I actually much prefer OS X's keyboard shortcuts relative to their Windows counterparts. ESPECIALLY for switching between Windows. The Windows behavior only allows me to switch between Windows using ALT+TAB. On the Mac Command+Tab switches between applications and ~+TAB switches between open windows within an application. I find this extra distinction extremely useful and productive (once you're aware of it's existence).
You would be much better off considering a carrier grade link designed for point to point applications as opposed to trying to use standard WiFi gear.
A link from Orthogon Systems for example. You can run thesse links at speeds ranging from 21 to 300 Mbps on the unlicensed bands.
These are much better systems in terms of reliability or throughput then you'll ever get with the current WiFi standards. They are a little costly ($10,000 - $20,000) but still significantly cheaper then fibre for point to point connectivity.
I'm not affiliated with Motorola or Orthogon in any way, I am a partner in operating a large WISP network and we use these types of backhaul radios to connect our towers together. Are longest link is over 30 KM.
I was careful to call it the best "general purpose" operating system meaning the best for a wide range of users. I did say Linux and BSD are better suited for other niche uses and of course Windows for the legacy apps one can't part with or for games that haven't been ported. Can you honestly name a feature that Windows can accomplish that isn't better suited by the above operating systems?
I don't think my comments were all that off-topic either, the topic was Apple's quality slipping, my comment was along the lines that 3 out of five of Apple systems I am running are MacBook Pro's ie) 1st generation brand new Apple hardware. Not one of the three MacBooks nor my PowerMac G5 nor my iMac G5 has had any hardware issues. I would say that is relevent to the discussion.
My overall point was that I haven't had any issues. Perhaps I'm lucky. In addition, even if they were having quality control issues and have a certain percentage of defects in their new hardware, there is no alternative. Is one going to run Windows because their new MacBook has some discoloration isssues?
I've been a Mac basher throughout my life. Not because of the hardware, but because of the software.
Now I'm a Mac convert.
The hardware is slick and well spec'd, but the reason I am moving to Mac at home and at my workplace has everything to do with the software. There simply is not a comparable product on the market. It doesn't matter if you buy a machine from Dell, HP, IBM, Sony, Gateway, Acer, or etc they all run Windows.
OS X is the only OS I've ever used that allows me to spend more time working (or more time posting on Slashdot) then tweaking the machine to keep it running.
I'm an experienced Windows, FreeBSD and Linux user, but nothing compares to OS X. I love FreeBSD and use it on all my servers. I've used Linux on many of my desktop machines in the past. Bottom line, nothing else out there touches OS X for a general purpose OS.
Though Linux and BSD both have their niche uses where they are much more suitable.
Windows is just a nuisance still around for reasons of compatibility as for as I am concerned.
All that being said. In the last year I've purchased several Apple systems both for myself and my colleagues and the experience has been excellent.
I have a PowerMac G5 (my primary workstation at the office) an iMac G5 (the machine I'm working on now and my main machine at home) two 15" MacBook Pro's and a 17" MacBook Pro. All of these machines have been running flawlessly since they were purchased.
I may just be very lucky, but so far I couldn't be more impressed.
I don't deny that they have the odd manufacturing defect. Though I haven't personally run into any. Even if the hardware stunk, there is no alternative. Anything that isn't running OS X just isn't comparable.
I think Apple the near impossible task of building an OS that a novice can use while not getting in the way of the hardcore geek.
I disagree. If done right modernizing a web site can make it look better in text based browsers.
Throwing out all the crap HTML3 legacy tags and table layouts etc and making sure the structure of your document is intact can make a page look more readable in a plain text browser then ever.
Have you compared how Slashdot looks in Lynx before and after their HTML/CSS redesign?
With Apple's track record of designing beautifull and functional hardware, I for one can't understand what happened when they designed their current keyboard and mouse.
I'm fortunate enough to use a PowerMac G5 at work daily. I tried to use the mouse, I really tried... After a few days of use I finally got sick of it and hucked it in favor of a good logitech. Sorry, one button? No scroll wheel (note: I haven't tried their new "Mighty Mouse").
As for the keyboard, its not bad to type on, but its damned ugly (my opinion) I just plain don't like it.
My biggest beef though is I want an ergonomic keyboard damnit! I want an ergonomic keyboard designed for Apple gear with all the volume/eject/etc function keys. One more requirement, put the damn 6 key on the left side of the split where it belongs... The only ergonomic keyboard I've found for Apple put the 6 on the right of the split, that is just plain wrong.
