I don't understand here, why are you saying there is a 0% chance of the machines running *BSD? Is it meant to be humorous? Because obviously they will run *BSD very well. Am I feeding the troll here?
Yub nub, eee chop yub nub Ah toe meet toe pee chee keene G'noop dock fling oh ah Yah wah, eee chop yah wah Ah toe meet toe pee chee keene G'noop dock fling oh ah
Coatee chah tu yub nub Coatee chah tu yah wah Coatee chah tu glowah Allay loo ta nuv
Glowah, eee chop glowah Ya glowah pee chu nee foam Ah toot dee awe goon daa
Coatee chah tu goo (yub nub!) Coatee chah tu doo (yah wah!) Coatee chah tu too (yachaa!) Allay loo ta nuv (x3)
Glowah, eee chop glowah Ya glowah pee chu nee foam Ah toot dee awe goon daa
Coatee chah tu goo (yub nub!) Coatee chah tu doo (yah wah!) Coatee chah tu too (yachaa!) Allay loo ta nuv (x4)
So, since I doubt this would get an overall success rating from/. in an Ask Slashdot forum, and since it's more on topic talking about a book of Car Hacks.....
How many people dream of modifying a 60's model Mercedes sedan? I mean, don't you just drool at the thought of fiberglass bumper covers? Trick rims on lower suspension? Maybe some AMG disc break conversion info? 6.3L V8 swap. Oh yeah baby!
spoilers on family sedans, ill-fitting aftermarket plastic body kits, and drivers of any type of Pontiac?
Man it's hilarious to see downforce spoilers/wings on front wheel drive cars. I may make a lot of people angry with this statement, but I can't help but laugh my white arse off when I see posers trying to lift their drive wheels off the ground. Absolutely hilarious.
So we have Sony and Nintendo lining up to battle each other over portable gaming dominance. Any word on Microsoft? They willing to lose more money yet? The most unfortunate portion of that entire statement is that I own both an Xbox and a Gamecube. So I guess I should really be rooting for Microsoft to at least make some profit. Need more games for the Xbox and all that.
The coolness feature I like about the PSP is it's WiFi integration. Able to game online through your home router according to the article. The DS, I believe, only allows Wireless (and not WiFi compliant right?) to other DS for gaming. So that's one the PSP has got on it's side.
So it's being released to Japan on 12/12. Any rumors or straight up bullshit about when it's going to street here? I would have thought they would have been fighting to get it out here before our lucrative Xmas season
It's time once again boys and girls for my Patented Bullshit Theory of the Day!! All BToD opinions are copyright and drug induced from the unraveling mind of me. They are to be taken lightly and humorously.
Open Sourcing OS/2? Could be promising, except I seem to remember that OS/2 was a collaborative effort between IBM and our beloved Microsoft. (Note, Sarcasm mistranslate netwise). Due to this much of OS/2 is in NT and much of NT is in OS/2, which is why OS/2 could run Windows 3.1 apps natively without and user intervention. OS/2 had a Win3.1 VM that worked so well Microsoft had to implement Win95/NT 4.0 style API's to break the compatibility.
So, if my memory is correct (and with this many holes how could it be wrong) IBM simply can't Open the code to OS/2 because they don't own 100% of it. Too much of it has Uncle Bill's own stamp on it and Opening the IBM only code would not produce a working system.
Also if memory serves, there may be some major HIPAA style agreements in place that would keep it from happening even if the ol' Softie claimed that no code from OS/2 was in the 2K version of the NT kernel and that they didn't care if the whold world saw it. Because OS/2 is used in a lot of back office banking, telecom, and medical solutions. I know that one is true, I worked for a CLEC for a while and a good 80% of the boxes were running OS/2 Warp 4.0.
So, even though it might be kind of interesting to take a long hard look at the OS/2 code. I don't personally think it would ever happen. Too many legalities and too much legacy in place that still just works to hand keys to something that might enable those less fortunate of us (humans) that feel it's ok to commit grand theft to circumvent the already cheese cloth security surrounding very personal data.
But all this is circumstantial and delusional and part of my deranged mind, and as such this has been another Bullshit Theory of the Day
We now return you to your regularly scheduled rant.
Re:are you sure you remember seeing the Cray 3 ?
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Cray XT-3 Ships
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· Score: 1
Again, kind of answered my own question here. Check out http://www.cray-cyber.org/general/start.php/ for a hosting provider in Germany that happens to have a Cray Y-MP EL online for external users with free accounts. Though, you do have to tell them what you want to use the account for and what not, so if you tell them to root kit their l33t 5up3rc0mpu73r they may not let you play with their toys.
Re:... Back in my day .... young whippersnapper
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Cray XT-3 Ships
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· Score: 1
Well.... it's actually pretty funny that you would mention that. After my own statement about what color the Cray-1 was I decided to run around the net like a mad hen..... which is where I started finding pics..... nothing like seeing a Cray-1 in Lemon Yellow. Anyway....
