64MB of ram around $100 20Gig HD around $239 Zip drive internal around $89 (100MB) Rage 128 around $200 DVD drive (unknown)
That's $600 for raw parts, not including the DVD drive. Now, let's subtract half that cost based on the lack of said parts or cheaper parts in the low end. That means $300 to upgrade (again, without DVD), so there's a hefty $700 to add DVD and that "smoking fast throughput". I might go up $500 or $600 from 400MHz to 450MHz, but when there's a large gap in price I have to question the price points. Your comments tell me that if I want a decent entry level machine, I should buy the 450MHz G4.
As far as "macho types with fat pockets", they usually sit in window offices and do little more with those machines than read email and create powerpoint slides for endless meetings. Meanwhile, those of use who really need that hoursepower slave away on what the beancounters allow because it's more cost effective.
You know, John, you're beginning to sound like an Apple marketing 'droid. Let's stop for a moment and think about some of the causes of Apple's current successes.
Apple has been selling its iMacs not on technical superiority, but on consumer marketing of the package. The shape, the simi translucence, the multiple colors, picking consumer outlets like CompUSA and Best Buy, all this is careful marketing orchestration. Jobs assertion that the iMac was superior to PII-based systems on the market at the time was quickly blown out of the water, and Apple never tried the technology angle again.
Everybody hates Microsoft. This has been going on for some time now, and everyone has taken advantage of it, especially Apple. Apple is riding that horse along with Linux and everybody else, for as hard and as long as that horse will run. What makes Apple's actions gallingly hypocritical is the acceptance, by Jobs, of Gate's 150 million to buy Apple's silence and finally put the last vestiges of the look-and-feel lawsuit to rest. Jobs even went so far as to comment Bill for saving Apple.
Apple is riding the wave of the longest economic expansion in American history. People can afford to buy Apples again. Take a look at your own price points for the new G4 systems. The first, at 400 MHz, starts at $1,599. Go up to 450MHz, and the price jumps to $2,499. Go up to 500MHz, and the price jumps again to $3,499. The trend is obvious. Going up 50 MHz in the G4 line costs about $1,000 for the privilege. Are you (and Apple) trying to tell me that going from 400 to 500 MHz is worth an extra $2,000? I don't think so. If the economy every turns sour, then Apple will be the first to feel it, and they'll feel it hardest.
Apple deserves credit for acting on what has been so obvious for so long, and that is computers are intimidating. Apple has borrowed from other industries (cars, consumer electronics) and carefully crafted a warm and fuzzy way to sell computers. That does not make them technically superior, just more easily marketable.
The Boston Globe article points out the serious flaw in Linux support, and that is the same zealots who pushed Java as the Microsoft killer are now on the Linux bandwagon, trying to do the same with Linux. You can point out all the differences you want between the language and the OS, but the hype hurting Java will eventually hurt Linux, if it hasn't already. As Microsoft says, "cold reality" is setting in. I've seen too many articles where non-geek users, who want to install and use Linux, wind up being stymied by Linux because it either wouldn't install, or after installation, wouldn't work quite as advertised, and trying to make it work causes them to get into Linux internals, leading to further shell-shock and disillusionment. Paranoia aside, Microsoft really doesn't have to do anything to fight Linux. Linux helps Microsoft every time a typical user has a negative experience either installing or using Linux. They can stand back and say "I told you so."
Microsoft is only sowing partial FUD when it says that Linux can't support SMP. Linux can indeed support SMP, if the kernel is rebuilt from the stock installation, and only if the installer knows to install all the supporting development tools and kernel source. The typical slashDotter knows how to do this, but not Average Joe User. And average Joe User isn't some knuckle-dragging anti-technology Neanderthal. Your Average Joe User can be, and usually is, the expert in another field who is a casual computer user and only wants to use the computer to get her or his job done. It is this market that Microsoft sells to, and as long as that market feels intimidated by the attitudes and antics of the typical Linux user as occasionally illustrated by the slashDot crowd, then that market will react by buying Microsoft.
