Re:Gotta wonder how IBM feels about this...
on
Lenovo To Shun Linux
·
· Score: 1
IBM never seriously pushed Linux on their desktop computers. There was one Linux ThinkPad model (cancelled several years ago, IIRC), and no desktops. Sure, you could pay their consultants to support Linux, but the PC group wasn't pushing it. It's pretty clear that IBM felt Linux was only useful for servers and workstations.
I disagree. IBM has certified Linux on their workstations, servers, and laptops for a long time now. Visit www.ibm.com/linux to see their Linux "portal". Under "Products and services - Hardware" click on "Linux on personal systems". You'll get a table of some laptop systems that are certified for Red Hat, SUSE, Novell, and TurboLinux.
The only thing I wish IBM had done differently was offer a series of ThinkPad models that came pre-installed with Linux. You can already get them pre-installed with Windows, but pre-installing them with one of the certified Linux distros would have made it much more visible. All that changed when IBM sold their desktop/laptop business to Lenovo, of course.
Final nail in the coffin for me is the dropping of the touchstick in favour of the unusable touchpad mouse. Big mistake. Saw them at a Lenovo roadshow the other week, awful.
Actually, it looks like just the "3000" series (for home/personal use) doesn't use the TrackPoint (aka "touchstick"). The ThinkPad professional series (for work/business use... what you normally think of as a ThinkPad) still have the TrackPoint.
Related to that, I would love to see a version of Slashdot for mobile web devices. I have a PSP, and I often check out news web sites on it. There is a way to turn on low bandwidth & simple design (thanks, Rob!) but I'd like to have a way to turn off the sidebar. I don't mind downloading the sidebar html if there is a stylesheet that turns off the sidebar when viewing on a mobile web device.
Does Slashdot plan to make a simplified stylesheet so the front page is rendered entirely across the viewing area? I don't even care if the next-level pages are mobile-enabled, just the front page so I can check out the headlines and summaries. To see what I mean, compare FreeDOS web site with the low bandwidth version. It's so much easier to read the low bandwidth version on a PSP browser.
I second this idea. I've had a ton of good experiences with the ThinkPad. Recently (March 2006) my wife decided it was time to upgrade her laptop. She was unsure what kind of system to get, but eventually decided she'd rather have another ThinkPad. We retired her very old A21e, and purchased a new ThinkPad T43. And yes, she asked me to put Linux on it. Of course, we looked at the different T43 models, and checked that the system we were buying had support under Linux. We chose Intel GMA 900 graphics, and the integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG network adapter. It runs great with Fedora Core 5, right "out of the box".
I also had the opportunity to test-drive a ThinkPad T60 for a month. Yes, I ran Linux on it. It was great - and my next laptop upgrade will be a ThinkPad. (Currently, I'm still running a ThinkPad R40 with Fedora Core 5.)
Still, if you're looking for a more specific suggestion, I'd suggest looking closely at the configuration of the laptop. Their online store makes this easy. I recommend getting a ThinkPad that uses the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 video (which is natively supported by x.org). So far, ipw3945-0.0.74-4.rhfc5.at seems to provide stable wireless networking, so I guess the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG integrated wireless is okay. I also have had good luck with the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG.
Alas, downloading the AVI from CoralCache doesn't really help you. When you grab the AVI via the cache, it sends you to the original site (one presumes they don't cache movie files):
To add insult to injury, if your name even remotely resembles the name of a known or suspected "evildoer," you get flagged. My entire family now suffers an extra 45 minutes of screening at the airport, every single time we fly, because my dad's name matches that of some IRA gunman who was last active in the early 80's.
I have the same problem when I fly, but I didn't think until now that my name might be similar to someone on an IRA watchlist.
The best example is when I flew to the UK last year around Christmastime. When I tried to do express check-in at the NorthWest counter, the computer told me I had to see an agent in person. The guy taps my passport number into his terminal, says "Oh!" (never a good sign) and makes a phone call. I can only hear his side of the conversation, but I'm not really paying attention until ten minutes later when I hear the phrase "... he's attempting to use an American passport." Not something you want to hear in an airport. That's when I moved the poinsettia out of the way so I could see and hear him better. I'm thinking, "Hey, maybe I'll spend Christmas in a 6'x6' chain link cell in Guantanamo... at least it's warm!" Five minutes after that, he says I've been cleared (?) and gives me my passport and ticket. The only comment he gave me was "I imagine this happens to you all the time." Never found out why I was flagged.
