Apple does everything for their systems, and so you can't just say Apple's hardware is slow and expensive, therefore everything from Apple is slow and expensive. New Apple's come with a LOT of Apple software, some of it innovative in what it does, some of it just does common things really well.
Like their MP3 player, which is integrated into the operating system, doesn't try to load a web-browser.. etc. When using this, you never need to know about file names.. drag an MP3 file onto it and it adds the ID3 tags to the play list, AND copies the file to it's internal music collection (which can be accessed just by clicking on the "Music" icon in your home directory). Want to convert a CD to MP3s? It's also the system's CD player.. put in the CD, press the big "Import" button and away you go. Burn it? Make a playlist with the songs you want, press the "Burn" button, and away you go. But I don't mean away from the computer.. it can multitask, so while burning you can actually keep on using the computer..
Want a PIM (Personal information manager) on your system? Macs now come with iCal and Address book, which do appoinments, and contact lists.. and with iSync, will copy your contacts and appoinments to your Palm device.
But wait, there's more! If you have a bluetooth phone (and adapter for older macs, now standard in new ones), it will copy your contact list and their phone numbers and other applicable data, onto your phone.. likewise Apple's iPod, an Mp3 player which is excellently integrated into the previously mentioned iTunes, has a contact list, which iSync also updates.. And so you have the same contact list on your iPod, your phone, your palm pilot and your computer's Address book (which also can talk to LDAP and other databases to get address from, then lets you add them to your address book by dragging their listing to your local address book..)
Sure, you could get similar functionality on a PC.. using software from about 15 different vendors, with associated conflicts, mismatches in user interface, and makes you reboot about 20 times before it works.. and if you don't pirate stuff, it will cost a lot more. But with a Mac, all this software is free. 100% legit. And doesn't fill your registry up with crap. Similar comment on Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris.. you could install most of this stuff, without the licensing issue, since you'ld be using GPL stuff, integrating it together would be a pain.
Oh and it has a rock solid UNIX base, comes with pretty much any common open source editor/compiler/program you want, or if not, compiling most of them isn't too difficult. As the joke goes, Apple's eMacs actually come with GNU Emacs installed:) A growing number of people who write these things are buying macs... funny that. Apple also makes available for free download an X11 server, which puts every other XServer on earth to shame. It's hardware accelarated and drawn with OpenGL. So you can have both an X11 server and "productivity" applications like MS Office running.. or you could use Apple's "AppleWorks", or soon, OpenOffice, or watch a DVD in a corner window..
So my point is, while Apple's hardware innovation is a bit limited of late (DDR, 802.11g, Bluetooth and Firewire 800 notwithstanding, but they're not terribly significant), but their software innovation is out of this world.
I think you'll find most people who write GPL software don't actually do it to get a job.. if one comes along, they accept the person for who they are and what they do and well and good, but if not, no loss..
Hmm so linux.conf.au took all the smart geeks? oh boo-hoo. Perhaps these geeks are more interested in meeting talking with other programmers and geeks, than they are in dealing with PHBs and other people in suits.
There was a LCA dinner.. one person wore a suit, and he was a lawyer, so no-one complained;) The rest of the conference, I saw only about one or two people with ties on. Everyone else was hanging around in shorts and a tshirt. Business-like? No way. Fun, useful? Oh yes:) IBM was a sponsor, with a lot of the ozlabs staff there, and Sun provided some LX50s, but aside from that, the commercial presence was tiny.
If I had my choice again, I still would have gone to LCA.
Re:Prices are out of whack for 1991
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 1
Right, I didn't mean to imply it was fraud either, since there is no financial consideration requested.. I just meant that in cases of fraud, this is what document examiners would look for.
Re:Prices are out of whack for 1991
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 1
Right:) Generally lined workbook paper isn't acid free.. it's usually cheaply made stuff which isn't made to last
Yep, I remember a friend having a CD-R (not CD-RW) drive in a PC in 1994, on a beta of Win95.. and it cost AU$2000 and the media was $15 each, and there was a return policy if it coastered!
