It is certainly evident that either Windows was not originally designed to be secure, or that those who coded it were fairly sloppy in implementing the design (perhaps a little of both).
The fact that nobody patches their systems is an indication that the delivery method is flawed. It must be that the patching system has one or more of the following problems:
1. Too complicated, or too flaky to make updates simple 2. The importance of patching is not impressed on the user at install time 3. Patches are too flaky to have automated installations done without even bugging the user
The thing is, all of the above are true on some level. Windows update is flaky, patches don't always install properly. And on top of that it doesn't keep good track of what updates are installed. It doesn't check library versions, or versions of actually installed files, it checks some database that IT generates. Regarding the second point, its too damn easy to switch off automated updates altogether. No reason to bug the user more than once, but use some bold type in there noting that they could get r00ted and their files could magically disappear. The last point is valid as well. If I recall correctly a patch for a recent worm, in its original incarnation conflicted with another patch or broke certain pieces of software.
I just don't understand why people put up with this. After you've lost as much money to downtime as it would cost to replace those windows boxen with some other solution (linux, mac os x, or anything else. this applies especially to systems where doing remote updates is easy and free. microsoft charges for tools to deploy plugs for all the holes in their operating system on a large scale. linux and mac os x updates can be performed via the command line, so you could script updates to network machines)
Sweet! Is there any way to connect a keyboard to either of these phones or does it provide some intuitive way to enter commands that doesn't require entering the same way as for the address book?
Anyone know of clients of similar sorts that will run on a Series 60 Symbian phone? I've been looking around but the VNC clients that I located refused to run on the phone after installing the package.
If this isn't simply a troll, try enabling DMA on your drives. Though, since you've state that you've been waiting for 20 minutes, I'm inclined to believe that you've made this scenario up and are merely trying to hook some rabid 10-year-old linux fan.
DMA being disabled on any operating system means a significant amount of CPU time gets spent on reading and writing to disk. You can either enable it in your kernel config (I can't see why your distro provider wouldn't have done this in the first place), or you can use hdparm in this manner, "hdparm -d1/dev/"
A 17 MB file should take seconds unless significant additional processing of file data is necessary regardless of operating system.
To cite a recent sign of the lack of robustness in the windows operating system (or cygwin) I attempted to back up a linux machine to a windows machine using cygwin and rsync. With about 700,000 files to consider the windows machine took literally days to get through simply dealing with the list of files before even transferring. Attempting the same, later, with a linux host (after augmenting disk space to allow for the process), considering the list of files took about 2-3 minutes, and the transfer took several hours (20 GB, compression enabled).
Remakes have been a staple of human entertainment for MANY years. I would go so far as to say a majority of movies were based on a book, play, musical, opera, or some other dramatic/literal presentation.
Permutation defines entertainment of all sorts. Pretty much every single general story type was discovered and exploited millenia ago.
That said, reality tv, american idol, etc are crap. They are cheap to produce, and they rarely disappoint the masses. They almost never build much of a highly supportive fanbase, because there's little to them. You can flip on the TV and instantly know what's going on
Linux is not an option because people feel that they need MS Office products. They also are not comfortable enough with a higher-level OS like Linux
You've just made my point. They feel they need MS Office products because everyone else uses it or because they don't know of other options.
Higher-level generally denotes a greater amount of abstraction, hence you see less of the bare hardware. Linux would, to some extent, classify as a "lower-level" operating system.
Many of the distros available today such as Lindows don't require any more fiddling with low level things than Windows does. You don't have to deal with it, but lower level access is always available.
not supporting MS isn't an option for 90% of the computer users in the world
HUH? I would think this would have more to do with not knowing of other options, or simply going with what everyone else goes with. There are only a small percentage of people that must use tools that do not exist on Linux or OS X (certain CAD/Engineering applications, for example). Most of those computer users, use their computer for web, email, and office (and perhaps a game or two).
It's possible, but for certain the $129 Mac OS X does not have any serial numbers. You are asked basically two things where to install, and then later registration info, and thats it.
