I think Apple has pretty effectively proven by now that it can do just fine without having to shuffle and buckdance for "corporate IT." When has "corporate IT" ever led the way in anything? The average corporate IT department is staffed by some of the most play-it-safe, unimaginative, "we do what we're told" yes-men you'll find anywhere. It might be HEADED by one or two clueful people, and the general staff may be OTHERWISE intelligent, but creative thinkers and proactive problem-solvers they are not. (In general.)
The PHBs run the show, and if the PHBs are won over by the shininess and sexiness of Apple's new toy, the company's IT department WILL be made to fall in line. If that means turning on IMAP on the Exchange server they sank their money into in their usual lemming-like orgy of uncreativity a few years ago, then that's what will be done. If the iPhone is anything approaching a hit, third-party software vendors will quickly come in and offer products to make sure the iPhone bends to all manner of paranoid corporate needs. And the PHBs will say "buy that third-party software so the iPhone works with our system." Or maybe they'll even say "chuck the server solution we have and go with something that works better with the iPhone."
Apple's very much on a "fuck you very much" roll these days when it comes to Microsoft, so you'll not see any Exchange interoperability any time soon. And finally, Apple's in a place where they can afford to be so cocky. (I prefer to say it's not cockiness, but rather, a demonstrated commitment to choosing open-source, open-standard solutions over a competitor's proprietary solution.) Let's say the iPhone DOESN'T get anywhere in corporate IT. Big deal; the iPod -- and let's be honest, the Macintosh too -- prove that Apple will thrive without the blessing of corporate IT departments.
In short, Apple just doesn't NEED corporate IT. And I am INCREDIBLY sick and tired of hearing the usual Wall Street and "me-too" tech industry press JACKASSES continue to make the same retarded braying sounds, every time Apple does -- well, anything, about how the "lack of acceptance by corporate IT" will DOOM Apple to failure. Right. So they should be going out of business any day now, no?
Fact is, Apple is one of those companies that sets the agenda FAR more often than it follows it. The real short-sightedness here is among all those self-proclaimed "experts" who seem to believe that the status quo is the way it'll always be. Yeah. That's why we're all still using WANG terminals and VMS. Or the GEM desktop. Or desktop computers made by IBM. Hell, I bet they'd have you believe Microsoft will still be ruling the desktop in 15 years. (Not saying Apple will, but Microsoft? Nah.) Dipshits.
FYI, not buying the iPhone, despite being somewhat of an Apple fanboy and Mac consultant by trade. I DO have the ability to see the iPhone's shortcomings, believe it or not . . .
What's this "Star Wars" thing?
on
Star Wars Sickout
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Hi. Am I the only Slashdot reader and geek* that has never seen a single Star Wars movie, doesn't understand the big deal, and is likely to never see one (mainly because the hype turns me off so much)? And I'm 30, so it's not as if I'm too young or too old.
Just, you know, wondering.
--- * That could be on shaky ground, since (a) I was into Macs pre-OS X, (b) I have a girlfriend, (c) I'm kind of around my proper weight/height ratio.
You're right on OS X Server, but as an alleged Apple technician, you really should know better about OS X client.
When you get to the screen asking you for your registration information, hit command-Q and you can bypass it. It'll ask you if you really want to skip this, and tell you why it's not the best idea, but nonetheless, you'll have a "Skip" button in the dialog box. Click it and there you have it -- no registering.
Having done this on many different machines more times than I care to remember, I can assure you that registering is most certainly not required.
What is WRONG with you, mods? This is a parody of a classic troll used in every Mac-related story on here. +1 Funny, goddammit. I'd certainly do it if I could.
I don't get it. I went to xupiter.com and nothing happened. It's just some lame search engine. No pop-ups, no errant behavior. And nothing weird got installed -- that's for sure.
Oh, I'm using Safari on OS X, if that helps. (snicker)
Like the guy who billed spammers, can I invoice these bastards for wasting my time?
I'm an independent consultant, and I bill by the hour, with a one-hour minimum. Why don't I just bill them for wasting my time? They're obviously businesses, too, so I'll be sure to bill them my sizable business rate.
Perhaps I dream of the large Accounts Payable department, where they just don't have the time to sit and analyze every invoice they get, and where some underpaid employee will just blindly cut a check and send it out . ..
Now, proceed to tell me what's wrong with this idea . . .
Speaking also as a Cube owner, I have to refute a few of these points.
