I have a WiFi network in my home, and we recently got a new microwave. The new microwave is about twice as powerful as the old one, but it's only a $100 Panasonic. This thing has juice, though. It disrupts the WiFi signal throughout the entire house, and it's even difficult to listen to the radio at the far end of the house because there's so much interference. Whenever the microwave is on, the internet is unusable, and if I'm on the cordless phone, people say it sounds like I'm underwater. If I were willing to go to the effort, I'd crawl around in the attic and wire the whole house with ethernet, especially after having experienced WiFi. I love the mobility of WiFi, and I'd probably still have a node or two, but it would be nice to be able to just plug into an ethernet connection when the WiFi connection is iffy.
The article talks about individual corporate networks dying, which at least seems plausible to me, but I read the submitter's question as asking about the internet as a whole. In the case of the latter, wouldn't something like that be self-regulating? A meltdown presumes that jillions of people are eating lots of bandwidth at once, but in this case, the demand would be limited by the supply, wouldn't it? I would think that whatever servers are hosting/streaming the files for the World Cup would melt down far sooner than the whole Internet would...
I would think that the most likely cause of a total meltdown would be a continuous stream of new internet users, higher-bandwidth usage patterns, and the infrastructure not being upgraded to meet demand. I'm no network wizard, so...yeah.
as computing matures and our OSes stabilize, security holes will be plugged faster than they are created
I think that under a free market for operating systems, this is unlikely to happen. With the opportunity to make money, and the need of an OS company to make money, the incentive is always to introduce new sexy features (people think strictly bug-fix releases aren't going to command payment, not to mention PR problems like "why'd you sell me something that was buggy in the first place, then expect me to pay for the bug fixes?"). Because the emphasis is on making money, there will be bugs. I think the only way to ensure something like what you described would be under a command market: someone decides what OS everyone uses, and whoever is maintaining the code doesn't profit from it (other than a salary). And that seems to me to be exceedingly unlikely to happen worldwide (not to mention that using a command market has problems of its own).
You might say "what about FOSS operating systems?", to which I reply: I'm all for the idea, but so long as "compile" is a part of typical user vocabulary for a FOSS OS, I really don't think its going to fly in the mainstream. Not to mention the whole "choice" issue (see above).
Speaking of which, does anyone know what's happened to FireWire 800? It's been out for some time now - why is it only available on the 17" MBP? I'd like it everywhere, of course, but I'd think at least both MBP models should have it.
As far as I can tell, it's $150 more. You have to bump the white one up to an 80 GB HD to make them feature-equal. That leaves $150 for...black? In my opinion: seriously? I was so surprised, I sent the following to Apple on their PowerBook feedback page (that being the closest to an appropriate feedback channel that I could find). If you agree, I'd encourage you to do the same. I think charging $150 for a black case is retarded, especially when you can get the same computer with higher specs in white:
I just saw the new MacBook you released today. I really liked the black model. I can understand only making it available in the higher-end model, but it seems that you're charging a $150 premium for the high-end black model over the high-end white model. The high-end white requires an additional $50 to match the hard drive of the black so that they're feature-equal, but is still $150 cheaper than the black model. Are you seriously charging $150 just for a black case? I like the look of the black case a lot, but there is no way I'm paying you an additional $150 just for that. It doesn't make sense: I can get the 80 GB drive and double the RAM to 1 GB on the white model and STILL come out $50 cheaper than the black one (which only has 512 MB RAM). It's more bang for the buck! You don't charge more for black iPod nanos or black video iPods, so why this?
I lived in NYC for the past couple of years, during which time I was dirt-poor. One of the results of this was that I never, never paid for drinks. I drank milk and water at home, and water in restaurants. At first I didn't like it, but over time, it really grew on me. I got to the point where, for the most part, I didn't want to have flavored drinks at all: most drinks tasted too sickly-sweet. I really, genuinely enjoyed the taste of water. I became somewhat of a water connoisseur. The result, obviously, is consumption of far fewer calories through drinks, and hey, it's better for you.
