On any Mac I have ever seen, the paperclip is for getting the diskette out of the drive after the (inevitable and regular) OS crash.
Ummm, the floppy ejects at boot time. Also, try using a version of the OS newer than 3 years old. Crashes are neither inevitable or regular on the average Mac OS 9 equipped machine. Tevanian's crew fixed a lot of stuff.
Have you actually run and looked as OS X Server? It is the worst I have ever seen for lack of standard file locations, and lack of man pages to explain it.
No one here is talking about OS X Server. We're discussing Mac OS X (sans "server"). The latter handles a lot of system configuration with XML. The former does not, and was basically intended as a stopgap to the latter.
But what if you could stand in your garage in front of your car with the hood open while a little animated paper-clip ran around in the engine fiddling with stuff...
That would kick ass, but I don't think the paper clip really has anything to do with system configuration. It's a glorified user manual.
People make fun of mac users because the macies rave on about how wonderful their system is... and this is the same system that goes down completely, or locks hard, if an application screws up, or if the system runs out of memory, or....
So you're suggesting that Linux would actually be a suitable replacement for most Mac users?
I don't think people like the poor memory management and CPU time slicing of Mac OS, but they (errr.... "we"), consider the user interface, manageability, and workflow aspects of it to be worth it. Aside from consumers, creative content people like Macs because the technology doesn't get in the way of the creative process. By contrast, a programmer's job is the techology, so it can't really get in the way.
I wish I could understand why people occassionally believe that no viewpoint other than their own could possibly have any validity, particuarly on issues like this which are very much subjective and reliant on personal tastes. It's such a sterotypical thing to hear on slashdot that appearance and ease-of-use are irrelevant as long as it runs from the command line and is open source.
Do you hang up code printouts on your wall instead of paintings?:) (kidding!)
I screw around with my OS, because the default environment doesn't accomplish want I want accomplished.
I'm not questioning the validity of this, but just out of curiosity, what is it that you have to do to the environment to make it acceptable? It seems like default installs of distributions should be sufficient to get just about anything done, especially since things like RH come with some many packages.
I believe NeXT had NetInfo way before the Windows registry existed. I'm sure this idea, like so many others (Project Builder -> VB, all GUI widgets, etc) were taken directly from NeXT into Windows 95.
Argh. XML is hardly any easier to parse than, say,.INI files. It's more verbose, i.e. wastes space and time
So you're saying Apple should define yet another config file format? Have you look in an/etc/ directory of any Unix dist recently?
XML is perfect for this type of stuff. I don't see how it is overhyped. It's a definition for definitions -- exactly what we need. What is the alternative? Every programmer int the world making up their own file formats?
I told my kids that they can install any operating system they like, as long as they reinstall Windows 98 before they go to bed. I think this should be easy since there's apparently an "install wizard" that does all the work for them.
Why can't it be free (as in beer)? We donate money to free software all the time. Let's just create a fund for a free Linux DVD project, and pay royalties out of that.
Uh... animated menus? buttons? browser-like file navagation? Didn't we see this in Windoze 95? Sure, maybe it's done better on Mac OS X. But it's deffinitly been seen before.
I'll grant you the browser-like navigation bit, but in terms of breaking new ground in UI, Windows 95/98/NT/2K are not even in the least bit comprable to Aqua.
like having colored buttons for close, restore, minimize. instead of graphical icons.
Symbols (+ -) appear when you mouse over the buttons.
To make a "cool" looking interface for marketing reasons. Instead of practical reasons.
Marketing reasons is an odd way to put it. Perhaps reasons that people that hack around in gdb all day don't really care about. People like cool looking interfaces. There is a small, vocal group of people that think the OS should forever stay like Mac OS 9, but watching Aqua in action is an amazing experience. It makes Enlightenment look 10 years old.
Someone mentioned that there might be a Mac OS X for Intel
I can't see how this would make any sense right now. People just took way too much license with Darwin running on Intel.
