Instant #1 Windows competitor!
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 2
I think that making OS X available for x86 hardware would instantly create some very serious competition for Windows on the user market. And in doing so, would step in front of linux as the biggest threat to Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, linux is fantastic, but I think we can all admit that it isn't yet applicable to the low-knowledge user (the ones who just got the latest edition of "Using a Mouse, for Retards" for christmas). However, this market has always been where Macs excelled. And this is the biggest growth market out there. Let's face it, PC sales are slowing down, why? Because everyone who knows a lot about computers already has one. I find that a lot of the people I know who are buying computers now, are doing so for the first time (having therefore no OS affinity), and in choosing an OS will be looking for 2 things--ease of use, and price. Mac's have always been easy to use. And now, they have a first class BSD core for their OS. We may care about the guts, but new users are really just interested in slick looks, and applications. Plus, behind Windows the Mac platform has the most mature user applications, including mainstay ones that aren't available on Linux (MS Office, Adobe graphics software, etc). And x86 hardware is much cheaper than Mac hardware.
While it's a great show, the participants who can enter the show are pretty limited. There are legions of us resourceful computer geeks out there who would be perfect for a sister-show to Junkyard Wars--based on computers. The contestants could be put in a warehouse filled with old 386's/486's and different obsolete software packages and the goal could be to assemble a specific type of computing system! (and perhaps to hack the opposing team's network!)
Ok, while I can appreciate the technical achievement that making a cell phone out of paper represents, I'm left wondering: Just who are these things for? So, let's go through the list of people who are likely to use these things.
Joe Average: Joe average, like just about everyone else, probably already has a cell phone for his local area/country. So he won't be using them much.
Mr. Suit: Mr. Suit, on business travel might use one of these, but again, he probably has a good cell phone already, or can just use calling cards provided by his company at the hotel or pay phones.
Bart Simpson: The perfect user! Bart likes to make crank calls. What better way to do it than a totally anonymous $10 phone!! (That way there's no chance of Moe chasing him with his psycho knife).
Mr. Crack Dealer: Another natural user. He likes to be anonymous, and to change his phone number often! He'll probably use them frequently to communicate with his pals Mr. Drug Runner, Mr. Hit Man, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Triad
So I thank the brilliant engineers of this device that will surly increase the number of phone calls that Ivana Tinkle gets, as well as the number of times the phrase "have you got the stuff?" is used on the airwaves. Not to mention posh homeless guys searching through dumpsters for dinner AND a phone!
I'm starting to wonder just what is going on at Intel. After all the recent fiascos regarding their 1G + Pentium III processors, and chipsets.. it seems that they can't get anything right.
I know that 32-bit x86 emulation performance isn't the top priority of a 64-bit chip, but c'mon people -- just how many engineers does it take to make a chip that's fast, and compatible?
Oh, right.. they've probably got all their top engineers trying to make chipsets that work properly with SDRAM. Or after we pay $4k for a 64-bit itanium chip, are we going to have to spend another $10k on enough RAMBUS to boot up with ($20K if you're going to run Whistler-64)?
Check out the Imail Server from IPSwitch. It's a great mail server that supports both web and pop/imap access (as well as ldap). The server only runs on windows NT, but it is a very solid product. The web client works on all browsers very well, and supports various options for session handling (cookies, or querystring), as well as SSL. There is also full web based administration. It's not free, but the cost is very reasonable. You also don't need a super-powerful server to be able to run it. The company is quick to patch any discovered issues with the product. My company has used it for some time now. It requires next to no maintenance either.
As so many others have pointed out, the playstation 1 is vastly underpowered to handle emulation of SNES. However, what about the playstation 2 ? From what I know about its specs, it should have no problem emulating an SNES. And also, if there were projects begun to develop SNES emulators for the playstation 1, perhaps they should be continued on the new playstation 2 platform.
Question: If the playstation 2 can play playstation 1 games, does it do so in such a restricted environment (like 2mb of ram, limited processing power), or would it allow more extended use of the hardware? Why I'm asking, is that if there was a SNES emulator for the playstation 1 that wasn't fast enough, would it possibly be usable on the PS2?
Before you make a fuss, and think that your days of pirating MS software are over, take a closer read at the article:
"Microsoft plans to deliver WPA in all 32-bit versions of Whistler except those sold to volume-licensing customers and the so-called "Royalty OEM initial install images" provided to PC makers, said sources close to the company. Microsoft is expected to add similar anti-piracy technology to Office 10 and Visual Studio.Net, sources said."
This "volume-licensing" program is called Microsoft Select, and it's what huge corporations get. The versions that come on those Select CDs don't need product keys at all. So, anyone want to take a guess at how long it will take people to start passing around ISO's of the Select versions of these products? (Hint: they don't call it "0-day warez" for nothing!)