Is there any good reason why they couldn't use the same socket as the Celerons? Are the busses too different to allow them to work on a Celeron 433-compatible board?
The busses are indeed different between the Athlon and the Intel Slot1/2 series. As has been reported elsewhere, the Athlon series catridge uses the Digital/Compaq Alpha buss edge connector. This allows the Athlon, for example, to access external memory at 200MHz instead of the Intel 100/133 MHz.
Moderation is not the end of the world. Moderation, in this case, is just editing for fitness of a web-based community online newspaper. As another example, moderation of net newsgroups has been around for quite some time, and is needed to order to keep the signal-to-noise ratio at least high enough to gain useful information from the forum. Such is also needed with a public website such as slashDot.
I don't question the need for moderation. What I do question are the standards by which articles are rated. I have watched with some amusement as one of my posts during this period of moderation angst has gone both up and down. Moderation will only mean something to slashDot participants (posters and readers) when it is carried out consistently and rationally. And saying that it should be obvious how to rank is not obvious, at least not to me. Only by consistently applying rational, fair rating rules can slashDot achieve credibility with this system, and from there, credibility in its editorial content (after all, this is just one huge op-ed site).
Palm OS from 3COm. EPOC from Psion QNX from ONX (think of Amiga and Proton UI) OpenDos from Caldera Thin Clients a.k.a Lineo Embedix, and embedded Linux from Lineo TRON, a series of embedded OS' from Japan
And that doesn't include Windows CE from Microsoft, and I'm sure I've not even scratched the surface. This sounds like another closed Japanese "innovation".
It will be interesting to see just who Microsoft's console manufacturer partners with to build this. If I were that console manufacturer, I'd choose Intel and its Celeron for a number of reasons:
1. The Celeron has already proven itself popular with PC gamers; 2. The Celeron is already dirt cheap, and the choice of very low end PC boxen ($300-$400). 3. It's already up in the 500 MHz range, making it quite competitive with current consoles. The notable exception would be the new Playstation II, if it ever does get build and shipped. 4. They've got the staying power.
In spite of impressive advanced press about Athlon, AMD has a poor track record for keeping up with market demand. It's been lossing quite a bit of money lately, so it's long term viability comes into question. If Athlon becomes popular with PC manufacturers and if, by some quirk of fate, the MS console becomes popular, there is no guarantee that AMD could keep up with demand.
I like an underdog, but I like underdogs that can execute and help me grow my business. And that means having Intel as a partner, not AMD
Of course, it begs the question of why the x86 architecture was choosen. The only x86 chip that was a decent embedded choice was the very old 80186. Intel is currently pitching StrongArm and its derivatives at this specific market. Alternate embedded chips would be MIPS or PowerPC. And Windows CE already runs on MIPS. A PowerPC port should be straight-forward.
Lack of useful information in the article seems to indicate this is a trial balloon from Microsoft marketing.
If FireWire dies, it will be Apple's fault
on
Is firewire dying?
·
· Score: 3
You can lay the death of FireWire at the feet of Apple Arrogance, along with the failure of the Mac OS interface (and the subsequent rise of Microsoft Windows).
FireWire is being priced right out of the marketplace by Apple's licensing requirement, which I believe runs at US$1/device that implements it. That may not sound like a lot, but costs are high enough, and margins razor thin, that $1 means a big deal when it's applied to millions of devices, especially from one manufacturer. What we have here is history repeating itself. IBM did this with Micro Channel in the late 80's. IBM was going to charge a licensing fee to every manufacturer that wanted to make motherboards or add-in cards. Instead, the industry, lead by Compaq and including Intel (the Gang of Nine) came up with EISA. That led to VLB and finally to PCI. IBM has since learned, as witnessed by their free release of a PowerPC motherboard reference design. That would have never come out of the IBM that gave us MicroChannel.
Apple is too greedy to take the long view. Apple should have given away the spec to FireWire and evangelised its use in everything from disk drives to camcorders to digital TVs. Then it should make FireWire a common port on every Apple system. With Apple being the standard creator, and providing powerful systems to take advantage of all those FireWire enabled devices, the market might have seen considerable advantage to buying Apple (there are no guarantees). But Apple will never learn. And with Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs back in the saddle, it will stay mired in the business practices of the bad old 80s.