As far as your caffeine requirement, I recommend coffee, like the parent post. Whenever I needed caffeine, coffee provided the most bang for the buck (significantly more than soda, especially if you're usually drinking water). However, I also agree with this post, which I also found to be true during my time in NYC. I drank coffee on rare occasions, but preferred to go without. It's painful to wean yourself at first, but I think it's worth it. However, if you do become a heavy coffee or tea drinker (which is better for the enamel on your teeth than dark soda, by the way), please do yourself and everyone else a favor and start brushing with toothpaste to combat the staining problem that will result (regular toothpaste is fine - whitening toothpaste sensitizes your teeth).
I think you perhaps are missing the point of putting a honeypot out there in the first place. I would think that they put honeypots out there to snare the people who are trying to snoop around on their servers. It follows that you would then want to make an example of anyone you caught.
The point of the honeypot, I think, is to catch him before he actually finds something (be it space aliens or tactical plans).
Instead, how about some action against the clueless sysadmins who left vital Army, Navy, Air Force, and DoD systems vulnerable to such a sophomoric and elementary 'attack' by not passwording administrator-level accounts? If I ever failed to protect my network against such an intrusion, I'd be cleaning out my desk at the end of the day.
Actually, the most credible-sounding explanation I've heard in the linked articles is that they set up honeypots for people like Doofus McKinnon:
Also I'm not sure how you got OSX 'Tiger' to run a G3, unless you know of a trick I don't know of. I didn't think it would install, nor function properly without the altivec extensions.
Just FYI: I'm typing this on a 400 MHz PowerBook G3 running OS X 10.4.6. It was a plain installation (albeit over a firewire cable, as my internal DVD drive died). It runs very nicely.
Slashdotters are certified geeks, but apparently there's a bunch of other people out there who are very interested in science, technology, politics and culture but they don't want to be known as geeks.
I'd say I don't really fit either category. I enjoy Slashdot, but I'm not a "certified geek" (assuming that means I know what I'm doing in geeky things, or that I make money off of my geekiness), but I also realize that I am highly geeky compared to much of the population. I don't really care if someone refers to me as a geek, so long as the intent isn't derogatory, but now that I think about it, "intellectually curious" is probably a better descriptor than anything else. That encompasses many "geeks" and "non-geeks" alike, and I've certainly met geeks who are not intellectually curious (at least in a Renaissance-like, interested-in-everything sense), so it seems more precise. "Intellectually curious." Nice. High fives.
They conclude that 60 million Americans can be called "intellectually curious." Intellectually, I'm curious what that makes the rest of them.
Why this won't negatively affect SW developers view of mac sales:
The average Mac user is never going to set up a dual boot (especially given no support, difficulties involved) so this really won't impact software developer plans (ie they won't stop making Mac software). Even those who dual boot will probably prefer to have native Mac versions of software. In the end all Macs sold will be potential buyers of Mac software. That is why this is a perfect solution, no official support and difficulties make it something only those who MUST have it will do, so it will not have any significant percentage of people using a Mac, but buying Windows software for it.
This isn't what worries me. What worries me is the Virtual PC sort of solutions. Those won't be difficult to use, will probably have 98% of the speed of a native install, and will cost only a little more than a copy of Windows. Now what? Will developers develop for the Mac, or tell you to buy Virtual PC? I sure hope not.
I've actually been researching this recently for my own Mac Mini DVR project. I found a cable made by Gefen which would seem to do the trick. I want to have mine hooked up to an LCD and a regular TV at the same time (even if it can't display both simultaneously, which I think it should be able to do through mirroring) so as to avoid lots of unplugging and re-plugging of cables. I haven't ordered the cable yet (I was hoping the new Mini might have VIIV in it - oh well), so I don't know if it works, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't.
You'd be surprised how few cables like this there are out there. I've found a few others that supposedly work through RCA video (the yellow RCA connector) and through S-Video from VGA, but I like this solution better. If you'd prefer the VGA-to-RCA/S-Video option, Gefen also sells a DVI-to-DVI-and-VGA splitter cable. As with the DVI-to-DVI-and-Component cable, this doesn't seem to be a common splitter cable.
Actually, I've found that dressing nicely can sometimes actually be more comfortable than dressing down (I'm thinking jeans and a t-shirt). I wear jeans and t-shirts all the time, and in the past I thought dressing up meant being physically uncomfortable and feeling awkward because I wasn't sure that what I was wearing looked "ok."
