Why doesn't apple just use standard ATX power supplies? They already use standard PCI, SATA/ATA, AGP, Memory, and other components, so why is using a standard power supply such a big problem?
No, but I would have at least an elipse and a line tool. These are common actions. Having to hold down shift for every line you draw is an annoyance, and having to go through a seven-step process to draw an outlined elipse is unacceptable:
1: Select elipse Tool 2: Draw elipse 3: Switch To fill Tool 4: Fill selection with color 5: Decrease selection size by desired line width 6: Delete the selection 7: Deselect the elipse
"Mac OS X has the advantage there - it's secure out out of the box and it doesn't have viruses attacking it."
That's bullshit. Viruses aren't the only threat. What about the student who decides to delete a bunch of files or download a program that messes up their system. Remember, these aren't the student's laptops, they're the school's.
"These kids' laptops won't get locked down."
Why not? The school is paying for the laptop and the IS staff. Why shouldn't they lock them down to save money and prevent problems?
"They'll be connecting to the Internet, several times a day, probably, way more often than virus definitions are updated."
You can update definitions daily. Believe it or not, it is very unlikely that a student would run into a virus that wouldn't be caught by definitions a day (or even a week) old.
"One of the latest worms spreads just by visiting a page with IE (from there it dials a 900 number in Muldova or something)."
Really. Did you make that up or do you have actual documentation?
"you don't set Windows Update to 'automatic' on 140,000 machines if these are an integral part of the cirriculum since you can't affort patch breakage"
Duh. You don't use Windows Update. You use the other tools that Microsoft provides you with that let you test a patch before you deploy it over the network.
"Which means there will be threats against unpatched machines in the wild while testing is happening."
Usually, exploits have appeared 4-8 weeks after the patch. That's plenty of time for IS.
"You can attempt perimeter security but it's more of a pipe dream than anything else."
It's called a personal firewall and a user policy that doesn't give students write permissions to critical directories (Windows, Office, etc.). Viruses don't have enough access to infect the important files (those added by the school) even if they get through Norton.
"With about 25 Windows boxes where I work, all with NAV, and only a handful portable, our sysadmin spends probably an hour a week dealing with viruses that sneak in before definitions are downloaded."
With about 800 Windows boxes where I go to school, all with NAV, and about 10% portable (mostly staff), we only have *one* sysadmin. And she isn't dealing with viruses for 32 hours a week. The district has one person assigned to assess virus threats and test patches. For a school district with likely 12000 computers, they only need one person. It doesn't scale linearly, you know. You don't have to test the patches 5200 times more - after all, every system is the same.
Dell is cheap, and you can change to another vendor in the future and still keep your network/OS environment the same. With Apple, you either buy Apple for the immediate future or you have to buy new applications and retrain staff/IS personnel.
"It is a PII 333mhz with 128mb of ram.
It came with NT 4.0 on it, but now has red hat. For most users, Win 98 would be the only other choice, as XP needs more system requirments that this."
XP would probably run fine on that notebook with the graphical effects turned off. We have a bunch of Pentium 166 desktops with 128MB of memory at my school that run Windows 2000, and they are actually pretty responsive. XP really isn't any more memory-hungry or cpu-hungry than 2000, as long as you turn of the graphical effects (mostly the theme engine).
My notebook, a Dell CSX (PIII 500, 256M memory) runs Windows 2000 and Slackware with Dropline GNOME (2.4). I would have to say that Windows 2000 is noticably more responsive than Slackware/GNOME.
"These are laptops the kids take home, connect directly to the Internet, load any cute software they come across, have their dad or older brother attempt to fix/upgrade/patch, etc."
No, they aren't, and if they are, it's idiodic. My district experimented with notebooks in one grade school (only about 120), and they had them locked down good and proper. Mac OS X can be trashed just as easily as Windows XP if it's not locked down.
Remember, these aren't the students property, and, as such, the families should not be able to upgrade them or fix/patch them. That's the responsibility of the district.
I'd by Windows, in that case. My district chose Windows 2000 for a reason:
- It runs on all of their hardware, so they don't have to get rid of their Pentium 166 boxes to standardize on a single OS. Try running Mac OS X on a PowerMac 200mhz with no USB. - It has very good centralized management tools - It doesn't lock them into a single hardware vendor. My discrict standardized on HP, but only because a signifigant portion of my town works for HP, so they get huge discounts on hardware - It doesn't require retraining or relearning. Most teachers are familiar with Windows 2000 and Mac OS 9. Mac OS X looks and behaves differently. - Microsoft Office. Mac OS may have Office, but it looks out of place on the desktop (the district has standardized on Office 2000). - Backwards app compatibility. They still have DOS and Windows 95 based applications. They don't want to have to use some "classic" mode to run their old applications. - Forwards app compatibility. There's no garuntee that future apps will run on OS 10.2; many apps are now incompatible with 10.1. With Windows, you can be relatively sure that most apps created in the near future will be compatible with Windows 2000. - Support. Microsoft's written policy is to provide hotfixes for Windows 2000 until at least March 31, 2007. Will Jaguar still be supported in 2007? Will RedHat Workstation still be supported in 2007?
My school has 2200 people and 800+ computers. They have 1.5 support personell (1 full time, 1 half time). So far, everything runs smoothly. I have never had a computer managed by the school crash. That's because they standardized on a software platform and are sticking with it. Even the new 2.4Ghz Evos they purchased three months ago run the same software as the 166mhz Pentium boxes they have. They have Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium IV boxes all under one roof, and they all run the same software, work with the same network, with the same documents, and, most importantly, the same administration.
That's opinion, not fact. My school runs Windows 2000, and I have *never* seen a *single* computer crash. Nor have Word, Excel, or PowerPoint ever crashed on me. Perhaps it's because they have a fixed environment and don't mess with it - but, nonetheless, Windows XP (or 2000) can be made rock solid with proper administration.
"and doesnt have to have a legion of anti-virus software packages installed on it to keep the machine safe"
They run Norton corpoate version. It's simple and stays out of your way. Virii aren't really an issue as students store everything on a Samba share (which automatically deletes executables and MP3s) and anything we can write to locally (e.g. the desktop) get's wiped out everytime you log out.
"What would be your choice for middle school classrooms with minimal sys admin?"
