Wow, TripMasterMonkey, are you sure you don't live in Northern Virginia?;-)
I lived in Representative Wolf's district for almost 20 years (even went to school with one of his daughters), and even after being gone for a decade, I'm surprised to find he's still in office. Everyone in the neighborhood talked about how he never does anything, yet no one ever votes against him or puts up a real campaign against him. Thank you for pointing out his "look at the little monkey" tactics so I didn't have to dig them up for everyone -- what we have here is a classic example of a do-nothing politician in an apathetic upper-class district. Quite sad, really, when you consider the amount of tertiary degrees or professional positions held by the district's constituency.
How about the folks who made it possible for cheap bastards like me to install NetBSD on ancient hardware (in my case, Mac 68k -- you know, the pre-Power-Mac stuff)? And to keep maintaining code for an obsolete architecture? For that, I owe some serious snaps and props to the NetBSD/Mac68k gang -- Alan Briggs, Bruce O'Neel, Hauke Fath, Frederick Bruckman, John Klos, Michael Zucca, Riccardo Mottola, Shigeki Uno, Julio Vidal, Tim Larson, and anyone who I might have missed. I owe those guys some serious beers!
Seven analog tuners? That would be perfect for the public-relations shop that I support -- we need to replace five analog VCRs that record the local news from the five local stations, four times every day. But we're going after five Pioneer DVR-810H-S (80 hour series-two TiVo with stupid-fast DVD-R drive). Recording the shows and archiving them to a cheap media -- EASILY AND QUICKLY -- are our top priorities. If it is quick and easy, any quality better than VHS is better for my folks. If this Sony seven-tuner monster had an internal DVD-R, I'd need this one box instead of five -- and I'd spend end-of-year money on something else instead of those five Pioneers.
Isn't this similar to the reason why Apple took Microsoft to court over the similarities between Mac OS and Windows? Or similar to the reason why Apple took some folks to court because they copied the look and feel of their Aqua GUI?
I don't mean to piss in anyone's Corn Flakes, but damn... look at a screenshot... Start button is named Start, My Desktop is My Desktop, etc. Watch the headlines here in a week to a month for the cease-and-desist letter from MS to the XPde folks. Makes me glad I have a friend going through law school... heh.
What he is saying is more like an opinion than a scientific work. It's like the example I mentioned in the above post of saying 'C++ sucks; Python rules'. One can't really justify "C++ sucks".
No, there is no difference between a scientific writing and the conversation we are having here. All are forms of communication, then
begin just like a theorem, run their course just like a theorem would, and end with a proper conclusion just like a theorem would. This guy's article was like flamebait on slashdot -- nothing to back up the argument, just awkward ramblings. Now, as either a professor or an administrator of a university -- where whether you like it or not, identify and branding are important -- this guy has a responsibility to be as much of a loon as he wants until he drags his employer and their identify into his morass.
See...you don't care about freedom of speech. All you care about is image. You are a conformist. I guess you want everyone conforming to the mainstream status quo.
Now that's absolutely hysterical. That's essentially the same thing the author of the article did -- he started flinging the mud when providing a shred of proof or a coherent thought would have been more appropriate. Oh, and dude? I have a house full of over-the-hill punks here, we're listening to Fugazi, we're all drinking beer, and we're all laughing at you for being such a Jeff K. if you don't get that, it's a joke. Laugh about it, it's the only way to retain your sanity. The world is not a black-and-white, cut-and-dry, love-it-or-leave-it place -- nothing about it is, not even free speech. All rights end where someone else's begin -- trample on my shit, and get your shit squashed in return.
No, I work in public relations, and that's why I'm all over the slander issue. IANAL, and I'll even give it to you that calling it slander is a stretch. But that's what some reporters do -- they stretch shit until it fits what the producer or editor ultimately wants, whatever slant they take (good, bad, indifferent), they run it, and see what kind of shit they can stir up to generate more news to sell more subscriptions or jack up their ratings. It's like elementary physics -- energy is neither created nor destroyed, just transfered. This guy didn't back up anything he said when attacking professionals from the same field he works in? It's like his article spontaneously explodes and impodes at the same time, ultimately transferring no energy in the process. Uh, hello, but dude, that's a termination notice or a failing grade any way you cut it -- it's not about conformity, it's about an ancient, lost ideal called respect. For not only his peers, but for his profession, and he drags his employer into the mud at the end? Game over, dude.
That should never happen. Last thing we need are people's freedom of speech being suppressed. Academia, believe it or not, is the bastion of free speech. I would prefer if it remains that way.
Oh, I agree with you 100% about academia being the last true refuge of free speech -- but there is an invisible line where an uninformed, biased, ill-equipped argument (as presented in his article) will find someone ostracized by their university community.
