Is that you must drink the beer while doing the support. Preferably slam two or three before getting started ("I just need to warm up before I get to work"). Make sure to keep the person you are doing the support for in the room with you by constant conversation. When you start to work on the computer do so in a distracted manner - keep talking and babbling while glancing back and forth at the screen. Horror stories about computer problems you've fixed (real or imagined) are good, but especially comments about things you've done that have fucked up computers. "Yeah I used to think anti-static wrist wraps were for pansies, then there was the time I blew out an entire system from one little spark. Damn, over $1000 in damages, just from my stupidity. Oh, were did I put that anti-static strap? Must have left it at home, oh well, no biggie." Also make sure to make comments like "Whoops! Hmmm, well didn't really need that anyway.", "So you do shopping on the Interweb? Man you should change your password, that one is too easy to hack." "What are these pictures of? analdogsex.com? I didn't know you leaned that way." "Jesus! You've got more spyware than the Kremlin in here!" If you are really mean you can also play some nice practical jokes while you are there. You know the stuff - make hardcore porn auto launch when you log in, switch the sounds out for farts. Whatever floats your boat. Odds are you can do the tech support blind, deaf and drunk anyway but the nice thing is you get to entertain yourself, terrify your friend and quite possibly next time your friend will take the machine to a shop instead of calling you to fix it.
Or in the case of iPod shuffle, external USB 2.0 drives. Your point stands never the less. Not much of a hack really.
Re:Gave up because the installer wouldn't let them
on
iPod Shuffle RAID
·
· Score: 1
Huh? You can't boot off of software RAID on OS X? You must be able too. I used to use a software RAID on my primary boot disk in Windows NT years ago. As long as the boot loader is aware it's not a problem.
Uh no. Both situations are stupid and amount to just a generation of a bunch of noise to the posts.
Consider:
Past: "any dumbass anti-Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful"
is equal to
Present: "any dumbass Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful"
In terms of constructive and interesting conversation which might actually present useful information - both of these are the same. If modded at all they should both be modded as Flamebait, Troll etc.
I'm not arguing that I miss the old days of getting modded Insightful for bashing Apple. I have never gotten karma that way. I would just like to see some actual intelligent discussion of the pros and cons. But I guess that is just too much to expect from Slashdot.
"While Napster at least had a little swagger as the slick pirate software"
Well Napster was like the pirate that storms into the bay, knocks over tables at the local pub, screws the governors daughter and flips the local militia the bird while drunk off his ass on rum. Ahaaaarrrr!
On Slashdot these days, all you need to do is reply to any post arguing benefits of using Windows refuting the arguments through the use of one word "wrong" and get modded "Insightful". Using the phrase "it Just Works" is useful too. How about an intelligent response?
It's just plain impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the pros and cons of Mac vs. Windows now.
Ranting done: So here to better analyze the statements that were made:
A.) It may be cheap and sexy, but it's hard to find apps for.
There are a lot of good applications for the Mac, but depending on what you may want to do it may or may not be sufficient. Microsoft Office and the Adobe line of products are well supported on Mac. If you have specific application needs due to your line of work, you should check this out before switching. Many Windows applications can be run at acceptable speed via Virtual PC.
If you switch you may need to reinvest in application purchases. If you own Windows licenses for a lot of software it can be cost prohibitive to make the switch. That being said, the Mac Mini does come with iLife, Appleworks and Quicken which will get you going.
B.) No Games. Sorry.
The situation is much better than it was before. A number of excellent games are available for the Mac including Rise of Nations, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942, Knights of the Old Republic, World of Warcraft etc.
That being said, you will usually wait a lot longer to play these games. The big exception is Blizzard which has supported simulatneous release on the Mac for quite some time.
If you don't mind the wait it's not a big deal but for some games this is problematic. It took almost two years for Battlefield 1942 to be released on the Mac. The game when it was first released was groundbreaking - being the first to offer air, sea and ground vehicles as well as the conquest mode. Mac users may be less impressed. They have probably seen these features first in Unreal 2004. Additionally, jumping into BF 1942 as a newbie and playing with people with 2 years of experience can't be much fun.