Its assholes like you who make Linux advocacy such a royal pain in the ass. Computer science works best when all opinions are appreciated, especially those that disagree with your point of view. If he didn't like Linux, then I want to know why, because just maybe his criticism illuminates a problem or shortcoming that needs to be addressed. If you want a world where everyone thinks like you, then go find that alternate reality. It sure ain't this one.
Let's not forget what SCO really stands for. SCO has always been a high-margin product. For example, in 1993, at a company in Orlando, we investigated various Unixes for the x86 architecture. AT&T had decided to license their SVR4 to a number of resellers at low prices in order to get Unix out to a lot more customers than previously. We were looking at Consensys and SCO. We could get Consensys with TCP/IP and NFS for $239/seat, or we could purchase SCO base ($695) and then NFS (another $695), and that didn't even include development tools. We went with Consensys because we couldn't afford to outfit 15 boxes to the cool tune of $1500/box for the OS and networking. We wound up buying a complete set of GNU tools from a vendor who had ported them to Consensys for a modest fee (we got source, of course, and we bypassed the hassle of getting everything built). It was during that time that I started bringing Linux in for everyone to look at, but it wasn't strong enough at that time for what we wanted to do.
SCO took a real beating from the "cheap" Unix market until bad management on AT&T's, then Novell's, part forced what was left to be sold to SCO at fire-sale rates.
If I were an employee at SCO, I'd be sweating bullets right about now. Whatever Linux's flaws (and it does have its warts, just like every other OS), SCO is finding it an increasing challenge to show how they give better value than Linux (or BSD) or why they should charge such a premium for their OS. SCO is the last of the old-time OS vendors, where their first line offering is their OS, and you'll pay a literal small fortune to use it. It's only a matter of time before they slip into oblivion.
This isn't any different than what IBM did with their IBM AT. Back in the dark ages of personal computing (circa 1984) IBM released the Intel 286 powered AT running at a blazing 6MHz. Folks soon realized that they could bump the system clock up to an astounding 10MHz or 12MHz. In the process, they discovered that an overclocked IBM AT was as powerful as many of IBM's System 3x minis, at a fraction of the cost. When IBM found out this was happening, they released a reved motherboard with a BIOS check that kept the AT from booting if the motherboard was being clocked faster than 6MHz. Of course, we screamed and yelled back then, then we found out where the code was in the BIOS and hacked around it (being careful to update the checksum in the process), and got on with life.
And speaking of 1984, remember when fattening a Mac meant going from 128K to 512K? Apple tried to stop that by releasing jiggered Macs back then, because they wanted to sell enhanced Macs at a premium.
Moral: Fix the G3 BIOS yourself and get on with life. Apple will always try to fuck with you. The answer is to fuck Apple back.
This isn't any different than what IBM did with their IBM AT. Back in the dark ages of personal computing (circa 1984) IBM released the Intel 286 powered AT running at a blazing 6MHz. Folks soon realized that they could bump the system clock up to an astounding 10MHz or 12MHz. In the process, they discovered that an overclocked IBM AT was as powerful as many of IBM's System 3x minis, at a fraction of the cost. When IBM found out this was happening, they released a reved motherboard with a BIOS check that kept the AT from booting if the motherboard was being clocked faster than 6MHz. Of course, we screamed and yelled back then, then we found out where the code was in the BIOS and hacked around it (being careful to update the checksum in the process), and got on with life.
Moral: Fix the G3 BIOS yourself and get on with life. Apple will always try to fuck with you. The answer is to fuck Apple back.
The problem with the original Tron was its long stretch on facts and thin story line. The movie had no greater intentions than some light entertainment, far from today's super-hyped movies such as the remake of Godzilla. You can't just go to a movie anymore, you have to be totally immersed in the movie-going "experience". I remember the following pleasant memories:
Jeff Bridges as the hacker/arcade owner. I remember such places in the early 80's in Atlanta, and there was a pretty sharp arcade spot right next to the theater where Tron premiered where I lived at the time. The opening scenes of Flynn with his avatar trying to break into the machine are priceless. So was the avatar's companion, Bit.