And here's why:
Without providing any information to back up his argument, this guy comes across as a total loon, or at the very least totally unprofessional. He isn't writing fiction, so he must provide factual evidence to reinforce his claims -- I can't "suspend my disbelief," like we all do on some level when we immerse ourselves in fictitious work. When he is ostracized by his peers for a commentary that smacks in the face of the laws of written communication, it makes Princeton look bad. And you don't make one of the major higher education learning institutions in America look bad. You have to remember that free speech is acceptable as long as it is in the name of the higher cause of learning -- the moment he makes the university look bad, his ass is grass. If he's not tenured, all I have to say is "Good luck!"
In closing, free speech doesn't protect anyone from making a complete arse out of themselves in a professional community.
Moving to digital TV may be the end of private PVR projects, or taping, or any other media manipulation that's not licensed and metered by the copyright holders.
Whoa, now, think about that for a minute. Take look at the back of your old-school TV set -- do you see those analog connections, including the pass-through connections? Don't change the subject to quality degradation from digital-to-analog conversion, that's another story -- we're talking about taping and PVRs here. If these new digital tuner set-top boxes have to connect to an older TV using a converted analog signal, taping and private PVRs aren't going anywhere.
This sounds to me like Apple did a small mod to something in the underlying system and...
Yeah, it's called the Mach microkernel. Hosed or not hosed, go look at the date on the microkernel and let me know what you think Apple fucked up. Between the mk's date and kernel extensions breaking all over the place, what do you think happened? Seriously, I want someone else's opinion. There's the obvious ethernet extension that is borked, and the not so obvious like my third-party wireless drivers.
This update made my PowerBook G3 "Wallstreet" a doorstop -- gray screen of doom at startup, and it will finally boot after over an hour of waiting. And then guess what? After that insanely long wait, I get an error telling me system problems are preventing me from logging in. WTF? So I reboot in verbose mode, and the network is constantly stalling while my IOxperts 802.11b driver is complaining that it can't find the network -- all while I get at least 500+ messages sprinkled in there telling me how it's waiting for Application Services to start. So it comes up after over an hour, and then won't let me log in. Great.
After trying safe mode and single user mode to no avail, I boot from an OS 9 CD (Diskwarrior) to let me poke around and observe the destruction. The most obvious change is that Apple swapped the microkernel out during this upgrade. Go look for yourself.
Funny that NYC is just getting their set-top box rollout from Bright House (former Time Warner), as the previous poster has one in Lincoln, Nebraska... and I've had one for three months in Birmingham, Ala-frickin-bama. I don't know about you guys, but that almost makes me feel like I was paying to be a beta tester (even if I've only had it fuck up twice).
I was about to mention SFU3 and noticed that an AC beat me to the punch -- but only because it was an insert in this month's Sysadmin Magazine (which totally threw me for a loop -- MS bought the centerfold spread and paid for a demo CD -- I sure hope they ended up picking up the entire tab for this month's production costs). One thing I noticed on the SFU3 CD jacket -- and bear with me because didn't see any fine print and haven't actually looked at the CDs contents yet -- is that it appears that MS is selling SFU3 as an add-on component for Windows. I'm curious if it requires Win2K Server (any of the family) or will also install on Win2K Pro and WinXP Pro. Does anyone know what the deal is, because this should solve his file name problem? That is, if the fine print doesn't say otherwise... and yeah, I could go google the answer, but why bother, because I probably won't buy this when I can do it another way for free.
Senior admins are a small minority of software customers.
You had me up until that point. Are you overlooking the fact that senior admins essentially speak for a larger number of people? Or that senior admins recommend purchases from enterprise-side rollouts down to workgroup-level rollouts all the way down to answering questions for anyone they encounter socially (I.E. from telling the secretary what PC to buy so little Johnny can out-frag the other preschoolers to answering questions every time they go to a family function, church, a bar, or any other kind of social function where the question "What do you do for a living?" is inevitably asked?). Yeah, if you overlook those scenarios, then you can definitely say that senior admins are a small portion of software customers. Whatever, dude -- there is a reason ThinkGeek.com sells shirts that say "No, I will not fix your computer."
I think Apple is most likely to aim for a product that streams only - no copy, no local saving.
Um, maybe you didn't know, but they already have that... it is called Darwin Streaming Server. The source code is available and they were even kind enough to create binaries for Mac OS X (client; it's already included with OSX Server), Solaris 8, Windows NT Server or Windows 2K Server, and Red Hat 7.x. The Web-based interface is the same on all systems, but the thing most people don't know about: free MP3 streaming. Check it out, I've been running this for quite a few months now at home on a Pentium 233 (Red Hat 7.1) and on an iBook 366 (Mac OS X 10.2.x).