If they do make an intel version. I really hope that thay also have the brains to make it possable to run it from within windows.
How in the world would this work? That's no different than expecting Linux to run from within Windows.
The iMac saved Apple, and everyone knows Jobs had nothing to do with the original iMac, but took all the credit.
Ummmm, Jonathan Ives (head of industrial design) was ready to leave the company before Jobs came in. And do you think there's any chance the iMac would have been marketed properly without Jobs there? Do you remember ANY Apple ads airing between 1995 and 1997?
the pundits said that buying NeXT was better than buying Be since NeXTSTEP was "finished"
Correct, and you can use that technology today in either Mac OS X Server, or Darwin. People don't really seem to remember that before Jobs took over, Rhapsody was supposed to be the future of the company. Rhapsody is exactly what exists today Mac OS X Server, except it is marketed different. Amelio wanted companies like Adobe to rewrite their apps from the ground up in Objective-C to get them to run on Rhapsody. Thankfully, Jobs realized this was pure insanity, and charted a course for Mac OS X.
Neither DPS nor Quartz provide any real services beyond what X with something like Display GhostScript
I don't think you've really read up much on Quartz. It provides Photoshop/Illustrator-level graphic capabilities to everyone from the lowly freeware/open source/shareware author to Adobe and Macromedia themselves. No other platform even comes close to this.
Right on! ASF = "Ass-kicking Streaming Format." Besides, Microsoft deserves some credit for stealing QuickTime code to create their early video software. I mean, would PC video have every really become popular without Microsoft? I think not.
Same thing with the internet. If Microsoft hadn't stepped in, we'd probably all be using something other than Windows nowadays. Think how much that would suck.
The tremendous number of Apple related posts are clearly indicative of that.
Like one ever week or two?
In my opinion, Apple is far worse than Microsoft when it comes to proprietary software.
How much software has Microsoft released into open source again? Apple has released Darwin, QuickTime Streaming Server, OpenPlay/NetSprocket and HeaderDoc. The Open Source Initiative in general, and ESR, specifically, have stated that the ASPL qualifies as a "true" open source license. Apple has also contributed to the Apache project.
Apple is after all the company that would like to control both hardware and software.
Dude, why do you think Macs tend to just work? Apple makes vastly less money on software then they do on hardware. It's not like they're just trying to grab all the profit. There's a real added value in having one developer create the entire product, not just assemble things piecemeal and hope to end up with a frankenstein that is able to walk.
But wait, Apple is joining the open source movement with Darwin. Unfortunately, all the other components are still proprietary, and they're probably going to stay that way.
So you're suggesting Apple just up and release their core assets into the public and watch the shareholders lynch Jobs? Huh? I don't think that's a very fair expectation. Apple is the first commercial computer company to release any major asset into an open-source compliant license. That's something not Microsoft, Sun nor Compaq have done.
Besides, the only reason that I can see why Apple is releasing the source code for Darwin is because their developers are not competent enough to continue development on the BSD Unix software they have ripped off.
Their "incompetent developers" include Avie Tevanian who had a large part in developing the Mach kernel, which was later handed over to the FSF. It was Tevanian who championed Apple's open source projects.
By the way, wasn't rhapsody the operating system that was going to show us all? Where is that NT killer these days?
The Rhapsody project, initialized by Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs's predecessor, was recognized by the current management staff as a recipe for disaster -- naming because it would force developers to completely rewrite their apps. Rhapsody was tranformed into what is available today Mac OS X Server.
Anyway, Apple and its devoted followers are scum as far as I'm concerned.
That's mature. Certainly lends creditability to your argument.
Besides, when was the last time Apple released anything other than their obnoxious QuickTime player and a new patch level for their dated operating system?
OK, so I've noticed some conspiracy theories in these comments to explain the slowness of software such as Office, on MacOS compared with similar Wintel machines. Its all Apple's fault. They kept a crappy OS alive for way to long.