Huh? This is the same type of bull that makes me hate IE only websites. At least most IE-only problems can be attributed to stupidity instead of malice. If someone tried to deliberately hinder my access to their site because I use Firefox, I'd likely never visit the site again.
Just curious... but would this be more palatable if the site were to advocate having your pages determine if IE were visiting your site, then use a special stylesheet that was crafted to make rendering look just slightly borked (on IE)? I know Microsoft tried this approach on their MSN sites... making the site look slightly off if you used Opera7, so people assumed Opera7 had buggy rendering.
I'm not advocating that, but the subtle approach ("hey, this site does look so good in IE, I'll switch to Firefox") sometimes has different effects than a blatant "you are running IE, switch to Firefox" message.
no offence, but Scheme is not an easy language for your average teenager to pick up.
Yes, I know Scheme isn't the easiest to pick up. That's why I had originally envisioned a "visual" programming interface for GNU Robots, one where you could create a robot program by dropping into place icons that represent the robot's actions. There would be one icon to tell the robot to move forward, another to have him turn to the left or right, and another to have him pick up things or fire his little gun.
A visual programming interface would help teach/reinforce the concepts of programming without making you get into the dirty details. As you become more comfortable with programming concepts, you can look at the generated Scheme source code and modify it on your own. We were planning to use tail-recursion, so it shouldn't have been too difficult to pick up, if you know what your robot is already supposed to do (and you should, since you created the robot.)
The project has been idle for a while now, but GNU Robots is a great way to introduce kids to the basic of programming. You have a little robot that you can set loose in a maze to explore, pick up prizes, eat energy pellets, and shoot little baddies. To "teach" your robot what to do, you have to write a program in Scheme. It doesn't need to be a difficult program - and we were working on a GUI-environment where you could use "logic blocks" to "build" a program (for example, a block for "move forward" could be wired to another block for "scan the space in front of me".)
Disclaimer: I am the original author of this program, although I haven't worked on it since 2000.
This does bring up a possible new (future) feature for slash - allow logged-in users to specify their own CSS URL, to be served instead of the standards.
Yes, that would be a good compromise (only let logged-in users specify their own CSS.) You could even make it something that only subscribers are able to do. I'd probably pay $$ just for that.:-)
And since the stylesheet would be defined as part of my Slashdot account, and not passed in as part of the URL, I would imagine there's very little opportunity for abuse or cross-site attacks.
Entries should show as at least the index, but ideally a few other pages to see how their design might look showing other data formats. I really think Slashdot has 4 "major" pages: The Index, The Article, The Comments, and The User. I'm not saying you need to do all four, but the winning design needs to translate well to every data type on the site. The more guidance you give us, the more likely you are to win.
CmdrTaco: I'm not bitching, but just an idle comment - it would be easier for us web designers to come up with new designs if you let us specify our own CSS. For example: css=http://www.example.com/myslashdot.css. Then we can just post our own CSS work on our own site, and have the Slashdot page reference our external CSS. No matter if we are on The Index, The Article, The Comments, The User, or one of the other pages in Slashdot.
I guess I'm not looking for this change right now as I don't have the free time to participate in this redesign contest, but it would be good for considering future redesigns.
I recently (December) purchased a Thinkpad X40. The number one reason I chose to do so is the fact that 100% of the components in it were supported by Linux. There aren't any mysterious, undocumented revisions with different components. Everything -- and I mean everything -- works perfectly with my laptop, which is saying a lot. As far as I can tell, the same holds with all of the other laptops in the Thinkpad line, with the exception that some of the laptops have ATI video cards that require proprietary drivers to get full acceleration. This holds for the laptops released after the Thinkpad line was purchased by Lenovo as well.
Recently (March 2006) my wife decided it was time to upgrade her laptop. She was unsure what kind of system to get, but eventually decided she'd rather have another ThinkPad. We retired her very old A21e, and purchased a new ThinkPad T43. And yes, she asked me to put Linux on it. Of course, we looked at the different T43 models, and checked that the system we were buying had support under Linux. We chose Intel GMA 900 graphics, and the integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG network adapter. It runs great with Fedora Core 5, right "out of the box".
I'm going to wait and see what other customers have to say. That said if I were in the market for a laptop right now I'd heavily consider Lenovo because Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, et al have all already proven themselves to be inferior products.
IBM and Lenovo are still tight business partners. For example, at the end of March, I met with my IBM sales rep to review projects coming up over the next 12 months. As an aside, half-jokingly, I mentioned in that timeframe I'd also buy a new laptop... and if he knew of any new ThinkPads coming out, let me know. Heh heh.
