Give me a break. The supposedly "nonstandard" technologies you mention aren't so crazy and out of line when you consider that they have all been around since nearly the beginning of the Macintosh in 1984, before Intel PC's had any right to claim the "standard." And even so, many of the examples you give just aren't true:
-Apple serial ports are standard RS422 which is generally compatible with RS232. In fact, it only takes a port adapter to hook a Mac serial port to a PC.
-Apple memory is exactly the same as PC memory. Most Macs used standard 30 and 72-pin SIMMs, and later 168-pin DIMMs.
-Apple monitors are signal compatible with PC monitors. All it takes is a port adapter.
-Apple microphones are generally identical to PC microphones.
-Apple floppy drives far more capable than PC floppy drives, as well as being fully able to read PC disks.
-SCSI is a generic open standard that is also available on PC. Most workstations also used SCSI.
Basically, you seem to think that Apple should have thrown their hands in the air in 1984 and adopted the ISA bus and parallel ports, but they had (and have) no reason to do so. Apple remained backwards compatible with its own hardware for far longer than most PC manufacturers do, for better or for worse. But most of what you're talking about is simply FUD. Or maybe a troll.
Apparently, Mac users were already buying most of their CRT monitors elsewhere. Apple's LCD sales tended to be much better than their CRT sales, I think, precisely because of the price premium issue. I personally that the 17" CRT display was incredibly overpriced at $500, given that $200 will buy you a comparable monitor. Most of the rest of Apple's prices are pretty reasonable, but the CRT was needlessly expensive. Now they can get rid of that liability while claiming the technological bleeding edge by dumping CRT's.
Let's see... a 17" flat screen CRT from Apple costs $500. A generic 17" flat screen costs $250-$300. But a 15" LCD from Apple costs $599, which is pretty close to what other manufacturers are charging. As a Mac user, I would pay $50 or maybe even $100 more for a high-quality LCD that matches my Mac and has a built-in USB hub.
I am continually amazed at the degree of ignorance and FUD that gets posted here about Apple. Apple is not perfect by any means (their legal team should be fired), but they have made a lot of progress in the past few years and come out with some really interesting stuff. When other companies do that sort of stuff, everyone cheers. When Apple does it, it's nothing but bitching and moaning. Why?
I keep seeing posts claiming that new Macs cost $5000+ and that Apple hardware isn't compatible with anything, etc, etc. I don't know where this is coming from, given that most of Apple's hardware costs well under $2000. (You can get a damn nice laptop for $1300). And I challenge you to find me a high-quality 22" wide-screen LCD for less than $2500. I also find it interesting that Apple dropped its price on the 15" screen to $599, but that shows up nowhere in the article. $599 is hardly a bad price for an LCD display.
If this were coming from SGI, the article would have originated from the "drooling-on-my-keyboard department," but instead we get the "you-gotta-be-kidding department." Very cute, guys. Mod me down as flamebait, but the knee-jerk reactions against everything Apple get a little irritating after a while.
I agree for the most part with your comment, but Scalia has never been the swing vote in cases like this. Look at nearly any decision in the last 10 years, and you will find Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas voting as a block against free speech, against separation of church and state, against equal protection, etc. (In the last case, check out Scalia's dissent in Romer v. Evans -- it's pretty sickening) . I'm pretty sure Scalia has already decided to vote for Son-of-CDA, in the interest of protecting "public morality" or some such tripe. The real swing votes here will be Kennedy or O'Connor, as always.
The old Power Mac 6100 has the perfect case for this application. It would fit pretty well in the bottom of a stereo system. The fan is also pretty quiet. You can upgrade these things with G3 processors that run around $150 on eBay, which should give you plenty of speed for MP3's and DVD's. The G3's generally don't require a fan, so that would also cut down on the noise level. It's got 16-bit stereo sound built in, as well as SCSI, so you could load it up with a SCSI DVD drive and you're set. The AV models come with TV out, but you would have to remove the AV card to fit a G3 upgrade, I think. You can buy scan converter boxes pretty cheap, though, to hook the built-in video to a TV.
If you didn't want to use the Mac itself, the case would still be pretty useful if you could find a PC motherboard that included all the components you needed onboard.
I have an easier solution. Every time you sit down at your computer, check the keyboard cable and make sure it plugs into the computer rather than some mysterious "black box" that somebody's put there. If you think somebody's going to put one inside your keyboard, then take the keyboard with you every time you leave. Consider locking your PC case to prevent anyone from opening it to install a device in there. Like somebody already posted, if you don't have physical security for your machine, you're pretty much screwed anyway.