The problem with AJAX and many new technology paradigms is the early adopters who implement it "just because."
If you save AJAX for the projects that will actually benefit from it you will benefit from it much more, instead of annoying your end users.
AJAX is for on-line applications, using it everywhere is not a good idea.
Example of poor use: A site that uses AJAX for navigation across the entire site. In this situation you now can't bookmark a specific article or piece of text, nor do you necessarily (depending on the site) have the ability to bookmark that particular section.
Example of a good use: I built an on-line calender for scheduling various events within my organization. Before I added AJAX to the code the entire monthly calender view had to be reloaded on when you click an event to zone in on its details. The old way caused the entire months summary to be reloaded, reparsed, etc just so the end user could see the details for one event. Now that it uses AJAX one can click each event and have the details load almost instantly without regenerating the entire month view.
I handle the IT for an Edmonton based WISP. When we moved offices almost a year ago we left our old Centrex system behind and built our own PBX using Asterisk. Overall we are happy with the setup, though it has a learning curve.
Once you resolve all the issues with echo cancellation, you'll end up with a very flexible setup. Best of all, because of its open standard nature you will not be marrried to any particular vendor of handsets.
It takes a little bit of work to get everything running to the spec you're looking for, but the results I would say are well worth it.
Nope. Your first statement is wrong. One of the ideas of IPv6 is to keep the IP addresses in a hierarchy to limit the number of core router routing table entries.
ie) The tier one providers are given a massive block which they subnet and pass downstream. The smaller providers further subnet into even smaller blocks.
If you switch internet providers, your new ISP will have a different block to work with and hence will assign you a different subnet.
You are right about NAT though, nothing stopping you from using NAT or better yet local / private IPv6 addresses in addition to your public IPv6 addresses (rserved IPv6 blocks exist for this purpose).
The biggest slow-down with the adoption of IPv6 is few people spend the time to really understand it.
The reason IPv6 uses such a large address space is to allow for the wasted IP addresses caused by the hierarchy based routing approach now in popular use to minimize the number of routes needed on the Internet's core routers.
ie) Class C sized/24 netblocks are no longer individually routeable on the core internet routers. Instead larger blocks are delegated to large providers who then subdivide them down to the smaller providers and so forth.
Subnetting in this fashion introduces overhead and wasted IP addresses. The huge address space of IPv6 makes this overhead and wasted IP addresses a non-issue.
Now why did you have to go and tell me that? Now I'm all keen on upgrading my box at home. I was looking for a good excuse to hold off and not go on an excited upgrading spree...:)
Whoops, looks like a struck a nerve with that last concept! No harm or stress intended.;)
Having a seperate binary certainly works to an extent, though it would break down at some point ie) having qmail-smtpd-auth-spf-goodmailfrom-tls would be a little overboard me-thinks.
I do need to humbly disagree with the concept of adding features to someone elses code being disrespectful or otherwise offensive. While you and/or djb are entitled to believe in this concept (it is his original code afterall) I think this attitude has offended some OSS purists. In contrast the community behind most projects have the rational that many contributers enhancing the feature set, when done correctly, is what allows projects to evolve and become much more valuable.
The qmail community seems to be less open to direct outside contribution. I think this has held qmail back to an extent.
All that being said, I'm an experienced admin. I am capable of merging patch-soup into the code base and getting the system running the way I need it to run. There are however many more admins who either do not want to, or are unable to go through such hassle to install an MTA.
One of the primary reasons I use Open Source software is the ability it gives me to strip out features I don't need and add features I require. I don't care if I have 1 terrabyte of storage and 10 gigabytes of ram. If I can strip 2 MB from my kernel or my qmail binaries I will gladly do so.
Most of these patches require hand editing the sources and Makefiles to successfuly merge them all into the stock qmail or netqmail base. Lots of manually reading through *.rej files to make it all work.
In order to simplify new installations I've created my own personal CVS repository for my Qmail sources. I commit changes to the tree whenever a new patch comes out with functionality I need. Hence on a new install I simply check out my custom tree and compile.
The initial work was a royal pain in the ass, however, once it is all up and running the stability and performance has been excellent.
Both the browser itself and the rendering engine feel very snappy. It seems to have dropped a lot of bulk. I would even go so far as to say its snappier then FireFox. The PNG support finally works (3 releases after they said they supported PNG (since IE 4). The PNG support alone is a huge, and WAY overdue plus.
The bad: At least a couple DOM incosistencies that I've noticed in past releases are still there.