The next day I got a call from a Lenovo rep, who had spoken with my IBM rep. She said she heard I was interested in Lenovo Thinkpads, and would I like to test-drive a new model that recently came out? Hell, yes.
I've been running a Thinkpad T60 laptop since the start of April. Of course, I'm running Linux on it. It's a great laptop. Titanium body, magnesium-allow cover, integrated wireless,... It's even Intel Core Duo! At the end of the month, it's going to be hard to go back to my Thinkpad R40 (ABS plastic body & cover, single-core CPU, etc.)
Still, if you're waiting to see what other customers have to say, I'd suggest getting a model that uses the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 video (which is natively supported by x.org). So far, ipw3945-0.0.74-4.rhfc5.at seems to provide stable wireless networking, so I guess the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG integrated wireless is okay.
This is cool, I like it, but I want to dual boot on the Mac Mini; and by dual boot I mean like I have it now on my old iBook -- OS X and Linux. I don't want Windows on it. So, my question, when you boot holding down the 'option' key on the Mac can you make it so you'll have the option of OS X or Linux.. ?
I've played with Boot Camp, but haven't done much with it. But from what I understand by reading the wiki, you can create a dual-boot MacOSX/Linux system. However, the BootCamp Assistant seems (inferred by TFA) to prefer you have one partition per operating system on the disk space you set up. I don't understand why, though (when I booted FreeDOS, then ran FDISK, it appeared as though the presented "hard drive" had no partitions, suggesting you could create your own partitions.)
If you want to be safe, I'd go ahead and follow the usual instructions with BootCamp Assistant, create a single Linux partition (no swap), and create a swap file in that partition.
At least, I infer that from TFA. As I said, when I experimented with it, it looked like you could create partitions as you would on any PC, when you booted into the "Windows" area (faked BIOS.)
I'll try this on the iMac I have at work in the next week... see my web site for updates.
All this app does is partition the disk, and burn a CD with the drivers that Windows needs to use Apple's hardware. If you want to run Linux, you're still on your own.
Not as bad as you think, though. I have an Intel iMac, and I was able to download and install the Boot Camp beta. Yes, it really is easy. Clearly, it provides an emulated BIOS for the hosted operating system. They intend for you to install Windows XP SP2 in here, but there's no reason you can't install something else.
Like FreeDOS, for example. No, that's not a faked photograph - it really is FreeDOS booted natively on an iMac!
Linux will run just happily under Boot Camp, too. At least, I booted the Fedora Core 5 installer, and it went into graphics mode ("vesa") just fine. I can provide another cell phone photo on that, if you need it. I intend to burn a single-disc DVD installer for FC5, and install on the 5GB space I carved out for myself. I'll definitely post photos to my web site when I've done it.
It is the equivalent of looking at a house from a public vantage point to see if any windows are open. Although such an action is suspicious (the person may next try to get in through a window), it certainly isn't illegal, at least in the United States. SANS seems to be overreacting.
Actually, I think port-scanning is a wee bit closer to turning the doorknobs on all exterior doors (but not opening them and going through), pushing the windowsills, and knocking on the walls looking for hidden doors. Grey-hat activity, probably not illegal - but if the cops saw you doing that to a stranger's, they'd probably have a good reason to ask what the hell you were doing.
Analogies between computers and the physical world are kind of hard.... aren't they?
Since I was not in the room with you when you typed that, I don't know if you meant "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... yay!" or "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... boo!" For any who are interested: it's a ThinkPad, by Lenovo. And the ThinkPad is a good, solid, stable laptop - I have one myself - and supports Linux very well. And the X-series offers a tablet version, which also supports Linux.
Since this is a Linux-friendly group, I will assume you meant "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... yay!"
I swear, the next time a manager tells me that I need to leverage my win-win situation to think outside the box synergisticly, I'm going to mail the CEO the christmas party pictures I took...it graphically proves that our admin used to be a gymnast...
I think you need to send the photos to me. You know, for safekeeping... in case something ever happens to you....:-)
Slashdot Mirror
IBM never seriously pushed Linux on their desktop computers. There was one Linux ThinkPad model (cancelled several years ago, IIRC), and no desktops. Sure, you could pay their consultants to support Linux, but the PC group wasn't pushing it. It's pretty clear that IBM felt Linux was only useful for servers and workstations.
I disagree. IBM has certified Linux on their workstations, servers, and laptops for a long time now. Visit www.ibm.com/linux to see their Linux "portal". Under "Products and services - Hardware" click on "Linux on personal systems". You'll get a table of some laptop systems that are certified for Red Hat, SUSE, Novell, and TurboLinux.