- The Cube CAME with an ADC to VGA convertor. You didn't have to buy one. I used mine with a Sony VGA monitor during the time it was my primary desktop. - Wow, so the power supply is big. When it's on the floor, way the hell out of the reach of my feet, under the desk, somehow I find myself not caring. - Yes, the speakers aren't that hot, but you can use any speakers via the Griffin iMic, which gives you a standard 1/4" speaker output. I used Monsoons that way. - I really never found the power button to be THAT sensitive. Maybe it's because they improved it in later revisions, but your account of how annoying it is really bears no resemblance to the experience I've had with the power button on my Cube. Of course, I don't have pets, either. - Yes, the port location sucks; this is why I ended up having a FireWire cable or two always plugged in, even if it wasn't connected to anything, since it was far easier to just plug it into the other end of the cable, knowing the cable itself was always connected to the machine. As for USB, well, my monitor had a built-in hub, so I didn't have to mess with the USB ports on the machine itself much.
Overall, though, I found the Cube to be a great machine until it just got too slow to keep up with OS X and my demands on the hardware. I still run it 24/7 as an OS X Server box -- with no fan and a small footprint, it's perfectly suited to be a home server.
Awesome beyond belief -- I just so happen to have a red-eye tonight from San Jose to Newark. 10pm departure from SJC, and a 6-something AM arrival in Newark. Perfect, perfect timing.
I'm almost ready to go with a free Internet station that I'd do strictly out of love of music, and wanting to offer something different. I wouldn't make a penny off the stream, except the occasional voluntary PayPal donation.
So what does this mean for me? If my revenues are zero, do I owe zero? A lot of the stuff I'd be playing would be from obscure artists who would likely not get a PENNY from RIAA extor^H^H^H^H^Hroyalties anyway.
Or is there a mandatory minimum, as I remember reading of in previous proposals?
I'm just glad I got this for free -- somebody bought it for me off the Amazon.com wish list for fuckMicrosoft.com (plug, plug).
I, too, was amazed at how THIN it was. Aside from having a hard copy of the directions for tweaking Sendmail so it works locally, I don't expect to get much use out of this book.
If you want to do some serious, under-the-GUI hacking, get "Mac OS X Unleashed." Seriously ass-kicking, as most of the Unleashed series tends to be. (Had to pay for that one . . . )
I do sidestep the CARP issue by requiring the DJ to take care of all that. If the DJ wants to broadcast original material, or do a talk show, then there are no copyright restrictions on that. If they want to broadcast copyrighted material, it's their responsibility to pay any associated fees.
Jon, I love your idea, even to the point that I started to sign up for a shift, with grand dreams of resurrecting my old radio show from my college days. Then I read your DJ agreement and got to the CARP part.
This effectively kills most broadcasts. Your average music enthusiast at home, who decides they love their eclectic, offbeat mix of music so much that they want to do a radio show on the Internet, doesn't have the money to pay "protection money" to the RIAA thugs. I know this isn't your problem, but it's a major problem that keeps this project from being terribly feasible.
Fact is, a lot of the most esoteric, indie-label stuff falls as much under the RIAA's grasp as the latest Titney Queers bullshit. Until and unless they resolve this crap (read: throw out this extortion idiocy), about the only people who can afford to broadcast on the Web are going to be the Clear Channels of the world. And we know what that sounds like . . .
I had my signup form all filled up, and was about to hit "submit" before I was reminded of this.
Note to the RIAA: Great job. You've defeated yet another person who actually gives a damn about music. Unlike you crooks, evidently.
Apple hasn't responded as of yet (Thursday, early evening, EST), but Stepwise already has step-by-step build instructions for OpenSSH 3.1 for OS X. Pop over to this page on their site, follow the instructions, and you're good to go.
The biggest problem with radio in America today is that it unabashedly and shamelessly SUCKS. Once the FCC bent over to NAB (National Assocation of Broadcasters) lobbying in the late 90s, and lifted ownership restrictions (which only allowed a company to own one FM and one AM in a market), the way was clear for Clear Channel, Infinity/CBS, and the one or two other conglomerates to move in and utterly destroy radio in this country.
This is why you can turn on the radio in LA on a Sunday night and hear the same idiot DJ on three stations at once, even though his show only loosely fits the format of two of those three -- because Clear Channel would rather pay only one DJ than three. Or why you have stupid radio contests where you now compete against callers across the entire country instead of in your own market. Or why 20-30 stations in a region have not only the same format, but the EXACT SAME playlist every week.