Slow Microsoft software was Microsoft's fault. Word 6 on the Mac sucked worse than any application that has ever sucked before. Microsoft knew this, customers knew this, Apple knew this. Several years and agreements later, we got Word 98 -- a completely rewrite. The difference is astounding. Word 98 quick, functional and easy to use.
They have released an "open source" (I know, it's not really, but Apple's trying anyway) version of the core and it's called 'Darwin'.
Actually, it is really open source. The Open Source Initiative approves of the APSL (Apple Public Source License). In fact, ESR was on hand at the announcement and approved of calling it open source.
though rumour has it that it won't support Mac's older than the original iMac
It's not a rumor. Mac OS X will run on anything that is G3 powered or newer. It may run on older machines, but it won't be supported.
How do you know that the mod_perl processes aren't idling and waiting for the database to respond, which would be mySQL's fault?
The logical answer to that would be that Perl is notorious for being slow, and MySQL is notorious for being fast (that's the design goal). The Perl problem is a quite common for large web sites to run into.
Or maybe the problem is that (as far as I can tell) a proxy isn't being run between user requests and the heavyweight mod_perl apache servers?
To me, it seems like it would only make sense to run lightweight static Apache daemons alongside mod_perl-equipped daemons if there was any static content on slashdot that is frequently accessed. I don't see how a proxy would help here.
We all see the feathers hanging out of the cat's mouth, and know that this cat has eaten canaries before, but suggest that perhaps the bird got sucked up into the unplugged vaccum instead.:)
then that would be the server, connection not perl
No. It's all the Perl code executing and taking up the CPU time and not allowing the webserver to respond to new requests. It looks like Slashdot is gearing up to throw some more hardware at the problem (or already has), but that may not really be the best long-term solution.
Fast-Cgi supports several languages, including perl, java and C/C++
Running FastCGI for Java seems odd, since you could just use servlets, which essentially solves all the same problems that FastCGI does, but adds considerable functionality.
From what I understand, FastCGI development has been somewhat deemphasized in favor of mod_perl.
This is why PHP is o.k. for small sites but does not scale well (Same arguement against ASP, BTW). I believe that partitioning the code from the presentation (HTML) provides several significant advantages and gives flexibility.
I think we're all trying to solve the same problem -- separate the content from the presentation. Out of the box, PHP does this much better than bare Perl, since you have to embed HTML tags in Perl scripts by default. You can add functionality to perl to allow it to use templates, but what makes you think that you can't do this with PHP, or JSP for that matter?
You can just stick all the logic into includes/modules/beans and sprinkle dynamic variables throughout the page, just as you describe. The only difference is Perl is a more surreal language than PHP, and probably isn't as fast as Java/JSP.
Given that most Web programming is pure text-processing work
Really? To me it seems that most web development these days is pure SQL data storage and retrival work.
As an aside, I skipped all those "code in page" paradigms: ASP, PHP, JSP. I just cannot pursue those sorts of paths, because in all my experience, the need to totally separate presentation and code is pretty strong.
The problem is valid but I'm unclear how you think Perl or Java servlets will help you extract your HTML from your code more. In order to solve that problem it seems more constructive to store the logic in Beans, and sprinkle dynamic Java snippets throughout HTML. This is why things like JSP and PHP were invented. That seems like a far more sane approach than stuffing a hole bunch of HTML in your Perl or C code. What happens when the site appearance has to change? You want to go in and rewrite all your functions?
As an alternative, we use a templating language with XHTML + XML that our code can "fill in" values in and branch around conditional text.
Slashdot Mirror
On any Mac I have ever seen, the paperclip is for getting the diskette out of the drive after the (inevitable and regular) OS crash.
Ummm, the floppy ejects at boot time. Also, try using a version of the OS newer than 3 years old. Crashes are neither inevitable or regular on the average Mac OS 9 equipped machine. Tevanian's crew fixed a lot of stuff.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
GNOMEs (specifically hp) are working on a solution, called GConf.
