That I'm this much of a Thinkpad fan and would buy an Apple notebook to replace a Thinkpad really speaks to the quality of the hardware. OK, some people would say it speaks to my stupidity, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it:)
I'm a big thinkpad fan too, and I am super unimpressed by the quality of my Macbook Pro. The keyboard is among the worst I have had on a laptop... it causes me physical pain if I use it for more than half an hour. The hardware is unexceptional, the lack of a docking port is a twice-daily pain in the back (from bending down to retrieve cables), and I really miss the ultrabay, the two-button trackpad, the easily replaced (ONE fat thumb screw) hard drive, and the matte high-traction scratch-resistant finish. Oh, and hat little lip around the lid that keeps loose objects from working in between the screen and the keyboard. And the *drive lights*... damn, I miss knowing whether the damn thing is hung or just busy. And the OS-independent hibernation in firmware that works for Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, and BeOS (yes, really).
And I could do without the overheating as well.
If you prefer the Macbook Pro, I don't know if you're stupid. Maybe you're just crazy.
they don't sell any low-end junk in their product line
I've had a lot of Macs, starting with the original 128k model M0001. My SE/30 was pretty damn junky, and the Powermac 8100 was horrible. What, that was before the Return of Jobs? OK, how about the iMac G3 (have you ever opened one up?), Mac Mini (a cheap laptop without the screen in too small a box for proper cooling), and several models of the iMac G5 and Intel iMac. Oh, it's not *priced* like low-end junk, but it's sure *built* like it. Low end generic hardware in a moderately expensive nice-looking plastic or aluminum box. With really crappy keyboards and mice, just to add injury to insult.
It's not that Apple hardware is simpler to write drivers for, because Apple hardware, since the early '90s, has increasingly been just generic PC hardware... first they went to PCI, then they went to generic bridge chips, finally they went Intel... and everything in a Mac is off the shelf.
And reliability has IMPROVED as it's become more generic. They had horrible problems with the "Grackle" PCI bridge in the original G3 desktops.
The Apple boot sequence is not specific to Macs, they picked a new industry standard that was already being developed, EFI, rather than porting their existing PPC bootstrap code to Intel.
What makes Macs "just work" is software. To be precise, it's software they don't have any more. They shed a lot of horrible legacy code when they shifted to a UNIX base. Microsoft kept all the legacy APIs and interfaces when they switched to NT, and they're all still there in Vista... they're talking about *maybe* putting those into some kind of emulator for Windows 7, but given that Vista is still missing features that were promised for Cairo (Windows NT 5.0, AKA Windows 2000) I wouldn't hold your breath.
And so this is another cost to DRM... and it's such a waste. Not only does it break fair use, but it's pointless. You can't protect digital content and still allow people to watch it, unless you install DRM hardware inside the brain so that you look at a screen full of static and it's decoded into "Batman vs. Spiderman II - Pest Strip Terror" inside your head.
The Linux kerneluser ABI is stable, and has been since 2.0.0.
Thanks for the info, I'm glad they're making *some* progress on the "woohoo, we bad cowboys" front. Will glibc start pulling some of the crack-inspired code out now?
However, the article is totally wrong on this point:
It's only the odd person who wants to write a kernel driver that needs to worry about the in-kernel interfaces changing. For the majority of the world, they neither see this interface, nor do they care about it at all.
As the great grandparent* of this article, and many others, have pointed out, end users are impacted directly by changes in the kernel ABIs just as much as they've been impacted by the continual changes in other APIs... even if they don't write code for them. If this means that it's more work for Linux programmers then that's what it means, because there is a huge gain from stable interfaces. Stable interfaces are, at the bottom of it all, what open systems are about. That's what open systems are, one way or another... stable interfaces that don't depend on quirks of specific implementations. Anywhere more than one team is working at an interface, making that interface an open one is a huge win... and drivers *are* such an interface.
Slusallek's RPU was doing real-time raytracing with about the same hardware as Rage Pro, three years ago.
