...if you already know the answer. That FAQ was all PR and didn't answer anything we didn't already know.
bnetd and fsgs aren't about piracy, they're about having 1) servers that don't suck and 2) private servers.
Blizzard's argument that it's about piracy prevention is flawed. It's about control. If you don't play on Battle.Net then you can't see their banner adds. They can't do statistical analysis of where players are roughly located. etc...
Their claim that Battle.Net emulators need to know the key-algorithm is also incorrect. There's two ways it can be done, and one is in wide practice. The first is for an emulator to just be an 'auth' proxy. It could get the cd-key from the game client, pass it to Blizzard's servers which send back the hash (presumably a one way algorithm that only Blizzard knows) to the emulator which gives it back to the client which also hashes it's key and compares it. Of course, that would require that the client makes the check, which Blizzard games don't currently do. And even if the emulator didn't proxy the key exchange the game would never get the returned hash and would disconnect. This solution leaves the client open to cracking of course.
A central authority is still the best way to authenticate game CD keys and the FPSs out there do this wonderfully. The central Id (Quake, etc) and WON (Half-Life and CS, etc) servers validate keys and deny duplicates yet a player can play on ANY server they damn well please.
Blizzard just happens to have put alot of time and effort into Battle.Net and that's what they're trying to protect. They've done a wonder job thus far and have been very attentitive to the gamer community. I love my OSX native version of StarCraft. But they shouldn't try to fool themselves, the players, and the media with their "FAQ'. In the end, it's about control.
Are you referring to./configure && make install? Wow, I never knew you could do that before. I wish I could change environment variables and install paths in the Makefiles myself.
Wait, or what if I could just type a 5 line gcc command?
I heard there's this low-level ASSembly thing-a-ma-jig so you wouldn't even have to do that.
What I _really_ wish for is a microscopic magnet so I could just twiddle the bits on the disk myself. That would rawk!.
You're so smart, I think you're really onto something here.
In other words, your sarcasm has not gone unnoticed. Of course you can customize software at compile time when building something manually. That, however, wasn't what the parent of my comment was talking about. They thought Ports were unflexible when the opposite is true.
Certainly I could. There was nothing in my responses that was the least bit fanatical. I also wasn't defending anything or being apologetic in any way. Logic was present in every response.
#1. Sure, instant boot would be great.
#2. FreeBSD is as easy a Unix as any. This is not a biased or narrow view. I know full well that Unix isn't terribly user-friendly. I don't have to put a disclaimer in every single comment to cover my ass just so I don't offend ACs such as yourself.
#3. The question itself indicated an unfamiliarity with FreeBSD's support for hardware. Since no setup for specific hardware is actually required for installs. The context of the question implied this. This type of question often comes up when users do new installs because of the visual Kernel Config (boot -c followed by 'visual' at the config prompt will get you back into it on a running system) which would LOGICally fit within this context. The inexperienced new user is often confused by this screen and proceeds to deactivate every device they think they don't need. In fact, this screen can be skipped completely. The 'conflicts' indicated at the top are not real but only those that _could_ exist if you actually _had_ every device that was listed. If you skip it (I always do), the kernel automatically probes for everything (which I believe is what was asked for?). That (like I originally said) is what GENERIC is for. There's no chance that there'd be 'no drivers for hardware' because they already exist. Removing items from this 'setup interface' is actually the opposite of #3's request.
Of course LOGIC is not perfect. I could just have misunderstood #3, but that's only human, and not not a symptom of narrow visions or fanatiscism.
#4 and #5. Too obvious.
#6 also demonstrates some misunderstandings on the part of the poster. My answer is factual.
#7. There _ARE_ several such applications. There was a company with one at BSDCon 2000 but it's name escapes me. I suppose I could go out of my way and look it up (or find the sample CD I got) but then, so could you.
Of course, I don't know that it was you, but the tone of your response would indicate that it was. That, or you're just another fanatic with a narrow vision who sees evil and conspiracy where none exist. You have erred.