It seems like this has to happen at a lower level then gnome. To me, it seems this has to be a distribution-level thing.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Have you actually run and looked as OS X Server? It is the worst I have ever seen for lack of standard file locations, and lack of man pages to explain it.
No one here is talking about OS X Server. We're discussing Mac OS X (sans "server"). The latter handles a lot of system configuration with XML. The former does not, and was basically intended as a stopgap to the latter.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
But what if you could stand in your garage in front of your car with the hood open while a little animated paper-clip ran around in the engine fiddling with stuff...
That would kick ass, but I don't think the paper clip really has anything to do with system configuration. It's a glorified user manual.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
People make fun of mac users because the macies rave on about how wonderful their system is... and this is the same system that goes down completely, or locks hard, if an application screws up, or if the system runs out of memory, or....
:) (kidding!)
So you're suggesting that Linux would actually be a suitable replacement for most Mac users?
I don't think people like the poor memory management and CPU time slicing of Mac OS, but they (errr.... "we"), consider the user interface, manageability, and workflow aspects of it to be worth it. Aside from consumers, creative content people like Macs because the technology doesn't get in the way of the creative process. By contrast, a programmer's job is the techology, so it can't really get in the way.
I wish I could understand why people occassionally believe that no viewpoint other than their own could possibly have any validity, particuarly on issues like this which are very much subjective and reliant on personal tastes. It's such a sterotypical thing to hear on slashdot that appearance and ease-of-use are irrelevant as long as it runs from the command line and is open source.
Do you hang up code printouts on your wall instead of paintings?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
I screw around with my OS, because the default environment doesn't accomplish want I want accomplished.
I'm not questioning the validity of this, but just out of curiosity, what is it that you have to do to the environment to make it acceptable? It seems like default installs of distributions should be sufficient to get just about anything done, especially since things like RH come with some many packages.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
It looks a lot like the Windows registry to me.
I believe NeXT had NetInfo way before the Windows registry existed. I'm sure this idea, like so many others (Project Builder -> VB, all GUI widgets, etc) were taken directly from NeXT into Windows 95.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Argh. XML is hardly any easier to parse than, say, .INI files. It's more verbose, i.e. wastes space and time
/etc/ directory of any Unix dist recently?
So you're saying Apple should define yet another config file format? Have you look in an
XML is perfect for this type of stuff. I don't see how it is overhyped. It's a definition for definitions -- exactly what we need. What is the alternative? Every programmer int the world making up their own file formats?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
I told my kids that they can install any operating system they like, as long as they reinstall Windows 98 before they go to bed. I think this should be easy since there's apparently an "install wizard" that does all the work for them.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Why can't it be free (as in beer)? We donate money to free software all the time. Let's just create a fund for a free Linux DVD project, and pay royalties out of that.
How is this different from buying the software?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Uh... animated menus? buttons? browser-like file navagation? Didn't we see this in Windoze 95? Sure, maybe it's done better on Mac OS X. But it's deffinitly been seen before.
I'll grant you the browser-like navigation bit, but in terms of breaking new ground in UI, Windows 95/98/NT/2K are not even in the least bit comprable to Aqua.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
like having colored buttons for close, restore, minimize. instead of graphical icons.
Symbols (+ -) appear when you mouse over the buttons.
To make a "cool" looking interface for marketing reasons. Instead of practical reasons.
Marketing reasons is an odd way to put it. Perhaps reasons that people that hack around in gdb all day don't really care about. People like cool looking interfaces. There is a small, vocal group of people that think the OS should forever stay like Mac OS 9, but watching Aqua in action is an amazing experience. It makes Enlightenment look 10 years old.
Someone mentioned that there might be a Mac OS X for Intel
I can't see how this would make any sense right now. People just took way too much license with Darwin running on Intel.