Even with all these great games available for the Mac - if you are a hardcore gamer you probably won't be happy. If I look at what I am currently playing: City of Heroes, Rome Total War, Vampire Bloodlines, Half Life 2, Battle for Middle Earth - nope none are out on the Mac.
You are also going to be limited by the onboard video in the Mac Mini. Yeah, sure the Radeon 9200 is ok for casual gaming. But if you want silky smooth antialiased gaming at 1600x1200 - that's not going to cut it. You should be looking at a PowerMac in that case. And that's a lot more cash - a PowerMac system comparable to my current gaming desktop (single 1.8Ghz G5, 1GB DDR 400, 160GB SATA drive, GeForce 6800GT vs. sames specs PC with a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4) runs about $700 more than the PC ($2200 vs. $1500).
C.) Regardless of the low price, Apple has a huge hurdle to overcome with the general masses that they won't be missing out if they get it.
Ok I'm not going to touch this one. I have no idea what he's trying to say.
Disclaimer: I work with Macs (OS9 and OSX), Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. They ALL piss me off sometimes.
Um, how about producers of that audio and video content. I work in media. Media companies generate huge amounts of data, and often need to keep a lot of it in online storage and archives. Print, radio, television, movie production etc.
I have a use right now. It would server perfectly for offline archives of our production data at my workplace. We currently use about 1.5TB and estimate usage in the 3TB range within 2 years. Tape backup for a data set this large is only practical by using incrementals which cause their own problems. I should mention this is a small business (about 75 employees) so we can't afford our very own robotic tape backup. Not too mention the time it takes to stream that large a data set to tape. We currently use disk based redundancy via SAN and NAS with incremental tape as a last stage. Being able to dump this data set to one or two disks for offline storage would be awesome.
I agree with that too. I like seeing Mario and the gang in games. I just feel sometimes that Nintendo needs to strike a better balance between "upgrading" their existing franchises and introducing new characters and play styles. We need more Pikmin and maybe a little less Mario Tennis.
How about poetry? The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed is a book that was "written" by an artificial intelligence program back in 1984. Supposedly the selections were not tweaked by humans but were certainly were selected by humans - this book of prose poetry was created by a program called "Racter". You can read Racter's work online. The software for Racter was available for various 8 bit computers. A DOS version can be downloaded from the Home of the Underdogs. Is it art? Well, if a large canvas painted entirely blue can be considered art, maybe just maybe the incoherent ramblings of an AI program can be too. The real consideration is WHO is the artist? Is it the program, or the programmer?
How about Haunted Freaking House for survival horror? Published in 1981! A game so freaking scary they were going to call it "Nightmare Manor" but that was just TOO scary!!
Don't believe me? Check out the EVIL bat:
spooky screen shots! (possibly not safe for work, kids or elderly with weak hearts).
"And if you have a context (franchise, etc.) in which a particular game type works, there's not necessarily a reason to abandon it."
True. But if you never create new worlds and characters, you will never come up with a new Zelda or Mario. Pokemon almost single handedly rejuvenated the Gameboy market, not so much because the RPG was totally revolutionary, but because the new characters struck a chord with the players. In the case of products such as Star Fox adventures, wouldn't it have been better to introduce new characters as Dinosaur Planet? Did putting Fox into a game non-characteristic of previous Star Fox games help either the game or the Star Fox brand? Especially seeing as there was no space ship flying Star Fox game out on the GameCube?
I agree that they are relying on the old franchises a bit much - I think also that a lot of the games only appeal to the younger set. We have all three consoles at my house and the GameCube gets the most play. Certainly the most group play. This is because of my 8 year old son who loved to play things like Super Smash Bros and Mario Party, hell even Mario Golf. The PS2 doesn't get much use and the Xbox is primarily used for emulation and media playback. As far as I can tell there isn't all that much good family oriented content on the Xbox. Most of the library seems geared toward gamers in high school or older. Not a lot of cute going on.
To be frank, both the Xbox and the Mac Mini can make great media boxes. They both have different benefits as well. To address the parent:
1. Xbox noise: I haven't noticed it to be noisy at all. Even with the additional fan a added to help cool the upgraded drive it is still quiet.