Could you choose the colour of your Cray machine ?
In the early days of the company yes, there was even rumour of a cowhide covered XMP delivered to a Houston oil company. As time went on colouring your computer was dropped as a customer option. Well almost - when there is that much money changing hands, if enough fuss is made, the exterior panels would revisit the paint shop. This did not apply to Els which were all black and red. Well almost - one customer which had just upgraded a pair of YMPs (one green, one blue) for a C90 and an EL did manage to get the EL painted a rather fetching sky blue colour.
As for XMP/EA, sn501 an internal contact reports "We lobbied to have it done up in denim (like the denim Jeans) & have a little red Levis tag attached.... Management was not amused & it never happened."
One second user customer did have a bit of a surprise when their second user C90 arrived in a lurid deep rose/pink colour. The top of the C90, being a convex shape happened to sit just a couple of feet under a set of strip lights and resulted in lovely pink glow over a whole section of the machine room. Rumour has it that the colour matched the previous owners, girlfriends' nail varnish.
The Bell Labs Cray (XMP) was a wallpapered IC design.
Firefox is a great little browser, but both it and Mozilla have some odd quirks in their UI implementation in their Mac forms. Mainly, the way they scroll is no where near smooth, especially with a scroll wheel.
I would have thought, with all the *NIX and Open Source OS being used if even in a trial format today, added to the CERT announcement to stop using IE for security reasons and whatever, that they would already be near 10% or more.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
Of interest to Cray-3 info
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Cray XT-3 Ships
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Cray-3 memories by Steve Gombosi
From a comp.unix.cray posting
Graywolf ("S5") was installed at NCAR. Like all NCAR supercomputers, until fairly recently, it was named after a Colorado locale.
This was the *only* Cray-3 shipment, installed in May 1993, the machine was a 4-processor, 128 Megaword system.
Two problems in the Cray-3 system were uncovered as a result of running NCAR's production climate codes (particularly MM5): a problem with the "D" module causing intermittent problems with parallel codes, and an error in the implementation of the square root approximation algorithm which caused incorrect results for certain data patterns (kinda like the Pentium divide bug;-) ). These were rectified and replacement CPU modules were installed, although I can't remember the date.
The machine ran NCAR production until CCC folded in March, 1995. Since NCAR never paid for it, at some point we reduced the CPU count to 2 and let the machine run essentially unattended. I'm not too sure when that happened, although it marked the end of my regular commuting between Colorado Springs and Boulder.
There were a total of 7 Cray-3 "tanks" constructed. S1-S4 were single "octant" tanks (the smallest that could be constructed) which accomodated up to a 2 processor/128MW configuration. S5 and S6 were two-octant tanks. S7 was a four-octant tank which we used as a software development and benchmarking platform. S6 was chiefly used for system testing.
S1-S3 were diverted to Cray-4 testing once the Cray-4 project built up steam. S4 was diverted to the quite possibly suicidal Cray-3/SSS project after S7 became available (S4 was previously our software development machine).
For those of you who have Cray-3 posters lying around (by the way, I took all the photos on that poster as well as the Cray-3 and Cray-4 brochures and all the annual reports except the first two):
1) The big photo is of S5
2) Seymour is leaning on S5 (and you have no idea how hard it was to get him to hold still that long while wearing a suit...or to talk him into that particular pose)
3) The two "cooling system" photos are S6
4) The hand holding the module is mine;-)
Cray-3 modules were 4x4x0.25 inches in size. Each module consisted of a multi-layer "sandwich" of PC boards (69 electrical layers), with 2 layers of 16 1x1 inch stacks. The stacks were the circuit boards containing the actual circuits (GaAs for logic, SRAM for memory modules). There were 16 bare GaAs chips mounted to each side of a logic stack. I think there were 12 bare SRAM chips on each side of a memory stack (the logic chips were square, the memory chips were rectangular).
Re:are you sure you remember seeing the Cray 3 ?
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Cray XT-3 Ships
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Looked around on the net, as well as a couple other/.'rs here, and someone posted a link here to a 2 and I found a pic of a 2 with the waterfall system that was mentioned by another person, and I must accept defeat within the loosened strands of my unraveling mind.
It was indeed a Cray-2 that I remember so vividly. Nevertheless, still an extremely exotic machine. Very much the Ferrari F40 or McLaren F1 of super computing. You've seen pics, maybe even seen one at a car show, but you know you'll never be allowed to touch one. It had as much class as an Italian sports car too.
I find myself wondering how many/. geeks it would take at what $$ amount to colocate a community Cray somewhere...... be like going in with 100 friends to buy a Ferrari though. Who gets to keep the keys?
Re:are you sure you remember seeing the Cray 3 ?