Apache comes preinstalled on OS X, regardless of whether it is the server version or "desktop" version. PHP is available as a package here and mysql here. PHP doesn't require much configuration in itself, same goes for mysql beyond creating databases which you have to do on either platform.
And yes indeed Mac OS X has two versions. But windows has 3. Home, Pro, and Server. But which one to use for desktop use is somewhat confusing on the windows side. XP Pro offers a few useful features, but they don't really justify increasing the cost. Mac OS X in all but a few cases cheaper than XP Pro or Home (home upgrade may be cheaper, but there are many sources that sell OS X for $100 instead of the msrp).
On top of that, we have no serial numbers, no product activation, and the install discs no matter which apple machine they were bundled with will install on any other apple machine (so long as that particular OS revision runs on the hardware).
Service Packs do not add features (for the most part). They're mostly bugfixes (except auto-update, and the anti-trust compliance stuff), its still the same overall version of the operating system.
For the record, Mac OS X 10.2 has had 6 "service packs," if you define one as previous security fixes with a bunch of bugfixes.
10.3 is a larger step up. The mail reader has threaded mail, the finder has as-you-type searching and a redesigned interface (load/save dialogs modified too), IPSec is included in the kernel, the final release of Apple's X11 release is included, fast user switching is added (yes XP has this), the overall gui has been updated and refined, exposé has been added (quite nice, and fast even on an ibook), and support for encrypted home directories is added (yes, xp pro has "encrypted filesystems" but its not really an encrypted filesystem but support for on-the-fly encrypting and decrypting of individual files within an overall non-encrypted filesystem), among other things. Service packs do not add these sorts of features, the only come along with major (read: for pay) operating system updgrades on either side of the fence (linux and other operating systems not included).
At NU the IT department has deployed hotspots at a variety of locations. The campus cafe, parts of the student center, certain locations in the dorms, libraries, as well as other locations provide wireless access.
WEP is not used to secure the network. Instead they're using VPN to provide authentication as well as secure/encrypted connections. Nothing beyond the VPN server and other clients of the AP are accessible without connecting to VPN. As an added benefit VPN allows off-campus users to use the NU mail relays, and other things that are restricted the university subnets.
I don't think he's referring solely to the CPU there since throughout the keynote the entire machine is simply referred to as "the xeon." I think the machine is being referred to as a whole, CPU, mobo, RAM, disk, OS, etc. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the Xeon didn't fare well under high memory usage conditions. PAE is somewhat of an ugly hack (among others, though the PPC architecture isn't without its issues), and the 64-bit CPU should be able to handle those conditions much more cleanly (though they didn't mention whether or not Mathematica has been rewritten/modified to be 64-bit clean on OS X.)
I'm not terribly familiar with tomcat, but I'd guess that apache (at least) is better tested on Linux/UNIX operating systems since that is where it was originally conceived. Java VMs also seem to vary a great deal in quality, performance, and stability from platform to platform as well as VM to VM on a single platform. I seem to remember the MS VM having its fair share of issues. Perhaps tomcat 4 is unstable or perhaps some of the features implemented are bringing out the worst in whatever vm you're using. There are quite a few variables to tweak beyond simply the OS.
Score 5, Insightful? WHAT!? This should be modded funny or something other than insightful. It's not insightful. If we hadn't broken more than a few eggs along the way we, as a race, would not be where we are now (for better AND worse)
Considering Win32 is probably their primary platform right now, purely in terms of profit margin, I'd hazard a guess they've invested more in that port and it should be quite solid. Plus the app has had plenty of years more to mature on the Win32 APIs than it has with Cocoa/OS X.
[mode="out-of-line-personal-jab"] Christ, look at your own comments on your own site about problems you've been having with your SQL server on Windows, and your hardware problems to boot. I spent 2 years with a series of Athlon and P4 based boxes that I built myself and had quite a bit of hardware failure too. Guess what I did, I got something other than a PC. [/mode]
OK, if you boil it down to that level, Apple hasn't done anything truly revolutionary. BUT.. Each of the things mentioned above has either marginally or significantly raised the bar as far design goes and other hardware/software makers tend to follow Apple's lead, rather than the other way around.