You really can't beat Windows 2000. Yes, there are problems with viruses and security holes, but those can be managed with Norton and a good patching policy. The main thing is that these students shouldn't have administrative access - this removes 90% of the threat. Also, Microsoft provides tools to "push" patches to remote computers - they must be used properly.
Whatever your opinion about Windows 2000, the fact is that it's exceedingly easy to administer if configured properly. In my high school of 2,200, with nearly 900 computers, we only have one full time and one half time IS employee. They lock things down, make the students store their documents on a Samba share, and if a computer *does* break they can have it up and running again in 10 minutes with Ghost.
Linux, of course, is another viable option. Unfortunately, however, the centralized management is somewhat more limited. Yes, there are tools, but none can quite match what Active Directory gives you. This may or may not matter in a school environment. The fact that you can't get Microsoft Office is another downside. The positives are clear however - you can save at least $200 a seat on software, and you don't have to worry about viruses (you still have to stay up on security patches, though).
Mac OS X is another alternative. You still have to pay for the OS, however, and schools would likely want to run Microsoft Office. Thus, the $200 a seat charge is still there. This may be an especially big disadvantage if Microsoft provides huge discounts as a tax writeoff (as they likely will). Also, the cheapest Mac laptop is the iBook at $999 - and I doubt that the school would want to run OS X in 128MB, so the cheapest real Mac laptop is $1050. The school would certainly get a discount, but Dell would also likely provide a discount. I suspect that a comparable Mac notebook would be $200 to $300 more expensive a seat. That's $3.9 million dollars - money that could be spent elsewhere in an already underbudgeted education system.
"Does anybody have altual experience with deploying CDMA networks?"
Not surprisingly, the US has the most CDMA towers (and, ironically, the most GSM towers) of any nation in the world. This is largely because the countries of the EU are not counted as a single nation, but nonetheless, the US has plenty of CDMA towers in service. CDMA isn't particularly new (it's been around for years), it's just that it's getting more attention now that 3GSM is based on wideband CDMA technology (WCDMA).
We have many, many wireless systems in the US: - AMPS; good old analog. High power, low call volume. - TDMA; this is the old AT&T and Cingular networks - GSM; AT&T's and Cingular's new network and T-Mobile - Nextel; they use a different system - CDMA; Sprint and Verizon
Plans? Verizon has had a CDMA network for quite some time now. Sprint's network is, and always has been, 100% CDMA. Both offer 3G data services (1xRTT is 144kbps which technically qualifies it for 3G status).
Verizon has the best coverage in the US largely because of their use of CDMA. People who complain about coverage in the US usually have GSM providers (T-Mobile, Cingular, ATT). Verizon seems to be rock solid - not 100% coverage but decent none the less.
"It should be rather obvious that 'straight' is not a tool in itself, but a modifier for the movement of existing tools. More like using a straight-edge accessory with your pen, brush or eraser than having a seperate pen, brush or eraser that only move in straight lines."
Yes, but that doesn't mean that there can't be a straight line tool. I'm not recommending that we remove the existing functionality (which I find quite useful), but that a simple tool that draws a simple straight line be added. Heck, when I work with bitmap graphics (e.g. drawing buttons on a website) and I want to draw pixel-perfect lines, it's annoying to have to hold down the shift key all the time.
"Since 'straight' is a modifer of movement rather than a tool, its not a huge leap to use a modifier key like shift, control or alt"
For many, it is a huge leap. I originally had to guess. I got it right, but many would not. Users aren't used to having to hold down a key to draw straight lines - it's not particularly intuitive.
I do think that a little hint would be good, but, quite frankly, what's so wrong with adding a straight line tool?
We all know rule #1 of UI design: the user doesn't have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn't read it. Actually, few users will read more than a few words.
"with every new OS release, your computer gets faster"
XP is already fast enough. On a 500mhz notebook, I almost never experience the same kind of "lag" that my Mac (and Linux) using friends do. I'm not talking about speed per say, but XP just feels snappy compared to GNOME or Mac OS. Hopefully 10.3 will resolve this.
I have seen expose in action, but, quite frankly, it doesn't impress me all that much. There are already emulations of Expose for Windows, but quite frankly I find the taskbar to be just as effective.
They mean 24 times video speed. A 2x DVD burner can actually burn an entire DVD in about 20 minutes, 6 times as fast as playback speed (assuming 2 hours a disk at decent quality). It's not unreasonable to assume that it will ship with an 8x +R; these are already on the market. I don't know why you say that 2.4x is the fastest, because 4x has been on the market for quite some time.
Here's a handy chart:
2x = 6x Realtime @ 2 hours a disc 4x = 12x Realtime @ 2 hours a disc 8x = 24x Realtime @ 2 hours a disc
This is one problem that I see a lot with open source software. Instead of changing the application, the developer expects the behavior of the user to change.
1: How hard would it be to add a straght line tool? 2: How are users supposed to know that you use the shift key to draw straight lines?
That is a UI flaw. Drawing straight lines is a common thing that users do. Including it as a non-apparent feature (which makes the user hunt down the documentation) is just plain stupid.
"RzUpAnmsCwrds... Raise Up Anonymous Cowards? Well, you got me this time."
Rise Up Anonymous Cowards. That's correct. Like a mutany or something. It's kind of ironic because I no longer am an Anonymous Coward.
"Sorry, but I call bullshit on you. At 2:03 CDT, you said that you normally double boot, and that you use Cygwin very ocacionally to check webpages in Konqueror without switching to Linux.
At 3:05 CDT you claim that you often run Windows and Linux under VMWare, along with a ton of applications in 256 MB of RAM."
I do both. I sometimes use Linux, I sometimes use Windows. Under Windows, I have KDE up under Cygwin to test web pages under Konqueror. Under Linux, I have VMWare to test web pages under Internet Explorer.
"As you said, with so little RAM such a setup will swap so much that it would be useless. Although afterwards you contradicted yourself saying that for the screenshot the machine wasn't swapping much."
It swaps a lot more after I start up VMWare.
"If you had all those programs running an hour before, why didn't you take the screenshot then?"
I'm going to be honest: I don't usually run 35 programs at once. I was simply stating that the Mac screenshot wasn't that impressive. My PC can do that too.
