Yeah, I don't see how computer programmer portrayals in Hollywood are any different from any other line of work. You think it's cool to be a cop or a doctor? No... I would imagine those are rather difficult lines of work. However Hollywood glamorizes both, and just about anything else they can make a buck from.
And it almost seems like this guy's post is attempting to trash cinema. It's the public's fault for being gullable enough to believe those things really happen.
Normal people aren't beautiful Normal people don't do amazing things
Normal people are boring. Nicely put. I think the moral of the story is don't be normal (:
For use as a NAS (which was the original post) either are more than enough. If you're looking for a 1U rack that holds four IDE drives, the Dell 725N was the best buy a year ago. I believe the one that is going to be released in the near future will again be the best buy.
And actually, Apple produced a few desktops along the way that had IDE disks in them. Here is an example, though it doesn't seem to be mentioned on that site. I had about four or five of these things here at work.
They also began using IDE CD-Rom drives quite frequently. I assume the price break was too much to pass up. I have quite a few older Macs here that have both IDE and SCSI controllers on the motherboard.
Additionally, when they had gone full IDE just a few years ago they were still including the option for a SCSI card and SCSI hard drives. I noticed recently (last revision?) that the G4 PowerMac no longer includes the option for SCSI hard drives, though a controller card is still available.
I personally like the Dell NAS. Aside from the Apple spacific hardware, the Dell 725N is comparable to the Apple XServe (or at least the old model) and was $1,700 cheaper.
Mine has a 900mhz P3 with 512mb of RAM. "Why would you put that in a NAS?" you ask? Because I had the money (: And even at that it was still way cheaper than the Apple. The reason I was even considering the Apple is because my NAS serves 25 Macintosh workstations - and the Dell NAS running Windows 2000 with Services for Macintosh does a pretty nice job. I can do complete remote management either through snapins or using Terminal Server which is free for admin use. It also has a web management console, though I don't use it because I prefer to use a Terminal session.
And it's basic X86 hardware. You could install Linux on it and have a Linux server serving your Linux cluster. Amazing! You could even yank the drives that it comes with and throw in 250GB Maxtor disks to get up to nearly 3/4 of a terabyte at RAID 5... in modern UFS! (:
Yeah, it's Mandrake with some games running in Wine. Woop-de-fucking-do.
I'm talking about building a system that rivals the simplicity of consoles. But the hardware is upgradable and the software is writen FOR LINUX. I think Games are a good place to start. It would require the backing of big name companies like NVidia, ATI, Creative, Sierra, EA, Blizzard... to name a few. I guess Sega could get in on the action now.
But an X86 Linux PC with a predefined install and A/V codecs running games that essentially load from CD/DVD (like consoles do) with maybe a little touch of installable software (for patches) running on hardware that could be upgraded by the user over time would be cool stuff. Then there could be standard hardware minimums along the way for the games. Set standards on audio, video, processor speed, and memory. Then when a new game comes out it would have a level rating instead of a whole list of acceptable hardware. The computer could tell the user what level of game they could play.
Add in a web browser, email client, and an mp3 player and you're set. Outputing to VGA, DVI, SVideo and RCA would be nice as well. That way console gamers would be happy with it because they could play it on their 65" 16:9 Sony Wega XBR.
Perhaps someone needs to make a Linux for Gamers distribution. Include all the free games, all the demo games, and make it stupid easy. Include a stupid easy email client and Mozilla... and XMMS. It needs nothing else. Sell the idea to people like Blizzard, Sierra, and EA. It could be like console systems, with upgradable hardware. It could have software that checks for driver updates for their hardware, and has an overclocker app.
Shit, you could even do the hardware route. I bet AlienWare would pick it up if it were good enough. They're doing the MS Media Center thing as it is.
Why the fuck is this on slashdot? This is ridiculous. Some idiot cooked their laptop and it gets posted on technology news site. You guys really need to evaluate standards.
If you don't place dependancy on something no one will ever see a need to make it dependable.
My agency does everything from the network. As a system administrator the only CDs I have left in my "daily use" CD book are operating system CDs. Everything, and I do mean everything, else is on my file server.
The artists have all their images on the server - there is no need for CDs there either. Additionally we have all our archive files on the server.
If our computers had no removable media drives it wouldn't effect our business. Yes it does make you depend more on your network, and that's fine. My network has been rock solid for 5+ years. It's the Windows servers I'm worried about (:
Wow, guess my math is a little off. Though we are in the begining of 2003, and if I recall correctly the Bondi was introduced in the fall. That gets me a little closer to be right (:
I believe that statement is a bit aggressive. I think it was only three years ago that Apple dropped the floppy drive for the New Bondi iMac. This is according to Apple-History.com anyway... I fully agree with the move but the consumers seemed to be upset - especially in the business world. Zip is not a viable alternative and SuperDisk wasn't marketted well enough.