And a stripped down Win95 was distributed on 3.5in floppies initially.. it was about 60 discs.. we have a box with it in at work;)
Re:Prices are out of whack for 1991
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 2
Yes, I too would like to "call bullshit" on this. I have recently been cleaning out some old stuff from primary school (ie, around 1991).
All the paper has been kept away from light and acid and stuff over the years, and it's ALL turned yellowish, and that is bright white, the ink hasn't even slightly seeped into the paper or faded, etc.
It's very difficult to age stuff like that. Investigators of financial fraud can use a gas chromatograph to determine the chemical makeup of the ink, and have lists of what was used when and by who.. Companies rarely keep the same mix of ingrediants over a period of 12 years.
I would be thinking that you're right on the money with that;) Apple doesn't want it to be known that they're working on an opposing Office suit until they're ready to ship, otherwise MS will stop producing Office X..
Not to forget, this week Perth is hosting Linux.conf.au. This is not some backwater event, nor is it a commercial event. It is a serious linux development conference, one of the few left. There are a total of two vendor stands, and one is from a local bookshop and one from a local software company looking for employees. There are three threads of lectures, and registered people are free to go to any of them.. and 6 lectures per thread per day.
In attendance to LCA and giving talks are: Alan Cox, Andrew Tridgell (Samba), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP), Hemos (Slashdot), Bdale Garbe (Debian), Adrian Chadd (Squid), Paul Rusty Russell (Kernel/ipchains), and attending the conference and occasionally dressing up as a penguin is Linus Torvalds..
Hmm ok, so my question to vendors or speakers is.. don't you wish you were here instead?:)
There are some media passes printed out for the fickle beasts. No-one wanted to come, and then suddenly word gets out that Linus is coming.. and oh, guess what.. there's hundreds of people calling up wanting tickets.
Official word.. there are door sales. About 50 of them.. First come, first served. Flying in next-day from Auckland doesn't count. This conference was announced months ago.
Of course, you would be well advised to get there within the next hour if you wanted to get in and hadn't registered already;)
I used an iPaq running PocketPC for 2 hours.. couldn't get either 802.11b or bluetooth to work with it. It had two Wireless connection icons.. one hung the machine whenever you clicked on it, and the other worked fine and let you set an IP address for the wireless card, which it then totally ignored and broadcasted the traffic from a different self-assigned IP address..
PocketPCs have some nice function, but my god the OS is crap. Windows is better than that.
My issue with mod_gzip is that squid up until very recently cached the page in gzipped format and sent it back to anyone who wanted it.. even if they couldn't accept gzipped. Which shat me off no end given that my previous ISP used transparent proxying...
The problem is fixed in squid now, thanks to the fact one of the squid developers lives across the road from my work.. but my ISP wouldn't upgrade, citing security reasons (??),... so I left them:)
All the computer porn from the 80s was on Commodore tapes, which you don't need to worry about removing the data from, the passage of time doing it for you:)
In mid 1980s, there were XTs and ATs, with CGA or EGA monitors. No BMP, GIF or JPEG. Mmm a 16 color PCX file!
The magnetic value of or a part of the disk after XORing a sector with zero, will still be close to the original value. If you have a hard drive you used to care about and are now selling it, cat/dev/random >/dev/hda1 etc will be your best bet:)
It's not exactly a crab logo, but I know what you mean.. "crab" logo + RTL = Realtek
> * The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is > * probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible > * exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master > * DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance > * gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.
It was ROTT. The splash screens while each level loaded had a more christmasy theme if you played it around christmas time. My dad's PC back in the day used to have ROTT on it, and I only saw him around christmas time, so when I played ROTT, most of the time the people had little red santa hats on and stuff:)
Which reminds me, I'm off there tomorrow.. time to start packing:)
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Apple does everything for their systems, and so you can't just say Apple's hardware is slow and expensive, therefore everything from Apple is slow and expensive. New Apple's come with a LOT of Apple software, some of it innovative in what it does, some of it just does common things really well.
:) A growing number of people who write these things are buying macs... funny that. Apple also makes available for free download an X11 server, which puts every other XServer on earth to shame. It's hardware accelarated and drawn with OpenGL. So you can have both an X11 server and "productivity" applications like MS Office running.. or you could use Apple's "AppleWorks", or soon, OpenOffice, or watch a DVD in a corner window..