Do you want to hear how I taught my mom how to use email?
Seriously... I'd like to hear all about it, and I bet others would, too.
Me? My mom hadn't used a computer since our Epson QX-10 died an uncerimonious death in the early '90s (for the uninitiated, that's a CP/M machine that was built around an Office-like suite of software called Valdocs... and the unforgetable "Insert Disk" message at startup). Having that Epson die meant she went back to using an old IBM typewriter. So I set up an old Mac with a Netscape alias/shortcut in the startup items folder, used her Hotmail account as her home page and set everything to remember her passwords. Netscape would trigger the modem to dial automagically, and then she could check her mail. And, since it was a Mac, having a "on/off" switch on the keyboard was priceless since it meant mom could use the machine like an appliance. Gee, what a simple idea. With that solved, it only took an hour or three to teach her how to use a mouse and find the word processor!
Maybe I'm not the only one like this, but after my parents' last visit, I'm out of the tech support game officially -- dad only gave me 48 hours to move the data from his old machine before dropping in a new mainboard/CPU/RAM upgrade, so for most of the visit I was holed up in my computer room tinkering. I mucked around for 30 hours straight (pulled an all-nighter, which freaks out parents no matter how old you are), got everything running and instaleld, then they packed up and left for home. I actually kept them two hours longer than they needed so I was ensured that a pristine backup tape was made of the new machine. Add to this experience every other visit I've made over the past six years (where I've spent more than 50% of the visit "fixing" someone's PC), and I've finally made my family realize that it just isn't cool to ask this of me each and every time they see me.
It Won't -- Because It Shouldn't
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Virtual PC 6 Review
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· Score: 2, Informative
I haven't used anything beyond VPC 4.x in "Classic" Mac OS, but you shouldn't ever need something like Partition Magic -- VPC stores all of the Windows OS, Windows apps, and Windows files in a single Mac file. Regarding this single file, you have two options: either allow the file(partition) to grow as necessary, or set it to a fixed amount (which I'd imagine VPC allocates and squats on said drive space).
I'd be curious if they used the package format in Mac OS X to make each Windows "partion" appear to be a single file while leaving the option of browsing the contents, but that's another story.
And you can also connect to Mac folders as virtual network shares/drives, so keeping common files from hogging space on your Windows partition(s) is a snap.
Add a G3/G4 upgrade card to certain PCI-based pre-G3 Power Macs and use XPostFacto to install Mac OS X on your ride. Need a six-slot G4? Upgrade that 9600/350 with a G4 card and you're in business. Seems to me that one or more of the upgrade companies have their own software that does this, but charge for it (only support costs $$ with XPostFacto).
$40 for DOS 6, Windows 3.1 Was a Freebie
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AOL's new Linux PC
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Always before MS has been able to hide the cost the consumer is paying.
No joke... the other day, I was cleaning up at home and found the build sheet for my 486/66 (about $4K for the curious). It was extremely interesting to note that I was charged $40 for DOS 6 by the vendor and that they tossed in Windows 3.1 for NO CHARGE. That's right -- the first hit was free. And yes, sharing this little story makes me feel old....
Here's an idea: these folks should talk to their local Air National Guard unit. I've worked with medical missionaries in the past who went to Ecuador for a month (imaging blogging over a 9.6 modem connection over AOL -- only provider we could hook up with -- it wasn't pretty, but that was mainly user error and I digress). These physicians managed to purchase/gather enough supplies and talked the Alabama Air National Guard into shipping everything down in a week or two in advance. Of course, I don't know how to pull those kind of stings, but I know it has been done in the past for medical missions so I guess this effort might differ in the eyes of non-techies, who don't believe that information technology is as essential as proper medical care. I'd chance a guess that pilots are like us in a way they'll look for any excuse to do what they do best.;-) Good luck, though!
Um, hello, excuse me, but did the folks at Yahoo fail elementary graphing or what? Notice the units on the vertical axis of the chart (stock value in dollars) -- why is the scale between 1-5 MUCH, MUCH larger than the scale between 5-10, 10-15, and 10-20? FWIW, I can't remember the proper terms and don't care to look them up at the moment (can a mathematician clue us in with a more insightful disection of these charts, please?), but we all know that the distances between points should be equal -- and when they're not equal, the chart is biased and does not properly represent the data. What's up with this, folks?
And isn't it ironic that even Yahoo's chart makes this type of financial snafu look less severe than it actually is (I.E. that graph should be taking a serious nose dive but the downward slope is less exaggerated because of the biased scale -- in a visible sense, that is)?
