"What these kids don't realize is that every time they pull up music and movies and make a copy, they are committing a felony under the United States code."
YM
"they are committing an act of terror." or "they are supporting the terrorists."
If the machine's data was recoverable, why didn't he ask her if she wanted it before formatting the hard drive? What if she had important work on it? I mean, I would hope she would have a backup, but...
Sounds like pretty crappy customer service if you ask me.
I can't think of an instance where there are two (working) CPU speeds being on the motherboard on low-end hardware, but that doesn't put the idea out of the realm of possibility.
If a dual-CPU situation were to arise, I think we'd be more likely to see the Pentium-class processor being put on a (PCI) card ala Amiga's Bridgeboard, Sun's SunPCi, OrangeMicro's card, etc, etc, etc. Much easier and cheaper to do.
Given the Itanium/2 probably will require a faster bus anyway, it should be pretty decent speed-wise.
Given how many managers I've seen that seem to lack balls, I'd say that ratio was way too low. [Of course, I don't most of us would consider this a 'good' feature. Hmm...]
The SliMP3 server software (that, from what I can tell, must be running in order for the SliMP3 to function, even if you give a playlist with only one entry) gives me not-so-good feelings, considering it does open up a port for web access and, optionally, another port for CLI access. Hopefully the code has undergone some sort of serious security review. [It is open source and included with the product. Smart folks will likely put it in a chroot jail, just to be on the safe side.]
You raise a good point w/r/t to WEP* protecting against someone taking control over the box via wireless. I'll concede that point. So, advantage: HomePod, for being a cheaper wireless solution than the SliMP3, and probably a more secure option to boot, since (I suspect) a user is more likely to have a secured wireless network (vs. the countless millions that just slap their machines onto their cable modem connection)--especially with the media attention over the past year or so about insecure wireless networks.
* Sure, it is
still somewhat breakable, but I would hope that most people would have more of a life than hacking keys to control someone's MP3 stream.:)
I picked up a SliMP3 and wanted to use it for wireless connectivity via a bridge, but it seems to be rather insecure in how it retrieves information from the network. (Just have someone pop up a server and take control of it. Whee!) Instead, we are re-organizing the hardware here at home and replaced our song playing box with it... but this still leaves me without 'living room' MP3 access.
So, before I plunk down for one of these, I would have the same concerns about the HomePod [never mind the issue of it interfacing with our own MP3 server control software].
In the quest for easy-to-use consumer devices, it appears that security is getting dumped by the wayside, which is ironic considering their target audience.
Interesting. Over supper last night we were discussing what Apple might reveal. We figured we would see a web browser too. We even came up with a good name for it...
At home, we have two Solaris 9 hosts and two Mac OS X 10.2 machines fully connected with home directories, accounts, and the like coming from S1DS. It isn't pretty, since Apple doesn't support RFC 2307bis definitions for automounts in addition to the lack of any real documentation about what lookupd and other system daemons require to be present.
Here are some things that might help folks:
Tip #1:/etc/openldap/schema is a directory full of schema information. In particular, you want to look at apple.schema, which has all of the weirdo Apple definitions.
Tip #2: Start with the RFC 2307 definitions and modify from there. Be aware that you will also need to match the objectClass for the type. i.e., when you click on Users in Directory Access, you need to list posixAccount, inetOrgPerson, and shadowAcount so that it pulls all of the necessary fields from those objectClasses. This is different than how it worked with LDAPv2 and under 10.1
Tip #3: Location management does NOT work with LDAPv3, despite the shiny pull-down. If you are on a PowerBook and use Locations to move around, you do not want to set up any sort of services.
Tip #4: "lookupd -d" is your friend. Use it to debug what your machine sees from the LDAP server and what you need to work on.
Tip #5: You can do NFS mount points, but they aren't pretty:
VFSLinkDir =/Network/Applications (or wherever you want it mounted)
VFSType = nfs
cn = server:dir path
Tip #6: You should match all of the fields for mount, even if you don't fill them in. For some reason, automountd wants to be able to look it up values that make no sense for a remote mount.
I think it is interesting that he skipped over the pain and suffering the PowerPC developers had due to the horrible build tools. CodeWarrior (unless you did some MAJOR hacking on gcc) was the only compiler you were able to use, as BeOS/ppc used PEF instead of something sane. No decent build tools=no decent apps, which in turn lowered the amount of early adopters you potentially had.
How about the gloss over of single-user? With the general introduction of networking to the masses, never mind the security implications, why would anyone want to use a single-user OS anymore?
Did they ever fix the printing subsystem to be useful? For a 'media OS' (good to see JLG still has his marketing skills), the printing support wasn't that great...
It is also well known that BeOS took the best features from a lot of different OSes... to say "with features built years ago that only today are companies putting into their future OS releases" is a bit much. Most of the features in BeOS were available on most major Unix platforms, even then. In comparison, it is perhaps better to say that BeOS had a 'clean slate' implementation of those features.
BeFS, however, was really the crown jewel... and probably the only thing really worth saving.
It sounds to me like you've learned what workstation people have known for a long time: most "slower" multiprocessor machines will generally "beat" a "faster" uniprocessor machine, if the OS and applications do their jobs properly...
I'm not sure what the personal appearance of the cashier has to do with the layout of the store. I probably wouldn't trust a cashier who was dressed in a business suit to be able to tell me where the newest KMFDM, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Pansy Division or any other CD that I might be interested in purchasing was located.
In fact, most of the music stores that I have been to that are located by colleges/universities and manned by college students are generally the best stores in town because they cater to the eclectic tastes of college radio rather than the hollowness of commercial radio... which translates into better selection and usually better prices... never mind the good feeling of hopefully supporting an independent, locally owned business vs. Tower or Sam Goody or Musicland or whatever.
IIRC, Sun committed to GNOME 2.0 shipping with Solaris. Since Solaris 9's gate is going to be closing in a few weeks, GNOME 2.0 won't be ready by then to actually integrate, test, and ship with the first cut of Solaris 9.
[Which illustrates a difference between open and closed source: with closed source, you actually have a date that you have to meet and produce a product. To make that date, sometimes you have to cut features/additions/etc.]
I still find it odd that Blizzard/Vivendi did this while they are having -massive- problems with their own battle.net servers. The lag is so bad because of dupers and other folks that a lot of folks have just given up on using their servers.
Despite this post on battle.net's forums:
Subject: Diablo II: Realm Stability
From: Battle.net Team
Host: Blizzard Entertainment
Date: Wed Feb 20 09:56:00
We have resolved the majority of problems that caused Diablo II realm instability and game lag. The remaining issues will be taken care of shortly. We thank you for your patience during this time.
-The Battle.net Team
The servers still aren't as reliable as they used to be a 3-6 months back.
It is almost as if they are forcing everyone to use their servers. [After all, how many people actually -know- about FSGS? Never mind the lack of Mac support.]
Interesting story. But there is one part that has me a bit concerned:
The Timbuktu extension that's installed on it posts a unique identifier to Netopia's IP Locator server (findme.netopia.com) whenever it connects to the internet.
What about the privacy aspects of this? Sure, in this instance it worked out to be a good thing, but do you really want someone else to know where you are using their license? How is this different than Windows XP phone home? What -other- information is being transmitted to Netopia?
While I was at MacWorld today, I asked the Roxio people working the booth if Toast 5.1 (which was released today) will still allow me to connect to FreeDB rather than using Gracenote's database. After a bit of a pause (I suspect they've been getting pretty beat up about it), the folks I talked to said that you will still able to connect to any services that you want. The -default- on -new installs- will be CDDB, however. On upgrades, it will keep your old settings. Clicking on the 'Default' button will set it back to CDDB, but you can change it to FreeDB manually.
Hopefully for you Windows folks, it will work the same way.
Re:Why DVD-R? DVD+RW makes more sense
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 1
A few months (or was it a year) after Apple released the machines with DVD-RAM, Steve Jobs admitted they made a mistake--people weren't ready to give up on CD-RW yet for mass storage. With that in mind, he announced the 'SuperDrive' machines--they were capable of reading and writing not only DVD media (DVD-R, DVD-RW) but also CD media (CD-R, CD-RW) in July of 2001.
IIRC, this would have been -before- DVD+RW actually had usable drives for the cosumer market! Even according to the website that you quote, it would appear that the DVD+RW Alliance didn't announce products until Aug 25. Way Too Late.
So what about new products? If they switched to DVD+RW now, you face the same backwards compatibility problem that plagued the DVD-RAM conversion... and for very little gain on the Joe Consumer front.
The problem with most of the Solaris (and most other commercial Unix) installs that I've seen is that most people don't take the time to actually tune them and take out a lot of the extraneous crap that Sun includes on the default User and Developer installs.
Granted, tuning is a bit of an art-form. Simple things like changing maxpgio [which should be set to (2*DISKRPM)/3 for single disk desktops] can go a long way. But, taking the time to sit down and build a jumpstart profile that doesn't include things like WBEM, smart card support, and other things that you do not use will go a long way for better performance... why run processes that aren't working for you?
Of course, there is still the CDE problem. I generally put in/etc/dt settings that allow a WindowMaker setup that includes the necessary bits of CDE to run CDE apps, but dump the hoggish dtwm, dtsession, etc, bits. This way, you get full CDE functionality if you need it, but a much more lightweight desktop.
I understand why Sun and most other vendors do this--it saves them a support call when Joe User's Whizzy Bangy Device doesn't work. But shame on the admin that doesn't do his or her job to make the user's desktop work faster...
How funny. We were just talking about WWIV, the first WWIVcon hosted by the Southern IL and St. Louis, MO sysops in 92 or so, and the events that led up to me switching to DLG Pro (and later on moderating the INTERNET echo on Fidonet for a year or two).
The documentary page seems to be incomplete though. In some sections it specifically says "author contacted" and in others it does not. For the sections where the "author contacted" is mising, does this mean that Jason Scott can't get a hold of them?
For some of these programs, I'm sure some of us know someone who knows how to get a hold of whoever or we can provide more background information ourself. (ie, I still have -lots- of stuff about WWIV and DLG laying around on my hard drive... somewhere. *smile* I know that I paid $50 to get the source back in 89 or so, and that it later went up to $75. v1 was written in BASIC [and was quite scary]. v3 was written in [Turbo] Pascal. v4 was written in [Turbo] C... etc..)
While I realize that the top of the page says:
If you see a lot of empty space, that probably means I haven't given that OS or Software my full attention. In some cases, I am finding lists of BBS Software online, shoving the names, and getting back to it all "later". Either way, feel free to send me information if you have it nearby.
I'd hate to flood the guy with info that he already has....
BeOS died when Be and Metrowerks were incapable of delivering a decent compiler for BeOS/ppc and tying the object format to PEF (so that using other tools was nearly impossible without major hacking). After years of struggling with an absolutely horrendous/unusable toolchain, most of the early adopters (read: 3rd party developers) gave up because it simply wasn't worth the pain.
It wasn't until the 2nd or 3rd developer release of BeOS/x86 that Be finally admitted how bad it was and switched to gcc (and even then, only for x86). By that time, most of the early folks who had generated the initial excitement and pledged support for BeOS had left. [I remember going to the first developer's conference and sitting next to folks from Lexmark (which was then just recently spun from IBM), Wolfram, and others. Funny how those 'big/important' names disappeared a year or so down the road.]
My experiences with autoconf- and libtool- based build processes is that they tend to either a) require using a gcc-based compiler or b) will only kick in optimization flags if the end user sets CFLAGS manually (and even then, the CFLAGS may not get carried over into all parts of the project).
So, depending upon your needs and just how portable you need to make your project, you might want to look at imake. While imake isn't 'simple' by any stretch of the imagination, one can take advantage of the fact that any system that ships with X11 developer packages has a working imake system that includes a good set of optimization switches set. The only big problem with imake is that a lot of folks don't set the site and/or host configuration files to change the compiler settings if they aren't using the manufacturer's compiler. [a simple #define HasGcc2 YES or is usually all it takes!]
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they are more expensive because they have some buzzwordy acronym associated with their resolution?
[For those that don't live in the Intel universe, a Google search seems to indicate that UXGA is 1600x1200.]
YM
"they are committing an act of terror." or "they are supporting the terrorists."
HTH.
If the machine's data was recoverable, why didn't he ask her if she wanted it before formatting the hard drive? What if she had important work on it? I mean, I would hope she would have a backup, but...
Sounds like pretty crappy customer service if you ask me.
If a dual-CPU situation were to arise, I think we'd be more likely to see the Pentium-class processor being put on a (PCI) card ala Amiga's Bridgeboard, Sun's SunPCi, OrangeMicro's card, etc, etc, etc. Much easier and cheaper to do.
Given the Itanium/2 probably will require a faster bus anyway, it should be pretty decent speed-wise.
[I know Linux has had that trouble in the past. I know it was supposed to have been fixed already, but I don't know for sure.]
Hmm...
./a.out
./a.out ./a.out: cannot execute [Exec format error]
;p
Ultra 2/2x168MHz:
$ time
100000000
real 0m0.03s
user 0m0.01s
sys 0m0.00s
$ time java Test
100000000
real 0m4.90s
user 0m4.60s
sys 0m0.15s
OS X 2x800MHz:
$ time java Test
100000000
real 0m2.26s
user 0m1.98s
sys 0m0.13s
$ time
-ksh:
real 0m0.01s
user 0m0.00s
sys 0m0.01s
Looks to me like Java wins considering that the C version wouldn't even run.
[For those playing at home: You don't have to "recompile" Java applications when you cross platforms. ]
Given how many managers I've seen that seem to lack balls, I'd say that ratio was way too low. [Of course, I don't most of us would consider this a 'good' feature. Hmm...]
You raise a good point w/r/t to WEP* protecting against someone taking control over the box via wireless. I'll concede that point. So, advantage: HomePod, for being a cheaper wireless solution than the SliMP3, and probably a more secure option to boot, since (I suspect) a user is more likely to have a secured wireless network (vs. the countless millions that just slap their machines onto their cable modem connection)--especially with the media attention over the past year or so about insecure wireless networks.
* Sure, it is still somewhat breakable, but I would hope that most people would have more of a life than hacking keys to control someone's MP3 stream. :)
So, before I plunk down for one of these, I would have the same concerns about the HomePod [never mind the issue of it interfacing with our own MP3 server control software].
In the quest for easy-to-use consumer devices, it appears that security is getting dumped by the wayside, which is ironic considering their target audience.
iBrowse
[har har har]
Here are some things that might help folks:
Tip #1: /etc/openldap/schema is a directory full of schema information. In particular, you want to look at apple.schema, which has all of the weirdo Apple definitions.
Tip #2: Start with the RFC 2307 definitions and modify from there. Be aware that you will also need to match the objectClass for the type. i.e., when you click on Users in Directory Access, you need to list posixAccount, inetOrgPerson, and shadowAcount so that it pulls all of the necessary fields from those objectClasses. This is different than how it worked with LDAPv2 and under 10.1
Tip #3: Location management does NOT work with LDAPv3, despite the shiny pull-down. If you are on a PowerBook and use Locations to move around, you do not want to set up any sort of services.
Tip #4: "lookupd -d" is your friend. Use it to debug what your machine sees from the LDAP server and what you need to work on.
Tip #5: You can do NFS mount points, but they aren't pretty:
VFSLinkDir =Tip #6: You should match all of the fields for mount, even if you don't fill them in. For some reason, automountd wants to be able to look it up values that make no sense for a remote mount.
Hope this helps somewhat.
How about the gloss over of single-user? With the general introduction of networking to the masses, never mind the security implications, why would anyone want to use a single-user OS anymore?
Did they ever fix the printing subsystem to be useful? For a 'media OS' (good to see JLG still has his marketing skills), the printing support wasn't that great...
It is also well known that BeOS took the best features from a lot of different OSes... to say "with features built years ago that only today are companies putting into their future OS releases" is a bit much. Most of the features in BeOS were available on most major Unix platforms, even then. In comparison, it is perhaps better to say that BeOS had a 'clean slate' implementation of those features.
BeFS, however, was really the crown jewel... and probably the only thing really worth saving.
It sounds to me like you've learned what workstation people have known for a long time: most "slower" multiprocessor machines will generally "beat" a "faster" uniprocessor machine, if the OS and applications do their jobs properly...
I'm not sure what the personal appearance of the cashier has to do with the layout of the store. I probably wouldn't trust a cashier who was dressed in a business suit to be able to tell me where the newest KMFDM, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Pansy Division or any other CD that I might be interested in purchasing was located.
In fact, most of the music stores that I have been to that are located by colleges/universities and manned by college students are generally the best stores in town because they cater to the eclectic tastes of college radio rather than the hollowness of commercial radio... which translates into better selection and usually better prices... never mind the good feeling of hopefully supporting an independent, locally owned business vs. Tower or Sam Goody or Musicland or whatever.
[Which illustrates a difference between open and closed source: with closed source, you actually have a date that you have to meet and produce a product. To make that date, sometimes you have to cut features/additions/etc.]
Despite this post on battle.net's forums: Subject: Diablo II: Realm Stability From: Battle.net Team Host: Blizzard Entertainment Date: Wed Feb 20 09:56:00 We have resolved the majority of problems that caused Diablo II realm instability and game lag. The remaining issues will be taken care of shortly. We thank you for your patience during this time. -The Battle.net Team The servers still aren't as reliable as they used to be a 3-6 months back.
It is almost as if they are forcing everyone to use their servers. [After all, how many people actually -know- about FSGS? Never mind the lack of Mac support.]
The Timbuktu extension that's installed on it posts a unique identifier to Netopia's IP Locator server (findme.netopia.com) whenever it connects to the internet.
What about the privacy aspects of this? Sure, in this instance it worked out to be a good thing, but do you really want someone else to know where you are using their license? How is this different than Windows XP phone home? What -other- information is being transmitted to Netopia?
While I was at MacWorld today, I asked the Roxio people working the booth if Toast 5.1 (which was released today) will still allow me to connect to FreeDB rather than using Gracenote's database. After a bit of a pause (I suspect they've been getting pretty beat up about it), the folks I talked to said that you will still able to connect to any services that you want. The -default- on -new installs- will be CDDB, however. On upgrades, it will keep your old settings. Clicking on the 'Default' button will set it back to CDDB, but you can change it to FreeDB manually.
Hopefully for you Windows folks, it will work the same way.
IIRC, this would have been -before- DVD+RW actually had usable drives for the cosumer market! Even according to the website that you quote, it would appear that the DVD+RW Alliance didn't announce products until Aug 25. Way Too Late.
So what about new products? If they switched to DVD+RW now, you face the same backwards compatibility problem that plagued the DVD-RAM conversion... and for very little gain on the Joe Consumer front.
Marketing: Don't worry. We still have Plan B.
GL: Plan B?
M:Yes. Plan B. We're going to secretly fund two guys to stand outside a movie theater for 5 months.
GL:5 months?
M:Yup. Apple is only hyping their MacWorld show for 5 days. We decided to go for 5 months! In Seattle! And we'll web cast it!
GL:Excellent! May the force be with you!
Granted, tuning is a bit of an art-form. Simple things like changing maxpgio [which should be set to (2*DISKRPM)/3 for single disk desktops] can go a long way. But, taking the time to sit down and build a jumpstart profile that doesn't include things like WBEM, smart card support, and other things that you do not use will go a long way for better performance... why run processes that aren't working for you?
Of course, there is still the CDE problem. I generally put in /etc/dt settings that allow a WindowMaker setup that includes the necessary bits of CDE to run CDE apps, but dump the hoggish dtwm, dtsession, etc, bits. This way, you get full CDE functionality if you need it, but a much more lightweight desktop.
I understand why Sun and most other vendors do this--it saves them a support call when Joe User's Whizzy Bangy Device doesn't work. But shame on the admin that doesn't do his or her job to make the user's desktop work faster...
The documentary page seems to be incomplete though. In some sections it specifically says "author contacted" and in others it does not. For the sections where the "author contacted" is mising, does this mean that Jason Scott can't get a hold of them?
For some of these programs, I'm sure some of us know someone who knows how to get a hold of whoever or we can provide more background information ourself. (ie, I still have -lots- of stuff about WWIV and DLG laying around on my hard drive... somewhere. *smile* I know that I paid $50 to get the source back in 89 or so, and that it later went up to $75. v1 was written in BASIC [and was quite scary]. v3 was written in [Turbo] Pascal. v4 was written in [Turbo] C... etc..)
While I realize that the top of the page says:
If you see a lot of empty space, that probably means I haven't given that OS or Software my full attention. In some cases, I am finding lists of BBS Software online, shoving the names, and getting back to it all "later". Either way, feel free to send me information if you have it nearby.
I'd hate to flood the guy with info that he already has....
BeOS died when Be and Metrowerks were incapable of delivering a decent compiler for BeOS/ppc and tying the object format to PEF (so that using other tools was nearly impossible without major hacking). After years of struggling with an absolutely horrendous/unusable toolchain, most of the early adopters (read: 3rd party developers) gave up because it simply wasn't worth the pain.
It wasn't until the 2nd or 3rd developer release of BeOS/x86 that Be finally admitted how bad it was and switched to gcc (and even then, only for x86). By that time, most of the early folks who had generated the initial excitement and pledged support for BeOS had left. [I remember going to the first developer's conference and sitting next to folks from Lexmark (which was then just recently spun from IBM), Wolfram, and others. Funny how those 'big/important' names disappeared a year or so down the road.]
My experiences with autoconf- and libtool- based build processes is that they tend to either a) require using a gcc-based compiler or b) will only kick in optimization flags if the end user sets CFLAGS manually (and even then, the CFLAGS may not get carried over into all parts of the project).
So, depending upon your needs and just how portable you need to make your project, you might want to look at imake. While imake isn't 'simple' by any stretch of the imagination, one can take advantage of the fact that any system that ships with X11 developer packages has a working imake system that includes a good set of optimization switches set. The only big problem with imake is that a lot of folks don't set the site and/or host configuration files to change the compiler settings if they aren't using the manufacturer's compiler. [a simple #define HasGcc2 YES or is usually all it takes!]
WWIV?
Nope, can't say I've heard of it.