If I actually read comments on many Linux stories and saw an equally misinformed comment I would respond in kind in much the same way I did this one. My goal was only to inform the uninformed, nothing more. You should learn to relax.
cvsup isn't installed by default because to build it from source requires Modula-3 and X libs, neither of which are part of FreeBSD and Modula-3 is fucking HUGE and would add upwards of 30 minutes to the world build time for Modula-3 and cvsup.
'make world' sounds scarier than it is, mostly for mythical religious reasons. It's not space hungry at all really. A full/usr/src is about 250M which you're likely to have anyway and/usr/obj (where the object files are during a make world) also gets to about 500M.
The fact that you installed binary packages is not relevant to building the world. FreeBSD is not a package based system (ala RPM, Deb, etc) and thus no portion of the OS itself is installed via a Package. 'make world' refers to rebuilding FreeBSD, not any 3rd party packages you installed so you wouldn't have to worry about them.
Freebsd.org/handbook is anything but thin on the process, and it's most CERTAINLY not out of date as it was updated to 4.4-RELEASE and 5.0-CURRENT for the recent 2nd Edition hardcopy publication (www.freebsdmall.com) handbook/makeworld.html has full step-by-step directions.
If you want to understand ports, the best source aside from the Handbook is 'man ports'. There's a man page for nearly everything in FreeBSD. You'd be surprised. Since Packages are just pre-compiled ports, they fall under the realm of the 'portupgrade' and pkg_* utilities. This is academic of course because there's no need to rebuild your packages after a make world unless you just happen to want newer versions of those packages (should new ones be available.)
3. Better setup interface (auto probe of PC hardware, setup hardware, if no drivers for hardware install modem or NIC and download drivers via cvsup and complete setup using xserver)
I don't know what you're talking about here. The GENERIC kernel, which is the one installed has support for all network cards already. A modem is just a serial device and doesn't need 'drivers'. All your typical PC hardware is also supported in GENERIC. That's why it's called 'GENERIC'.
4. One standard/exclusive window manager
This isn't a FreeBSD issue but a Unix/X one. It's the same situation on Linux.
5. One tool for window manager configuration.
If you mean to choose between wm's then this would seem to conflict with #4. If you mean to configure options for which ever wm you use, this already exists. GNOME and KDE (which are desktop environments more than window managers. GNOME runs on top of WindowMaker, Blackbox, Enlightenment, etc....), WindowMaker, etc all have their own window manager config tools.
And, like #4, this isn't a FreeBSD issue. Talk to your local window manager development team. Or hell, do it yourself.
6. One tool for driver/software tracking and installation/removals.
CVS baby (at least for the first part.) FreeBSD isn't a package based system so with the exception of 3rd party software (via Packages or the Ports Collection) What You See Is What You Get. You add and remove drivers by either recompiling your kernel or removing kernel modules that you've added. (In fact, build a very slim kernel and you can do nearly all via modules.)
As for 3rd party Packages that you've installed (Installed Ports essentially become registered Packages. In fact Packages are themselves made from Ports via 'make package' in/usr/ports/foo/bar.) You use the pkg_* tools. Ok, so it's not one single 'pkg_tool' command that does it all, but is it really that difficult to type 'pkg_delete' as opposed to 'pkg_add'?
The installer has always gone through a step-by-step installation as long as you choose the basic (or beginner, or whatever it is. I make world to upgrade and infrequently do a fresh install.)
"Frankly it sounds like you haven't tried it in a while."
Sounds more like he never really tried it in the first place. Being able to customize Ports behavior has been a feature for nearly as long as the system has existed.
He just never bothered to learn it. There's no harm there of course, but then he's not allowed to bitch and moan afterwards.
Most apps for Linux ARE NOT "Apps for Linux". That's why they'll compile. And nVidia OpenGL support is working (though not in the install yet.) See other comments under this story for details and link.
There is support for this in -CURRENT and people have successfully manually backported a patch to -STABLE. Then again, the burncd utility that's included in -STABLE works just fine for IDE burning.
"my Linux friends tell me there are much more end-user apps available [for Linux]"
That's an ignorant myth. A most there are (_literally_) a *few* more apps because of commercial software companies that sell closed source applications.
Thankfully, FreeBSD can run these as well under it's Linux ABI compatibility.