A very young Bruce Boxleitner, skinny with glasses and very geek-like. He turned out to be the real star (IMHO), and won the beautiful babe (Lora/Yori) that Flynn couldn't keep satisfied.
An equally young Peter Jurasik. When Jurasik showed up as Londo on Babilon 5, I didn't recognize him at all. Not only the years, but accent threw me. What's more, Peter is still using an accent on his latest gig on Sliders as a mad doctor. He was only given a short part in the movie, loosing to Flynn (Bridges) in a digital version of jaialai.
David Warner. What can I say? He's played every bad guy from Jack the Ripper (Time after Time) to a Klingon ambassador and points in between all over the acting map. He made an excellent villian in Tron, as well as accurately portraying the typical spinless upper management type.
Cindy Morgan, the gorgeous babe who looked super in sweaters or blue body suit.
Barnard Hughes, the conscience of the movie.
What I also came away with was the theme by Wendy Carlos (Walter Carlos before the sex change operation, "Switched-on Bach") for the solar sail simulation run. I can still hear that running through my head...
Like I said, this was a pleasant little movie. A remake or sequel is guaranteed to fall flat on its face. I'm not interested in another sucks-out-load movie extension like "Phantom Menace" that's all CGI and no decent acting whatsoever.
My kernel sources, based on the web-available patches and Alan Cox (2.2.10-ac10), shows support for the Ultra 160/m in drivers/scsi/aic7xxx.c. I don't know when it showed up, but it's probably in the config scripts, so go buy one of the little Adaptec beasties and drop it in.
And yes, it is in the kernel, not just Red Hat. This is not a conspiracy to coopt Linux, this is marketing droids giving out comfortable data points that they can understand. I wonder if it's in FreeBSD as well?
Here's another ancient memory ping. I transfered, via serial port, the sources from the Commodore to a dual floppy Dec Rainbow running a CPM86 6502 cross-assembler. Intel hex files were then shoveled into a serial EPROM programmer. I used the C64 as an initial embedded development system, then moved everything over to the Rainbow and CPM86 before getting "wise" and moving on to the PC and beyond. It was during the Rainbow period that I became acquanted with Dec Ultrix on a MicroVax 1. And it was all mine.
This reminds me of the bad old days, and four stories in particular. The first was reverse engineering Commodore ROM Basic back to commented source code on the Commodore 64. Once reversed, I ported it to an embbeded 65C802 system I was working on. The tool I was using was called Sourcerer. Needless to say it worked, and I had my own kernel with a BASIC running on top of it.
The second story was with a 68000 monitor and debubber that I had to write a disassembler for in order to move it to a 68010 SBC. The disassembler was hand-made by me.
The third involved the original 8052 BASIC52 that Intel had produced. There were some bugs and lacking features in it, so I wrote a small assembly routine to dump the contents of the chip out its built-in serial port. The 8052 output was captured on an IBM PC, and I wrote a disassembler in MSC 4 to put it back into 8052 assembly language. I then fixed the bugs and added the features I needed, after which I programmed it back into an 8752 for further development. I sent the code back to Ciarcia, and I even got a little note back.
But the biggest tool I used was V Communications Sourcer. I got started using it to reverse IBM PC ROMS to hack the drive tables, and then started to add little features and fix little bugs. I used it commercially to reverse engineer the IBM RTIC communications card DOS drivers. I did that so we could then port the card to Novell Netware 2.15 as a VAD (IBM had no plans at the time to port it, and we needed it to provide a Bouroughs data link between a Netware server and a Bouroughs mainframe). Sourcer was, and still is, the cleanest disassembler on the market, capable of giving you back highly commented source code from binary files. I haven't updated my license lately since I prefer open systems to Windows, but if I had to do that again I would go back to Sourcer.
The point is that reverse engineering is equal parts art and science, and if you need it bad enough and know assembly well enough, you'll find and/or build the right tools for the job. ESR needs to calm down a bit.