"My take is that in that hour you booted up that copy of VMWare that you had been playing with but that you don't really use because it's WAY too slow, and just for the sake of contradicting the grandparent post booted all those applications to take the screenshot. And it took you one hour to do it!"
VMWare is quite nippy, actually, fast enough to even play video (320x240, non full screen). Trying to compile a kernel at the same time would be painful.
It took me about five minutes to boot up those apps. GNOME really stays pretty nippy under those conditions. I spent most of my time responding to your post.
"By the way, I hope you live in Europe, because if you live in America you should be sleeping at that hour instead of trolling in Slashdot. Get a life. And more RAM."
My machine takes 384MB of memory, and I don't feel like spending $40 for an extra 128MB. And I do live in America. I'm a student, and I don't mind staying up until odd hours.
"(On a second look, I realize that you weren't even running VMWare/Windows, only Linux. So your machine wasn't swapping THAT much. But then you were not able to run all your Windows software except maybe using Wine which basically sucks.)"
Correct. With that + VMWare, it would swap itself crazy. But that has to do with how much memory it has, not that it's not a Mac.
That screenshot: - Wasn't a fake - Didn't take an hour to create (more like 5 minutes) - Was a usable desktop environment
Heck, under Windows 2000, my box seems even faster.
My point eactly. Conceptually, the G5 is quite similar to NForce2 - a northbridge with a FSB to the CPU, an AGP interface, and a memory controller, linked to an I/O controller (southbridge) through HyperTransport. Apple claims that it's "radically redesigned", but it really is just a traditional northbridge/southbridge configuration. Their main "innovation" is a faster FSB. However, the P4's bus is plenty fast - it has enough bandwidth to completely max out the memory bus, and I/O bandwidth rarely exceeds 100 megabytes a second. The NForce2 did have a problem with FSB speed; it had DualDDR400, but no way to get that bandwidth to the processor. K* is different, however, since it has dedicated memory bandwidth for each processor.
"Neither can claim all the credit for it, Apple was just the first to bring it market."
WRONG!!! The G5 *was not* the first computer to use it. Ever use NFORCE? or NFORCE2? It's been out for over a year and a half, and it uses HyperTransport to connect the northbridge and southbridge, just like the "revolutionary" G5.
AMD's innovation is to put the northbridge in the CPU. This is radically different from a traditional northbridge/southbridge configuration. It is not simply linking the northbridge and soutbridge with HyperTransport, it's removing the northbridge altogether and lowering the latency for memory by putting the controller in the CPU.
If anything has "bandwidth to burn", it's the Athlon 64. Dual DDR 400 + HyperTransport gives this processor both low latency and high bandwidth.
Apparently, "10 seconds of Google time" mislead you. Apple was not the first to use HyperTransport on a motherboard, nor were they the primary developer of HyperTransport. Apple's "HyperTransport Architecture" is nothing like AMD's.
You got your facts wrong. Please come back when you know what you're talking about.
"heh you wanna know stable? how about X11 + Gnome + Gimp for image authoring, + 6 different web browsers for cross-browser checking of DHTML functionality, + office apps such as word and excel to deal with requirements documents sent by management drones, Multi-IM chat client to stay connected with co-workers over AIM, and Jabber over SSL, iTunes mp3 player in the background to soothe the mind playing music from a firewire-connected iPod, BBEdit code editor and 10 terminal windows, one of which running Tomcat java servlet container, another one running ant build scripts, to work on various components of a J2EE-compliant web application, all this and a few other apps running and being actively used simultanously on a 400mhz Titanium powerbook bought in early 2001, recently upgraded to 1Gig of RAM for $180 including priority shipping courtesy of pricewatch.com."
Wow. You can multitask. That's impressive. I often run multiple operating systems simulatneously (VMWare) on my Dell CSX. And GIMP, GAIM, XMMS, Mozilla, Konqueror, Internet Explorer (under VMWare), Opera, Opera Windows (under VMWare), lots of terms, some building the kernel or modules or software, some installing packages. Plus Apache + Python, oh, and Java + Ant for my Hiptop. And that pig that they call OpenOffice.org. All with 256MB of memory.
So, does my system crash? No. It swaps itself brainless, but it never crashes.
Why should I weep? Below is a link to a screenshot where I hav about thirty apps running, am playing a video, compiling a kernel, running several browsers, have GIMP open with several images, am running about ten terminals, and a lot more. Your screenshot is simply not that impressive. And my screenshot was taken on a machine with 1/4 as much memory. Hell, I wasn't even swapping much.
Your screenshot has (My Screenshot Has): IE (Epiphany) Mozilla (Mozilla) Finder (Nautilus) Safari (Konqueror) Excel (Gnumeric) Something with a B (Some other random apps like Evolution) Terminal (2 terms with 10 tabs each) iPhoto (Nautilus viewing a directory with aout 100 photos) iTunes (Totem) Calculator (Calculator) Text editor (Gedit) Word (AbiWord) X11 (X11) GNOME (GNOME) Gimp (Gimp) Some random terminal stuff (Kernel compiling)
Wow. I did everything your screenshot did while remaining responsive on a PIII 500 notebook with 1/4 as much RAM. Mac OS X must really suck!
"a.PPC is a much cleaner ISA than x86, FP performance is superior undeniably, anything using altivec will maul the pc equivalent"
The PPC ISA *is* cleaner, but, quite frankly, YOU NEVER SEE THE FREAKING ISA. Unless you're writing a compiler or programming in assembly, the ISA is transparent. Why does the average user care?
"Superior undeniably" sounds like another superlative without proof. "The Pentium4 offers undeniably superior FP performance". Wow. I can do that too. Now come up with some data to backup your claim.
"b.Apples motherboard designs allow for much higher throughput to the PCI bus"
Than what? A toaster? Most PCI cards don't even support PCI-X. If you really care, get a PC motherboard with PCI-X. For most people, 133 megabytes of PCI bandwidth is more than plenty. Not even gigabit can max it out.
If you really want bandwidth to burn, look at Athlon 64. 6.4gbytes/sec of memory bandwidth + 6.4gbytes/sec of I/O bandwidth. Smoking.