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Cray XT-3 Ships
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· Score: 1
Well, anything is possible. It may not have been the 3 I saw. Though I seem to remember being able to see over it, and I think almost every other Cray was at least 6 foot tall. But I don't know, it could have been recessed into the floor. I was quite a bit younger at the time, obviously. I was more focused on the tour guide guy showing off the fact that electronics were in liquid. At the time I thought if it was wet, it conducted electricity, so that kind of blew my mind.
I'd love to find an old Cray, like maybe a C90. Something big enough to be retrofitted... man talk about cool factor plus 50. If a geek can build a bar/fridge out of an old VAX just think what a Cray could do. Obviously it wouldn't be economical to actually use the thing as a computer anymore. Too expensive. But what a garage fridge the thing would make.
... Back in my day .... young whippersnapper
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· Score: 4, Interesting
So come on, ante up. How many remember being awed at the mere sight of old Crays back in the day? Like the Cray-3? I remember the first time I saw a Cray.... thing was in an anti-static environment. To access it, one had to pass through an airlock and be "decharged" or "depolarized" etc. Basically they some how charged the air to get rid of static electricity. Then you had this system that was running *in* liquid! Take that "Oh I'm so cool cause I have a l337 haX0r water cooled CPU" overclockers
They (Cray) were so proud of this accomplishment that the upper portion of the cabinet was some kind of plexiglass so you could see the fluid as it moved, and moved wiring and what not with it. Very surreal feeling, almost like the thing was breathing.
And what about the Cray-1? Wasn't that a true testiment to 70's *art* and sculpture? The thing looks like some kind of freaky bus station bench with it's odd red and white panels and black base. Though, I don't know if they all looked like that, maybe you could get them in other colors?
K.... I have to jump into the midst of the fray here, sword drawn and what not.... I have glimpsed through the replies to this article, and many of them are of the "blah blah... wants to be TiVo... wah wah" variety. No one really stands firm on the whole Live TV over Ethernet thing, though.
My home is a little hard to cable. The cable provider wants to drill holes all over my house and poke cable through. I can find no one to crawl around the crawlspace and see if that is a better option, and I myself have acute claustrophobia. Now, I have at least three bedrooms and the garage that I would like to have Television, but I don't want holes drilled through my walls, I mean come on who would?
I have been halfheartedly trying to determine if VideoLAN could somehow be made to do something along these lines, but my biggest problem is I don't understand how the tuners break out the necessary 6 MHz slices for the encoded programming. Ergo, I want to be able to have different channels on every room in the house.
Now it looks like MS has the ability in MCE to do this? So that each set top box/Xbox is receiving a different channel, from one server, with one tuner? To me this is huge. To all the sarcastic wits saying "It will let me watch Live TV, on my TV??" I say "Yes Please!"
I already have WLAN in place feeding computers in every room of the house. So adding WLAN capable set top boxes is just another networking component and it will let me feed all the TV's through a single non-split coax. The cable company tells me, see, that they need to run several lines, and amplifiers to get what I want? As much as I dislike MS I don't currently have a single Windows PC anywhere in the house Sounds like I need to pick up MCE and start working with it.
Though, if someone can point to some extremely good sources of information so I can understand how to make VideoLAN encode the entire Freq stream from the tuner so I can break it back out to 5 different televisions, I'm still willing to keep the OS of Evil out my house. Otherwise, I'm tired of listening to my step-daughter gripe hourly about not getting to watch her Disney programming because my wife is watching Survivor and I want to be watching the Sci-Fi channel.
I am just curious, when was the last time you *actively* used WINE? Because, a couple of years ago, I was running a Red Hat 7.2 box with WINE and was running Microsoft apps very well. I used to have a screenshot of my desktop with IE open looking at microsoft.com while typing something in Word. On top of that, WINE has come a *long* way since then. I understand that you can now run Apple iTunes under Linux using WINE.
Also, it is funny that you should mention that "Windows programs wouldn't work except through something like Wine, which won't work any better for Mac..." Check out Darwine and you might be surprised. http://darwine.opendarwin.org/ While I will admit that this isn't quite Beta quality, and much work needs to be done, there is something about a screenshot of Notepad running on a PPC Mac under OS X that makes me giddy like a school girl..... Errr yeah....
Anyway, the Darwine team isn't even satisfied with merely running Windows binaries. They are even working on a port of the entire SDK so that open source Windows x86 apps can be recompiled completely against Darwine as a more "native" app. Though, the underlying and most important component is a Bochs like x86 HCL emulator. So it isn't like it can automagically fix little to big endian problems. But hey, it's a start.
I can already say "Name me something besides a game app that I can't run on my Mac in an equivalent fashion." Soon we'll be able to say "Name me something I can't run on my Mac, period."