It hasn't been until recently that CD-R / RW was streamlined enough for the 'common user', and the prices were affordable. I like the idea of USB "keychain storage", but those devices are still rather expensive.
Everything I do is on CD or on a network share these days anyway. I believe there will soon come a time that removable media is irrelivant. I would like to see hardware manufacturers and distributers put together a system where the bios gives you options for a TCP/IP stack and netbooting and there are Internet based boot servers. From there you could do anything you needed across a network.
"One of the strengths and simultaneously one of the weaknesses of free software has been that developers develop what they want to develop, not necessarily things that users want. It is possible, and it is often the case, that developers get great pleasure from producing a popular application or feature, and so are motivated largely by that as a goal. But the market gets distorted a little by that slight disconnect between user desires and developer production, even as it has been distorted (to a greater extent) on the non-free software side by Microsoft's monopoly."
I wouldn't say this is consistantly true. Infact I would say it's primarily true with free software for the simple reason that no one wanted it in the first place. Most of the time the developer made it because they wanted to.
With purchased software there was a need before the developer started. And when the developer is being payed, they tend to listen to the customer a bit more. See Adobe for an example.
Re:Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win
on
25 Best Linux Games
·
· Score: 1
Excuse me all to hell... Quake THREE. There, happy now?
But yeah, the Quake I & II duo being GPL'ed is pretty 1337 (:
Re:Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win
on
25 Best Linux Games
·
· Score: 1
I guess free is what's most important to the Slashdot community. I appologize for suggesting such an obtuse idea as to pay for something.
MY BAD!
Carry on.
Re:Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win
on
25 Best Linux Games
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Why should we expect Linux games to be any better than the millions of shareware games made for Windows?
Because not all Linux games are free...
Unreal Tournament, Railroad Tycoon 2, the various Sims, QUAKE! - these games aren't free or even shareware. I wouldn't expect them to be better, but at least comparable to their Windows counterparts.
Why is it that when people think of Linux, or any other OpenSource project, they immediately think "free"? These terms aren't interchangeable. And not all the software that goes with them is going to be OpenSource or free either.
So in otherwords the author's comment about it not being possible to "go back to Win98" is a load of crap? I mean, in boot.ini it lists the MS OSes that it found on the hard drive and gives you a 30 second selection menu.
Yeah it's just a joke, poking fun at Microsoft - but wouldn't it be better if it were factual? You might as well say Linux sucks because it doesn't have a GUI or that Macs suck because they can't talk to non-Macintosh computers.
I can back that up. If CDs were $8 and had a couple more songs on them I'd buy a lot more. If DVDs were $12 and were consistant with their features (alternat languages, sub-caps, etc...) I'd buy a lot more.
In addition to purchasing more media we'd be buying high end (Sony) electronics to play them on.
As it is, we use old junky hardware and steal the media.
Finally, someone on MY side. The last time I made a comment about all the benefits of CRT and the negatives about LCD I got trashed by about twenty Apple dorks.
I agree, the 22" and even more so with the 23" Apple Displays are beautiful displays. But not for what Apple is trying to sell them for, and definitely not for the price. I am the sys admin for an advertising agency in Little Rock, Arkansas - I buy all 21" Sonys for my artists and they absolutely love them. I'd get them the 24" if my budget were twice as big...
And actually I've been under the impression that Sony made Apple's displays all along - back to the days of the beige 21" Apple Studio Display. Without doing actual research I stumbled onto this Sony display which happens to be a 23" LCD with the exact same specs as Apple's HD Cinema Display I pretty much knew they were the same thing. Guess what, Sony's is $500 cheaper. Only difference is the Apple Digital Connector.
When the Trinitron is replaced I'll still be buying from Sony. They just make good shit.
What do the recording agencies do? Record, remaster, produce, manufacture and market musicians.
Nearly as I can tell computers and the Internet have pretty much taken over those roles. As far as getting paid for their hard work, I guess musicians are left to concert money and merchandise. Most listeners aren't going to be paying for an album that they can download for free, either legally or illegally.
Maybe the recording studios will be replaced by concert halls. Maybe the future is a movie theator with a band stage. Hey that'd be cool.
Re:faster than any other console on the market
on
Phantom Game Console
·
· Score: 1
....... If it seem that you're the only intelligent one in your midst, shut your mouth......
Nice sig. I assume you are a network administrator as well? (: Probably the most important think I've learned in my 6+ years at this job is if I know how to do something that needs to be done, don't let anyone else know that I know. If you do, they'll make you do it... permanently.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I don't see how computer programmer portrayals in Hollywood are any different from any other line of work. You think it's cool to be a cop or a doctor? No ... I would imagine those are rather difficult lines of work. However Hollywood glamorizes both, and just about anything else they can make a buck from.