"c.64-bit goodness at a lower cost than AMD or Itanium, right now show me 2ghz dual 64 bit proc system that is cheaper than Apple's"
First of all, Itanium is hugely overpriced. Second of all, it's not x86, so that's not relavent here. Thrid of all, SMP only helps out with extensive multitasking or with highly-threaded programs. You *never* get 2:1, and you're lucky if you get 1.5:1.
That said, BOXX technology makes some very nice dual Opteron workstations for under $3000.
Furthermore, 64-bit is not really needed by most people. Unless you're designing an airplane, 4GB of memory is just fine.
"d.OS X has programing frameworks and RAD development tools that beat the bloody piss out of anything MS offers or linux has."
Ahh, here we are again with the opinion. Apparently, someone hasn't seen VS.NET. No matter, your statement is unsubstantiated opinion. No facts, no studies, just someone with an opinion.
I personally find Python to be head and shoulders above any other programming language. And PyGTK is quite clean. Bloody piss indeed.
"e.Apple supports the whole widget, if you have ever worked in IT you'll know how convenient this is"
By widget, I'll assume you mean computer. Yes, I have worked in IT. We had hundreds of HP boexes. HP was greatly helpful with the hardware, and so long as your hardware is on the HCL (if you buy business desktops it almost always is) Microsoft will help you out with sofware (and won't blame it on hardware incompatibility).
"f.OS X has fewer vulnerabilities than windows or linux"
Linux has few to zero veulnerabilities. Oh, you're talking about a Linux distro. You can't really compare, as most Linux distros ship with hundreds of network-connected applications. OS X ships with very little comparitively.
Again, show me the beef. I have not seen a detailed report of "linux" veulnerabilities. I've seen the OpenSSH exploit and friends, but those can hardly be blamed on "linux".
"Answer this why do people spend big money on suns which specbench so much slower than Intel chips, hmm."
Specbench? You're referring to SPECMark. And the P4 blows the "bloody piss" out of the G5. Only when you use Apple's benchmarks, only in FP, only with Apple using a special heap library, and only with GCC does the G5 beat the P4. Intel has released their SPEC results; they are in the 1300s. Look them up on SPEC's website. Apple's numbers don't impress me. Don't pull this "fair" bullshit either. Life isn't fair. Most Windows apps are not compiled with GCC, and if GCC is the best compiler for the G5, that's all that Apple gets to use. That's the way that SPEC works. It's not a measure of a processor, it's a measure of a platform: a processor, hardware, OS, and compiler. Apple defeated this.
"The PC architecture is a toy, it could be offered up as how not to design a system look at the insane complexity of the machine code."
Apparently, 95%+ of the PCs out there are "toys". You probably use this "toy" every day. Again, I st
Good for you. I have a Dell CSX running Linux and Windows 2000. It's a Pentium III 500 with 512MB of memory. I've had it for six months and I have *never* rebooted it because of a crash. Sure, Nautilus had Explorer crash sometimes, but the OS stays running and I can get back to where I was. It's darn nippy, too.
Frankly, I don't care whether you had problems with Cygwin. I don't use Windows to run UNIX software; I use Cygwin mostly for testing websites under Konqueror without rebooting into Linux. When I want a real Unix box, it's not going to be some pretty-GUI on top of a Mach like system, it's going to be Linux. The fact is, UNIX is overrated. Linux has a lot of positive attributes, but I do not believe that it's similarity to UNIX is anywhere near the top of the list.
"The revolution is now starting with Apple's new next-generation computing hardware architecture. Read here why I place such emphasis on overall system architecture. Hint: until dramatic architecture changes happen, wintel PCs really are stuck in a speed dead-end right now."
So, apparently 6.4Gbytes per second of memory bandwidth + 6.4Gbytes per second of I/O bandwidth is not enough (Athlon 64 FX-51)? Apple's "revolutionary" system architecture closely mirrors platforms like NForce. Guess what? Apple's "revolutionary" architecture isn't all that revolutionary. It has a northbridge and a southbridge. The northbridge connects to the southbridge through HyperTransport, same as the NForce. The northbridge talks to the memory and CPU and AGP; the southbridge handles I/O (same as NForce). Apple's "revolutionary" architecture is really just a northbridge/southbridge.
What's far more revolutionary is Athlon 64. Memory controller in the CPU for lower latency. 6.4Gbytes/sec of HyperTransport connectivity for plenty of I/O bandwidth. Each processor gets it's own bandwidth. AMD's model removes the northbridge and reinvents the southbridge.
"wintel PCs really are stuck in a speed dead-end right now. Clocking your CPU chip upwards can only take you so far without melting your enclosing case or restricting your customer base to Alaska."
That, my friend, is bullshit. The Athlon 64 is at the beginning of it's life, and at 2.0 Ghz it's still far faster than the 3.2Ghz P4.
Intel keeps upping their clock because that is how their CPU was designed. They call it NetBurst for a reason: the P4 was designed to handle media encoding. With it's long pipeline, the P4 can be clocked high. A shorter pipeline helps with code that has many branch instructions. Media encoding has few of these instructions, and thus flies on the P4.
Apple's "system architecture" isn't revolutionary. Heck, it's not even evolutionary. It's the same thing that PC chipsets have been doing for years. And those drastic changes? They're coming from AMD , not Apple.
This is why I *hate* Apple zealots. They listen to what Apple says and spew it out like gospel. I am an AMD fanboy, but even I do not believe many of the claims they make on their website. No matter what AMD says, an Athlon XP 3200+ is not faster than a P4 3.2Ghz.
So, I ask again, show me the money. Where are the independent, reliable benchmarks with the G5. Apple sure won't be providing them: they haven't even compared the G5 to a Pentium 3.2Ghz or an Athlon 64. So, I ask again, how can Apple claim the G5 to be the "world's fastest personal computer" when they haven't even tested the fastest IA-32 PC?
"The turning point was this pure beauty of an operating system that is Mac OS X."
Come on. It's a damn operating system, not a religon. Hell, it's not even as important as what web browser I use. A proper OS is transparent. Look at Linux for a good example.
Slashdot Mirror
Human makes opening move.
Computer: Mate in 63. You lose.
Why doesn't apple just use standard ATX power supplies? They already use standard PCI, SATA/ATA, AGP, Memory, and other components, so why is using a standard power supply such a big problem?