Throw in the thinly veiled payola that is the current record promotion business, and you end up with a very smoothly running machine that operates only for itself and the interests of its owners -- listeners and music enthusiasts be damned. If you're an artist that doesn't have a big label behind you that believes you'd be profitable to them (because there are artists on big labels who get no support from their label -- who might as well just be on a no-name independent label in Des Moines), you're screwed. You may get college radio play, but that's not going to take you very far.
I read recently that Clear Channel is one of the partners of one of these companies -- not sure whether it's XM or Sirius. If this is really the case, this shit is doomed. I have a hard time believing the public is going to PAY for the same bland, homogenized garbage that they already get for free in the 90-something percent of America that is covered by a Clear Channel station already.
Having been a college and community radio DJ in the past, and remembering the days when a fair amount of commercial stations were even pretty good at times, this is really depressing to me. The idea that a wonderful new technology will probably end up being manipulated by the same uncultured, money-obsessed marketroids and milked for every last penny it can spit out, until it ultimately dies, is just plain sad.
So, you want to survive, Sirius and XM? Don't suck.
And OS 7.5+ could do it from, if I recall correctly, 1997 or so onward. That'd be a few years before Windows 2000, if my memory of numerals is correct.
I worry that apple is moving in the same direction with iTunes and iDVD and all that. Just as WMP hurts Real, Disc Burner/Disk Copy in OS X 10.1 hurts Roxio.
Except that Apple seems to be taking special care not to allow their built-in burning options be too capable. Toast can write lots more CD formats, makes CD copying a trivial task, and (from my experience) seems to operate faster. I'm quite sure Apple could incorporate all of Toast's functionality, but they chose instead to be good citizens.
iTunes, on the other hand -- you may be on to something there.
iDVD -- who, really, was the competition in the first place for a consumer-oriented DVD authoring package?
You and I may not need all the extra cruft that comes with OS's, but Joe Sixpack isn't likely to know how to, or want to, go out of his way to download the stuff he needs. And being a user of both OS X and Windows XP, I see a lot less cruft (and more useful stuff, like Apache and Sendmail) included in OS X.
Palm OS is showing its age, and needs the ability to do more. Yeah, WinCE may suck for a boatload of reasons, but there's an audience out there for web browsing, MP3 playing, and rich, full-color applications on a PDA. (Whether a PDA really needs to be able to do all these things is debatable, of course.)
Be OS can do all these, but never really had the opportunity to break into a mass-market product.
At first, I thought this was a strange marriage, but it's starting to make some sense now.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Apple has pretty effectively proven by now that it can do just fine without having to shuffle and buckdance for "corporate IT." When has "corporate IT" ever led the way in anything? The average corporate IT department is staffed by some of the most play-it-safe, unimaginative, "we do what we're told" yes-men you'll find anywhere. It might be HEADED by one or two clueful people, and the general staff may be OTHERWISE intelligent, but creative thinkers and proactive problem-solvers they are not. (In general.)
The PHBs run the show, and if the PHBs are won over by the shininess and sexiness of Apple's new toy, the company's IT department WILL be made to fall in line. If that means turning on IMAP on the Exchange server they sank their money into in their usual lemming-like orgy of uncreativity a few years ago, then that's what will be done. If the iPhone is anything approaching a hit, third-party software vendors will quickly come in and offer products to make sure the iPhone bends to all manner of paranoid corporate needs. And the PHBs will say "buy that third-party software so the iPhone works with our system." Or maybe they'll even say "chuck the server solution we have and go with something that works better with the iPhone."
Apple's very much on a "fuck you very much" roll these days when it comes to Microsoft, so you'll not see any Exchange interoperability any time soon. And finally, Apple's in a place where they can afford to be so cocky. (I prefer to say it's not cockiness, but rather, a demonstrated commitment to choosing open-source, open-standard solutions over a competitor's proprietary solution.) Let's say the iPhone DOESN'T get anywhere in corporate IT. Big deal; the iPod -- and let's be honest, the Macintosh too -- prove that Apple will thrive without the blessing of corporate IT departments.
In short, Apple just doesn't NEED corporate IT. And I am INCREDIBLY sick and tired of hearing the usual Wall Street and "me-too" tech industry press JACKASSES continue to make the same retarded braying sounds, every time Apple does -- well, anything, about how the "lack of acceptance by corporate IT" will DOOM Apple to failure. Right. So they should be going out of business any day now, no?