"Bull. Little handheld devices have been around for years and continue to be nothing but little trinkets that people get on Father's day, play with for a couple of weeks and never use to get any "real" work done."
Bull to you. The most successful hand-held, highly programmed device on the face of this planet is the mobile phone. You can't run a word processor on it, and people grouse that you can't surf the web or look at your email (although those features are slowly coming), but its heavy dependence on embedded micros (many with more than one), running sophisticated embedded software, can't be characterized as something you get for Father's day and then forget. And there are a lot of other examples.
Maybe you like sitting in front of Neolithic computing devices (monitor, keyboard, mouse) that have remained essentially unchanged since the late 60's, but I'd love to have a very thin (1/2" or less) 8.5 inch x 11 inch wireless slate with high resolution and color that would allow me to read and respond to email as well as surf the web (such as/.). And the Palm VII is the start of just such a device.
The internet blew the idea of monolithic and proprietary networking out of the water, making connectivity almost into a utility, like plugging into an electric socket for power. We need to finish the revolution by killing off the PC and creating cheap, powerful computing appliances to fit now-well-known needs. And we need revolutionary software to lead the way, not a bloated OS like Windows, and certainly not a tail-light following OS like Linux. We will certainly never get to the future of computing with Windows. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will be with Linux, either.
The stability issue may be the primary issue for many people to look at Linux and other Windows alternates. Stability is a facet of an even larger issue for Microsoft: quality. If Microsoft OS software were of higher quality (greater stability, better interface consistency and ease of use, better maintainance) Linux, BSD, and other WinOS alternatives would be little more than curiousities. Open source is of little interest to the majority of computer users. They want a platform that works, works all the time, and gets their job done without an inordinate amount of preparation and setup.
I have a feeling that Linux is at its zenith, and will only decline in the years to come as the real successor to Windows, such as the Palm and other computing appliances, make a lot of the functionality of current desktop PCs irrelevant. And those machines run embedded Java, PalmOS, and ECOS32, just to name three.
Yes, geek is insulting, especially as one definition of a geek is a carnival sideshow performer who bites off the heads of live chickens during a performance (which reminds me of my diet as an undergrad, but we won't go there).
Of course, you could be called a wonk. Back in the early days of the Clinton administration, both Bill and Al (Bill and Al's Excellent Adventure?) came across as Policy Wonks and Economics Wonks, because they appeared to be able to hold their own against other experts in foreign policy and economics. How would you like to be called a Computer Wonk?
Of course, after having meet some alledged computer geeks f2f, it's no wonder that people would think they bite off the heads of live chickens at carnivals...
I have to agree with the lack of professionalism in Rasterman's diatribes, but I don't think the non-Linux general user community (consumer or business) associates professionalism with Linux programmers.
I know Linux supporters can rattle off high-profile Linux stories (Titanic rendering, a number of research clustering projects, possibly Corel's NetWinder, etc), as if somehow that imbues Linux in general with something approaching professionalism, but they lack the depth and breadth of the kind of stories that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others can lay before prospective PHBs.
If anything, Rasterman comes off looking like some spoiled script kiddie who got lucky at RedHat and then threw a fit and quit when things didn't go his way. If Rasterman really wanted to help, he'd think beyond his own wounded ego to the rest of the community. And perhaps the Linux community, if they really want to be looked on as professional-like, should be more selective on whom they bestow fame and cachet.
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Ok, let's see, let's try these costs on:
64MB of ram around $100
20Gig HD around $239
Zip drive internal around $89 (100MB)
Rage 128 around $200
DVD drive (unknown)
That's $600 for raw parts, not including the DVD drive. Now, let's subtract half that cost based on the lack of said parts or cheaper parts in the low end. That means $300 to upgrade (again, without DVD), so there's a hefty $700 to add DVD and that "smoking fast throughput". I might go up $500 or $600 from 400MHz to 450MHz, but when there's a large gap in price I have to question the price points. Your comments tell me that if I want a decent entry level machine, I should buy the 450MHz G4.