Actually, they're G4 cubes, but yes, they're fanless. Apple recently dropped the price down to $1299, which is still quite a bit for an X term. On the other hand, the iMacs have been fanless for quite some time now. You could probably find a cheap refurbished or used one for around $500. You even get a monitor included.
Simons prefers to stick with Oudin
coil. It is easily constructed with hand tools. The job is simplified if you can lay hands on a vibrator of the type used in the spark coil of a Model-T Ford.
Well it's a good thing I've got one of those lying around in my garage!
Are they going to use their closed, proprietary system only internally, or are they going to release binaries to the public? IIRC, the GPL doesn't prohibit you from using its code in your own system, if you're not releasing anything to the public.
Look at it this way: the GPL requires you to release the source for any binaries you release which contain GPL'd software. If you're releasing no binaries, what's the problem?
I could be totally wrong on what the GPL says about this, but that was my understanding of how it worked.
You make it sound so simple. Imagine them trying to run EVERY piece of spam that Carnivore ever received through the decoder. Might take a while, don't you think?
By refusing to take the case, the effect is different than had they heard the case and ruled for the state of Virginia. As such, the ruling will only apply to the states within the circuit, rather than the entire nation. Also, a Supreme Court decision would have set a precedent for their future decisions. The Supreme Court does not usually look to the Courts of Appeals for precedent.
Actually, you're really not better off. Look at the parts list. That stuff is expensive! It's a total of $260 for everything there. When you add the cost of shipping from multiple parts distributors, the kit looks like a much better deal.
I used to think they had some sort of guiding principles to their decisions, until this election case. How is it that the "conservatives" on the court shoved aside states' rights just because it happened to benefit their candidate to do so? I haven't seen Rehnquist, Scalia, or Thomas invoke equal protection in practically their entire tenure, but suddenly they decided that it was a great reason to shut down counting votes.
...they still come down heavily on the pro-free speech side of things.
Which ones? Certainly not the conservative trio of Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas. How about the flag burning cases? Who was supporting free speech there? The liberals. There are plenty of other examples. You may be right that they would rule in favor of DeCSS, and you're certainly right that their definitions of conservative and liberal are different than the traditional political definitions, but at the moment I'm thoroughly disillusioned with their ability to make well-reasoned, impartial decisions.
There's more to this than just randomly making TLD's. You also need some entity to be responsible for managing registration for the TLD. This was a large part of the reason that many of the proposed TLD's weren't accepted-- the people proposing them had no ability to competently regulate them. Besides, how catchy is something like "amazon.ustm"? I didn't think so.
Just so you know, I have acquired a copyright on the term "web site", defined as "a page loaded using HTTP and displayed on a computer screen." You are currently infringing on my intellectual property. You won't get away with this.
1) Drop your resolution. I know it's fun to run at 1600x1200 on a 17" monitor just because you can, but your eyes will pay for it. If you need all that space, buy a 21" monitor.
2) Higher refresh rates obviously help.
3) It seems to me that TFT displays would be better on your eyes than CRT displays, because they don't generate their own light so much as filter other light (from the room, or from the cold cathode backlights, which run at very high frequencies IIRC).
4) Take breaks, for crying out loud! Go do something that doesn't involve focusing your eyes at close range.
Based on this, the Apple Cinema Display would be the perfect monitor. Mmmm, 24 inch LCD...
HFS+ does have the capability to run multi-user OS's like Linux. It can store ownership and permission information, which Mac OS X uses, although Mac OS 9 ignores this info. IIRC, there isn't the same support for symbolic links as there is under ext2, however. OS X had to come up with some crazy kludge, I think.
But the fact is, HFS+ is not supported by Linux at all right now beyond the very early experimental stages. If you can't even read files off of HFS+, I doubt you'd want to put your root partition there.
That sort of thing is a long way off. Personally, I'd be interested in seeing support for UFS (Apple's Unix File System) under Linux, so you could install Mac OS X and Linux on the same partition. Of course, you'd need to come up with something to avoid conflicting names, e.g./etc,/usr, and so on. But that seems possible, anyway.
Remember all the articles predicting that Linux would evolve into multiple mutually incompatible branches? Remember how the Slashdot community continually dismisses them? Well, think about this: to most of the world, it doesn't particularly matter whether there's only one branch of the kernel, because a lot more goes into supporting a complex piece of software than just that. I doubt the Linux kernel will fork, but at the same time, the incredible variety of distributions may be the way that Linux is gradually becoming self-incompatible.
Before you flame, keep in mind that I'm merely referring to the perception from the shrink-wrap software community; I'm well aware that all the 1337 hax0rs on Slashdot are capable of dealing with these sorts of problems.