2. Both Xbox and Mac Mini video cards are decent for a media box. Both can be output to HDTV. The Xbox can also output 480p and 1080p to VGA monitors with a special cable.
3. The Xbox requires some hacking to get it to become a media pc. This may either be considered a pain in the ass, or fun depending on your view. The modchip solder job is not all that complex (say compared to a PS2). There is no option for video recording on an Xbox this can be a down side. The Xbox has a remote as well.
Since we all no the Mac Mini's benefits - what can you do with an Xbox? You can swap in a large hard drive (I went with a 160GB, you can go higher) for media storage. Install Xbox Media Center (XBMC) which gives you:
audio playback (I'm not sure what codecs, MP3 of course) video playback (DVD, MPG, DIVX, XVID, Quicktime etc.) picture viewer Internet streaming audio support The current weather report Streams all media types off of Samba shares on the network if you don't want to put them on the local Xbox hard drive.
XBMC is a slick menu driven application which is very simple to use while sitting on the couch. In depth configuration is accomplished through easy to edit XML files. It is also skinnable, so you can make the interface match your living room decor. It integrates all of your media access into one nice program.
So what else do you get with a modded Xbox? Well, the big thing is games. There are emulators for just about every old console and computer system available for Xbox. So if playing Atari's Adventure or Super Mario Brothers on your big old HDTV sounds good - this is the way to go. Plus you get to play Robotron with two joysticks just like back in the arcade. All of the emulators work nicely with the standard controllers - so there is no question of while my controller work properly with this emulator (as occurs int the PC world). If you are interested in seeing what kind of Emulation is available for the Xbox check out:
The Xbox itself has a huge library of games which you can still play on your modified Xbox. Xbox live might be iffy though.
You can of course also install a full blown Linux installation on the Xbox if you like (as you can on the Mac although you hardly need to). For information about Xbox Linux check out:
How much does this all cost? $150 Xbox unit $30-$70 Mod chip $100-$150 Hard drive You figure on spending about $300 or so for the modded setup.
One thing should be mentioned. Modding the Xbox is illegal, using emulators is pretty iffy too and certainly against copyright law if you don't own the ROMs etc. Most Xbox applications are illegal as they are built with Microsoft's SDK but are not licensed from Microsoft. You can't even download the apps off of a web page. You need to go to the super secret (not really) IRC channel to get the super-secret (not really) access to get the files.
So Mac Mini vs. Xbox? If you like hacking around, don't mind the legality issue, are comfortable with using FTP and whacking XML config files, have a strong interest in gaming (both current and historical) and don't need DVR functionality, the Xbox is a really fun and extremely hackable little computer.
Seriously, I'm kind of bummed that they haven't completely pulled out all the stops to get any remaining Trek fans to watch. Where is the show I want to see. You know the one where Scott Bakula and that guy from Texas fight a whole truckload of Gorn to save the green skinned Orion women from being forced into the green alien sex trade while Q causes a time and dimensional, universal shift bringing the entire cast of TNG racing into battle - only get this - it's the MIRROR UNIVERSE TNG, with Evil Picard and even Evil Wesley showing up. Oh yeah and of course the Vulcan chick and Seven of Nine find out that, yes, they are in fact space lesbians.
What? Nothing to do in once you get to level 50? Surely you jest! You can:
1. Help power level everyone's alternate characters that they don't want to slog through the grind. 2. Make a new alien archetype! Um I guess that's kind of in the roll up a new character thing. 3. Ummm... I know! Give away bojillions of influence to low level newbies! 4. Ummmm... run all those low level task force missions you never got around to? 5. Ummmmm... collect all those badges you never got around to? 6. Ummmmmmm.... Sit around a bitch about how there is nothing to do? 7. Ummmmmmmm.... Smirk and laugh at how WoW players have to wait in queues?
Seeing as almost all of our local stations have been consumed by mega-corporations such as Clear Channel. We have nice exciting playlists that repeat about once a half hour. I guess for sports, national public radio and the like this might be a cool thing. Or for college radio shows that play at odd hours (it always seems that the only shows I like are on at 3 in the morning).