Oh... and slipping slightly back on topic here, since this is about an x86 Mac OS X port..... as was already previously stated in another post, OPENStep compiled fat binaries for each arch. it was available on. Look at GNUStep. An open source implimentation of the NeXT SDKs. In fact Linux Journal recently did an entire article on GNUStep, with a complete program.... some kind of image manipulation app.... so that they could go.... "Ok now, change this line and this line of code, recompile and viola instant OS X PPC Native app." Don't think there isn't a version of OS X on x86 hardware *somewhere*... just know that it's more heavily guarded than anything in the government.... It was widely rumored that x86 development boxes that were welded shut were given out to very select important vendors (Adobe) just before IBM figured out how to get the G5 to be a viable option.... so it was thought about. But if it ever happened it would be *APPLE* x86 hardware, meaning there would be no BIOS so it wouldn't run x86 OS like Windows, it would be Open Firmware and would be designed specific to Apple's requirements.... it would have just happened to have an x86 chip as the CPU
Ahh!! RTFA, right? I thought it was *Google* who had put this out there. Yeah, these guys wouldn't have any thing to worry about putting up a hack for Mac as well. I was working under the assumption that the thing was Google sponsored, meaning that even though it is DAV based, to put it out there as a "Hey, hit us up with iDisk" would be begging for a cease and desist.
While I will admit that the concept of having a drive on your desktop that lives somewhere other than your local machine is neat, it isn't really a stretch of the technology, is it?
I mean, Apple has had iDisk since even before Mac OS X came out on the scene, I was using it to keep my documents synced at school when I was still using Mac OS 8 (I think.... may have been early 9)
Also, I *know* there was another "freebie" website a couple of years ago that did something very similar that allowed you to connect to their storage via a drive icon in My Computer on Windows.
And we won't even start on *NIX networked file systems..... But I think this is going to be a very big gotcha for the service. It will really get some crazy attention now. However, I hope earlier/. posts I saw about "How soon before script kiddies and pirates use this as file repositories" don't start immediately coming true. Kill it before it even starts.
Probably, consider that while the product is in Beta they can guarantee that they will make no service level oriented promises. This gives them the opportunity to play around with all kinds of new tech that they may be able to spin off into a money maker while at the same time being able to completely walk away if it melts down.
Makes me wonder if they will try to license the Apple iDisk format for this as well for Mac users. I wouldn't mind having a 1 Gig internet drive to access files from home, work, and school without the need to carry DVD's around.
Since this happens to be an article about SUSE, I thought it might be on topic to point to their OpenExchange Mail Server. I haven't used it personally, but the site claims you can use Outlook against it.
http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/openexcha nge/index.html
SUSE LINUX Openexchange Server 4.1 is the trend-setting groupware and communication solution that helps your company to progress - with superior technical features, far-reaching hardware independence, smooth migration, and a wide range of supported clients including Outlook clients from Outlook 98 and various web browsers.
For All Requirements
On the basis of standardized protocols and Open Source components, SUSE LINUX Openexchange Server offers everything modern enterprises and organizations need for communication: e-mail server, web server, groupware, collaboration, and messaging.
Thanks to its modular architecture, SUSE LINUX Openexchange Server can be customized for diverse needs. Depending on the customer requirements (number of users, way of utilization, deployed hardware, etc.), SUSE LINUX Openexchange Server can be deployed in environments ranging from 10 to 2,500 users.... and All Budgets
A fair license policy is a hallmark of SUSE LINUX. Thus, the e-mail core functions of Openexchange Server are free of license fees, and the license fee for the groupware is lower than that of most competitor products, as numerous independent studies show.
Re:Undocumented API calls
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Hacking Quartz
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Well, I couldn't help but whip my thang out here. I also apologize in advance for my patent pending Bullshit Theory of the Day
Anyway. The API's for Quartz, and what you can do with the UI for the system is documented. Pick up some of the dog books from O'Reilly (Which, while I'm on the subject, where did the dog come from anyway. I mean.... it may not have been exactly public knowledge, but OS X has always been a cat.) Everything you need to know about how to do proper manipulation is there. All black and white.
The problem enters the equation when developers poke around and find things that Apple didn't mean for them to find. Ergo the undocumented hooks this guy is using. Now, while I will agree there is a bit of coolness about being able to locate something and then add it into your own code so you can just make a simple call and use it like you wrote it yourself, there is a problem with it. A guy in an earlier post complained about it not working with Jaguar. Most likely, it won't work with Tiger either.
You see, you have to understand that Apple, even though they are a big corporation out to make money off of both you and your grandmother, isn't specifically trying to hide something that you can use to write cool software to get your grandmother to buy a brand new G5. They want you to write something your grandmother will feel compelled to spend $2000 on a brand new Mac to use.
Here comes the but....