Fact is, Apple is one of those companies that sets the agenda FAR more often than it follows it. The real short-sightedness here is among all those self-proclaimed "experts" who seem to believe that the status quo is the way it'll always be. Yeah. That's why we're all still using WANG terminals and VMS. Or the GEM desktop. Or desktop computers made by IBM. Hell, I bet they'd have you believe Microsoft will still be ruling the desktop in 15 years. (Not saying Apple will, but Microsoft? Nah.) Dipshits.
Daring Fireball says most of the above well, also.
FYI, not buying the iPhone, despite being somewhat of an Apple fanboy and Mac consultant by trade. I DO have the ability to see the iPhone's shortcomings, believe it or not . . .
Hi. Am I the only Slashdot reader and geek* that has never seen a single Star Wars movie, doesn't understand the big deal, and is likely to never see one (mainly because the hype turns me off so much)? And I'm 30, so it's not as if I'm too young or too old.
Just, you know, wondering.
---
* That could be on shaky ground, since (a) I was into Macs pre-OS X, (b) I have a girlfriend, (c) I'm kind of around my proper weight/height ratio.
You're right on OS X Server, but as an alleged Apple technician, you really should know better about OS X client.
When you get to the screen asking you for your registration information, hit command-Q and you can bypass it. It'll ask you if you really want to skip this, and tell you why it's not the best idea, but nonetheless, you'll have a "Skip" button in the dialog box. Click it and there you have it -- no registering.
Having done this on many different machines more times than I care to remember, I can assure you that registering is most certainly not required.
What is WRONG with you, mods? This is a parody of a classic troll used in every Mac-related story on here. +1 Funny, goddammit. I'd certainly do it if I could.
No, I think that'd be the Finder.
Yeah, good point. Because we all know IT geeks, sysadmins, software engineers, etc. -- you know, your average Slashdot reader -- are dirt poor.
I don't get it. I went to xupiter.com and nothing happened. It's just some lame search engine. No pop-ups, no errant behavior. And nothing weird got installed -- that's for sure.
Oh, I'm using Safari on OS X, if that helps. (snicker)
Like the guy who billed spammers, can I invoice these bastards for wasting my time?
.
I'm an independent consultant, and I bill by the hour, with a one-hour minimum. Why don't I just bill them for wasting my time? They're obviously businesses, too, so I'll be sure to bill them my sizable business rate.
Perhaps I dream of the large Accounts Payable department, where they just don't have the time to sit and analyze every invoice they get, and where some underpaid employee will just blindly cut a check and send it out . .
Now, proceed to tell me what's wrong with this idea . . .
Speaking also as a Cube owner, I have to refute a few of these points.
- The Cube CAME with an ADC to VGA convertor. You didn't have to buy one. I used mine with a Sony VGA monitor during the time it was my primary desktop.
- Wow, so the power supply is big. When it's on the floor, way the hell out of the reach of my feet, under the desk, somehow I find myself not caring.
- Yes, the speakers aren't that hot, but you can use any speakers via the Griffin iMic, which gives you a standard 1/4" speaker output. I used Monsoons that way.
- I really never found the power button to be THAT sensitive. Maybe it's because they improved it in later revisions, but your account of how annoying it is really bears no resemblance to the experience I've had with the power button on my Cube. Of course, I don't have pets, either.
- Yes, the port location sucks; this is why I ended up having a FireWire cable or two always plugged in, even if it wasn't connected to anything, since it was far easier to just plug it into the other end of the cable, knowing the cable itself was always connected to the machine. As for USB, well, my monitor had a built-in hub, so I didn't have to mess with the USB ports on the machine itself much.
Overall, though, I found the Cube to be a great machine until it just got too slow to keep up with OS X and my demands on the hardware. I still run it 24/7 as an OS X Server box -- with no fan and a small footprint, it's perfectly suited to be a home server.
Awesome beyond belief -- I just so happen to have a red-eye tonight from San Jose to Newark. 10pm departure from SJC, and a 6-something AM arrival in Newark. Perfect, perfect timing.
I'm almost ready to go with a free Internet station that I'd do strictly out of love of music, and wanting to offer something different. I wouldn't make a penny off the stream, except the occasional voluntary PayPal donation.