More recently, I have discovered that my perception of dressy clothing as uncomfortable was mostly based on owning low-quality dressy clothing. The more I've tended toward buying higher-quality stuff, the more comfortable I've become. Higher-quality clothing tends to breathe better, rubs against your skin more pleasantly, and is more comfortable at the end of a long, difficult day than the lower-quality dressy stuff (or even the venerable jeans and a t-shirt). There are limits, of course: those $800 Italian loafers are probably going to be among the most comfortable you'll ever wear (they breathe well, they fit like a glove, you can walk in them all day without discomfort, etc.), but they are eight hundred dollars. I think there's a balance.
As far as the awkwardness, that was because no one ever taught me how to dress well, so I always felt like I didn't know what I was doing. A few years ago, I went hunting for a basic book about male style, and came up with a guide to "classic" style, which explains the basics of looking good. I really like it, because it has given me an idea of what colors look good on me (based on my skin tone and hair color), what I should look for when buying a jacket so that it looks good on my body, and so on, and without telling me exactly what I "should" wear. It gives you a basic idea of what looks good for you, which you can then use to build a personal style based on your own tastes, budget, etc. If anyone's interested, it's called "Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion" by Alan Flusser. It's kind of expensive, but I think it's worth it. There are a number of other books like it, but the ones I found seem to mostly adhere to one particular style or mindset.
I want to get my hands on the software. I have a Kensington trackball, and I'd love it if Apple's programmable multi-button driver worked with my device (I hate Kensington's software - the clicking lags).
One of the biggest questions I have about this idea of a combined high-capacity MP3 player and a phone is battery life.
My phone has a pretty new battery in it, and I usually don't use it that much. Despite that, it only lasts a few days after a full charge before I should charge it again (or risk having it die in the middle of the day). Sometimes, when I do use it a lot (3 or 4+ hours), it doesn't even last a whole day - it actually runs out of juice.
And now I'm supposed to want to drain the battery by listening to songs? I need the phone most of all as a phone - if it dies during the day and I can't use it for that purpose, why do I have it?
Maybe this isn't inconvenient for people who are getting in and out of a car all the time and can charge it while they drive, but if you live in, say, New York City, that's not going to work. And the alternative of dragging around an AC adapter does not appeal to me.
Unless the battery problem is solved, I don't understand how this converged-high-capacity-MP3-player-and-phone idea can really go anywhere.
As for consolidation, I don't have an answer for you right now. But as for dead links, OmniWeb has a rather extensive bookmark-checker built-in, as I recall (I haven't used it lately). You can set a preference for how often bookmarks are checked (possibly on a per-bookmark basis as well as global; I can't remember), and it notifies you of how many are dead/have changed.
I know this won't help you much for whatever you're working on right now, but if you want to get a better sense of what is good UI design, I do have a recommendation: the old Mac OS.
I've been using Macs since I was 10, and although I never learned how to write code, I used to sit at my Mac for hours and study the interface of the OS and various programs. I'd click on the buttons and all the other widgets just to see how the program had been designed to "do things." As a result, I've become somewhat of a UI nut - I think I have a pretty good sense of what makes a good or bad interface when I see one. I can pick out specific details of what parts of a UI don't work well and why they don't work well (as well as parts that do work well), and I become genuinely pleased when I find an app. with a really well-designed UI (I also rant and rave to myself about the bad ones sometimes).
I wish I could name some old apps that would be really good examples for you, but it's been so long I can't remember (plus it's late and I'm tired), so you'll have to just try them out yourself and see what you think. (Oop! One off the top of my head - ClarisWorks. It wasn't perfect, but it was really nice to use in some ways.)
Go buy an old used Mac or two somewhere and load System 7.1 onto one. Play around with it and with various apps until it seems to you that you really have a good feel for the system of logic used by the programmers who designed the UI - why they made things the way that they did. Then load System 7.5.5 onto it. Figure out how it's UI is different from 7.1. What changes do you like? Why are they an improvement? Why do they make the user's experience better? What changes are not so good, and why do they interfere with the user's experience? Then do the same with 7.6.1, 8.1, 8.6, and 9.2.2. As you upgrade the OS, remember to look at new versions of applications and note the changes in the designers' thinking there, too.