Everyone can see that this feature is going to be a huge annoyance, even Microsoft. And they especially don't want to annoy their major customers, so there will always be a way around it.
Can anyone see a potential issue waiting to happen? How about Pentium 4's disintegrating motherboards! Especially when Intel get's around to making them SMP compatible...
it's called "One-Click Fuck Off".. if you click on a site with your middle finger (of course your mouse has to be equipped for biometric finger identification) you are automatically removed from that site's mailing lists and your account is deleted, with all personal information removed.
To increase adoption by companies, if you middle-finger-click on a site that isn't signed up to the program they just get sent a bunch of spam with ASCII art flipping them the bird!
anyone who's "everyday needs" are taking precedent over buying a computer likely does not have the $1000-$3000 neccessary to buy a computer that a company can actually make money from selling.
Sure, there are billions of people out there who are working their butts off making our GAP clothes and Nike shoes and don't have a computer. However, until Dell et al can find a way to make a computer cost $10US there's no way many of these people could ever afford it.
perhaps when they fully assemble the supercomputer they can use some of that massive computing power to compress a video clip of 42sec (with no sound) to something less than 6MB! tsk, tsk...
that's the kind of bloat I'd expect from you-know-who:)
That link may be for the new phrack site, but try and get into any of it's sublinked pages... SQL errors all over the place. Looks like the MySQL server is down. So either they have been shutdown... or their mirror just got/.ed
Incidentally the MySQL server for that site is 63.145.226.10, and phrack.infonexus.com is 63.145.226.228. So it looks like the MySQL server was just for that mirror.
However, the front page at phrack.infonexus.com lists www.phrack.com as the home page for phrack. (and it says they had 0.56)
The DNS record for phrack.com is owned by NS1.DATALENS.COM which seems to be down, so does www.detalens.com so this could just be an ISP issue?
Microsoft's move to buy and partner up with Corel may very well be a sound investment on Microsoft's part. Corel has a history of generating major upswings in their stock price whenever there is hype around them. And Microsoft sure knows how to create hype. Corel's stock is also at a major low right now, so they are a bargin for M$.
This move seems to me quite like the move Microsoft pulled with investing $150 million in Apple a few years back when they weren't doing so well.
With a stock that is under-performing even Apple over the past 10 months, it is clear that Red Hat needs some changes in its business model if it is ever to reach profitability.
While no one like to see entire hardware lines dropped from compatability it may have been a neccesary decision for Red Hat. People may be using SPARCs with linux, but they are obviously not signing up for Red Hat support for those systems, hence Red Hat makes no money.
While this article deals with porting from MFC to GTK it seems to assume that the MFC finished product is what you're starting with. This is fine, but the situation can be much easier if you have a little forsight in mind when programming your original MFC application. Simply, it's called abstraction. Abstract all your UI functions and then write an MFC implimentation of your UI interface classes. If you then need to port all you have to rewrite is the implimentation classes. If you did it right, all your abstract interfaces won't have to be rewritten, and you won't have to spend time reprogramming behavior, just straight UI components.
The article restates the important fact that gnutella was developed very quickly, and was only put out in alpha format when it was killed by AOL. It was essentially a proof of concept release. The protocol spec and behavior that all the other clients are following is this quickly thrown together distributed file sharing protocol. No wonder it's got some bandwidth and scalability issues; it's not finished yet! It's not even 1.0
That is no reason to believe that gPulp (the next generation gnutella) won't be able to address and fix these issues. There is no "paradox". Give it time.
While this may look like a massive letter writing campaign, what it really amounts to being is a DDoS attack via e-mail. Most people have size (and or message count) limits on their e-mail boxes. This "million" e-mails will likely overflow the official's mailboxes! While I fully support more freedom for MP3s, is this sort of action really justified?
This move is obviously part of the Sun overall strategy. For 3 main reasons:
1. They make Solaris. It makes sense for them to try and run everything of theirs from this platform. Their programmers know the OS inside out. This move is about as surprising as hearing that Microsoft is trying to move Hotmail over to Windows 2000 from BSD. So we'll see if Sun has any better luck than Microsoft.
2. Announcing this OS move is also obviously a publicity stunt designed to try and put forth their own Solaris as a superior OS to Linux. Remember, like Oracle and Microsoft, Sun has a major superiority complex.