Pick up two 160 GB drives for about $200 each, an Athlon 1.4 GHz mainboard combo for about $140, a full-tower case with redundant power supplies for about $200 (or a *U rack unit), an Intel 10/100 ethernet card for $20, and the rest of the pieces/parts can be had for less than $100 with frugal shopping. Total cost for twice the storage of Iomega's lowest-end offering (which is $2000): about $860. With the remaining money you're saving, pick up a solid tape drive and practice religious backups (or step up to SCSI). I'm sorry, but I'm tired of paying a premium for "brand name" crap. I have the feeling a lot of other folks on this list are, too. Heck, for the Windows guys, spend the remaining money on a full version of your favorite Redmond OS. Rinse, lather, repeat -- and be satisfied with the fruits of your labors.
Jobs actually talked about that. He said the main reason they didn't have wireless keyboards was because they didn't have a good way of powering them yet.
Uh, now I find that rather odd. My wife has a Logitech cordless mouse on her iMac 333, running Mac OS 9.1. Whenever the batteries start to fade, the OS displays a new-style "floating palette" error message that the batteries are too low and should be replaced. What part of this is unintuitive? Or how hard would it be to put Das Blinkenlights on the front of said iMac to show when a keyboard/mouse link can't be established, or possibly combine that with the current warnings? Think about it: with the current crop of wireless IO goodies like mice and keyboards -- there's usually a USB dongle-like transmitter/receiver that's always powered. What I find hard to believe is that if these dongles were shoved into the mainboard design, why can't they keep the same warning messages? And if so, let's revisit the first question: what is unintiutive about a well-written warning message that your keyboard/mouse needs new batteries? Why not use rechargable batteries, and then recharge through a retractable USB cable built into either the keyboard or the machine itself?
The point is not that he could get around it, the point is he shouldnt have to, because he bought the friggen cable to begin with.
But that means complaining about an unchangable situation is more important than finding a viable solution. Now that's some fuzzy logic. The pragmatic viewpoint is to do whatever it takes to achieve a solution -- build a cable first to turn in that project, then complain about the DMCA later (too much of a hassle? get a new project. no time to complain? get over it.). Don't be confused with the first definition of "pragmatic" in the dictionary -- what I mean is the secondary definition, which means "relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters; practical as opposed to idealistic."
Practically speaking, dude has a project that requires a cable. He needs a cable to complete his project. The DMCA won't write him a note excusing him from his assignment. Since he's a grad student, do you honestly think the prof will cut him some slack? Maybe more slack than an undergrad would get, but not enough slack to make a cable appear automagically from thin air. That's about as likely as the DMCA being repealed before the assignment is due. Priorities, priorities, priorities.
So dude waits a week or two... and probably waited longer while they were actually being shipped to the US from Hong Kong... but in that time, he could have utilized that DIY ethic and built his own cable (and any for classmates in a similar bind). When in doubt, go to Google.com and find what you need... ten seconds and two clicks later, I found the same howto that radd0 mentions in the post above. Just like that. Little to no work involved.
I feel the pain of the DCMA nonsense, but lazy people who don't bother searching for another route to the finish line make my pooh soft... especially when his CS department probably has a huge box of old cables, just waiting to be hacked (like my network cables at home, which were bastard non-standard jobs that were going to be tossed but I just added new connectors and saved quite a bit of dough).
As a geek in a PR office, here's the inside scoop on why they're not beating their own drum on this one (or it's why 99% of all organizations will sit on newsworthy information like this): it's not "ready" yet (meaning they aren't ready to field internal or external questions about said stuff; they aren't ready to fill the rest of their own staff in on it yet or they're doing that right now while the public is left in the dark with rumors; there are problems that no one except a select few know of and they would like them "fixed" in whatever way necessary before the public is informed via the marketing droids; etc.). Mix any combination of said ingredients (or come up with your own possiblities and they're likely true) and you have a press release that's "on hold" until the events change or the marketing/PR folks find a way to respin things in their favor.... oh, and don't throw rocks, I'm not allowed to talk to outsiders in the office. I just know what happens....
Seriously... why don't we buy it? Is it because there are too many factions of geeks (seperated by OS, creed, nationality, spirituality, etc.)in the world today? Have the geeks simply lost the true revolutionary spirit? Is this the chance for [sic] world domination [/sic] that we've all joked about for years?
If you're a lawyer or MBA who reads/., what is wrong with this idea (besides assuming a volunteer-based and community-based ISP will flop)? They said it couldn't be done with operating systems... and it happened. What about ISPs? Would this be the biggest waste of money in the history of the world (or the largest pyramid scheme ever)... or could this be history in the making?
Inquiring minds want to know... because right now it'd rock if someone we could all trust (someone who isn't all about money to begin with) would set up a PayPal account for this very purpose and start rounding up heavyweight geeks to form the board. Rally the troops! Let's start buying up dead ISPs and turn the Internet back over to the people! Damn the man!