Once you've done that, there's an excellent series of articles on ArsTechnica which detail the evolution of Mac OS X, a good portion of which are devoted to the user interface, usually what John Siracusa doesn't like about some of the UI changes in OS X (some of the information on the underlying structure of the OS is really fascinating too). In the above link, scroll down to just above the Table of Contents to find a list of articles reviewing OS X starting from Developer Preview 2 (personally, I'd read them chronologically). This link will take you to his review of OS X 10.3, which contains links to the 10.1 and 10.2 articles in the first paragraph. He brings up some really interesting points about the UI design of OS X, and I tend to agree with much of what he says.
Of course, this is not to say that the classic Mac OS (or OS X) and associated applications are the end-all-be-all of user interface design, but I do think that the classic Mac OS and some of the programs for it had UI designs that were very, very good - certainly worth learning from. The interface for OS X is good in ways, and does have some improvements over the classic Mac OS, but I personally think that there were some aspects of the classic Mac OS UI design mindset that were left behind which were worth saving.
I've also heard over the years about some legendary user interface research done at Apple "in the old days," but I've never really taken the time to look it up or see if it's publicly available. But, if you can manage to get your hands on that, I would think it would be a very valuable resource for mulling over the concept of interface design. I certainly would browse through a copy if I had it.
I hope this helps you in the future, if not on your current project. To do everything I've suggested would take a while, so it probably wouldn't help you on this one. But I think that if you do it, it will help you with any UI project you do for the rest of your life.
Buy Virtual PC 6 for $200, and you can run all of those on your brand-new Mac. I agree with you that cross-upgrades would be very good, but until then, VP6 would be my recommendation. It's not a perfect solution, but if that's the number one reason that you haven't bought a Mac yet (and based on what you said, if I had to guess, the largest reason by a long shot), I'd say just fork over the $200 and be done with it. There are lots of incentives to getting a Mac that you would understand once you got one, despite the circumstances of your particular situation.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a WiFi network in my home, and we recently got a new microwave. The new microwave is about twice as powerful as the old one, but it's only a $100 Panasonic. This thing has juice, though. It disrupts the WiFi signal throughout the entire house, and it's even difficult to listen to the radio at the far end of the house because there's so much interference. Whenever the microwave is on, the internet is unusable, and if I'm on the cordless phone, people say it sounds like I'm underwater. If I were willing to go to the effort, I'd crawl around in the attic and wire the whole house with ethernet, especially after having experienced WiFi. I love the mobility of WiFi, and I'd probably still have a node or two, but it would be nice to be able to just plug into an ethernet connection when the WiFi connection is iffy.
The article talks about individual corporate networks dying, which at least seems plausible to me, but I read the submitter's question as asking about the internet as a whole. In the case of the latter, wouldn't something like that be self-regulating? A meltdown presumes that jillions of people are eating lots of bandwidth at once, but in this case, the demand would be limited by the supply, wouldn't it? I would think that whatever servers are hosting/streaming the files for the World Cup would melt down far sooner than the whole Internet would...
I would think that the most likely cause of a total meltdown would be a continuous stream of new internet users, higher-bandwidth usage patterns, and the infrastructure not being upgraded to meet demand. I'm no network wizard, so...yeah.
Thanks!
I think that under a free market for operating systems, this is unlikely to happen. With the opportunity to make money, and the need of an OS company to make money, the incentive is always to introduce new sexy features (people think strictly bug-fix releases aren't going to command payment, not to mention PR problems like "why'd you sell me something that was buggy in the first place, then expect me to pay for the bug fixes?"). Because the emphasis is on making money, there will be bugs. I think the only way to ensure something like what you described would be under a command market: someone decides what OS everyone uses, and whoever is maintaining the code doesn't profit from it (other than a salary). And that seems to me to be exceedingly unlikely to happen worldwide (not to mention that using a command market has problems of its own).
You might say "what about FOSS operating systems?", to which I reply: I'm all for the idea, but so long as "compile" is a part of typical user vocabulary for a FOSS OS, I really don't think its going to fly in the mainstream. Not to mention the whole "choice" issue (see above).
I was just curious: do you know where exactly that Thomas Jefferson quote comes from? A specific letter he wrote, or an essay, etc.? Thanks!