The really bad: Whoever is responsable for the UI is on crack! Things like moving the bloody menu bar away from the very top of the window, where it is in every single bloody other application to an irritating location beneath the tabs is retarded.
The UI just looks so disgustingly wrong (though slick compared to the putrid new interface of the new MSN Messenger.)
I can't even use the latest version of Messenger, its UI is way too vile.
Hopefully these garbage UI trends don't continue in this direction.
Speaking of the good ol' beastie, does anyone know whatever happened to the BSD statuette that was once on FreeBSD's site. I've been meaning to get one of those but they have since seemingly disapeared...
Kermit and Zmodem were both file transfer protocols used behind serial lines.
Typically one would use a terminal program to dial into a remote machine and then use kermit, and later zmodem to download or upload their files. Zmodem was extra cool cause it let you resume interrupted transfers.:)
Although the page is using a proper DOCTYPE declaration and is rendering in standards compliance mode in FireFox, a quick trip to validator.w3.org reveals a lot of small details that could still be fixed.:P
Still a far cry ahead of Slashdot's god awful HTML output, but still leaves something to be desired...
Pretty heavy on the javascript usage, and misc clutter as well.
Sweet. Pulled it down from the torrent in seconds. Can't even reach Mozilla.org or spreadfirefox.com or any of those sites right now. They are simply swamped.
I wonder how bad my home server would get pounded if I were to post a link to the FireFox 1.0 download. Go ahead, pound it... It's a special occassion.;)
Slashdot Mirror
What is smart about a device that claims to support e-mail but does not support a required protocol for doing so?
What braindead monkey over at RIM left out SMTP, let alone SMTP with support for authentication and TLS?
I actually much prefer OS X's keyboard shortcuts relative to their Windows counterparts. ESPECIALLY for switching between Windows. The Windows behavior only allows me to switch between Windows using ALT+TAB. On the Mac Command+Tab switches between applications and ~+TAB switches between open windows within an application. I find this extra distinction extremely useful and productive (once you're aware of it's existence).
Glad I'm not the only one that saw this.
You would be much better off considering a carrier grade link designed for point to point applications as opposed to trying to use standard WiFi gear.
A link from Orthogon Systems for example. You can run thesse links at speeds ranging from 21 to 300 Mbps on the unlicensed bands.
These are much better systems in terms of reliability or throughput then you'll ever get with the current WiFi standards. They are a little costly ($10,000 - $20,000) but still significantly cheaper then fibre for point to point connectivity.
I'm not affiliated with Motorola or Orthogon in any way, I am a partner in operating a large WISP network and we use these types of backhaul radios to connect our towers together. Are longest link is over 30 KM.
I was careful to call it the best "general purpose" operating system meaning the best for a wide range of users. I did say Linux and BSD are better suited for other niche uses and of course Windows for the legacy apps one can't part with or for games that haven't been ported. Can you honestly name a feature that Windows can accomplish that isn't better suited by the above operating systems?
I don't think my comments were all that off-topic either, the topic was Apple's quality slipping, my comment was along the lines that 3 out of five of Apple systems I am running are MacBook Pro's ie) 1st generation brand new Apple hardware. Not one of the three MacBooks nor my PowerMac G5 nor my iMac G5 has had any hardware issues. I would say that is relevent to the discussion.
My overall point was that I haven't had any issues. Perhaps I'm lucky. In addition, even if they were having quality control issues and have a certain percentage of defects in their new hardware, there is no alternative. Is one going to run Windows because their new MacBook has some discoloration isssues?
I've been a Mac basher throughout my life. Not because of the hardware, but because of the software.
Now I'm a Mac convert.
The hardware is slick and well spec'd, but the reason I am moving to Mac at home and at my workplace has everything to do with the software. There simply is not a comparable product on the market. It doesn't matter if you buy a machine from Dell, HP, IBM, Sony, Gateway, Acer, or etc they all run Windows.
OS X is the only OS I've ever used that allows me to spend more time working (or more time posting on Slashdot) then tweaking the machine to keep it running.
I'm an experienced Windows, FreeBSD and Linux user, but nothing compares to OS X. I love FreeBSD and use it on all my servers. I've used Linux on many of my desktop machines in the past. Bottom line, nothing else out there touches OS X for a general purpose OS.
Though Linux and BSD both have their niche uses where they are much more suitable.
Windows is just a nuisance still around for reasons of compatibility as for as I am concerned.