They could afford to put a couple of souped up RPUs in the corner of a GPU without noticing the "lost" transistors and get this kind of real-time raytracing on entry-level GPUs *today*.
Are you saying that I should upgrade my entire kernel to gain support for new hardware?
The Linux kernel needs to get out of "we bad, we cowboys, we don't need to care about yo wimpy APIs" mode and make the ABI at the kernel and USER level stable. Linux seems to have pushed the ABI out to glibc, and expect the glibc maintainers to dance the macarena on an erupting volcano to keep a stable glibc API on an unstable kernel.
I'm running FreeBSD 4 userlands unmodified in a jail on a FreeBSD 6 kernel. There's hosting companies providing "virtual red hat hosts" using the FreeBSD linux emulation running a Red Hat distro inside a jail. The biggest API change I can recall in FreeBSD was when seek (I think it was) went to "long long" and that changed the system call number so old programs could keep on working. And that was in the mid-90s.
Upgrading the kernel should be no more exciting than installing a driver.
Rebuilding the kernel shouldn't be a big deal. Just about every commercial UNIX out there has made driver installs into copying files and a kernel rebuild into something as trivial as "doconfig; make clean install" and then wrapped that in a GUI so cunning you can stick a tail on it and call it a weasel. You may not even need to press a button, it comes pre-pressed at the factory.
Does Linux STILL need you to faff around with an interactive script to rebuild the kernel and then update LILO to know where the kernel is? Surely not. I was boggled to see that in the late '90s... haven't had to deal with that kind of [expletive deleted] since the '80s.
Compiz is maybe the third OpenGL-based window manager for X, fourth if you count Berlin, and KDE and Google and most of the rest of the stuff you're talking about are applications.
Ubuntu is more than three years old.
None of these things are fundamental changes in Linux itself, they're all chrome.
And that's a good thing. Linux is BADLY in need of stability. You can't win a race if you spend all the time in the pit.
I'm not sure I would describe people who hold that belief as creationists, unless they told me that's how they wanted me to do so (and I'd be sure to ask why). Nor would I expect that any technical or scientifically minded person who was willing to accept something like the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics would be prepared to rule it out.
Also... I have made similar suggestions to various people who did identify themselves as creationists at various times over the past 36 years (the first time I can recall was at a religious booth at the Royal Sydney Easter Show in 1972) and I have yet to find such a self-identified creationist who was prepared to accept it.
Actually this would be great. You know why? Because once and for all there would be a public outcry to abolish the moronic speed laws.
Setting aside the fact that automated speed cameras haven't done that...
How do you feel about the insurance company raising your premiums because you stopped at McDonalds, and your creepy neighbor telling your wife you stopped at the bar on the way home from work, and your boss wondering why you dropped by his competitor twice last week, and all the rest of the ways this would make you really fucking insecure?
There are plenty of examples of species crossing over from plant-eating to meat-eating and vice versa. Consider the dolphin or the kinkajou... or ones stuck in the middle like humans...
Slashdot Mirror
So they took the whole game because of the evil balaclava?
we're talking about the freedom to run software that I've paid for on whatever system I damn well like.
That hasn't been a right in the US since the DMCA was passed. Next?
That I'm this much of a Thinkpad fan and would buy an Apple notebook to replace a Thinkpad really speaks to the quality of the hardware. OK, some people would say it speaks to my stupidity, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it :)
I'm a big thinkpad fan too, and I am super unimpressed by the quality of my Macbook Pro. The keyboard is among the worst I have had on a laptop... it causes me physical pain if I use it for more than half an hour. The hardware is unexceptional, the lack of a docking port is a twice-daily pain in the back (from bending down to retrieve cables), and I really miss the ultrabay, the two-button trackpad, the easily replaced (ONE fat thumb screw) hard drive, and the matte high-traction scratch-resistant finish. Oh, and hat little lip around the lid that keeps loose objects from working in between the screen and the keyboard. And the *drive lights*... damn, I miss knowing whether the damn thing is hung or just busy. And the OS-independent hibernation in firmware that works for Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, and BeOS (yes, really).