3. In porting Solaris to another platform they are improving the overall portability of the OS, making it a more attractive OS.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that making OS X available for x86 hardware would instantly create some very serious competition for Windows on the user market. And in doing so, would step in front of linux as the biggest threat to Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, linux is fantastic, but I think we can all admit that it isn't yet applicable to the low-knowledge user (the ones who just got the latest edition of "Using a Mouse, for Retards" for christmas). However, this market has always been where Macs excelled. And this is the biggest growth market out there. Let's face it, PC sales are slowing down, why? Because everyone who knows a lot about computers already has one. I find that a lot of the people I know who are buying computers now, are doing so for the first time (having therefore no OS affinity), and in choosing an OS will be looking for 2 things--ease of use, and price. Mac's have always been easy to use. And now, they have a first class BSD core for their OS. We may care about the guts, but new users are really just interested in slick looks, and applications. Plus, behind Windows the Mac platform has the most mature user applications, including mainstay ones that aren't available on Linux (MS Office, Adobe graphics software, etc). And x86 hardware is much cheaper than Mac hardware.
While it's a great show, the participants who can enter the show are pretty limited. There are legions of us resourceful computer geeks out there who would be perfect for a sister-show to Junkyard Wars--based on computers. The contestants could be put in a warehouse filled with old 386's/486's and different obsolete software packages and the goal could be to assemble a specific type of computing system! (and perhaps to hack the opposing team's network!)
Ok, while I can appreciate the technical achievement that making a cell phone out of paper represents, I'm left wondering: Just who are these things for? So, let's go through the list of people who are likely to use these things.
Joe Average: Joe average, like just about everyone else, probably already has a cell phone for his local area/country. So he won't be using them much.
Mr. Suit: Mr. Suit, on business travel might use one of these, but again, he probably has a good cell phone already, or can just use calling cards provided by his company at the hotel or pay phones.
Bart Simpson: The perfect user! Bart likes to make crank calls. What better way to do it than a totally anonymous $10 phone!! (That way there's no chance of Moe chasing him with his psycho knife).
Mr. Crack Dealer: Another natural user. He likes to be anonymous, and to change his phone number often! He'll probably use them frequently to communicate with his pals Mr. Drug Runner, Mr. Hit Man, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Triad
So I thank the brilliant engineers of this device that will surly increase the number of phone calls that Ivana Tinkle gets, as well as the number of times the phrase "have you got the stuff?" is used on the airwaves. Not to mention posh homeless guys searching through dumpsters for dinner AND a phone!
I'm starting to wonder just what is going on at Intel. After all the recent fiascos regarding their 1G + Pentium III processors, and chipsets.. it seems that they can't get anything right.
I know that 32-bit x86 emulation performance isn't the top priority of a 64-bit chip, but c'mon people -- just how many engineers does it take to make a chip that's fast, and compatible?
Oh, right.. they've probably got all their top engineers trying to make chipsets that work properly with SDRAM. Or after we pay $4k for a 64-bit itanium chip, are we going to have to spend another $10k on enough RAMBUS to boot up with ($20K if you're going to run Whistler-64)?
Check out the Imail Server from IPSwitch. It's a great mail server that supports both web and pop/imap access (as well as ldap). The server only runs on windows NT, but it is a very solid product. The web client works on all browsers very well, and supports various options for session handling (cookies, or querystring), as well as SSL. There is also full web based administration. It's not free, but the cost is very reasonable. You also don't need a super-powerful server to be able to run it. The company is quick to patch any discovered issues with the product. My company has used it for some time now. It requires next to no maintenance either.
As so many others have pointed out, the playstation 1 is vastly underpowered to handle emulation of SNES. However, what about the playstation 2 ? From what I know about its specs, it should have no problem emulating an SNES. And also, if there were projects begun to develop SNES emulators for the playstation 1, perhaps they should be continued on the new playstation 2 platform .
Question: If the playstation 2 can play playstation 1 games, does it do so in such a restricted environment (like 2mb of ram, limited processing power), or would it allow more extended use of the hardware? Why I'm asking, is that if there was a SNES emulator for the playstation 1 that wasn't fast enough, would it possibly be usable on the PS2?
Before you make a fuss, and think that your days of pirating MS software are over, take a closer read at the article:
.Net, sources said."
"Microsoft plans to deliver WPA in all 32-bit versions of Whistler except those sold to volume-licensing customers and the so-called "Royalty OEM initial install images" provided to PC makers, said sources close to the company. Microsoft is expected to add similar anti-piracy technology to Office 10 and Visual Studio
This "volume-licensing" program is called Microsoft Select, and it's what huge corporations get. The versions that come on those Select CDs don't need product keys at all. So, anyone want to take a guess at how long it will take people to start passing around ISO's of the Select versions of these products? (Hint: they don't call it "0-day warez" for nothing!)
Everyone can see that this feature is going to be a huge annoyance, even Microsoft. And they especially don't want to annoy their major customers, so there will always be a way around it.
millions and years spent on the ISS and it is constantly requiring construction and maintenance.. are you sure you're not talking about the IIS?
Can anyone see a potential issue waiting to happen? How about Pentium 4's disintegrating motherboards! Especially when Intel get's around to making them SMP compatible...