Slashdot Mirror
Is that you must drink the beer while doing the support. Preferably slam two or three before getting started ("I just need to warm up before I get to work"). Make sure to keep the person you are doing the support for in the room with you by constant conversation.
When you start to work on the computer do so in a distracted manner - keep talking and babbling while glancing back and forth at the screen. Horror stories about computer problems you've fixed (real or imagined) are good, but especially comments about things you've done that have fucked up computers. "Yeah I used to think anti-static wrist wraps were for pansies, then there was the time I blew out an entire system from one little spark. Damn, over $1000 in damages, just from my stupidity. Oh, were did I put that anti-static strap? Must have left it at home, oh well, no biggie."
Also make sure to make comments like "Whoops! Hmmm, well didn't really need that anyway.", "So you do shopping on the Interweb? Man you should change your password, that one is too easy to hack." "What are these pictures of? analdogsex.com? I didn't know you leaned that way." "Jesus! You've got more spyware than the Kremlin in here!"
If you are really mean you can also play some nice practical jokes while you are there. You know the stuff - make hardcore porn auto launch when you log in, switch the sounds out for farts. Whatever floats your boat.
Odds are you can do the tech support blind, deaf and drunk anyway but the nice thing is you get to entertain yourself, terrify your friend and quite possibly next time your friend will take the machine to a shop instead of calling you to fix it.
3.5" actually. IANABIAIOS (I am not anal but I act it on Slashdot).
Or in the case of iPod shuffle, external USB 2.0 drives. Your point stands never the less.
Not much of a hack really.
Huh? You can't boot off of software RAID on OS X?
You must be able too.
I used to use a software RAID on my primary boot disk in Windows NT years ago. As long as the boot loader is aware it's not a problem.
Uh no. Both situations are stupid and amount to just a generation of a bunch of noise to the posts.
Consider:
Past: "any dumbass anti-Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful"
is equal to
Present: "any dumbass Apple-fanboy comment would be moderated up to +5 Insightful"
In terms of constructive and interesting conversation which might actually present useful information - both of these are the same. If modded at all they should both be modded as Flamebait, Troll etc.
I'm not arguing that I miss the old days of getting modded Insightful for bashing Apple. I have never gotten karma that way. I would just like to see some actual intelligent discussion of the pros and cons. But I guess that is just too much to expect from Slashdot.
Well Napster was like the pirate that storms into the bay, knocks over tables at the local pub, screws the governors daughter and flips the local militia the bird while drunk off his ass on rum. Ahaaaarrrr!
Of course the brazen one gets strung up first.
The default version of IE isn't susceptable to this bug.
I would imagine that you can run the Mac native version too.
Actually so was I. :)
It's just plain impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the pros and cons of Mac vs. Windows now.
Ranting done: So here to better analyze the statements that were made:
A.) It may be cheap and sexy, but it's hard to find apps for.
There are a lot of good applications for the Mac, but depending on what you may want to do it may or may not be sufficient. Microsoft Office and the Adobe line of products are well supported on Mac. If you have specific application needs due to your line of work, you should check this out before switching. Many Windows applications can be run at acceptable speed via Virtual PC.
If you switch you may need to reinvest in application purchases. If you own Windows licenses for a lot of software it can be cost prohibitive to make the switch. That being said, the Mac Mini does come with iLife, Appleworks and Quicken which will get you going.
B.) No Games. Sorry.
The situation is much better than it was before. A number of excellent games are available for the Mac including Rise of Nations, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942, Knights of the Old Republic, World of Warcraft etc.
That being said, you will usually wait a lot longer to play these games. The big exception is Blizzard which has supported simulatneous release on the Mac for quite some time.
If you don't mind the wait it's not a big deal but for some games this is problematic. It took almost two years for Battlefield 1942 to be released on the Mac. The game when it was first released was groundbreaking - being the first to offer air, sea and ground vehicles as well as the conquest mode. Mac users may be less impressed. They have probably seen these features first in Unreal 2004. Additionally, jumping into BF 1942 as a newbie and playing with people with 2 years of experience can't be much fun.
Even with all these great games available for the Mac - if you are a hardcore gamer you probably won't be happy. If I look at what I am currently playing: City of Heroes, Rome Total War, Vampire Bloodlines, Half Life 2, Battle for Middle Earth - nope none are out on the Mac.