The iPod has lead other manufacturers to come up with smaller more elegant MP3 players, in some cases similar enough that Apple's legal department had issues with it. The iMac (original) lead some PC manufacturers to imitate the design and non-standard color scheme. iMovie lead Microsoft to respond with Windows Movie Maker.
They aren't the first to the plate with a 64-bit chip but they're the first to make available such a chip for desktop use. AMD, though it announced it much earlier hasn't released the desktop version of its chip.
Apple IS innovating, its just that lately its only showed in the details. The scroll wheel on the ipod, the neck on the newer iMacs, etc..
According to the linked article though, Apple used different optimizations on each platform. Personally I'd like to see both platforms with all optimizations on, compiled with GCC. Not that this really means much anyways, and it does _not_ really simulate "real world" application performance because all you're running is the benchmark on a minimal system install.
Of the benchmarks displayed I'd believe the Photoshop and Mathematica ones to some extent. The emagic comparison seems a little fishy though. The composition on the PC didn't look all that complicated, it shouldn't have sputtered and died the way it did.
That said, I'm sure each of the current leading CPUs shows better performance in one area or another. I'm sure things suited for altivec optimization will be way faster on the G5, and things suited for raw integer performance will be faster on the P4.
In any case, we have a rather fast, 64 bit, UNIX-based machine, that exhibits excellent polished design both software and hardware wise. I for one am lusting after a Dual 2 GHz G5 with at least 1 GB of DDR RAM, and I can't wait to see how it performs with Panther.
"Apple has always been at its best when it's actually creating new things not ripping off BSD and linux like lately.
Huh? iPod, iMac, PowerMac G4/G5, PowerBook G4 Ti/Al, Music Store, Apple Store (online and offline), iApps, iSight, Aqua/QuartzExtreme (which may run on top of BSD, but could technically run on another kernel and toolset), FinalCut Pro, Rendezvous.. the list goes on.
Some of these things are extremely recent, and the others that have been around longer have seen recent innovations
Whenever Apple tries to copy off its competitors it fails miserably, look at the Mac clones and Apples forays into consoles and PDAs. To be sure Apple has its market, but it just can't compete with Linux on the larger scale.
Apple hasn't touched PDAs (Newton), Consoles (Pippin), or Clones (Power Computing, UMAX, DayStar Digital, Motorola, etc) for years now.
In the long run, maybe it can't compete with linux, but for now the desktop software is better on the Mac. You don't see the same types of seamless intregration accross many apps, the same number of solid commercial desktop apps available, the same level of hardware vendor support (ie vendors providing drivers rather than an independent party putting something together by reverse engineering or getting a look at some of the specs). It _could_ get there, if either more corporations step in to guide the desktop environments for general users or if some developers have the same wants/needs in mind.
Right now, I'll take my Photoshop, Flash MX, solid iPod (and AAC) support, and nice set of working gui tools apple has provided (ie, easy VPN built into the OS) and I'll keep using a mac until someone provides something that has the same level of finesse, power, and stability.
I'm not going to see it from microsoft, because part of the power I expect is either having the GNU or BSD console-based tools, but GNOME or KDE could grow to fill this role.
Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of Apple's relationship with Mot. The G5s are being manufactured by IBM in Fishkill, NY (see here).
Indeed it is laughable that Mot would be able to turn out something with that high of a clock rate a year from now, but for IBM I'd be highly surprised if it doesn't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
It is certainly evident that either Windows was not originally designed to be secure, or that those who coded it were fairly sloppy in implementing the design (perhaps a little of both).