People will continue to use Netware for the same reason that they still use Token Ring networks--It takes effort to change. Effort and $.
But is anyone implimenting NEW Novell solutions? I don't know, maybe in Russia.
it's called "One-Click Fuck Off".. if you click on a site with your middle finger (of course your mouse has to be equipped for biometric finger identification) you are automatically removed from that site's mailing lists and your account is deleted, with all personal information removed.
To increase adoption by companies, if you middle-finger-click on a site that isn't signed up to the program they just get sent a bunch of spam with ASCII art flipping them the bird!
why don't they just call it BetaCD?
anyone who's "everyday needs" are taking precedent over buying a computer likely does not have the $1000-$3000 neccessary to buy a computer that a company can actually make money from selling.
Sure, there are billions of people out there who are working their butts off making our GAP clothes and Nike shoes and don't have a computer. However, until Dell et al can find a way to make a computer cost $10US there's no way many of these people could ever afford it.
perhaps when they fully assemble the supercomputer they can use some of that massive computing power to compress a video clip of 42sec (with no sound) to something less than 6MB! tsk, tsk...
:)
that's the kind of bloat I'd expect from you-know-who
That link may be for the new phrack site, but try and get into any of it's sublinked pages... SQL errors all over the place. Looks like the MySQL server is down. So either they have been shutdown... or their mirror just got /.ed
Incidentally the MySQL server for that site is 63.145.226.10, and phrack.infonexus.com is 63.145.226.228. So it looks like the MySQL server was just for that mirror.
However, the front page at phrack.infonexus.com lists www.phrack.com as the home page for phrack. (and it says they had 0.56)
The DNS record for phrack.com is owned by NS1.DATALENS.COM which seems to be down, so does www.detalens.com so this could just be an ISP issue?
Microsoft's move to buy and partner up with Corel may very well be a sound investment on Microsoft's part. Corel has a history of generating major upswings in their stock price whenever there is hype around them. And Microsoft sure knows how to create hype. Corel's stock is also at a major low right now, so they are a bargin for M$.
This move seems to me quite like the move Microsoft pulled with investing $150 million in Apple a few years back when they weren't doing so well.
Any predictions on how long it will take someone to crack this encryption method?
You can sure bet people will start trying!
Perhaps it will be a future project for distributed.net?
With a stock that is under-performing even Apple over the past 10 months, it is clear that Red Hat needs some changes in its business model if it is ever to reach profitability.
While no one like to see entire hardware lines dropped from compatability it may have been a neccesary decision for Red Hat. People may be using SPARCs with linux, but they are obviously not signing up for Red Hat support for those systems, hence Red Hat makes no money.
While this article deals with porting from MFC to GTK it seems to assume that the MFC finished product is what you're starting with. This is fine, but the situation can be much easier if you have a little forsight in mind when programming your original MFC application. Simply, it's called abstraction. Abstract all your UI functions and then write an MFC implimentation of your UI interface classes. If you then need to port all you have to rewrite is the implimentation classes. If you did it right, all your abstract interfaces won't have to be rewritten, and you won't have to spend time reprogramming behavior, just straight UI components.
The article restates the important fact that gnutella was developed very quickly, and was only put out in alpha format when it was killed by AOL. It was essentially a proof of concept release. The protocol spec and behavior that all the other clients are following is this quickly thrown together distributed file sharing protocol. No wonder it's got some bandwidth and scalability issues; it's not finished yet! It's not even 1.0
That is no reason to believe that gPulp (the next generation gnutella) won't be able to address and fix these issues. There is no "paradox". Give it time.
It may be one click shopping, but these are macs we're talking about.
So it's Shift-Option-Click!
While this may look like a massive letter writing campaign, what it really amounts to being is a DDoS attack via e-mail. Most people have size (and or message count) limits on their e-mail boxes. This "million" e-mails will likely overflow the official's mailboxes! While I fully support more freedom for MP3s, is this sort of action really justified?
what you're saying is partly true...
but what they really bought is the name!
This move is obviously part of the Sun overall strategy. For 3 main reasons:
1. They make Solaris. It makes sense for them to try and run everything of theirs from this platform. Their programmers know the OS inside out. This move is about as surprising as hearing that Microsoft is trying to move Hotmail over to Windows 2000 from BSD. So we'll see if Sun has any better luck than Microsoft.
2. Announcing this OS move is also obviously a publicity stunt designed to try and put forth their own Solaris as a superior OS to Linux. Remember, like Oracle and Microsoft, Sun has a major superiority complex.
3. In porting Solaris to another platform they are improving the overall portability of the OS, making it a more attractive OS.
believe me, 99% of the paranoid freaks out there all worried about Carnivore are way too boring for the FBI to be interested in!