And it almost seems like this guy's post is attempting to trash cinema. It's the public's fault for being gullable enough to believe those things really happen.
Normal people aren't beautiful
Normal people don't do amazing things
Normal people are boring. Nicely put. I think the moral of the story is don't be normal (:
For use as a NAS (which was the original post) either are more than enough. If you're looking for a 1U rack that holds four IDE drives, the Dell 725N was the best buy a year ago. I believe the one that is going to be released in the near future will again be the best buy.
And actually, Apple produced a few desktops along the way that had IDE disks in them. Here is an example, though it doesn't seem to be mentioned on that site. I had about four or five of these things here at work.
They also began using IDE CD-Rom drives quite frequently. I assume the price break was too much to pass up. I have quite a few older Macs here that have both IDE and SCSI controllers on the motherboard.
Additionally, when they had gone full IDE just a few years ago they were still including the option for a SCSI card and SCSI hard drives. I noticed recently (last revision?) that the G4 PowerMac no longer includes the option for SCSI hard drives, though a controller card is still available.
I personally like the Dell NAS. Aside from the Apple spacific hardware, the Dell 725N is comparable to the Apple XServe (or at least the old model) and was $1,700 cheaper.
... in modern UFS! (:
Mine has a 900mhz P3 with 512mb of RAM. "Why would you put that in a NAS?" you ask? Because I had the money (: And even at that it was still way cheaper than the Apple. The reason I was even considering the Apple is because my NAS serves 25 Macintosh workstations - and the Dell NAS running Windows 2000 with Services for Macintosh does a pretty nice job. I can do complete remote management either through snapins or using Terminal Server which is free for admin use. It also has a web management console, though I don't use it because I prefer to use a Terminal session.
And it's basic X86 hardware. You could install Linux on it and have a Linux server serving your Linux cluster. Amazing! You could even yank the drives that it comes with and throw in 250GB Maxtor disks to get up to nearly 3/4 of a terabyte at RAID 5
Yeah, it's Mandrake with some games running in Wine. Woop-de-fucking-do.
... to name a few. I guess Sega could get in on the action now.
... it's fun to think about.
I'm talking about building a system that rivals the simplicity of consoles. But the hardware is upgradable and the software is writen FOR LINUX. I think Games are a good place to start. It would require the backing of big name companies like NVidia, ATI, Creative, Sierra, EA, Blizzard
But an X86 Linux PC with a predefined install and A/V codecs running games that essentially load from CD/DVD (like consoles do) with maybe a little touch of installable software (for patches) running on hardware that could be upgraded by the user over time would be cool stuff. Then there could be standard hardware minimums along the way for the games. Set standards on audio, video, processor speed, and memory. Then when a new game comes out it would have a level rating instead of a whole list of acceptable hardware. The computer could tell the user what level of game they could play.
Add in a web browser, email client, and an mp3 player and you're set. Outputing to VGA, DVI, SVideo and RCA would be nice as well. That way console gamers would be happy with it because they could play it on their 65" 16:9 Sony Wega XBR.
I dunno
Perhaps someone needs to make a Linux for Gamers distribution. Include all the free games, all the demo games, and make it stupid easy. Include a stupid easy email client and Mozilla ... and XMMS. It needs nothing else. Sell the idea to people like Blizzard, Sierra, and EA. It could be like console systems, with upgradable hardware. It could have software that checks for driver updates for their hardware, and has an overclocker app.
Shit, you could even do the hardware route. I bet AlienWare would pick it up if it were good enough. They're doing the MS Media Center thing as it is.
Well yeah, me too. But it's not NEWS. If the shit happens all the time, how is that new? People are idiots 24/7 (:
Why the fuck is this on slashdot? This is ridiculous. Some idiot cooked their laptop and it gets posted on technology news site. You guys really need to evaluate standards.
If you don't place dependancy on something no one will ever see a need to make it dependable.
My agency does everything from the network. As a system administrator the only CDs I have left in my "daily use" CD book are operating system CDs. Everything, and I do mean everything, else is on my file server.
The artists have all their images on the server - there is no need for CDs there either. Additionally we have all our archive files on the server.
If our computers had no removable media drives it wouldn't effect our business. Yes it does make you depend more on your network, and that's fine. My network has been rock solid for 5+ years. It's the Windows servers I'm worried about (:
The Bondi iMac was the first iMac, so yes it never had a floppy drive.
And I was a few months off. Sue me.
Wow, guess my math is a little off. Though we are in the begining of 2003, and if I recall correctly the Bondi was introduced in the fall. That gets me a little closer to be right (:
I believe that statement is a bit aggressive. I think it was only three years ago that Apple dropped the floppy drive for the New Bondi iMac. This is according to Apple-History.com anyway ... I fully agree with the move but the consumers seemed to be upset - especially in the business world. Zip is not a viable alternative and SuperDisk wasn't marketted well enough.