The only thing I wish IBM had done differently was offer a series of ThinkPad models that came pre-installed with Linux. You can already get them pre-installed with Windows, but pre-installing them with one of the certified Linux distros would have made it much more visible. All that changed when IBM sold their desktop/laptop business to Lenovo, of course.
Final nail in the coffin for me is the dropping of the touchstick in favour of the unusable touchpad mouse. Big mistake. Saw them at a Lenovo roadshow the other week, awful.
Actually, it looks like just the "3000" series (for home/personal use) doesn't use the TrackPoint (aka "touchstick"). The ThinkPad professional series (for work/business use ... what you normally think of as a ThinkPad) still have the TrackPoint.
What, no screenshots?
Related to that, I would love to see a version of Slashdot for mobile web devices. I have a PSP, and I often check out news web sites on it. There is a way to turn on low bandwidth & simple design (thanks, Rob!) but I'd like to have a way to turn off the sidebar. I don't mind downloading the sidebar html if there is a stylesheet that turns off the sidebar when viewing on a mobile web device.
Does Slashdot plan to make a simplified stylesheet so the front page is rendered entirely across the viewing area? I don't even care if the next-level pages are mobile-enabled, just the front page so I can check out the headlines and summaries. To see what I mean, compare FreeDOS web site with the low bandwidth version. It's so much easier to read the low bandwidth version on a PSP browser.
h4x0r: !f j0o c4N r34D f15, jo0 n33d 2 g37 L41d.
I don't suppose you have the A21e and want to get rid of it cheap? It would look nice next to my A21p :)
Sorry, but I re-installed it with Fedora Core and gave it to my wife's cousin so she could do her email.
Just get a thinkpad
I second this idea. I've had a ton of good experiences with the ThinkPad. Recently (March 2006) my wife decided it was time to upgrade her laptop. She was unsure what kind of system to get, but eventually decided she'd rather have another ThinkPad. We retired her very old A21e, and purchased a new ThinkPad T43. And yes, she asked me to put Linux on it. Of course, we looked at the different T43 models, and checked that the system we were buying had support under Linux. We chose Intel GMA 900 graphics, and the integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG network adapter. It runs great with Fedora Core 5, right "out of the box".
I also had the opportunity to test-drive a ThinkPad T60 for a month. Yes, I ran Linux on it. It was great - and my next laptop upgrade will be a ThinkPad. (Currently, I'm still running a ThinkPad R40 with Fedora Core 5.)
Still, if you're looking for a more specific suggestion, I'd suggest looking closely at the configuration of the laptop. Their online store makes this easy. I recommend getting a ThinkPad that uses the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 video (which is natively supported by x.org). So far, ipw3945-0.0.74-4.rhfc5.at seems to provide stable wireless networking, so I guess the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG integrated wireless is okay. I also have had good luck with the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG.
The 'nunchuck' attachment for the Wii will also have an accelerometer inside it.
With an accelerometer, the Wii 'nunchuck' will know when I've thrown my controller to the ground when I get too frustrated with the final boss battle.
Alas, downloading the AVI from CoralCache doesn't really help you. When you grab the AVI via the cache, it sends you to the original site (one presumes they don't cache movie files):
Maybe it would help if I posted the link to Google video's copy. I think it's the same.
To add insult to injury, if your name even remotely resembles the name of a known or suspected "evildoer," you get flagged. My entire family now suffers an extra 45 minutes of screening at the airport, every single time we fly, because my dad's name matches that of some IRA gunman who was last active in the early 80's.
I have the same problem when I fly, but I didn't think until now that my name might be similar to someone on an IRA watchlist.
The best example is when I flew to the UK last year around Christmastime. When I tried to do express check-in at the NorthWest counter, the computer told me I had to see an agent in person. The guy taps my passport number into his terminal, says "Oh!" (never a good sign) and makes a phone call. I can only hear his side of the conversation, but I'm not really paying attention until ten minutes later when I hear the phrase "... he's attempting to use an American passport." Not something you want to hear in an airport. That's when I moved the poinsettia out of the way so I could see and hear him better. I'm thinking, "Hey, maybe I'll spend Christmas in a 6'x6' chain link cell in Guantanamo ... at least it's warm!" Five minutes after that, he says I've been cleared (?) and gives me my passport and ticket. The only comment he gave me was "I imagine this happens to you all the time." Never found out why I was flagged.
Yes, this stuff really does happen.
Huh? This is the same type of bull that makes me hate IE only websites. At least most IE-only problems can be attributed to stupidity instead of malice. If someone tried to deliberately hinder my access to their site because I use Firefox, I'd likely never visit the site again.
Just curious ... but would this be more palatable if the site were to advocate having your pages determine if IE were visiting your site, then use a special stylesheet that was crafted to make rendering look just slightly borked (on IE)? I know Microsoft tried this approach on their MSN sites ... making the site look slightly off if you used Opera7, so people assumed Opera7 had buggy rendering.
I'm not advocating that, but the subtle approach ("hey, this site does look so good in IE, I'll switch to Firefox") sometimes has different effects than a blatant "you are running IE, switch to Firefox" message.
no offence, but Scheme is not an easy language for your average teenager to pick up.
Yes, I know Scheme isn't the easiest to pick up. That's why I had originally envisioned a "visual" programming interface for GNU Robots, one where you could create a robot program by dropping into place icons that represent the robot's actions. There would be one icon to tell the robot to move forward, another to have him turn to the left or right, and another to have him pick up things or fire his little gun.
A visual programming interface would help teach/reinforce the concepts of programming without making you get into the dirty details. As you become more comfortable with programming concepts, you can look at the generated Scheme source code and modify it on your own. We were planning to use tail-recursion, so it shouldn't have been too difficult to pick up, if you know what your robot is already supposed to do (and you should, since you created the robot.)
The project has been idle for a while now, but GNU Robots is a great way to introduce kids to the basic of programming. You have a little robot that you can set loose in a maze to explore, pick up prizes, eat energy pellets, and shoot little baddies. To "teach" your robot what to do, you have to write a program in Scheme. It doesn't need to be a difficult program - and we were working on a GUI-environment where you could use "logic blocks" to "build" a program (for example, a block for "move forward" could be wired to another block for "scan the space in front of me".)
Disclaimer: I am the original author of this program, although I haven't worked on it since 2000.
This does bring up a possible new (future) feature for slash - allow logged-in users to specify their own CSS URL, to be served instead of the standards.
Yes, that would be a good compromise (only let logged-in users specify their own CSS.) You could even make it something that only subscribers are able to do. I'd probably pay $$ just for that. :-)
And since the stylesheet would be defined as part of my Slashdot account, and not passed in as part of the URL, I would imagine there's very little opportunity for abuse or cross-site attacks.
Is there a link, by any chance, that would display a summary of each icon; a caption if you will? (Or at least just the images)
You can view all topics here: http://slashdot.org/topics.shtml
Entries should show as at least the index, but ideally a few other pages to see how their design might look showing other data formats. I really think Slashdot has 4 "major" pages: The Index, The Article, The Comments, and The User. I'm not saying you need to do all four, but the winning design needs to translate well to every data type on the site. The more guidance you give us, the more likely you are to win.
CmdrTaco: I'm not bitching, but just an idle comment - it would be easier for us web designers to come up with new designs if you let us specify our own CSS. For example: css=http://www.example.com/myslashdot.css. Then we can just post our own CSS work on our own site, and have the Slashdot page reference our external CSS. No matter if we are on The Index, The Article, The Comments, The User, or one of the other pages in Slashdot.
I guess I'm not looking for this change right now as I don't have the free time to participate in this redesign contest, but it would be good for considering future redesigns.
I recently (December) purchased a Thinkpad X40. The number one reason I chose to do so is the fact that 100% of the components in it were supported by Linux. There aren't any mysterious, undocumented revisions with different components. Everything -- and I mean everything -- works perfectly with my laptop, which is saying a lot. As far as I can tell, the same holds with all of the other laptops in the Thinkpad line, with the exception that some of the laptops have ATI video cards that require proprietary drivers to get full acceleration. This holds for the laptops released after the Thinkpad line was purchased by Lenovo as well.
Recently (March 2006) my wife decided it was time to upgrade her laptop. She was unsure what kind of system to get, but eventually decided she'd rather have another ThinkPad. We retired her very old A21e, and purchased a new ThinkPad T43. And yes, she asked me to put Linux on it. Of course, we looked at the different T43 models, and checked that the system we were buying had support under Linux. We chose Intel GMA 900 graphics, and the integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG network adapter. It runs great with Fedora Core 5, right "out of the box".
I'm going to wait and see what other customers have to say. That said if I were in the market for a laptop right now I'd heavily consider Lenovo because Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, et al have all already proven themselves to be inferior products.