:)
Like their MP3 player, which is integrated into the operating system, doesn't try to load a web-browser.. etc. When using this, you never need to know about file names.. drag an MP3 file onto it and it adds the ID3 tags to the play list, AND copies the file to it's internal music collection (which can be accessed just by clicking on the "Music" icon in your home directory). Want to convert a CD to MP3s? It's also the system's CD player.. put in the CD, press the big "Import" button and away you go. Burn it? Make a playlist with the songs you want, press the "Burn" button, and away you go. But I don't mean away from the computer.. it can multitask, so while burning you can actually keep on using the computer..
Want a PIM (Personal information manager) on your system? Macs now come with iCal and Address book, which do appoinments, and contact lists.. and with iSync, will copy your contacts and appoinments to your Palm device.
But wait, there's more! If you have a bluetooth phone (and adapter for older macs, now standard in new ones), it will copy your contact list and their phone numbers and other applicable data, onto your phone.. likewise Apple's iPod, an Mp3 player which is excellently integrated into the previously mentioned iTunes, has a contact list, which iSync also updates.. And so you have the same contact list on your iPod, your phone, your palm pilot and your computer's Address book (which also can talk to LDAP and other databases to get address from, then lets you add them to your address book by dragging their listing to your local address book..)
Sure, you could get similar functionality on a PC.. using software from about 15 different vendors, with associated conflicts, mismatches in user interface, and makes you reboot about 20 times before it works.. and if you don't pirate stuff, it will cost a lot more. But with a Mac, all this software is free. 100% legit. And doesn't fill your registry up with crap. Similar comment on Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris.. you could install most of this stuff, without the licensing issue, since you'ld be using GPL stuff, integrating it together would be a pain.
Oh and it has a rock solid UNIX base, comes with pretty much any common open source editor/compiler/program you want, or if not, compiling most of them isn't too difficult. As the joke goes, Apple's eMacs actually come with GNU Emacs installed
So my point is, while Apple's hardware innovation is a bit limited of late (DDR, 802.11g, Bluetooth and Firewire 800 notwithstanding, but they're not terribly significant), but their software innovation is out of this world.
Test drive an Apple today!
The 15inch TiBook's dont scrape the screen, it only looks like it... you just need to clean the screen with a light solvent and it comes clean :)
Apple eMacs actually ship with GNU/Emacs ;>
I think you'll find most people who write GPL software don't actually do it to get a job.. if one comes along, they accept the person for who they are and what they do and well and good, but if not, no loss..
That's a nice part of town :) I've been there a few times.
Hmm so linux.conf.au took all the smart geeks? oh boo-hoo. Perhaps these geeks are more interested in meeting talking with other programmers and geeks, than they are in dealing with PHBs and other people in suits.
;) The rest of the conference, I saw only about one or two people with ties on. Everyone else was hanging around in shorts and a tshirt. Business-like? No way. Fun, useful? Oh yes :) IBM was a sponsor, with a lot of the ozlabs staff there, and Sun provided some LX50s, but aside from that, the commercial presence was tiny.
There was a LCA dinner.. one person wore a suit, and he was a lawyer, so no-one complained
If I had my choice again, I still would have gone to LCA.
Right, I didn't mean to imply it was fraud either, since there is no financial consideration requested.. I just meant that in cases of fraud, this is what document examiners would look for.
Right :) Generally lined workbook paper isn't acid free.. it's usually cheaply made stuff which isn't made to last
Yep, I remember a friend having a CD-R (not CD-RW) drive in a PC in 1994, on a beta of Win95.. and it cost AU$2000 and the media was $15 each, and there was a return policy if it coastered!
;)
And a stripped down Win95 was distributed on 3.5in floppies initially.. it was about 60 discs.. we have a box with it in at work
Yes, I too would like to "call bullshit" on this. I have recently been cleaning out some old stuff from primary school (ie, around 1991).
All the paper has been kept away from light and acid and stuff over the years, and it's ALL turned yellowish, and that is bright white, the ink hasn't even slightly seeped into the paper or faded, etc.