The fact that nobody patches their systems is an indication that the delivery method is flawed. It must be that the patching system has one or more of the following problems:
1. Too complicated, or too flaky to make updates simple
2. The importance of patching is not impressed on the user at install time
3. Patches are too flaky to have automated installations done without even bugging the user
The thing is, all of the above are true on some level. Windows update is flaky, patches don't always install properly. And on top of that it doesn't keep good track of what updates are installed. It doesn't check library versions, or versions of actually installed files, it checks some database that IT generates. Regarding the second point, its too damn easy to switch off automated updates altogether. No reason to bug the user more than once, but use some bold type in there noting that they could get r00ted and their files could magically disappear. The last point is valid as well. If I recall correctly a patch for a recent worm, in its original incarnation conflicted with another patch or broke certain pieces of software.
I just don't understand why people put up with this. After you've lost as much money to downtime as it would cost to replace those windows boxen with some other solution (linux, mac os x, or anything else. this applies especially to systems where doing remote updates is easy and free. microsoft charges for tools to deploy plugs for all the holes in their operating system on a large scale. linux and mac os x updates can be performed via the command line, so you could script updates to network machines)
Mwahahaha. I'm safe here in Washington....
wait.. what was that white fla
"I would gauge my eyes out."
How does one do that? Is it like checking eyeball fluid pressure?
I've got a 3650. Unfortunately I just noticed the price of this product as well, pretty steep.
Sweet! Is there any way to connect a keyboard to either of these phones or does it provide some intuitive way to enter commands that doesn't require entering the same way as for the address book?
Anyone know of clients of similar sorts that will run on a Series 60 Symbian phone? I've been looking around but the VNC clients that I located refused to run on the phone after installing the package.
stupid slashdot filters:
/dev/[hdd device]"
"hdparm -d1
If this isn't simply a troll, try enabling DMA on your drives. Though, since you've state that you've been waiting for 20 minutes, I'm inclined to believe that you've made this scenario up and are merely trying to hook some rabid 10-year-old linux fan.
/dev/"
DMA being disabled on any operating system means a significant amount of CPU time gets spent on reading and writing to disk. You can either enable it in your kernel config (I can't see why your distro provider wouldn't have done this in the first place), or you can use hdparm in this manner, "hdparm -d1
A 17 MB file should take seconds unless significant additional processing of file data is necessary regardless of operating system.
To cite a recent sign of the lack of robustness in the windows operating system (or cygwin) I attempted to back up a linux machine to a windows machine using cygwin and rsync. With about 700,000 files to consider the windows machine took literally days to get through simply dealing with the list of files before even transferring. Attempting the same, later, with a linux host (after augmenting disk space to allow for the process), considering the list of files took about 2-3 minutes, and the transfer took several hours (20 GB, compression enabled).
Remakes have been a staple of human entertainment for MANY years. I would go so far as to say a majority of movies were based on a book, play, musical, opera, or some other dramatic/literal presentation.
Permutation defines entertainment of all sorts. Pretty much every single general story type was discovered and exploited millenia ago.
That said, reality tv, american idol, etc are crap. They are cheap to produce, and they rarely disappoint the masses. They almost never build much of a highly supportive fanbase, because there's little to them. You can flip on the TV and instantly know what's going on
Linux is not an option because people feel that they need MS Office products. They also are not comfortable enough with a higher-level OS like Linux
You've just made my point. They feel they need MS Office products because everyone else uses it or because they don't know of other options.
Higher-level generally denotes a greater amount of abstraction, hence you see less of the bare hardware. Linux would, to some extent, classify as a "lower-level" operating system.
Many of the distros available today such as Lindows don't require any more fiddling with low level things than Windows does. You don't have to deal with it, but lower level access is always available.
not supporting MS isn't an option for 90% of the computer users in the world
HUH? I would think this would have more to do with not knowing of other options, or simply going with what everyone else goes with. There are only a small percentage of people that must use tools that do not exist on Linux or OS X (certain CAD/Engineering applications, for example). Most of those computer users, use their computer for web, email, and office (and perhaps a game or two).
It's possible, but for certain the $129 Mac OS X does not have any serial numbers. You are asked basically two things where to install, and then later registration info, and thats it.
Huh?