It hasn't been until recently that CD-R / RW was streamlined enough for the 'common user', and the prices were affordable. I like the idea of USB "keychain storage", but those devices are still rather expensive.
Everything I do is on CD or on a network share these days anyway. I believe there will soon come a time that removable media is irrelivant. I would like to see hardware manufacturers and distributers put together a system where the bios gives you options for a TCP/IP stack and netbooting and there are Internet based boot servers. From there you could do anything you needed across a network.
"One of the strengths and simultaneously one of the weaknesses of free software has been that developers develop what they want to develop, not necessarily things that users want. It is possible, and it is often the case, that developers get great pleasure from producing a popular application or feature, and so are motivated largely by that as a goal. But the market gets distorted a little by that slight disconnect between user desires and developer production, even as it has been distorted (to a greater extent) on the non-free software side by Microsoft's monopoly."
I wouldn't say this is consistantly true. Infact I would say it's primarily true with free software for the simple reason that no one wanted it in the first place. Most of the time the developer made it because they wanted to.
With purchased software there was a need before the developer started. And when the developer is being payed, they tend to listen to the customer a bit more. See Adobe for an example.
Excuse me all to hell ... Quake THREE. There, happy now?
But yeah, the Quake I & II duo being GPL'ed is pretty 1337 (:
I guess free is what's most important to the Slashdot community. I appologize for suggesting such an obtuse idea as to pay for something.
MY BAD!
Carry on.
Why should we expect Linux games to be any better than the millions of shareware games made for Windows?
...
Because not all Linux games are free
Unreal Tournament, Railroad Tycoon 2, the various Sims, QUAKE! - these games aren't free or even shareware. I wouldn't expect them to be better, but at least comparable to their Windows counterparts.
Why is it that when people think of Linux, or any other OpenSource project, they immediately think "free"? These terms aren't interchangeable. And not all the software that goes with them is going to be OpenSource or free either.
Grow some balls, pay for your software.
OOOoooohhhh. Yeah. Well that pretty much sucks.
Well sometimes progress is scraping off a scab and letting a new one grow in its place. (:
So in otherwords the author's comment about it not being possible to "go back to Win98" is a load of crap? I mean, in boot.ini it lists the MS OSes that it found on the hard drive and gives you a 30 second selection menu.
Yeah it's just a joke, poking fun at Microsoft - but wouldn't it be better if it were factual? You might as well say Linux sucks because it doesn't have a GUI or that Macs suck because they can't talk to non-Macintosh computers.
Is it not possible to run XP on FAT32? I've never done a 98 to XP upgrade so I honestly don't know.
Has anyone actually done this upgrade?
I can back that up. If CDs were $8 and had a couple more songs on them I'd buy a lot more. If DVDs were $12 and were consistant with their features (alternat languages, sub-caps, etc ...) I'd buy a lot more.
In addition to purchasing more media we'd be buying high end (Sony) electronics to play them on.
As it is, we use old junky hardware and steal the media.
Finally, someone on MY side. The last time I made a comment about all the benefits of CRT and the negatives about LCD I got trashed by about twenty Apple dorks.
...
I agree, the 22" and even more so with the 23" Apple Displays are beautiful displays. But not for what Apple is trying to sell them for, and definitely not for the price. I am the sys admin for an advertising agency in Little Rock, Arkansas - I buy all 21" Sonys for my artists and they absolutely love them. I'd get them the 24" if my budget were twice as big
And actually I've been under the impression that Sony made Apple's displays all along - back to the days of the beige 21" Apple Studio Display. Without doing actual research I stumbled onto this Sony display which happens to be a 23" LCD with the exact same specs as Apple's HD Cinema Display I pretty much knew they were the same thing. Guess what, Sony's is $500 cheaper. Only difference is the Apple Digital Connector.
When the Trinitron is replaced I'll still be buying from Sony. They just make good shit.
What do the recording agencies do? Record, remaster, produce, manufacture and market musicians.
Nearly as I can tell computers and the Internet have pretty much taken over those roles. As far as getting paid for their hard work, I guess musicians are left to concert money and merchandise. Most listeners aren't going to be paying for an album that they can download for free, either legally or illegally.
Maybe the recording studios will be replaced by concert halls. Maybe the future is a movie theator with a band stage. Hey that'd be cool.
....... If it seem that you're the only intelligent one in your midst, shut your mouth. .....
... permanently.
Nice sig. I assume you are a network administrator as well? (: Probably the most important think I've learned in my 6+ years at this job is if I know how to do something that needs to be done, don't let anyone else know that I know. If you do, they'll make you do it
I could have sworn THIS was the longest data transmission we'd ever seen.
They could just as easily call it the "Barf-O-Matic" ...