It's very difficult to age stuff like that. Investigators of financial fraud can use a gas chromatograph to determine the chemical makeup of the ink, and have lists of what was used when and by who.. Companies rarely keep the same mix of ingrediants over a period of 12 years.
I would be thinking that you're right on the money with that ;) Apple doesn't want it to be known that they're working on an opposing Office suit until they're ready to ship, otherwise MS will stop producing Office X..
I had more fun at LCA watching Hemos getting totally shitfaced ;)
:)
When he wakes up, expect a post from him about LCA
.. for buying 1GB DDR SDRAM sticks.. since buying in high capacity means the environment suffers less :D
Not to forget, this week Perth is hosting Linux.conf.au. This is not some backwater event, nor is it a commercial event. It is a serious linux development conference, one of the few left. There are a total of two vendor stands, and one is from a local bookshop and one from a local software company looking for employees. There are three threads of lectures, and registered people are free to go to any of them.. and 6 lectures per thread per day.
:)
In attendance to LCA and giving talks are: Alan Cox, Andrew Tridgell (Samba), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP), Hemos (Slashdot), Bdale Garbe (Debian), Adrian Chadd (Squid), Paul Rusty Russell (Kernel/ipchains), and attending the conference and occasionally dressing up as a penguin is Linus Torvalds..
Hmm ok, so my question to vendors or speakers is.. don't you wish you were here instead?
There are some media passes printed out for the fickle beasts. No-one wanted to come, and then suddenly word gets out that Linus is coming.. and oh, guess what.. there's hundreds of people calling up wanting tickets.
;)
Official word.. there are door sales. About 50 of them.. First come, first served. Flying in next-day from Auckland doesn't count. This conference was announced months ago.
Of course, you would be well advised to get there within the next hour if you wanted to get in and hadn't registered already
I used an iPaq running PocketPC for 2 hours.. couldn't get either 802.11b or bluetooth to work with it. It had two Wireless connection icons.. one hung the machine whenever you clicked on it, and the other worked fine and let you set an IP address for the wireless card, which it then totally ignored and broadcasted the traffic from a different self-assigned IP address..
PocketPCs have some nice function, but my god the OS is crap. Windows is better than that.
My issue with mod_gzip is that squid up until very recently cached the page in gzipped format and sent it back to anyone who wanted it.. even if they couldn't accept gzipped. Which shat me off no end given that my previous ISP used transparent proxying...
:)
The problem is fixed in squid now, thanks to the fact one of the squid developers lives across the road from my work.. but my ISP wouldn't upgrade, citing security reasons (??),... so I left them
True enough I guess ;) I work as a sysadmin at a university. I've got records of people using a $250k SGI Onyx to browse porn ;>
All the computer porn from the 80s was on Commodore tapes, which you don't need to worry about removing the data from, the passage of time doing it for you :)
In mid 1980s, there were XTs and ATs, with CGA or EGA monitors. No BMP, GIF or JPEG. Mmm a 16 color PCX file!
The impression I got was that the CC numbers were on a hard drive out of an ATM (most are just running OS/2 or NT anyway)
silly bank for using hardware level link encryption, then storing data locally in cleartext.
The magnetic value of or a part of the disk after XORing a sector with zero, will still be close to the original value. If you have a hard drive you used to care about and are now selling it, cat /dev/random > /dev/hda1 etc will be your best bet :)
Be nice to us and we'll be nice to you.
It's common courtesy and will get you everywhere in life
Your friendly neighbourhood BOFH.
It's not exactly a crab logo, but I know what you mean.. "crab" logo + RTL = Realtek
> * The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
> * probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
> * exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
> * DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
> * gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.
It was ROTT. The splash screens while each level loaded had a more christmasy theme if you played it around christmas time. My dad's PC back in the day used to have ROTT on it, and I only saw him around christmas time, so when I played ROTT, most of the time the people had little red santa hats on and stuff :)
:)
Which reminds me, I'm off there tomorrow.. time to start packing
Compared to Spam, the cost of making an international phone call is significant.
:/
Keep in mind, a growing number of companies in the US are moving their call centres to India... it can't be TOO expensive