As far as "macho types with fat pockets", they usually sit in window offices and do little more with those machines than read email and create powerpoint slides for endless meetings. Meanwhile, those of use who really need that hoursepower slave away on what the beancounters allow because it's more cost effective.
Apple deserves credit for acting on what has been so obvious for so long, and that is computers are intimidating. Apple has borrowed from other industries (cars, consumer electronics) and carefully crafted a warm and fuzzy way to sell computers. That does not make them technically superior, just more easily marketable.
The Boston Globe article points out the serious flaw in Linux support, and that is the same zealots who pushed Java as the Microsoft killer are now on the Linux bandwagon, trying to do the same with Linux. You can point out all the differences you want between the language and the OS, but the hype hurting Java will eventually hurt Linux, if it hasn't already. As Microsoft says, "cold reality" is setting in. I've seen too many articles where non-geek users, who want to install and use Linux, wind up being stymied by Linux because it either wouldn't install, or after installation, wouldn't work quite as advertised, and trying to make it work causes them to get into Linux internals, leading to further shell-shock and disillusionment. Paranoia aside, Microsoft really doesn't have to do anything to fight Linux. Linux helps Microsoft every time a typical user has a negative experience either installing or using Linux. They can stand back and say "I told you so."
Microsoft is only sowing partial FUD when it says that Linux can't support SMP. Linux can indeed support SMP, if the kernel is rebuilt from the stock installation, and only if the installer knows to install all the supporting development tools and kernel source. The typical slashDotter knows how to do this, but not Average Joe User. And average Joe User isn't some knuckle-dragging anti-technology Neanderthal. Your Average Joe User can be, and usually is, the expert in another field who is a casual computer user and only wants to use the computer to get her or his job done. It is this market that Microsoft sells to, and as long as that market feels intimidated by the attitudes and antics of the typical Linux user as occasionally illustrated by the slashDot crowd, then that market will react by buying Microsoft.
Is there any good reason why they couldn't use the same socket as the Celerons? Are the busses too different to allow them to work on a Celeron 433-compatible board?
The busses are indeed different between the Athlon and the Intel Slot1/2 series. As has been reported elsewhere, the Athlon series catridge uses the Digital/Compaq Alpha buss edge connector. This allows the Athlon, for example, to access external memory at 200MHz instead of the Intel 100/133 MHz.
Moderation is not the end of the world. Moderation, in this case, is just editing for fitness of a web-based community online newspaper. As another example, moderation of net newsgroups has been around for quite some time, and is needed to order to keep the signal-to-noise ratio at least high enough to gain useful information from the forum. Such is also needed with a public website such as slashDot.
I don't question the need for moderation. What I do question are the standards by which articles are rated. I have watched with some amusement as one of my posts during this period of moderation angst has gone both up and down. Moderation will only mean something to slashDot participants (posters and readers) when it is carried out consistently and rationally. And saying that it should be obvious how to rank is not obvious, at least not to me. Only by consistently applying rational, fair rating rules can slashDot achieve credibility with this system, and from there, credibility in its editorial content (after all, this is just one huge op-ed site).
Let's see, we have:
Palm OS from 3COm.
EPOC from Psion
QNX from ONX (think of Amiga and Proton UI)
OpenDos from Caldera Thin Clients a.k.a Lineo
Embedix, and embedded Linux from Lineo
TRON, a series of embedded OS' from Japan
And that doesn't include Windows CE from Microsoft, and I'm sure I've not even scratched the surface. This sounds like another closed Japanese "innovation".
It will be interesting to see just who Microsoft's console manufacturer partners with to build this. If I were that console manufacturer, I'd choose Intel and its Celeron for a number of reasons:
1. The Celeron has already proven itself popular with PC gamers;
2. The Celeron is already dirt cheap, and the choice of very low end PC boxen ($300-$400).
3. It's already up in the 500 MHz range, making it quite competitive with current consoles. The notable exception would be the new Playstation II, if it ever does get build and shipped.