So what does this mean for me? If my revenues are zero, do I owe zero? A lot of the stuff I'd be playing would be from obscure artists who would likely not get a PENNY from RIAA extor^H^H^H^H^Hroyalties anyway.
Or is there a mandatory minimum, as I remember reading of in previous proposals?
I'm just glad I got this for free -- somebody bought it for me off the Amazon.com wish list for fuckMicrosoft.com (plug, plug).
I, too, was amazed at how THIN it was. Aside from having a hard copy of the directions for tweaking Sendmail so it works locally, I don't expect to get much use out of this book.
If you want to do some serious, under-the-GUI hacking, get "Mac OS X Unleashed." Seriously ass-kicking, as most of the Unleashed series tends to be. (Had to pay for that one . . . )
This effectively kills most broadcasts. Your average music enthusiast at home, who decides they love their eclectic, offbeat mix of music so much that they want to do a radio show on the Internet, doesn't have the money to pay "protection money" to the RIAA thugs. I know this isn't your problem, but it's a major problem that keeps this project from being terribly feasible.
Fact is, a lot of the most esoteric, indie-label stuff falls as much under the RIAA's grasp as the latest Titney Queers bullshit. Until and unless they resolve this crap (read: throw out this extortion idiocy), about the only people who can afford to broadcast on the Web are going to be the Clear Channels of the world. And we know what that sounds like . . .
I had my signup form all filled up, and was about to hit "submit" before I was reminded of this.
Note to the RIAA: Great job. You've defeated yet another person who actually gives a damn about music. Unlike you crooks, evidently.
Apple hasn't responded as of yet (Thursday, early evening, EST), but Stepwise already has step-by-step build instructions for OpenSSH 3.1 for OS X. Pop over to this page on their site, follow the instructions, and you're good to go.
This is why you can turn on the radio in LA on a Sunday night and hear the same idiot DJ on three stations at once, even though his show only loosely fits the format of two of those three -- because Clear Channel would rather pay only one DJ than three. Or why you have stupid radio contests where you now compete against callers across the entire country instead of in your own market. Or why 20-30 stations in a region have not only the same format, but the EXACT SAME playlist every week.
Throw in the thinly veiled payola that is the current record promotion business, and you end up with a very smoothly running machine that operates only for itself and the interests of its owners -- listeners and music enthusiasts be damned. If you're an artist that doesn't have a big label behind you that believes you'd be profitable to them (because there are artists on big labels who get no support from their label -- who might as well just be on a no-name independent label in Des Moines), you're screwed. You may get college radio play, but that's not going to take you very far.
I read recently that Clear Channel is one of the partners of one of these companies -- not sure whether it's XM or Sirius. If this is really the case, this shit is doomed. I have a hard time believing the public is going to PAY for the same bland, homogenized garbage that they already get for free in the 90-something percent of America that is covered by a Clear Channel station already.
Having been a college and community radio DJ in the past, and remembering the days when a fair amount of commercial stations were even pretty good at times, this is really depressing to me. The idea that a wonderful new technology will probably end up being manipulated by the same uncultured, money-obsessed marketroids and milked for every last penny it can spit out, until it ultimately dies, is just plain sad.
So, you want to survive, Sirius and XM? Don't suck.
And OS 7.5+ could do it from, if I recall correctly, 1997 or so onward. That'd be a few years before Windows 2000, if my memory of numerals is correct.
"Not that it really matters," of course.
Except that Apple seems to be taking special care not to allow their built-in burning options be too capable. Toast can write lots more CD formats, makes CD copying a trivial task, and (from my experience) seems to operate faster. I'm quite sure Apple could incorporate all of Toast's functionality, but they chose instead to be good citizens.
iTunes, on the other hand -- you may be on to something there.
iDVD -- who, really, was the competition in the first place for a consumer-oriented DVD authoring package?
You and I may not need all the extra cruft that comes with OS's, but Joe Sixpack isn't likely to know how to, or want to, go out of his way to download the stuff he needs. And being a user of both OS X and Windows XP, I see a lot less cruft (and more useful stuff, like Apache and Sendmail) included in OS X.
Palm OS is showing its age, and needs the ability to do more. Yeah, WinCE may suck for a boatload of reasons, but there's an audience out there for web browsing, MP3 playing, and rich, full-color applications on a PDA. (Whether a PDA really needs to be able to do all these things is debatable, of course.) Be OS can do all these, but never really had the opportunity to break into a mass-market product. At first, I thought this was a strange marriage, but it's starting to make some sense now.