No, but I would have at least an elipse and a line tool. These are common actions. Having to hold down shift for every line you draw is an annoyance, and having to go through a seven-step process to draw an outlined elipse is unacceptable:
1: Select elipse Tool
2: Draw elipse
3: Switch To fill Tool
4: Fill selection with color
5: Decrease selection size by desired line width
6: Delete the selection
7: Deselect the elipse
Vs. with an elipse tool:
1: Select elipse tool
2: Uncheck "fill" in tool options, check "outline"
3: Draw elipse
"Mac OS X has the advantage there - it's secure out out of the box and it doesn't have viruses attacking it."
That's bullshit. Viruses aren't the only threat. What about the student who decides to delete a bunch of files or download a program that messes up their system. Remember, these aren't the student's laptops, they're the school's.
"These kids' laptops won't get locked down."
Why not? The school is paying for the laptop and the IS staff. Why shouldn't they lock them down to save money and prevent problems?
"They'll be connecting to the Internet, several times a day, probably, way more often than virus definitions are updated."
You can update definitions daily. Believe it or not, it is very unlikely that a student would run into a virus that wouldn't be caught by definitions a day (or even a week) old.
"One of the latest worms spreads just by visiting a page with IE (from there it dials a 900 number in Muldova or something)."
Really. Did you make that up or do you have actual documentation?
"you don't set Windows Update to 'automatic' on 140,000 machines if these are an integral part of the cirriculum since you can't affort patch breakage"
Duh. You don't use Windows Update. You use the other tools that Microsoft provides you with that let you test a patch before you deploy it over the network.
"Which means there will be threats against unpatched machines in the wild while testing is happening."
Usually, exploits have appeared 4-8 weeks after the patch. That's plenty of time for IS.
"You can attempt perimeter security but it's more of a pipe dream than anything else."
It's called a personal firewall and a user policy that doesn't give students write permissions to critical directories (Windows, Office, etc.). Viruses don't have enough access to infect the important files (those added by the school) even if they get through Norton.
"With about 25 Windows boxes where I work, all with NAV, and only a handful portable, our sysadmin spends probably an hour a week dealing with viruses that sneak in before definitions are downloaded."
With about 800 Windows boxes where I go to school, all with NAV, and about 10% portable (mostly staff), we only have *one* sysadmin. And she isn't dealing with viruses for 32 hours a week. The district has one person assigned to assess virus threats and test patches. For a school district with likely 12000 computers, they only need one person. It doesn't scale linearly, you know. You don't have to test the patches 5200 times more - after all, every system is the same.
Dell is cheap, and you can change to another vendor in the future and still keep your network/OS environment the same. With Apple, you either buy Apple for the immediate future or you have to buy new applications and retrain staff/IS personnel.
"It is a PII 333mhz with 128mb of ram.
It came with NT 4.0 on it, but now has red hat. For most users, Win 98 would be the only other choice, as XP needs more system requirments that this."
XP would probably run fine on that notebook with the graphical effects turned off. We have a bunch of Pentium 166 desktops with 128MB of memory at my school that run Windows 2000, and they are actually pretty responsive. XP really isn't any more memory-hungry or cpu-hungry than 2000, as long as you turn of the graphical effects (mostly the theme engine).
My notebook, a Dell CSX (PIII 500, 256M memory) runs Windows 2000 and Slackware with Dropline GNOME (2.4). I would have to say that Windows 2000 is noticably more responsive than Slackware/GNOME.
"These are laptops the kids take home, connect directly to the Internet, load any cute software they come across, have their dad or older brother attempt to fix/upgrade/patch, etc."
No, they aren't, and if they are, it's idiodic. My district experimented with notebooks in one grade school (only about 120), and they had them locked down good and proper. Mac OS X can be trashed just as easily as Windows XP if it's not locked down.
Remember, these aren't the students property, and, as such, the families should not be able to upgrade them or fix/patch them. That's the responsibility of the district.
I'd by Windows, in that case. My district chose Windows 2000 for a reason:
- It runs on all of their hardware, so they don't have to get rid of their Pentium 166 boxes to standardize on a single OS. Try running Mac OS X on a PowerMac 200mhz with no USB.
- It has very good centralized management tools
- It doesn't lock them into a single hardware vendor. My discrict standardized on HP, but only because a signifigant portion of my town works for HP, so they get huge discounts on hardware
- It doesn't require retraining or relearning. Most teachers are familiar with Windows 2000 and Mac OS 9. Mac OS X looks and behaves differently.
- Microsoft Office. Mac OS may have Office, but it looks out of place on the desktop (the district has standardized on Office 2000).
- Backwards app compatibility. They still have DOS and Windows 95 based applications. They don't want to have to use some "classic" mode to run their old applications.
- Forwards app compatibility. There's no garuntee that future apps will run on OS 10.2; many apps are now incompatible with 10.1. With Windows, you can be relatively sure that most apps created in the near future will be compatible with Windows 2000.
- Support. Microsoft's written policy is to provide hotfixes for Windows 2000 until at least March 31, 2007. Will Jaguar still be supported in 2007? Will RedHat Workstation still be supported in 2007?
My school has 2200 people and 800+ computers. They have 1.5 support personell (1 full time, 1 half time). So far, everything runs smoothly. I have never had a computer managed by the school crash. That's because they standardized on a software platform and are sticking with it. Even the new 2.4Ghz Evos they purchased three months ago run the same software as the 166mhz Pentium boxes they have. They have Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium IV boxes all under one roof, and they all run the same software, work with the same network, with the same documents, and, most importantly, the same administration.
"OS X crashes less then windows xp"
That's opinion, not fact. My school runs Windows 2000, and I have *never* seen a *single* computer crash. Nor have Word, Excel, or PowerPoint ever crashed on me. Perhaps it's because they have a fixed environment and don't mess with it - but, nonetheless, Windows XP (or 2000) can be made rock solid with proper administration.
"and doesnt have to have a legion of anti-virus software packages installed on it to keep the machine safe"
They run Norton corpoate version. It's simple and stays out of your way. Virii aren't really an issue as students store everything on a Samba share (which automatically deletes executables and MP3s) and anything we can write to locally (e.g. the desktop) get's wiped out everytime you log out.
"What would be your choice for middle school classrooms with minimal sys admin?"