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, TripMasterMonkey, are you sure you don't live in Northern Virginia? ;-)
I lived in Representative Wolf's district for almost 20 years (even went to school with one of his daughters), and even after being gone for a decade, I'm surprised to find he's still in office. Everyone in the neighborhood talked about how he never does anything, yet no one ever votes against him or puts up a real campaign against him. Thank you for pointing out his "look at the little monkey" tactics so I didn't have to dig them up for everyone -- what we have here is a classic example of a do-nothing politician in an apathetic upper-class district. Quite sad, really, when you consider the amount of tertiary degrees or professional positions held by the district's constituency.
I thought I was missing something new here, but TFA is wrong ... ISO 9669 is a standard for the interface for tank containers. ISO 9660 is the volume and file system standard.
How about the folks who made it possible for cheap bastards like me to install NetBSD on ancient hardware (in my case, Mac 68k -- you know, the pre-Power-Mac stuff)? And to keep maintaining code for an obsolete architecture? For that, I owe some serious snaps and props to the NetBSD/Mac68k gang -- Alan Briggs, Bruce O'Neel, Hauke Fath, Frederick Bruckman, John Klos, Michael Zucca, Riccardo Mottola, Shigeki Uno, Julio Vidal, Tim Larson, and anyone who I might have missed. I owe those guys some serious beers!
Seven analog tuners? That would be perfect for the public-relations shop that I support -- we need to replace five analog VCRs that record the local news from the five local stations, four times every day. But we're going after five Pioneer DVR-810H-S (80 hour series-two TiVo with stupid-fast DVD-R drive). Recording the shows and archiving them to a cheap media -- EASILY AND QUICKLY -- are our top priorities. If it is quick and easy, any quality better than VHS is better for my folks. If this Sony seven-tuner monster had an internal DVD-R, I'd need this one box instead of five -- and I'd spend end-of-year money on something else instead of those five Pioneers.
Isn't this similar to the reason why Apple took Microsoft to court over the similarities between Mac OS and Windows? Or similar to the reason why Apple took some folks to court because they copied the look and feel of their Aqua GUI?
... look at a screenshot ... Start button is named Start, My Desktop is My Desktop, etc. Watch the headlines here in a week to a month for the cease-and-desist letter from MS to the XPde folks. Makes me glad I have a friend going through law school ... heh.
I don't mean to piss in anyone's Corn Flakes, but damn
What he is saying is more like an opinion than a scientific work. It's like the example I mentioned in the above post of saying 'C++ sucks; Python rules'. One can't really justify "C++ sucks".
No, there is no difference between a scientific writing and the conversation we are having here. All are forms of communication, then begin just like a theorem, run their course just like a theorem would, and end with a proper conclusion just like a theorem would. This guy's article was like flamebait on slashdot -- nothing to back up the argument, just awkward ramblings. Now, as either a professor or an administrator of a university -- where whether you like it or not, identify and branding are important -- this guy has a responsibility to be as much of a loon as he wants until he drags his employer and their identify into his morass.
See...you don't care about freedom of speech. All you care about is image. You are a conformist. I guess you want everyone conforming to the mainstream status quo.
Now that's absolutely hysterical. That's essentially the same thing the author of the article did -- he started flinging the mud when providing a shred of proof or a coherent thought would have been more appropriate. Oh, and dude? I have a house full of over-the-hill punks here, we're listening to Fugazi, we're all drinking beer, and we're all laughing at you for being such a Jeff K. if you don't get that, it's a joke. Laugh about it, it's the only way to retain your sanity. The world is not a black-and-white, cut-and-dry, love-it-or-leave-it place -- nothing about it is, not even free speech. All rights end where someone else's begin -- trample on my shit, and get your shit squashed in return.
No, I work in public relations, and that's why I'm all over the slander issue. IANAL, and I'll even give it to you that calling it slander is a stretch. But that's what some reporters do -- they stretch shit until it fits what the producer or editor ultimately wants, whatever slant they take (good, bad, indifferent), they run it, and see what kind of shit they can stir up to generate more news to sell more subscriptions or jack up their ratings. It's like elementary physics -- energy is neither created nor destroyed, just transfered. This guy didn't back up anything he said when attacking professionals from the same field he works in? It's like his article spontaneously explodes and impodes at the same time, ultimately transferring no energy in the process. Uh, hello, but dude, that's a termination notice or a failing grade any way you cut it -- it's not about conformity, it's about an ancient, lost ideal called respect. For not only his peers, but for his profession, and he drags his employer into the mud at the end? Game over, dude.
That should never happen. Last thing we need are people's freedom of speech being suppressed. Academia, believe it or not, is the bastion of free speech. I would prefer if it remains that way.