And I could do without the overheating as well.
If you prefer the Macbook Pro, I don't know if you're stupid. Maybe you're just crazy.
they don't sell any low-end junk in their product line
I've had a lot of Macs, starting with the original 128k model M0001. My SE/30 was pretty damn junky, and the Powermac 8100 was horrible. What, that was before the Return of Jobs? OK, how about the iMac G3 (have you ever opened one up?), Mac Mini (a cheap laptop without the screen in too small a box for proper cooling), and several models of the iMac G5 and Intel iMac. Oh, it's not *priced* like low-end junk, but it's sure *built* like it. Low end generic hardware in a moderately expensive nice-looking plastic or aluminum box. With really crappy keyboards and mice, just to add injury to insult.
And where is Apple preventing you from installing any OS you want on your Mac?
Didn't we go through this very sort of thing in the 80's with IBM?
IBM didn't write the OS, and you didn't run IBM PC DOS on the clone, you ran MS-DOS or CP/M-86.
So, um, "No".
Because Apple can't afford to.
Really.
If Psystar wins this, there's going to be deep and unpleasant consequences for OS X.
It's not that Apple hardware is simpler to write drivers for, because Apple hardware, since the early '90s, has increasingly been just generic PC hardware... first they went to PCI, then they went to generic bridge chips, finally they went Intel... and everything in a Mac is off the shelf.
And reliability has IMPROVED as it's become more generic. They had horrible problems with the "Grackle" PCI bridge in the original G3 desktops.
The Apple boot sequence is not specific to Macs, they picked a new industry standard that was already being developed, EFI, rather than porting their existing PPC bootstrap code to Intel.
What makes Macs "just work" is software. To be precise, it's software they don't have any more. They shed a lot of horrible legacy code when they shifted to a UNIX base. Microsoft kept all the legacy APIs and interfaces when they switched to NT, and they're all still there in Vista... they're talking about *maybe* putting those into some kind of emulator for Windows 7, but given that Vista is still missing features that were promised for Cairo (Windows NT 5.0, AKA Windows 2000) I wouldn't hold your breath.
And so this is another cost to DRM... and it's such a waste. Not only does it break fair use, but it's pointless. You can't protect digital content and still allow people to watch it, unless you install DRM hardware inside the brain so that you look at a screen full of static and it's decoded into "Batman vs. Spiderman II - Pest Strip Terror" inside your head.
(maybe I shouldn't give them ideas)
The Linux kerneluser ABI is stable, and has been since 2.0.0.
Thanks for the info, I'm glad they're making *some* progress on the "woohoo, we bad cowboys" front. Will glibc start pulling some of the crack-inspired code out now?
However, the article is totally wrong on this point:
It's only the odd person who wants to write a kernel driver that needs to worry about the in-kernel interfaces changing. For the majority of the world, they neither see this interface, nor do they care about it at all.
As the great grandparent* of this article, and many others, have pointed out, end users are impacted directly by changes in the kernel ABIs just as much as they've been impacted by the continual changes in other APIs... even if they don't write code for them. If this means that it's more work for Linux programmers then that's what it means, because there is a huge gain from stable interfaces. Stable interfaces are, at the bottom of it all, what open systems are about. That's what open systems are, one way or another... stable interfaces that don't depend on quirks of specific implementations. Anywhere more than one team is working at an interface, making that interface an open one is a huge win... and drivers *are* such an interface.
PS: This is a serious problem - please don't mod this funny.
They won't let me mod it up "Serious".
Slusallek's RPU was doing real-time raytracing with about the same hardware as Rage Pro, three years ago.
They could afford to put a couple of souped up RPUs in the corner of a GPU without noticing the "lost" transistors and get this kind of real-time raytracing on entry-level GPUs *today*.