You really can't beat Windows 2000. Yes, there are problems with viruses and security holes, but those can be managed with Norton and a good patching policy. The main thing is that these students shouldn't have administrative access - this removes 90% of the threat. Also, Microsoft provides tools to "push" patches to remote computers - they must be used properly.
Whatever your opinion about Windows 2000, the fact is that it's exceedingly easy to administer if configured properly. In my high school of 2,200, with nearly 900 computers, we only have one full time and one half time IS employee. They lock things down, make the students store their documents on a Samba share, and if a computer *does* break they can have it up and running again in 10 minutes with Ghost.
Linux, of course, is another viable option. Unfortunately, however, the centralized management is somewhat more limited. Yes, there are tools, but none can quite match what Active Directory gives you. This may or may not matter in a school environment. The fact that you can't get Microsoft Office is another downside. The positives are clear however - you can save at least $200 a seat on software, and you don't have to worry about viruses (you still have to stay up on security patches, though).
Mac OS X is another alternative. You still have to pay for the OS, however, and schools would likely want to run Microsoft Office. Thus, the $200 a seat charge is still there. This may be an especially big disadvantage if Microsoft provides huge discounts as a tax writeoff (as they likely will). Also, the cheapest Mac laptop is the iBook at $999 - and I doubt that the school would want to run OS X in 128MB, so the cheapest real Mac laptop is $1050. The school would certainly get a discount, but Dell would also likely provide a discount. I suspect that a comparable Mac notebook would be $200 to $300 more expensive a seat. That's $3.9 million dollars - money that could be spent elsewhere in an already underbudgeted education system.
"Does anybody have altual experience with deploying CDMA networks?"
Not surprisingly, the US has the most CDMA towers (and, ironically, the most GSM towers) of any nation in the world. This is largely because the countries of the EU are not counted as a single nation, but nonetheless, the US has plenty of CDMA towers in service. CDMA isn't particularly new (it's been around for years), it's just that it's getting more attention now that 3GSM is based on wideband CDMA technology (WCDMA).
We have many, many wireless systems in the US:
- AMPS; good old analog. High power, low call volume.
- TDMA; this is the old AT&T and Cingular networks
- GSM; AT&T's and Cingular's new network and T-Mobile
- Nextel; they use a different system
- CDMA; Sprint and Verizon
Plans? Verizon has had a CDMA network for quite some time now. Sprint's network is, and always has been, 100% CDMA. Both offer 3G data services (1xRTT is 144kbps which technically qualifies it for 3G status).
Verizon has the best coverage in the US largely because of their use of CDMA. People who complain about coverage in the US usually have GSM providers (T-Mobile, Cingular, ATT). Verizon seems to be rock solid - not 100% coverage but decent none the less.
"It should be rather obvious that 'straight' is not a tool in itself, but a modifier for the movement of existing tools. More like using a straight-edge accessory with your pen, brush or eraser than having a seperate pen, brush or eraser that only move in straight lines."
Yes, but that doesn't mean that there can't be a straight line tool. I'm not recommending that we remove the existing functionality (which I find quite useful), but that a simple tool that draws a simple straight line be added. Heck, when I work with bitmap graphics (e.g. drawing buttons on a website) and I want to draw pixel-perfect lines, it's annoying to have to hold down the shift key all the time.
"Since 'straight' is a modifer of movement rather than a tool, its not a huge leap to use a modifier key like shift, control or alt"
For many, it is a huge leap. I originally had to guess. I got it right, but many would not. Users aren't used to having to hold down a key to draw straight lines - it's not particularly intuitive.
I do think that a little hint would be good, but, quite frankly, what's so wrong with adding a straight line tool?
"Also, you could read the manual."
We all know rule #1 of UI design: the user doesn't have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn't read it. Actually, few users will read more than a few words.
"with every new OS release, your computer gets faster"
XP is already fast enough. On a 500mhz notebook, I almost never experience the same kind of "lag" that my Mac (and Linux) using friends do. I'm not talking about speed per say, but XP just feels snappy compared to GNOME or Mac OS. Hopefully 10.3 will resolve this.
I have seen expose in action, but, quite frankly, it doesn't impress me all that much. There are already emulations of Expose for Windows, but quite frankly I find the taskbar to be just as effective.
If it's any consolation, it does work in Excel.
They mean 24 times video speed. A 2x DVD burner can actually burn an entire DVD in about 20 minutes, 6 times as fast as playback speed (assuming 2 hours a disk at decent quality). It's not unreasonable to assume that it will ship with an 8x +R; these are already on the market. I don't know why you say that 2.4x is the fastest, because 4x has been on the market for quite some time.
Here's a handy chart:
2x = 6x Realtime @ 2 hours a disc
4x = 12x Realtime @ 2 hours a disc
8x = 24x Realtime @ 2 hours a disc
"mountvol c: /d"
Amazingly, the OS doesn't seem to mind having it's drive unmounted. I'm typing this right now with my C drive unmounted.
This is one problem that I see a lot with open source software. Instead of changing the application, the developer expects the behavior of the user to change.
1: How hard would it be to add a straght line tool?
2: How are users supposed to know that you use the shift key to draw straight lines?
That is a UI flaw. Drawing straight lines is a common thing that users do. Including it as a non-apparent feature (which makes the user hunt down the documentation) is just plain stupid.
"RzUpAnmsCwrds... Raise Up Anonymous Cowards? Well, you got me this time."
Rise Up Anonymous Cowards. That's correct. Like a mutany or something. It's kind of ironic because I no longer am an Anonymous Coward.
"Sorry, but I call bullshit on you. At 2:03 CDT, you said that you normally double boot, and that you use Cygwin very ocacionally to check webpages in Konqueror without switching to Linux.
At 3:05 CDT you claim that you often run Windows and Linux under VMWare, along with a ton of applications in 256 MB of RAM."
I do both. I sometimes use Linux, I sometimes use Windows. Under Windows, I have KDE up under Cygwin to test web pages under Konqueror. Under Linux, I have VMWare to test web pages under Internet Explorer.
"As you said, with so little RAM such a setup will swap so much that it would be useless. Although afterwards you contradicted yourself saying that for the screenshot the machine wasn't swapping much."
It swaps a lot more after I start up VMWare.