Oh, I agree with you 100% about academia being the last true refuge of free speech -- but there is an invisible line where an uninformed, biased, ill-equipped argument (as presented in his article) will find someone ostracized by their university community.
And here's why:
Without providing any information to back up his argument, this guy comes across as a total loon, or at the very least totally unprofessional. He isn't writing fiction, so he must provide factual evidence to reinforce his claims -- I can't "suspend my disbelief," like we all do on some level when we immerse ourselves in fictitious work. When he is ostracized by his peers for a commentary that smacks in the face of the laws of written communication, it makes Princeton look bad. And you don't make one of the major higher education learning institutions in America look bad. You have to remember that free speech is acceptable as long as it is in the name of the higher cause of learning -- the moment he makes the university look bad, his ass is grass. If he's not tenured, all I have to say is "Good luck!"
In closing, free speech doesn't protect anyone from making a complete arse out of themselves in a professional community.
Moving to digital TV may be the end of private PVR projects, or taping, or any other media manipulation that's not licensed and metered by the copyright holders.
Whoa, now, think about that for a minute. Take look at the back of your old-school TV set -- do you see those analog connections, including the pass-through connections? Don't change the subject to quality degradation from digital-to-analog conversion, that's another story -- we're talking about taping and PVRs here. If these new digital tuner set-top boxes have to connect to an older TV using a converted analog signal, taping and private PVRs aren't going anywhere.
This sounds to me like Apple did a small mod to something in the underlying system and...
Yeah, it's called the Mach microkernel. Hosed or not hosed, go look at the date on the microkernel and let me know what you think Apple fucked up. Between the mk's date and kernel extensions breaking all over the place, what do you think happened? Seriously, I want someone else's opinion. There's the obvious ethernet extension that is borked, and the not so obvious like my third-party wireless drivers.
This update made my PowerBook G3 "Wallstreet" a doorstop -- gray screen of doom at startup, and it will finally boot after over an hour of waiting. And then guess what? After that insanely long wait, I get an error telling me system problems are preventing me from logging in. WTF? So I reboot in verbose mode, and the network is constantly stalling while my IOxperts 802.11b driver is complaining that it can't find the network -- all while I get at least 500+ messages sprinkled in there telling me how it's waiting for Application Services to start. So it comes up after over an hour, and then won't let me log in. Great.
After trying safe mode and single user mode to no avail, I boot from an OS 9 CD (Diskwarrior) to let me poke around and observe the destruction. The most obvious change is that Apple swapped the microkernel out during this upgrade. Go look for yourself.
Funny that NYC is just getting their set-top box rollout from Bright House (former Time Warner), as the previous poster has one in Lincoln, Nebraska ... and I've had one for three months in Birmingham, Ala-frickin-bama. I don't know about you guys, but that almost makes me feel like I was paying to be a beta tester (even if I've only had it fuck up twice).
I was about to mention SFU3 and noticed that an AC beat me to the punch -- but only because it was an insert in this month's Sysadmin Magazine (which totally threw me for a loop -- MS bought the centerfold spread and paid for a demo CD -- I sure hope they ended up picking up the entire tab for this month's production costs). One thing I noticed on the SFU3 CD jacket -- and bear with me because didn't see any fine print and haven't actually looked at the CDs contents yet -- is that it appears that MS is selling SFU3 as an add-on component for Windows. I'm curious if it requires Win2K Server (any of the family) or will also install on Win2K Pro and WinXP Pro. Does anyone know what the deal is, because this should solve his file name problem? That is, if the fine print doesn't say otherwise ... and yeah, I could go google the answer, but why bother, because I probably won't buy this when I can do it another way for free.
Senior admins are a small minority of software customers.
You had me up until that point. Are you overlooking the fact that senior admins essentially speak for a larger number of people? Or that senior admins recommend purchases from enterprise-side rollouts down to workgroup-level rollouts all the way down to answering questions for anyone they encounter socially (I.E. from telling the secretary what PC to buy so little Johnny can out-frag the other preschoolers to answering questions every time they go to a family function, church, a bar, or any other kind of social function where the question "What do you do for a living?" is inevitably asked?). Yeah, if you overlook those scenarios, then you can definitely say that senior admins are a small portion of software customers. Whatever, dude -- there is a reason ThinkGeek.com sells shirts that say "No, I will not fix your computer."
I think Apple is most likely to aim for a product that streams only - no copy, no local saving.
... it is called Darwin Streaming Server. The source code is available and they were even kind enough to create binaries for Mac OS X (client; it's already included with OSX Server), Solaris 8, Windows NT Server or Windows 2K Server, and Red Hat 7.x. The Web-based interface is the same on all systems, but the thing most people don't know about: free MP3 streaming. Check it out, I've been running this for quite a few months now at home on a Pentium 233 (Red Hat 7.1) and on an iBook 366 (Mac OS X 10.2.x).