Your/. ID isn't terribly high, so I assume you've been here for a while. How is it that after dozens and dozens of BSD stories that people still don't know a damned thing about it? Unix, for the most part, is Unix. There's nothing Linux about KDE, XMMS, etc. Linux and "Open Source" are used together in sentences all the time by people who never give a moment's thought to./configure && make install and frankly it scares me.
And now you ask if LaTeX! of all things is on FreeBSD? Dude, TeX (and friends) are OLDER than Linux! So is the X Window System!
The answer to your question "is it worthwile to try FreeBSD now?" can be found by asking YOURSELF that question. Is it worthwile? Would you gain anything? Not just in performance or stability, but would you maybe learn anything in the process? Would you maybe even find that you just 'like it' better and switch completely? Is spending the time learning another OS (course, it's still Unix so as long as you don't go into it with preconceptions it'll be easy) worth any rewards you may gain?
This goes for anything, and not just FreeBSD, and not just Operating Systems and computers.
Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
If you're going to bother making the case that Linux should be written as GNU/Linux then you should also strive to make sure that when you're talking about Free Software that you don't focus on just Linux.
W2K can run older Windows apps because it's all still Win32. OSX is Unix/Carbon/Cocoa and can't just run old MacOS apps at will, hence the Classic OS boots.
A closer comparison would be how FreeBSD supports Linux binaries via a "thunking" layer -- translating Linux syscalls to BSD syscalls. Again, this is fairly easy to do since it's still the Unix API. The old Trumpet 32bit Winsock did the same thing by translating 32bit calls to 16bit ones.
Apple could probably have easily made a thunking layer that would at least run classic binaries using Mach syscalls, but drawing the windows themselves might not have been as easy to support natively.
Then again, can't LinuxPPC and friends run classic apps? Or PPC BeOS?
This IS a monopolistic move. The.tv Corporation is behind SRSPlus (www.srsplus.com) , which is a wholesale registration service for partners that resell domain registration services. It's the same idea as Tucow's OpenSRS (www.opensrs.com) service (though 1 Domain Year is a little cheaper, and the lately the API has gotten better than OpenSRS's.)
In otherwords, unless they keep SRSPlus around and don't fuck it up, they've effectively destroyed hundreds or thousands (I don't know how many SRSPlus resellers there are) of competitors.
They clearly don't gain much else other than offering.tv domains since every other domain the.tv Corp offered was also available from NetSol (Verisign). You can bet it's SRSPlus they're after.
Your original post acknowledged that MacOS apps don't "need" a second mouse. Now you've changed your mind? What gives?
As was pointed out, not only do you not NEED an external mouse to get the same functionality, but ctrl-click gives you contextual menus and XFree86 (XDarwin) lets you do add additional mappings.
He told you that if you really wanted to 'right click' that you should go fucking buy one.
There is _every_ reason to believe that other posters don't do the same, because it happens A L L T H E T I M E. It is exactly these users that the 'RTFM' attitude is for.
ls/etc | wc -l returns 67 items. That's less than my FreeBSD machine, but the latter has many.bak/.orig files any a few I've added since install. Additionally, though some files you may expect to find under MacOSX aren't there, you can create them to suit your needs (For example, tcpd, the TCP Wrapper is present, but/etc/hosts.allow is not by default.)
There's no/dev/mouse or/dev/kdb. Yes it "violates a tenet", but the mouse and keybard haven't suddently become difficult to use because of it (which you claim.)
Yes, everything above the kernel is propreitary. I don't see the connection between openness and level of integration. Carbon/Cocoa/Quartz/Aqua could be GPL and still not have a lick of integration. That was a poor choice of words on your part.
Windows hardley has CLI-GUI integration. What does that even mean? Just because you can start something with a command? Again, poor choice of words...but as someone pointed out, you _can_ open apps (or files even) from the CLI. The "open" command performs the equivalent of a double-click (or Command-O in the Finder). 'open Mail.app" opens Mail, and 'open foo.mp3' opens foo.mp3 in iTunes.
Lastly, you misuse FUD. Not only is MacOSX's Unixness just as is vaunted, but even if it weren't, the words "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" would not in anyway describe the situation. Misleading Commercial Hype maybe. But it's moot. It's perfectly Unixy.
This is a fine deal. All you (Chris) as an argument for it not being a deal was that you can get a $200 15" flatpanel. The G4 vs x86 comparison is debatable (not by myself, but by many others). An 800MHz G4 w/Altivec is nothing to sneeze at.
The high end iMac is the real deal maker. A comparable machine (DVDR/CDRW and all) w/ flat panel would run about the same price. Add the coolness facter and it's perfect.
It's not the ripoff that the Cube was, but it's in no way a bad deal at all.
"Official" FreeBSD CDs have been available for years and years, at least as far as 2.1.X (as that's the earliest I've seen) and probably earlier.
This announcement marks the first CD published by Daemon News, which took over the CD distribution after Wind River (who did 4.4 after inheriting it from BSDi (who did 4.3 and 4.2 as well I think after inheriting it from Walnut Creek CDROM (who did all of them up to 4.2))) stopped.
The CDs have always been "Official"ly mastered by Jordan Hubbard as the Release Manager. The only difference is that the only.iso's available have been for CD #1 of the 4 CD Set. Now there's an.iso for all 4 CDs.
Hopefully the majority of people know this (at least the first part), but the story title could be confusing to those who don't, or those who have limited memory capacity.
The first mechanical computer only did elementary math also.
What do you freaking expect? A holodeck? The first electronic computer couldn't render immersive 3D scenes, so don't expect miracles from the first quantom computers.
The breakthrough here is that quantom computing is no longer just theory. It's the birth of an entirely new type of computing.
You're just too used to being pampered by your Athlon XPs and Geforce3s.
Submitters: Please Please Please stop linking every word and phrase. It took me 5 tries before I found the actual page that text in the submission (above and below, etc) came from.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, after playing from a copied StarCraft CD for a month I went out and bought the retail BattleChest.
I must not have a local Piracy Recruitment Center near where I live. That or a magic sheild to protect me from the evil spies.
bnetd and fsgs aren't about piracy, they're about having 1) servers that don't suck and 2) private servers.
Blizzard's argument that it's about piracy prevention is flawed. It's about control. If you don't play on Battle.Net then you can't see their banner adds. They can't do statistical analysis of where players are roughly located. etc...
Their claim that Battle.Net emulators need to know the key-algorithm is also incorrect. There's two ways it can be done, and one is in wide practice. The first is for an emulator to just be an 'auth' proxy. It could get the cd-key from the game client, pass it to Blizzard's servers which send back the hash (presumably a one way algorithm that only Blizzard knows) to the emulator which gives it back to the client which also hashes it's key and compares it. Of course, that would require that the client makes the check, which Blizzard games don't currently do. And even if the emulator didn't proxy the key exchange the game would never get the returned hash and would disconnect. This solution leaves the client open to cracking of course.
A central authority is still the best way to authenticate game CD keys and the FPSs out there do this wonderfully. The central Id (Quake, etc) and WON (Half-Life and CS, etc) servers validate keys and deny duplicates yet a player can play on ANY server they damn well please.
Blizzard just happens to have put alot of time and effort into Battle.Net and that's what they're trying to protect. They've done a wonder job thus far and have been very attentitive to the gamer community. I love my OSX native version of StarCraft. But they shouldn't try to fool themselves, the players, and the media with their "FAQ'. In the end, it's about control.
Are you referring to ./configure && make install? Wow, I never knew you could do that before. I wish I could change environment variables and install paths in the Makefiles myself.
Wait, or what if I could just type a 5 line gcc command?
I heard there's this low-level ASSembly thing-a-ma-jig so you wouldn't even have to do that.
What I _really_ wish for is a microscopic magnet so I could just twiddle the bits on the disk myself. That would rawk!.
You're so smart, I think you're really onto something here.
In other words, your sarcasm has not gone unnoticed. Of course you can customize software at compile time when building something manually. That, however, wasn't what the parent of my comment was talking about. They thought Ports were unflexible when the opposite is true.
Certainly I could. There was nothing in my responses that was the least bit fanatical. I also wasn't defending anything or being apologetic in any way. Logic was present in every response.
#1. Sure, instant boot would be great.
#2. FreeBSD is as easy a Unix as any. This is not a biased or narrow view. I know full well that Unix isn't terribly user-friendly. I don't have to put a disclaimer in every single comment to cover my ass just so I don't offend ACs such as yourself.
#3. The question itself indicated an unfamiliarity with FreeBSD's support for hardware. Since no setup for specific hardware is actually required for installs. The context of the question implied this. This type of question often comes up when users do new installs because of the visual Kernel Config (boot -c followed by 'visual' at the config prompt will get you back into it on a running system) which would LOGICally fit within this context. The inexperienced new user is often confused by this screen and proceeds to deactivate every device they think they don't need. In fact, this screen can be skipped completely. The 'conflicts' indicated at the top are not real but only those that _could_ exist if you actually _had_ every device that was listed. If you skip it (I always do), the kernel automatically probes for everything (which I believe is what was asked for?). That (like I originally said) is what GENERIC is for. There's no chance that there'd be 'no drivers for hardware' because they already exist. Removing items from this 'setup interface' is actually the opposite of #3's request.
Of course LOGIC is not perfect. I could just have misunderstood #3, but that's only human, and not not a symptom of narrow visions or fanatiscism.
#4 and #5. Too obvious.
#6 also demonstrates some misunderstandings on the part of the poster. My answer is factual.
#7. There _ARE_ several such applications. There was a company with one at BSDCon 2000 but it's name escapes me. I suppose I could go out of my way and look it up (or find the sample CD I got) but then, so could you.
Of course, I don't know that it was you, but the tone of your response would indicate that it was. That, or you're just another fanatic with a narrow vision who sees evil and conspiracy where none exist. You have erred.
If I actually read comments on many Linux stories and saw an equally misinformed comment I would respond in kind in much the same way I did this one. My goal was only to inform the uninformed, nothing more. You should learn to relax.
cvsup isn't installed by default because to build it from source requires Modula-3 and X libs, neither of which are part of FreeBSD and Modula-3 is fucking HUGE and would add upwards of 30 minutes to the world build time for Modula-3 and cvsup.
/usr/src is about 250M which you're likely to have anyway and /usr/obj (where the object files are during a make world) also gets to about 500M.
'make world' sounds scarier than it is, mostly for mythical religious reasons. It's not space hungry at all really. A full
The fact that you installed binary packages is not relevant to building the world. FreeBSD is not a package based system (ala RPM, Deb, etc) and thus no portion of the OS itself is installed via a Package. 'make world' refers to rebuilding FreeBSD, not any 3rd party packages you installed so you wouldn't have to worry about them.
Freebsd.org/handbook is anything but thin on the process, and it's most CERTAINLY not out of date as it was updated to 4.4-RELEASE and 5.0-CURRENT for the recent 2nd Edition hardcopy publication (www.freebsdmall.com) handbook/makeworld.html has full step-by-step directions.
If you want to understand ports, the best source aside from the Handbook is 'man ports'. There's a man page for nearly everything in FreeBSD. You'd be surprised. Since Packages are just pre-compiled ports, they fall under the realm of the 'portupgrade' and pkg_* utilities. This is academic of course because there's no need to rebuild your packages after a make world unless you just happen to want newer versions of those packages (should new ones be available.)
1. Fast boot ups
/usr/ports/foo/bar.) You use the pkg_* tools. Ok, so it's not one single 'pkg_tool' command that does it all, but is it really that difficult to type 'pkg_delete' as opposed to 'pkg_add'?
Boots as fast as Linux and faster than Windows.
2. Ease of use
It's as easy to use as any Unix. Get over it.
3. Better setup interface (auto probe of PC hardware, setup hardware, if no drivers for hardware install modem or NIC and download drivers via cvsup and complete setup using xserver)
I don't know what you're talking about here. The GENERIC kernel, which is the one installed has support for all network cards already. A modem is just a serial device and doesn't need 'drivers'. All your typical PC hardware is also supported in GENERIC. That's why it's called 'GENERIC'.
4. One standard/exclusive window manager
This isn't a FreeBSD issue but a Unix/X one. It's the same situation on Linux.
5. One tool for window manager configuration.
If you mean to choose between wm's then this would seem to conflict with #4. If you mean to configure options for which ever wm you use, this already exists. GNOME and KDE (which are desktop environments more than window managers. GNOME runs on top of WindowMaker, Blackbox, Enlightenment, etc....), WindowMaker, etc all have their own window manager config tools.
And, like #4, this isn't a FreeBSD issue. Talk to your local window manager development team. Or hell, do it yourself.
6. One tool for driver/software tracking and installation/removals.
CVS baby (at least for the first part.) FreeBSD isn't a package based system so with the exception of 3rd party software (via Packages or the Ports Collection) What You See Is What You Get. You add and remove drivers by either recompiling your kernel or removing kernel modules that you've added. (In fact, build a very slim kernel and you can do nearly all via modules.)
As for 3rd party Packages that you've installed (Installed Ports essentially become registered Packages. In fact Packages are themselves made from Ports via 'make package' in
7. One tool for system administration
Several such tools exist. Myself, I like vi(m).
The installer has always gone through a step-by-step installation as long as you choose the basic (or beginner, or whatever it is. I make world to upgrade and infrequently do a fresh install.)
"Frankly it sounds like you haven't tried it in a while."
Sounds more like he never really tried it in the first place. Being able to customize Ports behavior has been a feature for nearly as long as the system has existed.
He just never bothered to learn it. There's no harm there of course, but then he's not allowed to bitch and moan afterwards.
Most apps for Linux ARE NOT "Apps for Linux". That's why they'll compile. And nVidia OpenGL support is working (though not in the install yet.) See other comments under this story for details and link.
There is support for this in -CURRENT and people have successfully manually backported a patch to -STABLE. Then again, the burncd utility that's included in -STABLE works just fine for IDE burning.
"my Linux friends tell me there are much more end-user apps available [for Linux]"
That's an ignorant myth. A most there are (_literally_) a *few* more apps because of commercial software companies that sell closed source applications.
Thankfully, FreeBSD can run these as well under it's Linux ABI compatibility.
Your /. ID isn't terribly high, so I assume you've been here for a while. How is it that after dozens and dozens of BSD stories that people still don't know a damned thing about it? Unix, for the most part, is Unix. There's nothing Linux about KDE, XMMS, etc. Linux and "Open Source" are used together in sentences all the time by people who never give a moment's thought to ./configure && make install and frankly it scares me.
And now you ask if LaTeX! of all things is on FreeBSD? Dude, TeX (and friends) are OLDER than Linux! So is the X Window System!
The answer to your question "is it worthwile to try FreeBSD now?" can be found by asking YOURSELF that question. Is it worthwile? Would you gain anything? Not just in performance or stability, but would you maybe learn anything in the process? Would you maybe even find that you just 'like it' better and switch completely? Is spending the time learning another OS (course, it's still Unix so as long as you don't go into it with preconceptions it'll be easy) worth any rewards you may gain?
This goes for anything, and not just FreeBSD, and not just Operating Systems and computers.
Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
If you're going to bother making the case that Linux should be written as GNU/Linux then you should also strive to make sure that when you're talking about Free Software that you don't focus on just Linux.
W2K can run older Windows apps because it's all still Win32. OSX is Unix/Carbon/Cocoa and can't just run old MacOS apps at will, hence the Classic OS boots.
A closer comparison would be how FreeBSD supports Linux binaries via a "thunking" layer -- translating Linux syscalls to BSD syscalls. Again, this is fairly easy to do since it's still the Unix API. The old Trumpet 32bit Winsock did the same thing by translating 32bit calls to 16bit ones.
Apple could probably have easily made a thunking layer that would at least run classic binaries using Mach syscalls, but drawing the windows themselves might not have been as easy to support natively.
Then again, can't LinuxPPC and friends run classic apps? Or PPC BeOS?
both of you 'man sudoers'. You can override the password requirement with the 'NOPASSWD' option.
This IS a monopolistic move. The .tv Corporation is behind SRSPlus (www.srsplus.com) , which is a wholesale registration service for partners that resell domain registration services. It's the same idea as Tucow's OpenSRS (www.opensrs.com) service (though 1 Domain Year is a little cheaper, and the lately the API has gotten better than OpenSRS's.)