It seems like all consumer electronics these days suffers from the same quality-control problems as computers do. I remember trying to fix a 15 to 20-year old tape deck that had finally quit after all those years. Man, that thing was built like a brick! All the components were heavy-duty, discrete, with lots of wires running all over the place. Confusing? Maybe. But definitely solid.
Compare that to the tape deck I worked on from a few years ago. I open it up, and it's basically one custom-made IC attached to a cheap motor and a few flimsy metal parts. It's not just that unit, either, practically everything you buy anymore short of the very high-end is like that. It's actually sort of ironic that they're advertising the "new" 19 inch width of VCR's as a feature, when in fact the total amount of space used within one of those cases is about 10 cubic inches.
Bring back the good old days, when things worked, and when they broke, at least replacement components existed!
How I long for a decent web browser under Mac OS X beta. I've tried everything I can find, and it seems that nobody makes a decent browser anymore. IE randomly misrenders pages, frequently locks up, has trouble connecting to many sites, and quits intermittently and unexpectedly. Netscape occasionally stops connecting to the outside world on my system. iCab also randomly quits and doesn't render pages properly. OmniWeb refused to even install on my system. And mozilla, well, it's heavy on the fluff while being practically unusable for surfing the web. And Mac OS X doesn't even come with lynx!
That's OK, we OS X users don't need to surf the web anyway.
This is why it doesn't work to be a single-issue voter. The DMCA has passed. It's a moot issue. The big deal is not who previously voted for one piece of legislation, but how they will vote in the future. The DMCA is not necessarily a reliable indicator of that.
Also, just because somebody hasn't had the chance to vote for the DMCA doesn't mean they voted against it. Personally, I've decided to be a single-issue voter as well: I'll vote against any Senator who voted to confirm Justice Scalia to the Supreme Court. Oh, wait, that was everyone in the Senate at that time!
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I have an Omni Studio system and have been extremely pleased with it. The audio quality is excellent.
Notably, M-Audio has also been much more forthcoming with OS X drivers than any other company I've seen.
-Apple serial ports are standard RS422 which is generally compatible with RS232. In fact, it only takes a port adapter to hook a Mac serial port to a PC.
-Apple memory is exactly the same as PC memory. Most Macs used standard 30 and 72-pin SIMMs, and later 168-pin DIMMs.
-Apple monitors are signal compatible with PC monitors. All it takes is a port adapter.
-Apple microphones are generally identical to PC microphones.
-Apple floppy drives far more capable than PC floppy drives, as well as being fully able to read PC disks.
-SCSI is a generic open standard that is also available on PC. Most workstations also used SCSI.
Basically, you seem to think that Apple should have thrown their hands in the air in 1984 and adopted the ISA bus and parallel ports, but they had (and have) no reason to do so. Apple remained backwards compatible with its own hardware for far longer than most PC manufacturers do, for better or for worse. But most of what you're talking about is simply FUD. Or maybe a troll.
Let's see... a 17" flat screen CRT from Apple costs $500. A generic 17" flat screen costs $250-$300. But a 15" LCD from Apple costs $599, which is pretty close to what other manufacturers are charging. As a Mac user, I would pay $50 or maybe even $100 more for a high-quality LCD that matches my Mac and has a built-in USB hub.
I keep seeing posts claiming that new Macs cost $5000+ and that Apple hardware isn't compatible with anything, etc, etc. I don't know where this is coming from, given that most of Apple's hardware costs well under $2000. (You can get a damn nice laptop for $1300). And I challenge you to find me a high-quality 22" wide-screen LCD for less than $2500. I also find it interesting that Apple dropped its price on the 15" screen to $599, but that shows up nowhere in the article. $599 is hardly a bad price for an LCD display.
If this were coming from SGI, the article would have originated from the "drooling-on-my-keyboard department," but instead we get the "you-gotta-be-kidding department." Very cute, guys. Mod me down as flamebait, but the knee-jerk reactions against everything Apple get a little irritating after a while.
I agree for the most part with your comment, but Scalia has never been the swing vote in cases like this. Look at nearly any decision in the last 10 years, and you will find Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas voting as a block against free speech, against separation of church and state, against equal protection, etc. (In the last case, check out Scalia's dissent in Romer v. Evans -- it's pretty sickening) . I'm pretty sure Scalia has already decided to vote for Son-of-CDA, in the interest of protecting "public morality" or some such tripe. The real swing votes here will be Kennedy or O'Connor, as always.