Speaking of which, does anyone know what's happened to FireWire 800? It's been out for some time now - why is it only available on the 17" MBP? I'd like it everywhere, of course, but I'd think at least both MBP models should have it.
I lived in NYC for the past couple of years, during which time I was dirt-poor. One of the results of this was that I never, never paid for drinks. I drank milk and water at home, and water in restaurants. At first I didn't like it, but over time, it really grew on me. I got to the point where, for the most part, I didn't want to have flavored drinks at all: most drinks tasted too sickly-sweet. I really, genuinely enjoyed the taste of water. I became somewhat of a water connoisseur. The result, obviously, is consumption of far fewer calories through drinks, and hey, it's better for you.
As far as your caffeine requirement, I recommend coffee, like the parent post. Whenever I needed caffeine, coffee provided the most bang for the buck (significantly more than soda, especially if you're usually drinking water). However, I also agree with this post, which I also found to be true during my time in NYC. I drank coffee on rare occasions, but preferred to go without. It's painful to wean yourself at first, but I think it's worth it. However, if you do become a heavy coffee or tea drinker (which is better for the enamel on your teeth than dark soda, by the way), please do yourself and everyone else a favor and start brushing with toothpaste to combat the staining problem that will result (regular toothpaste is fine - whitening toothpaste sensitizes your teeth).
I think you perhaps are missing the point of putting a honeypot out there in the first place. I would think that they put honeypots out there to snare the people who are trying to snoop around on their servers. It follows that you would then want to make an example of anyone you caught.
The point of the honeypot, I think, is to catch him before he actually finds something (be it space aliens or tactical plans).
Actually, the most credible-sounding explanation I've heard in the linked articles is that they set up honeypots for people like Doofus McKinnon:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18508
Just FYI: I'm typing this on a 400 MHz PowerBook G3 running OS X 10.4.6. It was a plain installation (albeit over a firewire cable, as my internal DVD drive died). It runs very nicely.
That would be Anthony Burgess.
Actually, according to The Black Book of Communism (which has a decent reputation, as I understand), the figure is around 85 to 100 million, all told.
Would that it were true. They're 5400 RPM. Look at the top of the 3rd column from the left.
You'd be surprised how few cables like this there are out there. I've found a few others that supposedly work through RCA video (the yellow RCA connector) and through S-Video from VGA, but I like this solution better. If you'd prefer the VGA-to-RCA/S-Video option, Gefen also sells a DVI-to-DVI-and-VGA splitter cable. As with the DVI-to-DVI-and-Component cable, this doesn't seem to be a common splitter cable.
More recently, I have discovered that my perception of dressy clothing as uncomfortable was mostly based on owning low-quality dressy clothing. The more I've tended toward buying higher-quality stuff, the more comfortable I've become. Higher-quality clothing tends to breathe better, rubs against your skin more pleasantly, and is more comfortable at the end of a long, difficult day than the lower-quality dressy stuff (or even the venerable jeans and a t-shirt). There are limits, of course: those $800 Italian loafers are probably going to be among the most comfortable you'll ever wear (they breathe well, they fit like a glove, you can walk in them all day without discomfort, etc.), but they are eight hundred dollars. I think there's a balance.
As far as the awkwardness, that was because no one ever taught me how to dress well, so I always felt like I didn't know what I was doing. A few years ago, I went hunting for a basic book about male style, and came up with a guide to "classic" style, which explains the basics of looking good. I really like it, because it has given me an idea of what colors look good on me (based on my skin tone and hair color), what I should look for when buying a jacket so that it looks good on my body, and so on, and without telling me exactly what I "should" wear. It gives you a basic idea of what looks good for you, which you can then use to build a personal style based on your own tastes, budget, etc. If anyone's interested, it's called "Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion" by Alan Flusser. It's kind of expensive, but I think it's worth it. There are a number of other books like it, but the ones I found seem to mostly adhere to one particular style or mindset.
Just my two cents.
from the auxiliary gasoline engine and tank, silly!
I want to get my hands on the software. I have a Kensington trackball, and I'd love it if Apple's programmable multi-button driver worked with my device (I hate Kensington's software - the clicking lags).
One of the biggest questions I have about this idea of a combined high-capacity MP3 player and a phone is battery life.