Are you saying that I should upgrade my entire kernel to gain support for new hardware?
The Linux kernel needs to get out of "we bad, we cowboys, we don't need to care about yo wimpy APIs" mode and make the ABI at the kernel and USER level stable. Linux seems to have pushed the ABI out to glibc, and expect the glibc maintainers to dance the macarena on an erupting volcano to keep a stable glibc API on an unstable kernel.
I'm running FreeBSD 4 userlands unmodified in a jail on a FreeBSD 6 kernel. There's hosting companies providing "virtual red hat hosts" using the FreeBSD linux emulation running a Red Hat distro inside a jail. The biggest API change I can recall in FreeBSD was when seek (I think it was) went to "long long" and that changed the system call number so old programs could keep on working. And that was in the mid-90s.
Upgrading the kernel should be no more exciting than installing a driver.
Rebuilding the kernel shouldn't be a big deal. Just about every commercial UNIX out there has made driver installs into copying files and a kernel rebuild into something as trivial as "doconfig; make clean install" and then wrapped that in a GUI so cunning you can stick a tail on it and call it a weasel. You may not even need to press a button, it comes pre-pressed at the factory.
Does Linux STILL need you to faff around with an interactive script to rebuild the kernel and then update LILO to know where the kernel is? Surely not. I was boggled to see that in the late '90s... haven't had to deal with that kind of [expletive deleted] since the '80s.
IBM To Linux Desktop Developers: 'Stop Copying Windows'.
Compiz is maybe the third OpenGL-based window manager for X, fourth if you count Berlin, and KDE and Google and most of the rest of the stuff you're talking about are applications.
Ubuntu is more than three years old.
None of these things are fundamental changes in Linux itself, they're all chrome.
And that's a good thing. Linux is BADLY in need of stability. You can't win a race if you spend all the time in the pit.
My openSuse Linux install takes about 20 minutes for the base install, and another twenty for all the updates and extra programs I use.
Why so long? Aee you using a 500 MHz PIII or something?
It's waaaay faster to install than XP and programs, which usually ends up at about three hours.
You're familiar with the phrase "damning with faint praise", I hope?
It's about time games took health seriously. I guess the Nintendo Wii is starting to have an effect on PCs as well as consoles.
Linux hasn't had any major changes in the past three years, why would you think it'll have any in the next three?
I'm not sure I would describe people who hold that belief as creationists, unless they told me that's how they wanted me to do so (and I'd be sure to ask why). Nor would I expect that any technical or scientifically minded person who was willing to accept something like the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics would be prepared to rule it out.
Also... I have made similar suggestions to various people who did identify themselves as creationists at various times over the past 36 years (the first time I can recall was at a religious booth at the Royal Sydney Easter Show in 1972) and I have yet to find such a self-identified creationist who was prepared to accept it.
But I take your point.
what are you doing here if you hate it that much?
Cor! A Geekriot!
Actually this would be great. You know why? Because once and for all there would be a public outcry to abolish the moronic speed laws.
Setting aside the fact that automated speed cameras haven't done that...
How do you feel about the insurance company raising your premiums because you stopped at McDonalds, and your creepy neighbor telling your wife you stopped at the bar on the way home from work, and your boss wondering why you dropped by his competitor twice last week, and all the rest of the ways this would make you really fucking insecure?
Hi my name is "analogy that doesn't apply".
Oh, I thought it would be "Bryan". Silly me.
Intelligent design of a universe driven by natural selection!
Is that a compromise, or what?
Pyrrhic Compromise: a solution to a problem designed to piss off everyone involved.
[With Spore] we didn't want to go too far down that path: we leave the whole creation of the universe question open.
With spore, we know how the universe was created. It was created in Will Wright's office. Duh.
There are plenty of examples of species crossing over from plant-eating to meat-eating and vice versa. Consider the dolphin or the kinkajou... or ones stuck in the middle like humans...