But the internal developers deep within the bowels of Apple are slaving day and night to make The Next Cool Thing (TM) that everyone will have to have in the newest version of OS X. These features are extremely fluid, sometimes disappearing completely in a simple increment upgrade within the same major version of the Cat. Because those same developers might have tried to create something too cool and have opened a hole somewhere else. They are undocumented because they might be gone tomorrow, or might change how they are called, or might become a butterfly all by the next major revision when they become concrete.
You see, when they solidify and become concrete, then documents are written, then become published API's with which to write code against. I mean, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to write code against an API, documented or not, that I knew wasn't standard yet and would most likely change tomorrow.
My Mac keeps me off Windows. Though, I guess to be fair, I do have a copy of Microsoft Office installed for my wife to use. (Personally I ssh to my SuSE machine, push X console back and open OO.o but the wife just doesn't want to learn that option.)
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I don't understand here, why are you saying there is a 0% chance of the machines running *BSD? Is it meant to be humorous? Because obviously they will run *BSD very well. Am I feeding the troll here?
Ahhh.... Indeed, your cut and paste kung fu is better than my dragon style typing
Yub nub, eee chop yub nub
Ah toe meet toe pee chee keene
G'noop dock fling oh ah
Yah wah, eee chop yah wah
Ah toe meet toe pee chee keene
G'noop dock fling oh ah
Coatee chah tu yub nub
Coatee chah tu yah wah
Coatee chah tu glowah
Allay loo ta nuv
Glowah, eee chop glowah
Ya glowah pee chu nee foam
Ah toot dee awe goon daa
Coatee chah tu goo (yub nub!)
Coatee chah tu doo (yah wah!)
Coatee chah tu too (yachaa!)
Allay loo ta nuv (x3)
Glowah, eee chop glowah
Ya glowah pee chu nee foam
Ah toot dee awe goon daa
Coatee chah tu goo (yub nub!)
Coatee chah tu doo (yah wah!)
Coatee chah tu too (yachaa!)
Allay loo ta nuv (x4)
So, since I doubt this would get an overall success rating from /. in an Ask Slashdot forum, and since it's more on topic talking about a book of Car Hacks .....
How many people dream of modifying a 60's model Mercedes sedan? I mean, don't you just drool at the thought of fiberglass bumper covers? Trick rims on lower suspension? Maybe some AMG disc break conversion info? 6.3L V8 swap. Oh yeah baby!
Bring it on, let's get some ideas!!!!!
Man it's hilarious to see downforce spoilers/wings on front wheel drive cars. I may make a lot of people angry with this statement, but I can't help but laugh my white arse off when I see posers trying to lift their drive wheels off the ground. Absolutely hilarious.
What are you talking about!? I have Sw33t Type-R decals on my Chevrolet Cavalier sedan. You're just jealous of those more l337 than you.
So we have Sony and Nintendo lining up to battle each other over portable gaming dominance. Any word on Microsoft? They willing to lose more money yet? The most unfortunate portion of that entire statement is that I own both an Xbox and a Gamecube. So I guess I should really be rooting for Microsoft to at least make some profit. Need more games for the Xbox and all that.
The coolness feature I like about the PSP is it's WiFi integration. Able to game online through your home router according to the article. The DS, I believe, only allows Wireless (and not WiFi compliant right?) to other DS for gaming. So that's one the PSP has got on it's side.
So it's being released to Japan on 12/12. Any rumors or straight up bullshit about when it's going to street here? I would have thought they would have been fighting to get it out here before our lucrative Xmas season
It's time once again boys and girls for my Patented Bullshit Theory of the Day!! All BToD opinions are copyright and drug induced from the unraveling mind of me. They are to be taken lightly and humorously.
Open Sourcing OS/2? Could be promising, except I seem to remember that OS/2 was a collaborative effort between IBM and our beloved Microsoft. (Note, Sarcasm mistranslate netwise). Due to this much of OS/2 is in NT and much of NT is in OS/2, which is why OS/2 could run Windows 3.1 apps natively without and user intervention. OS/2 had a Win3.1 VM that worked so well Microsoft had to implement Win95/NT 4.0 style API's to break the compatibility.
So, if my memory is correct (and with this many holes how could it be wrong) IBM simply can't Open the code to OS/2 because they don't own 100% of it. Too much of it has Uncle Bill's own stamp on it and Opening the IBM only code would not produce a working system.
Also if memory serves, there may be some major HIPAA style agreements in place that would keep it from happening even if the ol' Softie claimed that no code from OS/2 was in the 2K version of the NT kernel and that they didn't care if the whold world saw it. Because OS/2 is used in a lot of back office banking, telecom, and medical solutions. I know that one is true, I worked for a CLEC for a while and a good 80% of the boxes were running OS/2 Warp 4.0.
So, even though it might be kind of interesting to take a long hard look at the OS/2 code. I don't personally think it would ever happen. Too many legalities and too much legacy in place that still just works to hand keys to something that might enable those less fortunate of us (humans) that feel it's ok to commit grand theft to circumvent the already cheese cloth security surrounding very personal data.