Apache comes preinstalled on OS X, regardless of whether it is the server version or "desktop" version. PHP is available as a package here and mysql here. PHP doesn't require much configuration in itself, same goes for mysql beyond creating databases which you have to do on either platform.
And yes indeed Mac OS X has two versions. But windows has 3. Home, Pro, and Server. But which one to use for desktop use is somewhat confusing on the windows side. XP Pro offers a few useful features, but they don't really justify increasing the cost. Mac OS X in all but a few cases cheaper than XP Pro or Home (home upgrade may be cheaper, but there are many sources that sell OS X for $100 instead of the msrp).
On top of that, we have no serial numbers, no product activation, and the install discs no matter which apple machine they were bundled with will install on any other apple machine (so long as that particular OS revision runs on the hardware).
Service Packs do not add features (for the most part). They're mostly bugfixes (except auto-update, and the anti-trust compliance stuff), its still the same overall version of the operating system.
For the record, Mac OS X 10.2 has had 6 "service packs," if you define one as previous security fixes with a bunch of bugfixes.
10.3 is a larger step up. The mail reader has threaded mail, the finder has as-you-type searching and a redesigned interface (load/save dialogs modified too), IPSec is included in the kernel, the final release of Apple's X11 release is included, fast user switching is added (yes XP has this), the overall gui has been updated and refined, exposé has been added (quite nice, and fast even on an ibook), and support for encrypted home directories is added (yes, xp pro has "encrypted filesystems" but its not really an encrypted filesystem but support for on-the-fly encrypting and decrypting of individual files within an overall non-encrypted filesystem), among other things. Service packs do not add these sorts of features, the only come along with major (read: for pay) operating system updgrades on either side of the fence (linux and other operating systems not included).
At NU the IT department has deployed hotspots at a variety of locations. The campus cafe, parts of the student center, certain locations in the dorms, libraries, as well as other locations provide wireless access.
WEP is not used to secure the network. Instead they're using VPN to provide authentication as well as secure/encrypted connections. Nothing beyond the VPN server and other clients of the AP are accessible without connecting to VPN. As an added benefit VPN allows off-campus users to use the NU mail relays, and other things that are restricted the university subnets.
Check it out:
http://www.tss.northwestern.edu/wireless/
http://www.tss.northwestern.edu/vpn/
Translation: It'll only take 5 seconds to slashdot 'em.
"Microscopic Robots" != "nanotechnology" !!
Nanotech is about engineering things on a much lower level to make things better, faster, and cheaper (all three, not pick two).
I don't think he's referring solely to the CPU there since throughout the keynote the entire machine is simply referred to as "the xeon." I think the machine is being referred to as a whole, CPU, mobo, RAM, disk, OS, etc. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the Xeon didn't fare well under high memory usage conditions. PAE is somewhat of an ugly hack (among others, though the PPC architecture isn't without its issues), and the 64-bit CPU should be able to handle those conditions much more cleanly (though they didn't mention whether or not Mathematica has been rewritten/modified to be 64-bit clean on OS X.)
I'm not terribly familiar with tomcat, but I'd guess that apache (at least) is better tested on Linux/UNIX operating systems since that is where it was originally conceived. Java VMs also seem to vary a great deal in quality, performance, and stability from platform to platform as well as VM to VM on a single platform. I seem to remember the MS VM having its fair share of issues. Perhaps tomcat 4 is unstable or perhaps some of the features implemented are bringing out the worst in whatever vm you're using. There are quite a few variables to tweak beyond simply the OS.
Score 5, Insightful? WHAT!? This should be modded funny or something other than insightful. It's not insightful. If we hadn't broken more than a few eggs along the way we, as a race, would not be where we are now (for better AND worse)
Considering Win32 is probably their primary platform right now, purely in terms of profit margin, I'd hazard a guess they've invested more in that port and it should be quite solid. Plus the app has had plenty of years more to mature on the Win32 APIs than it has with Cocoa/OS X.