You are also going to be limited by the onboard video in the Mac Mini. Yeah, sure the Radeon 9200 is ok for casual gaming. But if you want silky smooth antialiased gaming at 1600x1200 - that's not going to cut it. You should be looking at a PowerMac in that case. And that's a lot more cash - a PowerMac system comparable to my current gaming desktop (single 1.8Ghz G5, 1GB DDR 400, 160GB SATA drive, GeForce 6800GT vs. sames specs PC with a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4) runs about $700 more than the PC ($2200 vs. $1500).
C.) Regardless of the low price, Apple has a huge hurdle to overcome with the general masses that they won't be missing out if they get it.
Ok I'm not going to touch this one. I have no idea what he's trying to say.
Disclaimer: I work with Macs (OS9 and OSX), Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. They ALL piss me off sometimes.
Um, how about producers of that audio and video content. I work in media. Media companies generate huge amounts of data, and often need to keep a lot of it in online storage and archives.
Print, radio, television, movie production etc.
I have a use right now. It would server perfectly for offline archives of our production data at my workplace. We currently use about 1.5TB and estimate usage in the 3TB range within 2 years.
Tape backup for a data set this large is only practical by using incrementals which cause their own problems. I should mention this is a small business (about 75 employees) so we can't afford our very own robotic tape backup. Not too mention the time it takes to stream that large a data set to tape.
We currently use disk based redundancy via SAN and NAS with incremental tape as a last stage.
Being able to dump this data set to one or two disks for offline storage would be awesome.
I agree with that too. I like seeing Mario and the gang in games. I just feel sometimes that Nintendo needs to strike a better balance between "upgrading" their existing franchises and introducing new characters and play styles. We need more Pikmin and maybe a little less Mario Tennis.
How about poetry?
The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed is a book that was "written" by an artificial intelligence program back in 1984. Supposedly the selections were not tweaked by humans but were certainly were selected by humans - this book of prose poetry was created by a program called "Racter". You can read Racter's work online.
The software for Racter was available for various 8 bit computers. A DOS version can be downloaded from the Home of the Underdogs.
Is it art? Well, if a large canvas painted entirely blue can be considered art, maybe just maybe the incoherent ramblings of an AI program can be too. The real consideration is WHO is the artist? Is it the program, or the programmer?
Don't believe me? Check out the EVIL bat: spooky screen shots! (possibly not safe for work, kids or elderly with weak hearts).
True. But if you never create new worlds and characters, you will never come up with a new Zelda or Mario. Pokemon almost single handedly rejuvenated the Gameboy market, not so much because the RPG was totally revolutionary, but because the new characters struck a chord with the players.
In the case of products such as Star Fox adventures, wouldn't it have been better to introduce new characters as Dinosaur Planet? Did putting Fox into a game non-characteristic of previous Star Fox games help either the game or the Star Fox brand? Especially seeing as there was no space ship flying Star Fox game out on the GameCube?
I agree that they are relying on the old franchises a bit much - I think also that a lot of the games only appeal to the younger set.
We have all three consoles at my house and the GameCube gets the most play. Certainly the most group play. This is because of my 8 year old son who loved to play things like Super Smash Bros and Mario Party, hell even Mario Golf.
The PS2 doesn't get much use and the Xbox is primarily used for emulation and media playback.
As far as I can tell there isn't all that much good family oriented content on the Xbox. Most of the library seems geared toward gamers in high school or older. Not a lot of cute going on.
To be frank, both the Xbox and the Mac Mini can make great media boxes. They both have different benefits as well.
To address the parent:
1. Xbox noise: I haven't noticed it to be noisy at all. Even with the additional fan a added to help cool the upgraded drive it is still quiet.
2. Both Xbox and Mac Mini video cards are decent for a media box. Both can be output to HDTV. The Xbox can also output 480p and 1080p to VGA monitors with a special cable.
3. The Xbox requires some hacking to get it to become a media pc. This may either be considered a pain in the ass, or fun depending on your view. The modchip solder job is not all that complex (say compared to a PS2). There is no option for video recording on an Xbox this can be a down side. The Xbox has a remote as well.