If you didn't want to use the Mac itself, the case would still be pretty useful if you could find a PC motherboard that included all the components you needed onboard.
I have an easier solution. Every time you sit down at your computer, check the keyboard cable and make sure it plugs into the computer rather than some mysterious "black box" that somebody's put there. If you think somebody's going to put one inside your keyboard, then take the keyboard with you every time you leave. Consider locking your PC case to prevent anyone from opening it to install a device in there. Like somebody already posted, if you don't have physical security for your machine, you're pretty much screwed anyway.
Actually, they're G4 cubes, but yes, they're fanless. Apple recently dropped the price down to $1299, which is still quite a bit for an X term. On the other hand, the iMacs have been fanless for quite some time now. You could probably find a cheap refurbished or used one for around $500. You even get a monitor included.
Well it's a good thing I've got one of those lying around in my garage!
Look at it this way: the GPL requires you to release the source for any binaries you release which contain GPL'd software. If you're releasing no binaries, what's the problem?
I could be totally wrong on what the GPL says about this, but that was my understanding of how it worked.
You make it sound so simple. Imagine them trying to run EVERY piece of spam that Carnivore ever received through the decoder. Might take a while, don't you think?
Check your URL. You're probably at one of the typosquatter pages that frames slashdot with more ads.
By refusing to take the case, the effect is different than had they heard the case and ruled for the state of Virginia. As such, the ruling will only apply to the states within the circuit, rather than the entire nation. Also, a Supreme Court decision would have set a precedent for their future decisions. The Supreme Court does not usually look to the Courts of Appeals for precedent.
The part about immediate termination of the license if you sue Apple is still in there, unfortunately. Other than that, it looks a lot better.
Actually, you're really not better off. Look at the parts list. That stuff is expensive! It's a total of $260 for everything there. When you add the cost of shipping from multiple parts distributors, the kit looks like a much better deal.
Which ones? Certainly not the conservative trio of Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas. How about the flag burning cases? Who was supporting free speech there? The liberals. There are plenty of other examples. You may be right that they would rule in favor of DeCSS, and you're certainly right that their definitions of conservative and liberal are different than the traditional political definitions, but at the moment I'm thoroughly disillusioned with their ability to make well-reasoned, impartial decisions.
There's more to this than just randomly making TLD's. You also need some entity to be responsible for managing registration for the TLD. This was a large part of the reason that many of the proposed TLD's weren't accepted-- the people proposing them had no ability to competently regulate them. Besides, how catchy is something like "amazon.ustm"? I didn't think so.
Just so you know, I have acquired a copyright on the term "web site", defined as "a page loaded using HTTP and displayed on a computer screen." You are currently infringing on my intellectual property. You won't get away with this.
2) Higher refresh rates obviously help.
3) It seems to me that TFT displays would be better on your eyes than CRT displays, because they don't generate their own light so much as filter other light (from the room, or from the cold cathode backlights, which run at very high frequencies IIRC).
4) Take breaks, for crying out loud! Go do something that doesn't involve focusing your eyes at close range.
Based on this, the Apple Cinema Display would be the perfect monitor. Mmmm, 24 inch LCD...
But the fact is, HFS+ is not supported by Linux at all right now beyond the very early experimental stages. If you can't even read files off of HFS+, I doubt you'd want to put your root partition there.
That sort of thing is a long way off. Personally, I'd be interested in seeing support for UFS (Apple's Unix File System) under Linux, so you could install Mac OS X and Linux on the same partition. Of course, you'd need to come up with something to avoid conflicting names, e.g. /etc, /usr, and so on. But that seems possible, anyway.
Before you flame, keep in mind that I'm merely referring to the perception from the shrink-wrap software community; I'm well aware that all the 1337 hax0rs on Slashdot are capable of dealing with these sorts of problems.
Compare that to the tape deck I worked on from a few years ago. I open it up, and it's basically one custom-made IC attached to a cheap motor and a few flimsy metal parts. It's not just that unit, either, practically everything you buy anymore short of the very high-end is like that. It's actually sort of ironic that they're advertising the "new" 19 inch width of VCR's as a feature, when in fact the total amount of space used within one of those cases is about 10 cubic inches.
Bring back the good old days, when things worked, and when they broke, at least replacement components existed!
That's OK, we OS X users don't need to surf the web anyway.
Also, just because somebody hasn't had the chance to vote for the DMCA doesn't mean they voted against it. Personally, I've decided to be a single-issue voter as well: I'll vote against any Senator who voted to confirm Justice Scalia to the Supreme Court. Oh, wait, that was everyone in the Senate at that time!
Yes, only the best can leave out both form and function.