4. They've got the staying power.
In spite of impressive advanced press about Athlon, AMD has a poor track record for keeping up with market demand. It's been lossing quite a bit of money lately, so it's long term viability comes into question. If Athlon becomes popular with PC manufacturers and if, by some quirk of fate, the MS console becomes popular, there is no guarantee that AMD could keep up with demand.
I like an underdog, but I like underdogs that can execute and help me grow my business. And that means having Intel as a partner, not AMD
Of course, it begs the question of why the x86 architecture was choosen. The only x86 chip that was a decent embedded choice was the very old 80186. Intel is currently pitching StrongArm and its derivatives at this specific market. Alternate embedded chips would be MIPS or PowerPC. And Windows CE already runs on MIPS. A PowerPC port should be straight-forward.
Lack of useful information in the article seems to indicate this is a trial balloon from Microsoft marketing.
FireWire is being priced right out of the marketplace by Apple's licensing requirement, which I believe runs at US$1/device that implements it. That may not sound like a lot, but costs are high enough, and margins razor thin, that $1 means a big deal when it's applied to millions of devices, especially from one manufacturer. What we have here is history repeating itself. IBM did this with Micro Channel in the late 80's. IBM was going to charge a licensing fee to every manufacturer that wanted to make motherboards or add-in cards. Instead, the industry, lead by Compaq and including Intel (the Gang of Nine) came up with EISA. That led to VLB and finally to PCI. IBM has since learned, as witnessed by their free release of a PowerPC motherboard reference design. That would have never come out of the IBM that gave us MicroChannel.
Apple is too greedy to take the long view. Apple should have given away the spec to FireWire and evangelised its use in everything from disk drives to camcorders to digital TVs. Then it should make FireWire a common port on every Apple system. With Apple being the standard creator, and providing powerful systems to take advantage of all those FireWire enabled devices, the market might have seen considerable advantage to buying Apple (there are no guarantees). But Apple will never learn. And with Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs back in the saddle, it will stay mired in the business practices of the bad old 80s.
Its assholes like you who make Linux advocacy such a royal pain in the ass. Computer science works best when all opinions are appreciated, especially those that disagree with your point of view. If he didn't like Linux, then I want to know why, because just maybe his criticism illuminates a problem or shortcoming that needs to be addressed. If you want a world where everyone thinks like you, then go find that alternate reality. It sure ain't this one.
SCO took a real beating from the "cheap" Unix market until bad management on AT&T's, then Novell's, part forced what was left to be sold to SCO at fire-sale rates.
If I were an employee at SCO, I'd be sweating bullets right about now. Whatever Linux's flaws (and it does have its warts, just like every other OS), SCO is finding it an increasing challenge to show how they give better value than Linux (or BSD) or why they should charge such a premium for their OS. SCO is the last of the old-time OS vendors, where their first line offering is their OS, and you'll pay a literal small fortune to use it. It's only a matter of time before they slip into oblivion.
And speaking of 1984, remember when fattening a Mac meant going from 128K to 512K? Apple tried to stop that by releasing jiggered Macs back then, because they wanted to sell enhanced Macs at a premium.
Moral: Fix the G3 BIOS yourself and get on with life. Apple will always try to fuck with you. The answer is to fuck Apple back.
Moral: Fix the G3 BIOS yourself and get on with life. Apple will always try to fuck with you. The answer is to fuck Apple back.
I remember the following pleasant memories:
What I also came away with was the theme by Wendy Carlos (Walter Carlos before the sex change operation, "Switched-on Bach") for the solar sail simulation run. I can still hear that running through my head...
Like I said, this was a pleasant little movie. A remake or sequel is guaranteed to fall flat on its face. I'm not interested in another sucks-out-load movie extension like "Phantom Menace" that's all CGI and no decent acting whatsoever.
And yes, it is in the kernel, not just Red Hat. This is not a conspiracy to coopt Linux, this is marketing droids giving out comfortable data points that they can understand. I wonder if it's in FreeBSD as well?