[mode="out-of-line-personal-jab"]
Christ, look at your own comments on your own site about problems you've been having with your SQL server on Windows, and your hardware problems to boot. I spent 2 years with a series of Athlon and P4 based boxes that I built myself and had quite a bit of hardware failure too. Guess what I did, I got something other than a PC.
[/mode]
OK, if you boil it down to that level, Apple hasn't done anything truly revolutionary. BUT.. Each of the things mentioned above has either marginally or significantly raised the bar as far design goes and other hardware/software makers tend to follow Apple's lead, rather than the other way around.
The iPod has lead other manufacturers to come up with smaller more elegant MP3 players, in some cases similar enough that Apple's legal department had issues with it. The iMac (original) lead some PC manufacturers to imitate the design and non-standard color scheme. iMovie lead Microsoft to respond with Windows Movie Maker.
They aren't the first to the plate with a 64-bit chip but they're the first to make available such a chip for desktop use. AMD, though it announced it much earlier hasn't released the desktop version of its chip.
Apple IS innovating, its just that lately its only showed in the details. The scroll wheel on the ipod, the neck on the newer iMacs, etc..
According to the linked article though, Apple used different optimizations on each platform. Personally I'd like to see both platforms with all optimizations on, compiled with GCC. Not that this really means much anyways, and it does _not_ really simulate "real world" application performance because all you're running is the benchmark on a minimal system install.
Of the benchmarks displayed I'd believe the Photoshop and Mathematica ones to some extent. The emagic comparison seems a little fishy though. The composition on the PC didn't look all that complicated, it shouldn't have sputtered and died the way it did.
That said, I'm sure each of the current leading CPUs shows better performance in one area or another. I'm sure things suited for altivec optimization will be way faster on the G5, and things suited for raw integer performance will be faster on the P4.
In any case, we have a rather fast, 64 bit, UNIX-based machine, that exhibits excellent polished design both software and hardware wise. I for one am lusting after a Dual 2 GHz G5 with at least 1 GB of DDR RAM, and I can't wait to see how it performs with Panther.
"Apple has always been at its best when it's actually creating new things not ripping off BSD and linux like lately.
Huh? iPod, iMac, PowerMac G4/G5, PowerBook G4 Ti/Al, Music Store, Apple Store (online and offline), iApps, iSight, Aqua/QuartzExtreme (which may run on top of BSD, but could technically run on another kernel and toolset), FinalCut Pro, Rendezvous.. the list goes on.
Some of these things are extremely recent, and the others that have been around longer have seen recent innovations
Whenever Apple tries to copy off its competitors it fails miserably, look at the Mac clones and Apples forays into consoles and PDAs. To be sure Apple has its market, but it just can't compete with Linux on the larger scale.
Apple hasn't touched PDAs (Newton), Consoles (Pippin), or Clones (Power Computing, UMAX, DayStar Digital, Motorola, etc) for years now.
In the long run, maybe it can't compete with linux, but for now the desktop software is better on the Mac. You don't see the same types of seamless intregration accross many apps, the same number of solid commercial desktop apps available, the same level of hardware vendor support (ie vendors providing drivers rather than an independent party putting something together by reverse engineering or getting a look at some of the specs). It _could_ get there, if either more corporations step in to guide the desktop environments for general users or if some developers have the same wants/needs in mind.
Right now, I'll take my Photoshop, Flash MX, solid iPod (and AAC) support, and nice set of working gui tools apple has provided (ie, easy VPN built into the OS) and I'll keep using a mac until someone provides something that has the same level of finesse, power, and stability.
I'm not going to see it from microsoft, because part of the power I expect is either having the GNU or BSD console-based tools, but GNOME or KDE could grow to fill this role.
Or did I misinterpret your words?
Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of Apple's relationship with Mot. The G5s are being manufactured by IBM in Fishkill, NY (see here).
Indeed it is laughable that Mot would be able to turn out something with that high of a clock rate a year from now, but for IBM I'd be highly surprised if it doesn't happen.
Feed will be up here after the keynote