But all this is circumstantial and delusional and part of my deranged mind, and as such this has been another Bullshit Theory of the Day
We now return you to your regularly scheduled rant.
Again, kind of answered my own question here. Check out http://www.cray-cyber.org/general/start.php/ for a hosting provider in Germany that happens to have a Cray Y-MP EL online for external users with free accounts. Though, you do have to tell them what you want to use the account for and what not, so if you tell them to root kit their l33t 5up3rc0mpu73r they may not let you play with their toys.
Well .... it's actually pretty funny that you would mention that. After my own statement about what color the Cray-1 was I decided to run around the net like a mad hen ..... which is where I started finding pics ..... nothing like seeing a Cray-1 in Lemon Yellow. Anyway ....
From: http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/CrayWWWStuff/ Cfaqp3.html#TOC19
Could you choose the colour of your Cray machine ? In the early days of the company yes, there was even rumour of a cowhide covered XMP delivered to a Houston oil company. As time went on colouring your computer was dropped as a customer option. Well almost - when there is that much money changing hands, if enough fuss is made, the exterior panels would revisit the paint shop. This did not apply to Els which were all black and red. Well almost - one customer which had just upgraded a pair of YMPs (one green, one blue) for a C90 and an EL did manage to get the EL painted a rather fetching sky blue colour.
As for XMP/EA, sn501 an internal contact reports "We lobbied to have it done up in denim (like the denim Jeans) & have a little red Levis tag attached. ... Management was not amused & it never happened."
One second user customer did have a bit of a surprise when their second user C90 arrived in a lurid deep rose/pink colour. The top of the C90, being a convex shape happened to sit just a couple of feet under a set of strip lights and resulted in lovely pink glow over a whole section of the machine room. Rumour has it that the colour matched the previous owners, girlfriends' nail varnish.
The Bell Labs Cray (XMP) was a wallpapered IC design.
Firefox is a great little browser, but both it and Mozilla have some odd quirks in their UI implementation in their Mac forms. Mainly, the way they scroll is no where near smooth, especially with a scroll wheel.
I would have thought, with all the *NIX and Open Source OS being used if even in a trial format today, added to the CERT announcement to stop using IE for security reasons and whatever, that they would already be near 10% or more.
I always thought it was more like this:
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
Cray-3 memories by Steve Gombosi From a comp.unix.cray posting
Graywolf ("S5") was installed at NCAR. Like all NCAR supercomputers, until fairly recently, it was named after a Colorado locale.
This was the *only* Cray-3 shipment, installed in May 1993, the machine was a 4-processor, 128 Megaword system.
Two problems in the Cray-3 system were uncovered as a result of running NCAR's production climate codes (particularly MM5): a problem with the "D" module causing intermittent problems with parallel codes, and an error in the implementation of the square root approximation algorithm which caused incorrect results for certain data patterns (kinda like the Pentium divide bug ;-) ). These were rectified and replacement CPU modules were installed, although I can't remember the date.
The machine ran NCAR production until CCC folded in March, 1995. Since NCAR never paid for it, at some point we reduced the CPU count to 2 and let the machine run essentially unattended. I'm not too sure when that happened, although it marked the end of my regular commuting between Colorado Springs and Boulder.
There were a total of 7 Cray-3 "tanks" constructed. S1-S4 were single "octant" tanks (the smallest that could be constructed) which accomodated up to a 2 processor/128MW configuration. S5 and S6 were two-octant tanks. S7 was a four-octant tank which we used as a software development and benchmarking platform. S6 was chiefly used for system testing.
S1-S3 were diverted to Cray-4 testing once the Cray-4 project built up steam. S4 was diverted to the quite possibly suicidal Cray-3/SSS project after S7 became available (S4 was previously our software development machine).
For those of you who have Cray-3 posters lying around (by the way, I took all the photos on that poster as well as the Cray-3 and Cray-4 brochures and all the annual reports except the first two):
1) The big photo is of S5 ;-)
2) Seymour is leaning on S5 (and you have no idea how hard it was to get him to hold still that long while wearing a suit...or to talk him into that particular pose)
3) The two "cooling system" photos are S6
4) The hand holding the module is mine
Cray-3 modules were 4x4x0.25 inches in size. Each module consisted of a multi-layer "sandwich" of PC boards (69 electrical layers), with 2 layers of 16 1x1 inch stacks. The stacks were the circuit boards containing the actual circuits (GaAs for logic, SRAM for memory modules). There were 16 bare GaAs chips mounted to each side of a logic stack. I think there were 12 bare SRAM chips on each side of a memory stack (the logic chips were square, the memory chips were rectangular).
Looked around on the net, as well as a couple other /.'rs here, and someone posted a link here to a 2 and I found a pic of a 2 with the waterfall system that was mentioned by another person, and I must accept defeat within the loosened strands of my unraveling mind.