Here's another ancient memory ping. I transfered, via serial port, the sources from the Commodore to a dual floppy Dec Rainbow running a CPM86 6502 cross-assembler. Intel hex files were then shoveled into a serial EPROM programmer. I used the C64 as an initial embedded development system, then moved everything over to the Rainbow and CPM86 before getting "wise" and moving on to the PC and beyond. It was during the Rainbow period that I became acquanted with Dec Ultrix on a MicroVax 1. And it was all mine.
The second story was with a 68000 monitor and debubber that I had to write a disassembler for in order to move it to a 68010 SBC. The disassembler was hand-made by me.
The third involved the original 8052 BASIC52 that Intel had produced. There were some bugs and lacking features in it, so I wrote a small assembly routine to dump the contents of the chip out its built-in serial port. The 8052 output was captured on an IBM PC, and I wrote a disassembler in MSC 4 to put it back into 8052 assembly language. I then fixed the bugs and added the features I needed, after which I programmed it back into an 8752 for further development. I sent the code back to Ciarcia, and I even got a little note back.
But the biggest tool I used was V Communications Sourcer. I got started using it to reverse IBM PC ROMS to hack the drive tables, and then started to add little features and fix little bugs. I used it commercially to reverse engineer the IBM RTIC communications card DOS drivers. I did that so we could then port the card to Novell Netware 2.15 as a VAD (IBM had no plans at the time to port it, and we needed it to provide a Bouroughs data link between a Netware server and a Bouroughs mainframe). Sourcer was, and still is, the cleanest disassembler on the market, capable of giving you back highly commented source code from binary files. I haven't updated my license lately since I prefer open systems to Windows, but if I had to do that again I would go back to Sourcer.
The point is that reverse engineering is equal parts art and science, and if you need it bad enough and know assembly well enough, you'll find and/or build the right tools for the job. ESR needs to calm down a bit.
Bull to you. The most successful hand-held, highly programmed device on the face of this planet is the mobile phone. You can't run a word processor on it, and people grouse that you can't surf the web or look at your email (although those features are slowly coming), but its heavy dependence on embedded micros (many with more than one), running sophisticated embedded software, can't be characterized as something you get for Father's day and then forget. And there are a lot of other examples.
Maybe you like sitting in front of Neolithic computing devices (monitor, keyboard, mouse) that have remained essentially unchanged since the late 60's, but I'd love to have a very thin (1/2" or less) 8.5 inch x 11 inch wireless slate with high resolution and color that would allow me to read and respond to email as well as surf the web (such as /.). And the Palm VII is the start of just such a device.
The internet blew the idea of monolithic and proprietary networking out of the water, making connectivity almost into a utility, like plugging into an electric socket for power. We need to finish the revolution by killing off the PC and creating cheap, powerful computing appliances to fit now-well-known needs. And we need revolutionary software to lead the way, not a bloated OS like Windows, and certainly not a tail-light following OS like Linux. We will certainly never get to the future of computing with Windows. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will be with Linux, either.
I have a feeling that Linux is at its zenith, and will only decline in the years to come as the real successor to Windows, such as the Palm and other computing appliances, make a lot of the functionality of current desktop PCs irrelevant. And those machines run embedded Java, PalmOS, and ECOS32, just to name three.
Of course, you could be called a wonk. Back in the early days of the Clinton administration, both Bill and Al (Bill and Al's Excellent Adventure?) came across as Policy Wonks and Economics Wonks, because they appeared to be able to hold their own against other experts in foreign policy and economics. How would you like to be called a Computer Wonk?
Of course, after having meet some alledged computer geeks f2f, it's no wonder that people would think they bite off the heads of live chickens at carnivals...
I know Linux supporters can rattle off high-profile Linux stories (Titanic rendering, a number of research clustering projects, possibly Corel's NetWinder, etc), as if somehow that imbues Linux in general with something approaching professionalism, but they lack the depth and breadth of the kind of stories that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others can lay before prospective PHBs.
If anything, Rasterman comes off looking like some spoiled script kiddie who got lucky at RedHat and then threw a fit and quit when things didn't go his way. If Rasterman really wanted to help, he'd think beyond his own wounded ego to the rest of the community. And perhaps the Linux community, if they really want to be looked on as professional-like, should be more selective on whom they bestow fame and cachet.