.tv domains since every other domain the .tv Corp offered was also available from NetSol (Verisign). You can bet it's SRSPlus they're after.
In otherwords, unless they keep SRSPlus around and don't fuck it up, they've effectively destroyed hundreds or thousands (I don't know how many SRSPlus resellers there are) of competitors.
They clearly don't gain much else other than offering
Your original post acknowledged that MacOS apps don't "need" a second mouse. Now you've changed your mind? What gives?
As was pointed out, not only do you not NEED an external mouse to get the same functionality, but ctrl-click gives you contextual menus and XFree86 (XDarwin) lets you do add additional mappings.
He told you that if you really wanted to 'right click' that you should go fucking buy one.
There is _every_ reason to believe that other posters don't do the same, because it happens A L L T H E T I M E. It is exactly these users that the 'RTFM' attitude is for.
I don't know what /etc you're looking at:
/etc | wc -l returns 67 items. That's less than my FreeBSD machine, but the latter has many .bak/.orig files any a few I've added since install. Additionally, though some files you may expect to find under MacOSX aren't there, you can create them to suit your needs (For example, tcpd, the TCP Wrapper is present, but /etc/hosts.allow is not by default.)
/dev/mouse or /dev/kdb. Yes it "violates a tenet", but the mouse and keybard haven't suddently become difficult to use because of it (which you claim.)
ls
There's no
Yes, everything above the kernel is propreitary. I don't see the connection between openness and level of integration. Carbon/Cocoa/Quartz/Aqua could be GPL and still not have a lick of integration. That was a poor choice of words on your part.
Windows hardley has CLI-GUI integration. What does that even mean? Just because you can start something with a command? Again, poor choice of words...but as someone pointed out, you _can_ open apps (or files even) from the CLI. The "open" command performs the equivalent of a double-click (or Command-O in the Finder). 'open Mail.app" opens Mail, and 'open foo.mp3' opens foo.mp3 in iTunes.
Lastly, you misuse FUD. Not only is MacOSX's Unixness just as is vaunted, but even if it weren't, the words "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" would not in anyway describe the situation. Misleading Commercial Hype maybe. But it's moot. It's perfectly Unixy.
This is a fine deal. All you (Chris) as an argument for it not being a deal was that you can get a $200 15" flatpanel. The G4 vs x86 comparison is debatable (not by myself, but by many others). An 800MHz G4 w/Altivec is nothing to sneeze at.
The high end iMac is the real deal maker. A comparable machine (DVDR/CDRW and all) w/ flat panel would run about the same price. Add the coolness facter and it's perfect.
It's not the ripoff that the Cube was, but it's in no way a bad deal at all.
Just donate $5 after your ftp install or .iso download.
"Official" FreeBSD CDs have been available for years and years, at least as far as 2.1.X (as that's the earliest I've seen) and probably earlier.
.iso's available have been for CD #1 of the 4 CD Set. Now there's an .iso for all 4 CDs.
This announcement marks the first CD published by Daemon News, which took over the CD distribution after Wind River (who did 4.4 after inheriting it from BSDi (who did 4.3 and 4.2 as well I think after inheriting it from Walnut Creek CDROM (who did all of them up to 4.2))) stopped.
The CDs have always been "Official"ly mastered by Jordan Hubbard as the Release Manager. The only difference is that the only
Hopefully the majority of people know this (at least the first part), but the story title could be confusing to those who don't, or those who have limited memory capacity.
The first mechanical computer only did elementary math also.
What do you freaking expect? A holodeck? The first electronic computer couldn't render immersive 3D scenes, so don't expect miracles from the first quantom computers.
The breakthrough here is that quantom computing is no longer just theory. It's the birth of an entirely new type of computing.
You're just too used to being pampered by your Athlon XPs and Geforce3s.
He's not saying that makes it ok. He's saying it's not a "loss" if there was no chance of there being a sale in the first place.
Submitters: Please Please Please stop linking every word and phrase. It took me 5 tries before I found the actual page that text in the submission (above and below, etc) came from.