IBM and Lenovo are still tight business partners. For example, at the end of March, I met with my IBM sales rep to review projects coming up over the next 12 months. As an aside, half-jokingly, I mentioned in that timeframe I'd also buy a new laptop ... and if he knew of any new ThinkPads coming out, let me know. Heh heh.
The next day I got a call from a Lenovo rep, who had spoken with my IBM rep. She said she heard I was interested in Lenovo Thinkpads, and would I like to test-drive a new model that recently came out? Hell, yes.
I've been running a Thinkpad T60 laptop since the start of April. Of course, I'm running Linux on it. It's a great laptop. Titanium body, magnesium-allow cover, integrated wireless, ... It's even Intel Core Duo! At the end of the month, it's going to be hard to go back to my Thinkpad R40 (ABS plastic body & cover, single-core CPU, etc.)
Still, if you're waiting to see what other customers have to say, I'd suggest getting a model that uses the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 video (which is natively supported by x.org). So far, ipw3945-0.0.74-4.rhfc5.at seems to provide stable wireless networking, so I guess the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG integrated wireless is okay.
This is cool, I like it, but I want to dual boot on the Mac Mini; and by dual boot I mean like I have it now on my old iBook -- OS X and Linux. I don't want Windows on it. So, my question, when you boot holding down the 'option' key on the Mac can you make it so you'll have the option of OS X or Linux .. ?
I've played with Boot Camp, but haven't done much with it. But from what I understand by reading the wiki, you can create a dual-boot MacOSX/Linux system. However, the BootCamp Assistant seems (inferred by TFA) to prefer you have one partition per operating system on the disk space you set up. I don't understand why, though (when I booted FreeDOS, then ran FDISK, it appeared as though the presented "hard drive" had no partitions, suggesting you could create your own partitions.)
If you want to be safe, I'd go ahead and follow the usual instructions with BootCamp Assistant, create a single Linux partition (no swap), and create a swap file in that partition.
At least, I infer that from TFA. As I said, when I experimented with it, it looked like you could create partitions as you would on any PC, when you booted into the "Windows" area (faked BIOS.)
I'll try this on the iMac I have at work in the next week ... see my web site for updates.
All this app does is partition the disk, and burn a CD with the drivers that Windows needs to use Apple's hardware. If you want to run Linux, you're still on your own.
Not as bad as you think, though. I have an Intel iMac, and I was able to download and install the Boot Camp beta. Yes, it really is easy. Clearly, it provides an emulated BIOS for the hosted operating system. They intend for you to install Windows XP SP2 in here, but there's no reason you can't install something else.
Like FreeDOS, for example. No, that's not a faked photograph - it really is FreeDOS booted natively on an iMac!
Linux will run just happily under Boot Camp, too. At least, I booted the Fedora Core 5 installer, and it went into graphics mode ("vesa") just fine. I can provide another cell phone photo on that, if you need it. I intend to burn a single-disc DVD installer for FC5, and install on the 5GB space I carved out for myself. I'll definitely post photos to my web site when I've done it.
For those of us that are thinking about buying our first MacMini for our living room, I find this a very interesting test. Thanks to UW-Wisconsin!
It is the equivalent of looking at a house from a public vantage point to see if any windows are open. Although such an action is suspicious (the person may next try to get in through a window), it certainly isn't illegal, at least in the United States. SANS seems to be overreacting.
Actually, I think port-scanning is a wee bit closer to turning the doorknobs on all exterior doors (but not opening them and going through), pushing the windowsills, and knocking on the walls looking for hidden doors. Grey-hat activity, probably not illegal - but if the cops saw you doing that to a stranger's, they'd probably have a good reason to ask what the hell you were doing.
Analogies between computers and the physical world are kind of hard .... aren't they?
Oh yeah, and they go all the way up! ;-)
"Guess which laptop is the preferred one..."
Since I was not in the room with you when you typed that, I don't know if you meant "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... yay!" or "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... boo!" For any who are interested: it's a ThinkPad, by Lenovo. And the ThinkPad is a good, solid, stable laptop - I have one myself - and supports Linux very well. And the X-series offers a tablet version, which also supports Linux.
Since this is a Linux-friendly group, I will assume you meant "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... yay!"
I swear, the next time a manager tells me that I need to leverage my win-win situation to think outside the box synergisticly, I'm going to mail the CEO the christmas party pictures I took...it graphically proves that our admin used to be a gymnast...
I think you need to send the photos to me. You know, for safekeeping ... in case something ever happens to you.... :-)