All that being said. In the last year I've purchased several Apple systems both for myself and my colleagues and the experience has been excellent.
I have a PowerMac G5 (my primary workstation at the office) an iMac G5 (the machine I'm working on now and my main machine at home) two 15" MacBook Pro's and a 17" MacBook Pro. All of these machines have been running flawlessly since they were purchased.
I may just be very lucky, but so far I couldn't be more impressed.
I don't deny that they have the odd manufacturing defect. Though I haven't personally run into any. Even if the hardware stunk, there is no alternative. Anything that isn't running OS X just isn't comparable.
I think Apple the near impossible task of building an OS that a novice can use while not getting in the way of the hardcore geek.
I disagree. If done right modernizing a web site can make it look better in text based browsers.
Throwing out all the crap HTML3 legacy tags and table layouts etc and making sure the structure of your document is intact can make a page look more readable in a plain text browser then ever.
Have you compared how Slashdot looks in Lynx before and after their HTML/CSS redesign?
With Apple's track record of designing beautifull and functional hardware, I for one can't understand what happened when they designed their current keyboard and mouse.
I'm fortunate enough to use a PowerMac G5 at work daily. I tried to use the mouse, I really tried... After a few days of use I finally got sick of it and hucked it in favor of a good logitech. Sorry, one button? No scroll wheel (note: I haven't tried their new "Mighty Mouse").
As for the keyboard, its not bad to type on, but its damned ugly (my opinion) I just plain don't like it.
My biggest beef though is I want an ergonomic keyboard damnit! I want an ergonomic keyboard designed for Apple gear with all the volume/eject/etc function keys. One more requirement, put the damn 6 key on the left side of the split where it belongs... The only ergonomic keyboard I've found for Apple put the 6 on the right of the split, that is just plain wrong.
The problem with AJAX and many new technology paradigms is the early adopters who implement it "just because."
If you save AJAX for the projects that will actually benefit from it you will benefit from it much more, instead of annoying your end users.
AJAX is for on-line applications, using it everywhere is not a good idea.
Example of poor use:
A site that uses AJAX for navigation across the entire site. In this situation you now can't bookmark a specific article or piece of text, nor do you necessarily (depending on the site) have the ability to bookmark that particular section.
Example of a good use:
I built an on-line calender for scheduling various events within my organization. Before I added AJAX to the code the entire monthly calender view had to be reloaded on when you click an event to zone in on its details. The old way caused the entire months summary to be reloaded, reparsed, etc just so the end user could see the details for one event. Now that it uses AJAX one can click each event and have the details load almost instantly without regenerating the entire month view.
I handle the IT for an Edmonton based WISP. When we moved offices almost a year ago we left our old Centrex system behind and built our own PBX using Asterisk. Overall we are happy with the setup, though it has a learning curve.
Once you resolve all the issues with echo cancellation, you'll end up with a very flexible setup. Best of all, because of its open standard nature you will not be marrried to any particular vendor of handsets.
It takes a little bit of work to get everything running to the spec you're looking for, but the results I would say are well worth it.
Nope. Your first statement is wrong. One of the ideas of IPv6 is to keep the IP addresses in a hierarchy to limit the number of core router routing table entries.
ie) The tier one providers are given a massive block which they subnet and pass downstream. The smaller providers further subnet into even smaller blocks.
If you switch internet providers, your new ISP will have a different block to work with and hence will assign you a different subnet.
You are right about NAT though, nothing stopping you from using NAT or better yet local / private IPv6 addresses in addition to your public IPv6 addresses (rserved IPv6 blocks exist for this purpose).
The biggest slow-down with the adoption of IPv6 is few people spend the time to really understand it.
The reason IPv6 uses such a large address space is to allow for the wasted IP addresses caused by the hierarchy based routing approach now in popular use to minimize the number of routes needed on the Internet's core routers.
/24 netblocks are no longer individually routeable on the core internet routers. Instead larger blocks are delegated to large providers who then subdivide them down to the smaller providers and so forth.
ie) Class C sized
Subnetting in this fashion introduces overhead and wasted IP addresses. The huge address space of IPv6 makes this overhead and wasted IP addresses a non-issue.
Now why did you have to go and tell me that? Now I'm all keen on upgrading my box at home. I was looking for a good excuse to hold off and not go on an excited upgrading spree... :)
So if I'm not mistaken this is not yet a 6-STABLE release, much like 5 was only flagged stable at 5.4.
Looking forward for a new release, but past experience shows it pays to wait for the STABLE tag on a production server.