It was indeed a Cray-2 that I remember so vividly. Nevertheless, still an extremely exotic machine. Very much the Ferrari F40 or McLaren F1 of super computing. You've seen pics, maybe even seen one at a car show, but you know you'll never be allowed to touch one. It had as much class as an Italian sports car too.
I find myself wondering how many /. geeks it would take at what $$ amount to colocate a community Cray somewhere ...... be like going in with 100 friends to buy a Ferrari though. Who gets to keep the keys?
Well, anything is possible. It may not have been the 3 I saw. Though I seem to remember being able to see over it, and I think almost every other Cray was at least 6 foot tall. But I don't know, it could have been recessed into the floor. I was quite a bit younger at the time, obviously. I was more focused on the tour guide guy showing off the fact that electronics were in liquid. At the time I thought if it was wet, it conducted electricity, so that kind of blew my mind.
I'd love to find an old Cray, like maybe a C90. Something big enough to be retrofitted ... man talk about cool factor plus 50. If a geek can build a bar/fridge out of an old VAX just think what a Cray could do. Obviously it wouldn't be economical to actually use the thing as a computer anymore. Too expensive. But what a garage fridge the thing would make.
So come on, ante up. How many remember being awed at the mere sight of old Crays back in the day? Like the Cray-3? I remember the first time I saw a Cray .... thing was in an anti-static environment. To access it, one had to pass through an airlock and be "decharged" or "depolarized" etc. Basically they some how charged the air to get rid of static electricity. Then you had this system that was running *in* liquid! Take that "Oh I'm so cool cause I have a l337 haX0r water cooled CPU" overclockers
They (Cray) were so proud of this accomplishment that the upper portion of the cabinet was some kind of plexiglass so you could see the fluid as it moved, and moved wiring and what not with it. Very surreal feeling, almost like the thing was breathing.
And what about the Cray-1? Wasn't that a true testiment to 70's *art* and sculpture? The thing looks like some kind of freaky bus station bench with it's odd red and white panels and black base. Though, I don't know if they all looked like that, maybe you could get them in other colors?
Ahh .... those were the days.
K .... I have to jump into the midst of the fray here, sword drawn and what not .... I have glimpsed through the replies to this article, and many of them are of the "blah blah ... wants to be TiVo ... wah wah" variety. No one really stands firm on the whole Live TV over Ethernet thing, though.
My home is a little hard to cable. The cable provider wants to drill holes all over my house and poke cable through. I can find no one to crawl around the crawlspace and see if that is a better option, and I myself have acute claustrophobia. Now, I have at least three bedrooms and the garage that I would like to have Television, but I don't want holes drilled through my walls, I mean come on who would?
I have been halfheartedly trying to determine if VideoLAN could somehow be made to do something along these lines, but my biggest problem is I don't understand how the tuners break out the necessary 6 MHz slices for the encoded programming. Ergo, I want to be able to have different channels on every room in the house.
Now it looks like MS has the ability in MCE to do this? So that each set top box/Xbox is receiving a different channel, from one server, with one tuner? To me this is huge. To all the sarcastic wits saying "It will let me watch Live TV, on my TV??" I say "Yes Please!"
I already have WLAN in place feeding computers in every room of the house. So adding WLAN capable set top boxes is just another networking component and it will let me feed all the TV's through a single non-split coax. The cable company tells me, see, that they need to run several lines, and amplifiers to get what I want? As much as I dislike MS I don't currently have a single Windows PC anywhere in the house Sounds like I need to pick up MCE and start working with it.
Though, if someone can point to some extremely good sources of information so I can understand how to make VideoLAN encode the entire Freq stream from the tuner so I can break it back out to 5 different televisions, I'm still willing to keep the OS of Evil out my house. Otherwise, I'm tired of listening to my step-daughter gripe hourly about not getting to watch her Disney programming because my wife is watching Survivor and I want to be watching the Sci-Fi channel.
I am just curious, when was the last time you *actively* used WINE? Because, a couple of years ago, I was running a Red Hat 7.2 box with WINE and was running Microsoft apps very well. I used to have a screenshot of my desktop with IE open looking at microsoft.com while typing something in Word. On top of that, WINE has come a *long* way since then. I understand that you can now run Apple iTunes under Linux using WINE.
Also, it is funny that you should mention that "Windows programs wouldn't work except through something like Wine, which won't work any better for Mac ..." Check out Darwine and you might be surprised. http://darwine.opendarwin.org/ While I will admit that this isn't quite Beta quality, and much work needs to be done, there is something about a screenshot of Notepad running on a PPC Mac under OS X that makes me giddy like a school girl. .... Errr yeah ....