Since we all no the Mac Mini's benefits - what can you do with an Xbox?
You can swap in a large hard drive (I went with a 160GB, you can go higher) for media storage.
Install Xbox Media Center (XBMC) which gives you:
audio playback (I'm not sure what codecs, MP3 of course)
video playback (DVD, MPG, DIVX, XVID, Quicktime etc.)
picture viewer
Internet streaming audio support
The current weather report
Streams all media types off of Samba shares on the network if you don't want to put them on the local Xbox hard drive.
XBMC is a slick menu driven application which is very simple to use while sitting on the couch. In depth configuration is accomplished through easy to edit XML files. It is also skinnable, so you can make the interface match your living room decor. It integrates all of your media access into one nice program.
If you want more information check out:
www.xboxmediacenter.de
So what else do you get with a modded Xbox? Well, the big thing is games. There are emulators for just about every old console and computer system available for Xbox. So if playing Atari's Adventure or Super Mario Brothers on your big old HDTV sounds good - this is the way to go. Plus you get to play Robotron with two joysticks just like back in the arcade. All of the emulators work nicely with the standard controllers - so there is no question of while my controller work properly with this emulator (as occurs int the PC world).
If you are interested in seeing what kind of Emulation is available for the Xbox check out:
Xport
The Xbox itself has a huge library of games which you can still play on your modified Xbox. Xbox live might be iffy though.
You can of course also install a full blown Linux installation on the Xbox if you like (as you can on the Mac although you hardly need to).
For information about Xbox Linux check out:
Xbox Linux
How much does this all cost?
$150 Xbox unit
$30-$70 Mod chip
$100-$150 Hard drive
You figure on spending about $300 or so for the modded setup.
One thing should be mentioned. Modding the Xbox is illegal, using emulators is pretty iffy too and certainly against copyright law if you don't own the ROMs etc. Most Xbox applications are illegal as they are built with Microsoft's SDK but are not licensed from Microsoft. You can't even download the apps off of a web page. You need to go to the super secret (not really) IRC channel to get the super-secret (not really) access to get the files.
So Mac Mini vs. Xbox? If you like hacking around, don't mind the legality issue, are comfortable with using FTP and whacking XML config files, have a strong interest in gaming (both current and historical) and don't need DVR functionality, the Xbox is a really fun and extremely hackable little computer.
Myself, I think I want both of them.
Wow, form AND function! Props to the system developers.... oh.
But they better have compatible hardware.
Seriously, I'm kind of bummed that they haven't completely pulled out all the stops to get any remaining Trek fans to watch.
Where is the show I want to see. You know the one where Scott Bakula and that guy from Texas fight a whole truckload of Gorn to save the green skinned Orion women from being forced into the green alien sex trade while Q causes a time and dimensional, universal shift bringing the entire cast of TNG racing into battle - only get this - it's the MIRROR UNIVERSE TNG, with Evil Picard and even Evil Wesley showing up.
Oh yeah and of course the Vulcan chick and Seven of Nine find out that, yes, they are in fact space lesbians.
What? Nothing to do in once you get to level 50?
Surely you jest!
You can:
1. Help power level everyone's alternate characters that they don't want to slog through the grind.
2. Make a new alien archetype! Um I guess that's kind of in the roll up a new character thing.
3. Ummm... I know! Give away bojillions of influence to low level newbies!
4. Ummmm... run all those low level task force missions you never got around to?
5. Ummmmm... collect all those badges you never got around to?
6. Ummmmmmm.... Sit around a bitch about how there is nothing to do?
7. Ummmmmmmm.... Smirk and laugh at how WoW players have to wait in queues?
That's funny finding a non-Mac PPC system to run it on is a bit of a chore too!
This would be a great service - but not for me. Sometimes living on an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean has disadvantages.
So they time-shifted a cyborg?
Seeing as almost all of our local stations have been consumed by mega-corporations such as Clear Channel. We have nice exciting playlists that repeat about once a half hour.
I guess for sports, national public radio and the like this might be a cool thing. Or for college radio shows that play at odd hours (it always seems that the only shows I like are on at 3 in the morning).