My phone has a pretty new battery in it, and I usually don't use it that much. Despite that, it only lasts a few days after a full charge before I should charge it again (or risk having it die in the middle of the day). Sometimes, when I do use it a lot (3 or 4+ hours), it doesn't even last a whole day - it actually runs out of juice.
And now I'm supposed to want to drain the battery by listening to songs? I need the phone most of all as a phone - if it dies during the day and I can't use it for that purpose, why do I have it?
Maybe this isn't inconvenient for people who are getting in and out of a car all the time and can charge it while they drive, but if you live in, say, New York City, that's not going to work. And the alternative of dragging around an AC adapter does not appeal to me.
Unless the battery problem is solved, I don't understand how this converged-high-capacity-MP3-player-and-phone idea can really go anywhere.
OmniWeb
I've been using Macs since I was 10, and although I never learned how to write code, I used to sit at my Mac for hours and study the interface of the OS and various programs. I'd click on the buttons and all the other widgets just to see how the program had been designed to "do things." As a result, I've become somewhat of a UI nut - I think I have a pretty good sense of what makes a good or bad interface when I see one. I can pick out specific details of what parts of a UI don't work well and why they don't work well (as well as parts that do work well), and I become genuinely pleased when I find an app. with a really well-designed UI (I also rant and rave to myself about the bad ones sometimes).
I wish I could name some old apps that would be really good examples for you, but it's been so long I can't remember (plus it's late and I'm tired), so you'll have to just try them out yourself and see what you think. (Oop! One off the top of my head - ClarisWorks. It wasn't perfect, but it was really nice to use in some ways.)
Go buy an old used Mac or two somewhere and load System 7.1 onto one. Play around with it and with various apps until it seems to you that you really have a good feel for the system of logic used by the programmers who designed the UI - why they made things the way that they did. Then load System 7.5.5 onto it. Figure out how it's UI is different from 7.1. What changes do you like? Why are they an improvement? Why do they make the user's experience better? What changes are not so good, and why do they interfere with the user's experience? Then do the same with 7.6.1, 8.1, 8.6, and 9.2.2. As you upgrade the OS, remember to look at new versions of applications and note the changes in the designers' thinking there, too.
Once you've done that, there's an excellent series of articles on ArsTechnica which detail the evolution of Mac OS X, a good portion of which are devoted to the user interface, usually what John Siracusa doesn't like about some of the UI changes in OS X (some of the information on the underlying structure of the OS is really fascinating too). In the above link, scroll down to just above the Table of Contents to find a list of articles reviewing OS X starting from Developer Preview 2 (personally, I'd read them chronologically). This link will take you to his review of OS X 10.3, which contains links to the 10.1 and 10.2 articles in the first paragraph. He brings up some really interesting points about the UI design of OS X, and I tend to agree with much of what he says.
Of course, this is not to say that the classic Mac OS (or OS X) and associated applications are the end-all-be-all of user interface design, but I do think that the classic Mac OS and some of the programs for it had UI designs that were very, very good - certainly worth learning from. The interface for OS X is good in ways, and does have some improvements over the classic Mac OS, but I personally think that there were some aspects of the classic Mac OS UI design mindset that were left behind which were worth saving.
I've also heard over the years about some legendary user interface research done at Apple "in the old days," but I've never really taken the time to look it up or see if it's publicly available. But, if you can manage to get your hands on that, I would think it would be a very valuable resource for mulling over the concept of interface design. I certainly would browse through a copy if I had it.
I hope this helps you in the future, if not on your current project. To do everything I've suggested would take a while, so it probably wouldn't help you on this one. But I think that if you do it, it will help you with any UI project you do for the rest of your life.
ok, so i'm curious - what's your guess as to why they aren't picking Macs if they require less time?
Buy Virtual PC 6 for $200, and you can run all of those on your brand-new Mac. I agree with you that cross-upgrades would be very good, but until then, VP6 would be my recommendation. It's not a perfect solution, but if that's the number one reason that you haven't bought a Mac yet (and based on what you said, if I had to guess, the largest reason by a long shot), I'd say just fork over the $200 and be done with it. There are lots of incentives to getting a Mac that you would understand once you got one, despite the circumstances of your particular situation.