Um, maybe you didn't know, but they already have that
Do you want to hear how I taught my mom how to use email?
... I'd like to hear all about it, and I bet others would, too.
... and the unforgetable "Insert Disk" message at startup). Having that Epson die meant she went back to using an old IBM typewriter. So I set up an old Mac with a Netscape alias/shortcut in the startup items folder, used her Hotmail account as her home page and set everything to remember her passwords. Netscape would trigger the modem to dial automagically, and then she could check her mail. And, since it was a Mac, having a "on/off" switch on the keyboard was priceless since it meant mom could use the machine like an appliance. Gee, what a simple idea. With that solved, it only took an hour or three to teach her how to use a mouse and find the word processor!
Seriously
Me? My mom hadn't used a computer since our Epson QX-10 died an uncerimonious death in the early '90s (for the uninitiated, that's a CP/M machine that was built around an Office-like suite of software called Valdocs
Maybe I'm not the only one like this, but after my parents' last visit, I'm out of the tech support game officially -- dad only gave me 48 hours to move the data from his old machine before dropping in a new mainboard/CPU/RAM upgrade, so for most of the visit I was holed up in my computer room tinkering. I mucked around for 30 hours straight (pulled an all-nighter, which freaks out parents no matter how old you are), got everything running and instaleld, then they packed up and left for home. I actually kept them two hours longer than they needed so I was ensured that a pristine backup tape was made of the new machine. Add to this experience every other visit I've made over the past six years (where I've spent more than 50% of the visit "fixing" someone's PC), and I've finally made my family realize that it just isn't cool to ask this of me each and every time they see me.
I haven't used anything beyond VPC 4.x in "Classic" Mac OS, but you shouldn't ever need something like Partition Magic -- VPC stores all of the Windows OS, Windows apps, and Windows files in a single Mac file. Regarding this single file, you have two options: either allow the file(partition) to grow as necessary, or set it to a fixed amount (which I'd imagine VPC allocates and squats on said drive space).
I'd be curious if they used the package format in Mac OS X to make each Windows "partion" appear to be a single file while leaving the option of browsing the contents, but that's another story.
And you can also connect to Mac folders as virtual network shares/drives, so keeping common files from hogging space on your Windows partition(s) is a snap.
Add a G3/G4 upgrade card to certain PCI-based pre-G3 Power Macs and use XPostFacto to install Mac OS X on your ride. Need a six-slot G4? Upgrade that 9600/350 with a G4 card and you're in business. Seems to me that one or more of the upgrade companies have their own software that does this, but charge for it (only support costs $$ with XPostFacto).
Always before MS has been able to hide the cost the consumer is paying.
... the other day, I was cleaning up at home and found the build sheet for my 486/66 (about $4K for the curious). It was extremely interesting to note that I was charged $40 for DOS 6 by the vendor and that they tossed in Windows 3.1 for NO CHARGE. That's right -- the first hit was free. And yes, sharing this little story makes me feel old ....
No joke
Here's an idea: these folks should talk to their local Air National Guard unit. I've worked with medical missionaries in the past who went to Ecuador for a month (imaging blogging over a 9.6 modem connection over AOL -- only provider we could hook up with -- it wasn't pretty, but that was mainly user error and I digress). These physicians managed to purchase/gather enough supplies and talked the Alabama Air National Guard into shipping everything down in a week or two in advance. Of course, I don't know how to pull those kind of stings, but I know it has been done in the past for medical missions so I guess this effort might differ in the eyes of non-techies, who don't believe that information technology is as essential as proper medical care. I'd chance a guess that pilots are like us in a way they'll look for any excuse to do what they do best. ;-) Good luck, though!
Um, hello, excuse me, but did the folks at Yahoo fail elementary graphing or what? Notice the units on the vertical axis of the chart (stock value in dollars) -- why is the scale between 1-5 MUCH, MUCH larger than the scale between 5-10, 10-15, and 10-20? FWIW, I can't remember the proper terms and don't care to look them up at the moment (can a mathematician clue us in with a more insightful disection of these charts, please?), but we all know that the distances between points should be equal -- and when they're not equal, the chart is biased and does not properly represent the data. What's up with this, folks?
And isn't it ironic that even Yahoo's chart makes this type of financial snafu look less severe than it actually is (I.E. that graph should be taking a serious nose dive but the downward slope is less exaggerated because of the biased scale -- in a visible sense, that is)?
First, head to pricewatch.com.