Whoops, looks like a struck a nerve with that last concept! No harm or stress intended. ;)
Having a seperate binary certainly works to an extent, though it would break down at some point ie) having qmail-smtpd-auth-spf-goodmailfrom-tls would be a little overboard me-thinks.
I do need to humbly disagree with the concept of adding features to someone elses code being disrespectful or otherwise offensive. While you and/or djb are entitled to believe in this concept (it is his original code afterall) I think this attitude has offended some OSS purists. In contrast the community behind most projects have the rational that many contributers enhancing the feature set, when done correctly, is what allows projects to evolve and become much more valuable.
The qmail community seems to be less open to direct outside contribution. I think this has held qmail back to an extent.
All that being said, I'm an experienced admin. I am capable of merging patch-soup into the code base and getting the system running the way I need it to run. There are however many more admins who either do not want to, or are unable to go through such hassle to install an MTA.
One of the primary reasons I use Open Source software is the ability it gives me to strip out features I don't need and add features I require. I don't care if I have 1 terrabyte of storage and 10 gigabytes of ram. If I can strip 2 MB from my kernel or my qmail binaries I will gladly do so.
I'm not sure, it would be convenient for me. I don't know if every qmail user, however, or every qmail installation would require SMTP auth.
What would be really nice is if someone could clean up the code base in such a way that you can enable or disable all these features at compile time.
That however would be a significant effort.
Definately agree on point 9. I maintain a mail server of over 2,000 users. Currently running Qmail with the following patches:
chkuser-2.0.8b-release.tar.gz
doublebounce-trim.patch
netqmail-1.05-tls-20050329.patch
outgoingip.patch
qmail-smtpd-auth-0.31.tar.gz
qmail-smtpd-auth-close3.patch
qmail-smtpd_gmfcheck.patch
qmail-spf-rc5.patch
Most of these patches require hand editing the sources and Makefiles to successfuly merge them all into the stock qmail or netqmail base. Lots of manually reading through *.rej files to make it all work.
In order to simplify new installations I've created my own personal CVS repository for my Qmail sources. I commit changes to the tree whenever a new patch comes out with functionality I need. Hence on a new install I simply check out my custom tree and compile.
The initial work was a royal pain in the ass, however, once it is all up and running the stability and performance has been excellent.
Both the browser itself and the rendering engine feel very snappy. It seems to have dropped a lot of bulk. I would even go so far as to say its snappier then FireFox. The PNG support finally works (3 releases after they said they supported PNG (since IE 4). The PNG support alone is a huge, and WAY overdue plus.
The bad: At least a couple DOM incosistencies that I've noticed in past releases are still there.
The really bad: Whoever is responsable for the UI is on crack! Things like moving the bloody menu bar away from the very top of the window, where it is in every single bloody other application to an irritating location beneath the tabs is retarded.
The UI just looks so disgustingly wrong (though slick compared to the putrid new interface of the new MSN Messenger.)
I can't even use the latest version of Messenger, its UI is way too vile.
Hopefully these garbage UI trends don't continue in this direction.
-- End Rant --
Speaking of the good ol' beastie, does anyone know whatever happened to the BSD statuette that was once on FreeBSD's site. I've been meaning to get one of those but they have since seemingly disapeared...
Kermit and Zmodem were both file transfer protocols used behind serial lines.
:)
Typically one would use a terminal program to dial into a remote machine and then use kermit, and later zmodem to download or upload their files. Zmodem was extra cool cause it let you resume interrupted transfers.
cvsup ~/ports-supfile
portupgrade pear-XML_RPC
Although the page is using a proper DOCTYPE declaration and is rendering in standards compliance mode in FireFox, a quick trip to validator.w3.org reveals a lot of small details that could still be fixed. :P
Still a far cry ahead of Slashdot's god awful HTML output, but still leaves something to be desired...
Pretty heavy on the javascript usage, and misc clutter as well.
Indeed, and I remember when #565963 was still to subscribe. ;)
Glad it worked for you. I was curious more then anything what would happen to me if I posted such a link.
:)
Server is still running, had 16428 downloads thus far. Web server is very slow webbing in from work.
Sweet. Pulled it down from the torrent in seconds. Can't even reach Mozilla.org or spreadfirefox.com or any of those sites right now. They are simply swamped.
;)
I wonder how bad my home server would get pounded if I were to post a link to the FireFox 1.0 download. Go ahead, pound it... It's a special occassion.