"If you had all those programs running an hour before, why didn't you take the screenshot then?"
I'm going to be honest: I don't usually run 35 programs at once. I was simply stating that the Mac screenshot wasn't that impressive. My PC can do that too.
"My take is that in that hour you booted up that copy of VMWare that you had been playing with but that you don't really use because it's WAY too slow, and just for the sake of contradicting the grandparent post booted all those applications to take the screenshot. And it took you one hour to do it!"
VMWare is quite nippy, actually, fast enough to even play video (320x240, non full screen). Trying to compile a kernel at the same time would be painful.
It took me about five minutes to boot up those apps. GNOME really stays pretty nippy under those conditions. I spent most of my time responding to your post.
"By the way, I hope you live in Europe, because if you live in America you should be sleeping at that hour instead of trolling in Slashdot. Get a life. And more RAM."
My machine takes 384MB of memory, and I don't feel like spending $40 for an extra 128MB. And I do live in America. I'm a student, and I don't mind staying up until odd hours.
"(On a second look, I realize that you weren't even running VMWare/Windows, only Linux. So your machine wasn't swapping THAT much. But then you were not able to run all your Windows software except maybe using Wine which basically sucks.)"
Correct. With that + VMWare, it would swap itself crazy. But that has to do with how much memory it has, not that it's not a Mac.
That screenshot:
- Wasn't a fake
- Didn't take an hour to create (more like 5 minutes)
- Was a usable desktop environment
Heck, under Windows 2000, my box seems even faster.
My point eactly. Conceptually, the G5 is quite similar to NForce2 - a northbridge with a FSB to the CPU, an AGP interface, and a memory controller, linked to an I/O controller (southbridge) through HyperTransport. Apple claims that it's "radically redesigned", but it really is just a traditional northbridge/southbridge configuration. Their main "innovation" is a faster FSB. However, the P4's bus is plenty fast - it has enough bandwidth to completely max out the memory bus, and I/O bandwidth rarely exceeds 100 megabytes a second. The NForce2 did have a problem with FSB speed; it had DualDDR400, but no way to get that bandwidth to the processor. K* is different, however, since it has dedicated memory bandwidth for each processor.
"Neither can claim all the credit for it, Apple was just the first to bring it market."
WRONG!!! The G5 *was not* the first computer to use it. Ever use NFORCE? or NFORCE2? It's been out for over a year and a half, and it uses HyperTransport to connect the northbridge and southbridge, just like the "revolutionary" G5.
AMD's innovation is to put the northbridge in the CPU. This is radically different from a traditional northbridge/southbridge configuration. It is not simply linking the northbridge and soutbridge with HyperTransport, it's removing the northbridge altogether and lowering the latency for memory by putting the controller in the CPU.
If anything has "bandwidth to burn", it's the Athlon 64. Dual DDR 400 + HyperTransport gives this processor both low latency and high bandwidth.
Apparently, "10 seconds of Google time" mislead you. Apple was not the first to use HyperTransport on a motherboard, nor were they the primary developer of HyperTransport. Apple's "HyperTransport Architecture" is nothing like AMD's.
You got your facts wrong. Please come back when you know what you're talking about.
"heh you wanna know stable? how about X11 + Gnome + Gimp for image authoring, + 6 different web browsers for cross-browser checking of DHTML functionality, + office apps such as word and excel to deal with requirements documents sent by management drones, Multi-IM chat client to stay connected with co-workers over AIM, and Jabber over SSL, iTunes mp3 player in the background to soothe the mind playing music from a firewire-connected iPod, BBEdit code editor and 10 terminal windows, one of which running Tomcat java servlet container, another one running ant build scripts, to work on various components of a J2EE-compliant web application, all this and a few other apps running and being actively used simultanously on a 400mhz Titanium powerbook bought in early 2001, recently upgraded to 1Gig of RAM for $180 including priority shipping courtesy of pricewatch.com."
Wow. You can multitask. That's impressive. I often run multiple operating systems simulatneously (VMWare) on my Dell CSX. And GIMP, GAIM, XMMS, Mozilla, Konqueror, Internet Explorer (under VMWare), Opera, Opera Windows (under VMWare), lots of terms, some building the kernel or modules or software, some installing packages. Plus Apache + Python, oh, and Java + Ant for my Hiptop. And that pig that they call OpenOffice.org. All with 256MB of memory.
So, does my system crash? No. It swaps itself brainless, but it never crashes.
Why should I weep? Below is a link to a screenshot where I hav about thirty apps running, am playing a video, compiling a kernel, running several browsers, have GIMP open with several images, am running about ten terminals, and a lot more. Your screenshot is simply not that impressive. And my screenshot was taken on a machine with 1/4 as much memory. Hell, I wasn't even swapping much.
Your screenshot has (My Screenshot Has):
IE (Epiphany)
Mozilla (Mozilla)
Finder (Nautilus)
Safari (Konqueror)
Excel (Gnumeric)
Something with a B (Some other random apps like Evolution)
Terminal (2 terms with 10 tabs each)
iPhoto (Nautilus viewing a directory with aout 100 photos)
iTunes (Totem)
Calculator (Calculator)
Text editor (Gedit)
Word (AbiWord)
X11 (X11)
GNOME (GNOME)
Gimp (Gimp)
Some random terminal stuff (Kernel compiling)
Wow. I did everything your screenshot did while remaining responsive on a PIII 500 notebook with 1/4 as much RAM. Mac OS X must really suck!
http://cwcairns.home.comcast.net/screenshot.png
"a.PPC is a much cleaner ISA than x86, FP performance is superior undeniably, anything using altivec will maul the pc equivalent"
The PPC ISA *is* cleaner, but, quite frankly, YOU NEVER SEE THE FREAKING ISA. Unless you're writing a compiler or programming in assembly, the ISA is transparent. Why does the average user care?
"Superior undeniably" sounds like another superlative without proof. "The Pentium4 offers undeniably superior FP performance". Wow. I can do that too. Now come up with some data to backup your claim.
"b.Apples motherboard designs allow for much higher throughput to the PCI bus"
Than what? A toaster? Most PCI cards don't even support PCI-X. If you really care, get a PC motherboard with PCI-X. For most people, 133 megabytes of PCI bandwidth is more than plenty. Not even gigabit can max it out.