Pick up two 160 GB drives for about $200 each, an Athlon 1.4 GHz mainboard combo for about $140, a full-tower case with redundant power supplies for about $200 (or a *U rack unit), an Intel 10/100 ethernet card for $20, and the rest of the pieces/parts can be had for less than $100 with frugal shopping. Total cost for twice the storage of Iomega's lowest-end offering (which is $2000): about $860. With the remaining money you're saving, pick up a solid tape drive and practice religious backups (or step up to SCSI). I'm sorry, but I'm tired of paying a premium for "brand name" crap. I have the feeling a lot of other folks on this list are, too. Heck, for the Windows guys, spend the remaining money on a full version of your favorite Redmond OS. Rinse, lather, repeat -- and be satisfied with the fruits of your labors.
Jobs actually talked about that. He said the main reason they didn't have wireless keyboards was because they didn't have a good way of powering them yet.
Uh, now I find that rather odd. My wife has a Logitech cordless mouse on her iMac 333, running Mac OS 9.1. Whenever the batteries start to fade, the OS displays a new-style "floating palette" error message that the batteries are too low and should be replaced. What part of this is unintuitive? Or how hard would it be to put Das Blinkenlights on the front of said iMac to show when a keyboard/mouse link can't be established, or possibly combine that with the current warnings? Think about it: with the current crop of wireless IO goodies like mice and keyboards -- there's usually a USB dongle-like transmitter/receiver that's always powered. What I find hard to believe is that if these dongles were shoved into the mainboard design, why can't they keep the same warning messages? And if so, let's revisit the first question: what is unintiutive about a well-written warning message that your keyboard/mouse needs new batteries? Why not use rechargable batteries, and then recharge through a retractable USB cable built into either the keyboard or the machine itself?
The point is not that he could get around it, the point is he shouldnt have to, because he bought the friggen cable to begin with.
But that means complaining about an unchangable situation is more important than finding a viable solution. Now that's some fuzzy logic. The pragmatic viewpoint is to do whatever it takes to achieve a solution -- build a cable first to turn in that project, then complain about the DMCA later (too much of a hassle? get a new project. no time to complain? get over it.). Don't be confused with the first definition of "pragmatic" in the dictionary -- what I mean is the secondary definition, which means "relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters; practical as opposed to idealistic."
Practically speaking, dude has a project that requires a cable. He needs a cable to complete his project. The DMCA won't write him a note excusing him from his assignment. Since he's a grad student, do you honestly think the prof will cut him some slack? Maybe more slack than an undergrad would get, but not enough slack to make a cable appear automagically from thin air. That's about as likely as the DMCA being repealed before the assignment is due. Priorities, priorities, priorities.
So dude waits a week or two ... and probably waited longer while they were actually being shipped to the US from Hong Kong ... but in that time, he could have utilized that DIY ethic and built his own cable (and any for classmates in a similar bind). When in doubt, go to Google.com and find what you need ... ten seconds and two clicks later, I found the same howto that radd0 mentions in the post above. Just like that. Little to no work involved.
... especially when his CS department probably has a huge box of old cables, just waiting to be hacked (like my network cables at home, which were bastard non-standard jobs that were going to be tossed but I just added new connectors and saved quite a bit of dough).
I feel the pain of the DCMA nonsense, but lazy people who don't bother searching for another route to the finish line make my pooh soft
As a geek in a PR office, here's the inside scoop on why they're not beating their own drum on this one (or it's why 99% of all organizations will sit on newsworthy information like this): it's not "ready" yet (meaning they aren't ready to field internal or external questions about said stuff; they aren't ready to fill the rest of their own staff in on it yet or they're doing that right now while the public is left in the dark with rumors; there are problems that no one except a select few know of and they would like them "fixed" in whatever way necessary before the public is informed via the marketing droids; etc.). Mix any combination of said ingredients (or come up with your own possiblities and they're likely true) and you have a press release that's "on hold" until the events change or the marketing/PR folks find a way to respin things in their favor .... oh, and don't throw rocks, I'm not allowed to talk to outsiders in the office. I just know what happens ....
Seriously ... why don't we buy it? Is it because there are too many factions of geeks (seperated by OS, creed, nationality, spirituality, etc.)in the world today? Have the geeks simply lost the true revolutionary spirit? Is this the chance for [sic] world domination [/sic] that we've all joked about for years?
/., what is wrong with this idea (besides assuming a volunteer-based and community-based ISP will flop)? They said it couldn't be done with operating systems ... and it happened. What about ISPs? Would this be the biggest waste of money in the history of the world (or the largest pyramid scheme ever) ... or could this be history in the making?
... because right now it'd rock if someone we could all trust (someone who isn't all about money to begin with) would set up a PayPal account for this very purpose and start rounding up heavyweight geeks to form the board. Rally the troops! Let's start buying up dead ISPs and turn the Internet back over to the people! Damn the man!
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