Anyway, the Darwine team isn't even satisfied with merely running Windows binaries. They are even working on a port of the entire SDK so that open source Windows x86 apps can be recompiled completely against Darwine as a more "native" app. Though, the underlying and most important component is a Bochs like x86 HCL emulator. So it isn't like it can automagically fix little to big endian problems. But hey, it's a start.
I can already say "Name me something besides a game app that I can't run on my Mac in an equivalent fashion." Soon we'll be able to say "Name me something I can't run on my Mac, period."
Oh ... and slipping slightly back on topic here, since this is about an x86 Mac OS X port ..... as was already previously stated in another post, OPENStep compiled fat binaries for each arch. it was available on. Look at GNUStep. An open source implimentation of the NeXT SDKs. In fact Linux Journal recently did an entire article on GNUStep, with a complete program .... some kind of image manipulation app .... so that they could go .... "Ok now, change this line and this line of code, recompile and viola instant OS X PPC Native app." Don't think there isn't a version of OS X on x86 hardware *somewhere* ... just know that it's more heavily guarded than anything in the government .... It was widely rumored that x86 development boxes that were welded shut were given out to very select important vendors (Adobe) just before IBM figured out how to get the G5 to be a viable option .... so it was thought about. But if it ever happened it would be *APPLE* x86 hardware, meaning there would be no BIOS so it wouldn't run x86 OS like Windows, it would be Open Firmware and would be designed specific to Apple's requirements .... it would have just happened to have an x86 chip as the CPU
Ahh!! RTFA, right? I thought it was *Google* who had put this out there. Yeah, these guys wouldn't have any thing to worry about putting up a hack for Mac as well. I was working under the assumption that the thing was Google sponsored, meaning that even though it is DAV based, to put it out there as a "Hey, hit us up with iDisk" would be begging for a cease and desist.
While I will admit that the concept of having a drive on your desktop that lives somewhere other than your local machine is neat, it isn't really a stretch of the technology, is it?
I mean, Apple has had iDisk since even before Mac OS X came out on the scene, I was using it to keep my documents synced at school when I was still using Mac OS 8 (I think.... may have been early 9)
Also, I *know* there was another "freebie" website a couple of years ago that did something very similar that allowed you to connect to their storage via a drive icon in My Computer on Windows.
And we won't even start on *NIX networked file systems ..... But I think this is going to be a very big gotcha for the service. It will really get some crazy attention now. However, I hope earlier /. posts I saw about "How soon before script kiddies and pirates use this as file repositories" don't start immediately coming true. Kill it before it even starts.
Probably, consider that while the product is in Beta they can guarantee that they will make no service level oriented promises. This gives them the opportunity to play around with all kinds of new tech that they may be able to spin off into a money maker while at the same time being able to completely walk away if it melts down.
Makes me wonder if they will try to license the Apple iDisk format for this as well for Mac users. I wouldn't mind having a 1 Gig internet drive to access files from home, work, and school without the need to carry DVD's around.
Well, I couldn't help but whip my thang out here. I also apologize in advance for my patent pending Bullshit Theory of the Day
Anyway. The API's for Quartz, and what you can do with the UI for the system is documented. Pick up some of the dog books from O'Reilly (Which, while I'm on the subject, where did the dog come from anyway. I mean .... it may not have been exactly public knowledge, but OS X has always been a cat.) Everything you need to know about how to do proper manipulation is there. All black and white.
The problem enters the equation when developers poke around and find things that Apple didn't mean for them to find. Ergo the undocumented hooks this guy is using. Now, while I will agree there is a bit of coolness about being able to locate something and then add it into your own code so you can just make a simple call and use it like you wrote it yourself, there is a problem with it. A guy in an earlier post complained about it not working with Jaguar. Most likely, it won't work with Tiger either.
You see, you have to understand that Apple, even though they are a big corporation out to make money off of both you and your grandmother, isn't specifically trying to hide something that you can use to write cool software to get your grandmother to buy a brand new G5. They want you to write something your grandmother will feel compelled to spend $2000 on a brand new Mac to use.
Here comes the but....
But the internal developers deep within the bowels of Apple are slaving day and night to make The Next Cool Thing (TM) that everyone will have to have in the newest version of OS X. These features are extremely fluid, sometimes disappearing completely in a simple increment upgrade within the same major version of the Cat. Because those same developers might have tried to create something too cool and have opened a hole somewhere else. They are undocumented because they might be gone tomorrow, or might change how they are called, or might become a butterfly all by the next major revision when they become concrete.
You see, when they solidify and become concrete, then documents are written, then become published API's with which to write code against. I mean, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to write code against an API, documented or not, that I knew wasn't standard yet and would most likely change tomorrow.
But this is all just the opinion of one old man.
My Mac keeps me off Windows. Though, I guess to be fair, I do have a copy of Microsoft Office installed for my wife to use. (Personally I ssh to my SuSE machine, push X console back and open OO.o but the wife just doesn't want to learn that option.)