If you really want bandwidth to burn, look at Athlon 64. 6.4gbytes/sec of memory bandwidth + 6.4gbytes/sec of I/O bandwidth. Smoking.
"c.64-bit goodness at a lower cost than AMD or Itanium, right now show me 2ghz dual 64 bit proc system that is cheaper than Apple's"
First of all, Itanium is hugely overpriced. Second of all, it's not x86, so that's not relavent here. Thrid of all, SMP only helps out with extensive multitasking or with highly-threaded programs. You *never* get 2:1, and you're lucky if you get 1.5:1.
That said, BOXX technology makes some very nice dual Opteron workstations for under $3000.
Furthermore, 64-bit is not really needed by most people. Unless you're designing an airplane, 4GB of memory is just fine.
"d.OS X has programing frameworks and RAD development tools that beat the bloody piss out of anything MS offers or linux has."
Ahh, here we are again with the opinion. Apparently, someone hasn't seen VS.NET. No matter, your statement is unsubstantiated opinion. No facts, no studies, just someone with an opinion.
I personally find Python to be head and shoulders above any other programming language. And PyGTK is quite clean. Bloody piss indeed.
"e.Apple supports the whole widget, if you have ever worked in IT you'll know how convenient this is"
By widget, I'll assume you mean computer. Yes, I have worked in IT. We had hundreds of HP boexes. HP was greatly helpful with the hardware, and so long as your hardware is on the HCL (if you buy business desktops it almost always is) Microsoft will help you out with sofware (and won't blame it on hardware incompatibility).
"f.OS X has fewer vulnerabilities than windows or linux"
Linux has few to zero veulnerabilities. Oh, you're talking about a Linux distro. You can't really compare, as most Linux distros ship with hundreds of network-connected applications. OS X ships with very little comparitively.
Again, show me the beef. I have not seen a detailed report of "linux" veulnerabilities. I've seen the OpenSSH exploit and friends, but those can hardly be blamed on "linux".
"Answer this why do people spend big money on suns which specbench so much slower than Intel chips, hmm."
Specbench? You're referring to SPECMark. And the P4 blows the "bloody piss" out of the G5. Only when you use Apple's benchmarks, only in FP, only with Apple using a special heap library, and only with GCC does the G5 beat the P4. Intel has released their SPEC results; they are in the 1300s. Look them up on SPEC's website. Apple's numbers don't impress me. Don't pull this "fair" bullshit either. Life isn't fair. Most Windows apps are not compiled with GCC, and if GCC is the best compiler for the G5, that's all that Apple gets to use. That's the way that SPEC works. It's not a measure of a processor, it's a measure of a platform: a processor, hardware, OS, and compiler. Apple defeated this.
"The PC architecture is a toy, it could be offered up as how not to design a system look at the insane complexity of the machine code."
Apparently, 95%+ of the PCs out there are "toys". You probably use this "toy" every day. Again, I st
Good for you. I have a Dell CSX running Linux and Windows 2000. It's a Pentium III 500 with 512MB of memory. I've had it for six months and I have *never* rebooted it because of a crash. Sure, Nautilus had Explorer crash sometimes, but the OS stays running and I can get back to where I was. It's darn nippy, too.
Frankly, I don't care whether you had problems with Cygwin. I don't use Windows to run UNIX software; I use Cygwin mostly for testing websites under Konqueror without rebooting into Linux. When I want a real Unix box, it's not going to be some pretty-GUI on top of a Mach like system, it's going to be Linux. The fact is, UNIX is overrated. Linux has a lot of positive attributes, but I do not believe that it's similarity to UNIX is anywhere near the top of the list.
"The revolution is now starting with Apple's new next-generation computing hardware architecture. Read here why I place such emphasis on overall system architecture. Hint: until dramatic architecture changes happen, wintel PCs really are stuck in a speed dead-end right now."
So, apparently 6.4Gbytes per second of memory bandwidth + 6.4Gbytes per second of I/O bandwidth is not enough (Athlon 64 FX-51)? Apple's "revolutionary" system architecture closely mirrors platforms like NForce. Guess what? Apple's "revolutionary" architecture isn't all that revolutionary. It has a northbridge and a southbridge. The northbridge connects to the southbridge through HyperTransport, same as the NForce. The northbridge talks to the memory and CPU and AGP; the southbridge handles I/O (same as NForce). Apple's "revolutionary" architecture is really just a northbridge/southbridge.
What's far more revolutionary is Athlon 64. Memory controller in the CPU for lower latency. 6.4Gbytes/sec of HyperTransport connectivity for plenty of I/O bandwidth. Each processor gets it's own bandwidth. AMD's model removes the northbridge and reinvents the southbridge.
"wintel PCs really are stuck in a speed dead-end right now. Clocking your CPU chip upwards can only take you so far without melting your enclosing case or restricting your customer base to Alaska."
That, my friend, is bullshit. The Athlon 64 is at the beginning of it's life, and at 2.0 Ghz it's still far faster than the 3.2Ghz P4.
Intel keeps upping their clock because that is how their CPU was designed. They call it NetBurst for a reason: the P4 was designed to handle media encoding. With it's long pipeline, the P4 can be clocked high. A shorter pipeline helps with code that has many branch instructions. Media encoding has few of these instructions, and thus flies on the P4.
Apple's "system architecture" isn't revolutionary. Heck, it's not even evolutionary. It's the same thing that PC chipsets have been doing for years. And those drastic changes? They're coming from AMD , not Apple.
This is why I *hate* Apple zealots. They listen to what Apple says and spew it out like gospel. I am an AMD fanboy, but even I do not believe many of the claims they make on their website. No matter what AMD says, an Athlon XP 3200+ is not faster than a P4 3.2Ghz.
So, I ask again, show me the money. Where are the independent, reliable benchmarks with the G5. Apple sure won't be providing them: they haven't even compared the G5 to a Pentium 3.2Ghz or an Athlon 64. So, I ask again, how can Apple claim the G5 to be the "world's fastest personal computer" when they haven't even tested the fastest IA-32 PC?
"The turning point was this pure beauty of an operating system that is Mac OS X."
Come on. It's a damn operating system, not a religon. Hell, it's not even as important as what web browser I use. A proper OS is transparent. Look at Linux for a good example.