If they do make an intel version. I really hope that thay also have the brains to make it possable to run it from within windows.
How in the world would this work? That's no different than expecting Linux to run from within Windows.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
The iMac saved Apple, and everyone knows Jobs had nothing to do with the original iMac, but took all the credit.
Ummmm, Jonathan Ives (head of industrial design) was ready to leave the company before Jobs came in. And do you think there's any chance the iMac would have been marketed properly without Jobs there? Do you remember ANY Apple ads airing between 1995 and 1997?
the pundits said that buying NeXT was better than buying Be since NeXTSTEP was "finished"
Correct, and you can use that technology today in either Mac OS X Server, or Darwin. People don't really seem to remember that before Jobs took over, Rhapsody was supposed to be the future of the company. Rhapsody is exactly what exists today Mac OS X Server, except it is marketed different. Amelio wanted companies like Adobe to rewrite their apps from the ground up in Objective-C to get them to run on Rhapsody. Thankfully, Jobs realized this was pure insanity, and charted a course for Mac OS X.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Yes, Apple will release a public beta this summer (probably Macworld NY in July), and it will probably be free.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Neither DPS nor Quartz provide any real services beyond what X with something like Display GhostScript
I don't think you've really read up much on Quartz. It provides Photoshop/Illustrator-level graphic capabilities to everyone from the lowly freeware/open source/shareware author to Adobe and Macromedia themselves. No other platform even comes close to this.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Right on! ASF = "Ass-kicking Streaming Format." Besides, Microsoft deserves some credit for stealing QuickTime code to create their early video software. I mean, would PC video have every really become popular without Microsoft? I think not.
Same thing with the internet. If Microsoft hadn't stepped in, we'd probably all be using something other than Windows nowadays. Think how much that would suck.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
The tremendous number of Apple related posts are clearly indicative of that.
Like one ever week or two?
In my opinion, Apple is far worse than Microsoft when it comes to proprietary software.
How much software has Microsoft released into open source again? Apple has released Darwin, QuickTime Streaming Server, OpenPlay/NetSprocket and HeaderDoc. The Open Source Initiative in general, and ESR, specifically, have stated that the ASPL qualifies as a "true" open source license. Apple has also contributed to the Apache project.
Apple is after all the company that would like to control both hardware and software.
Dude, why do you think Macs tend to just work? Apple makes vastly less money on software then they do on hardware. It's not like they're just trying to grab all the profit. There's a real added value in having one developer create the entire product, not just assemble things piecemeal and hope to end up with a frankenstein that is able to walk.
But wait, Apple is joining the open source movement with Darwin. Unfortunately, all the other components are still proprietary, and they're probably going to stay that way.
So you're suggesting Apple just up and release their core assets into the public and watch the shareholders lynch Jobs? Huh? I don't think that's a very fair expectation. Apple is the first commercial computer company to release any major asset into an open-source compliant license. That's something not Microsoft, Sun nor Compaq have done.
Besides, the only reason that I can see why Apple is releasing the source code for Darwin is because their developers are not competent enough to continue development on the BSD Unix software they have ripped off.
Their "incompetent developers" include Avie Tevanian who had a large part in developing the Mach kernel, which was later handed over to the FSF. It was Tevanian who championed Apple's open source projects.
By the way, wasn't rhapsody the operating system that was going to show us all? Where is that NT killer these days?
The Rhapsody project, initialized by Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs's predecessor, was recognized by the current management staff as a recipe for disaster -- naming because it would force developers to completely rewrite their apps. Rhapsody was tranformed into what is available today Mac OS X Server.
Anyway, Apple and its devoted followers are scum as far as I'm concerned.
That's mature. Certainly lends creditability to your argument.
Besides, when was the last time Apple released anything other than their obnoxious QuickTime player and a new patch level for their dated operating system?
Visit http://apple.com/pr/.
All I'm waiting for is a proper website to open about computer technology in general without the clearly biased opinions.
Unless they're Linux-biased, right?
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
OK, so I've noticed some conspiracy theories in these comments to explain the slowness of software such as Office, on MacOS compared with similar Wintel machines. Its all Apple's fault. They kept a crappy OS alive for way to long.
Slow Microsoft software was Microsoft's fault. Word 6 on the Mac sucked worse than any application that has ever sucked before. Microsoft knew this, customers knew this, Apple knew this. Several years and agreements later, we got Word 98 -- a completely rewrite. The difference is astounding. Word 98 quick, functional and easy to use.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
They have released an "open source" (I know, it's not really, but Apple's trying anyway) version of the core and it's called 'Darwin'.
Actually, it is really open source. The Open Source Initiative approves of the APSL (Apple Public Source License). In fact, ESR was on hand at the announcement and approved of calling it open source.
though rumour has it that it won't support Mac's older than the original iMac
It's not a rumor. Mac OS X will run on anything that is G3 powered or newer. It may run on older machines, but it won't be supported.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
How do you know that the mod_perl processes aren't idling and waiting for the database to respond, which would be mySQL's fault?
:)
The logical answer to that would be that Perl is notorious for being slow, and MySQL is notorious for being fast (that's the design goal). The Perl problem is a quite common for large web sites to run into.
Or maybe the problem is that (as far as I can tell) a proxy isn't being run between user requests and the heavyweight mod_perl apache servers?
To me, it seems like it would only make sense to run lightweight static Apache daemons alongside mod_perl-equipped daemons if there was any static content on slashdot that is frequently accessed. I don't see how a proxy would help here.
We all see the feathers hanging out of the cat's mouth, and know that this cat has eaten canaries before, but suggest that perhaps the bird got sucked up into the unplugged vaccum instead.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
then that would be the server, connection not perl
No. It's all the Perl code executing and taking up the CPU time and not allowing the webserver to respond to new requests. It looks like Slashdot is gearing up to throw some more hardware at the problem (or already has), but that may not really be the best long-term solution.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
There's also MacPerl.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Fast-Cgi supports several languages, including perl, java and C/C++
Running FastCGI for Java seems odd, since you could just use servlets, which essentially solves all the same problems that FastCGI does, but adds considerable functionality.
From what I understand, FastCGI development has been somewhat deemphasized in favor of mod_perl.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
This is why PHP is o.k. for small sites but does not scale well (Same arguement against ASP, BTW). I believe that partitioning the code from the presentation (HTML) provides several significant advantages and gives flexibility.
I think we're all trying to solve the same problem -- separate the content from the presentation. Out of the box, PHP does this much better than bare Perl, since you have to embed HTML tags in Perl scripts by default. You can add functionality to perl to allow it to use templates, but what makes you think that you can't do this with PHP, or JSP for that matter?
You can just stick all the logic into includes/modules/beans and sprinkle dynamic variables throughout the page, just as you describe. The only difference is Perl is a more surreal language than PHP, and probably isn't as fast as Java/JSP.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Given that most Web programming is pure text-processing work
Really? To me it seems that most web development these days is pure SQL data storage and retrival work.
As an aside, I skipped all those "code in page" paradigms: ASP, PHP, JSP. I just cannot pursue those sorts of paths, because in all my experience, the need to totally separate presentation and code is pretty strong.
The problem is valid but I'm unclear how you think Perl or Java servlets will help you extract your HTML from your code more. In order to solve that problem it seems more constructive to store the logic in Beans, and sprinkle dynamic Java snippets throughout HTML. This is why things like JSP and PHP were invented. That seems like a far more sane approach than stuffing a hole bunch of HTML in your Perl or C code. What happens when the site appearance has to change? You want to go in and rewrite all your functions?
As an alternative, we use a templating language with XHTML + XML that our code can "fill in" values in and branch around conditional text.
What do you think JSP does?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson