I'm pretty happy with my own switch to the Mac. My 366 MHz PII and 650MHz P3 laptops (running Win2K) were getting toasted by the first Powerbook I had (a 400MHz Pismo running early OSX). These days I know you can get PC laptops in the GHz range but I've been very happy with my Powerbooks in terms of performance. Sure, sometimes the desktop PCs can beat the desktop Macs at some things and if you want a dedicated code cruncher then a laptop isn't what you want anyway.
Get a Powerbook for you. Get a desktop x86 or G5 for the code crunching. Nothing seems to handle load better than a Powerbook. Compiling while running 8 or 9 GUI apps and nothing gives out. iTunes plays without a hiccup. It's certainly a relief from where I used to be. I still have a screenshot of my last P3 notebook at 89% CPU running only Outlook....and another where Outlook munged the GDI layer. Things like that matter.
This is a rebranded solution from another company (begins with X...or something) but it does essentially what you want and is simple enough for people who work cash registers to not have to spend too much time learning new stuff unless they want to.
At the end of the day, you can't just plug an alternative fuel source like solar or wind into a computer and expect it to work. Power like this comes in peaks and troughs and will quickly kill a PSU and will make damn short work of any laptop battery.
Now...this means you need a regulator for the power and a capacitor for storage. Batteries are a great addition as well so you can have the light on at night. At the end of the day you'll want something you can start up quickly, shut down quickly, charge quickly and run for a while.
This points at a laptop (although you might want to consider some of the older Jupiter-class Windows CE devices like the Vadem Clio - the instant-on of the PDA-type OSen means they don't waste cycles in booting.
Also, consider using a slower machine with an older OS. Their batteries didn't last as long but using an older processor and an older OS to go along with it you can get very respectable speeds. This is based on the two laptops I have here. One is a 1.25 GHz Powerbook G4 with all the features up the wazoo, the other is a 25 MHz Powerbook 170. The new Powerbook has a note in Mactracker of being 46 Watts. The Powerbook 170 uses 17 Watts - a third of the new Powerbook. Now that's just an example and you may decide to take the hit for a newer, faster machine.
As long as you remember that an extra hour of typing could mean an hour or two less cooking time, or less light, or reduced refrigeration...
It's quite an unfair brush that we are painted with.
Some of us do put our user requests at the top of the pile - yards ahead of the bulk of procedure. We strive to have a can-do attitude to everything. This even includes taking requests seriously when we know they could prove negative to the environment.
While many of we sysadmins are not developers and in many cases, can never be developers, it is also true to say that many developers are not sysadmins and don't have the temperament for it.
In my experience, sysadmin is 20% technology and 80% personality.
This isn't a "remote root exploit vulnerability" as much as it is a "stupidly turned on by default" and fixed by......turning the service off.
This sort of thing has been an issue in a network running NFS for years, is an issue in any network running DHCP (just how much configuration do you permit to be dynamic?)..
I mean, if you came onto my network, nabbed your DHCP address and my DNS servers forwarded every request of yours to whitehouse.gov...then is it your fault or the vendors fault? Like so many "explots", it requires non-trustworthy infrastructure.
I think you may need to be careful with your mud slinging.
"Another Mac User talking crap", like, CmdrTaco, Moshe Bar, James Gosling? All Mac users talking crap?
Sure, it's a bit of a blow for Linux adoption and a big plus for Mac OS X adoption but frankly I don't see a conflict here. If you would spend more time convincing people on Windows to go to Linux then wouldn't we all be in a better place.
GIMP is a great app - for the price. I've been using it for years but it is laughable to compare it to Photoshop. It's only comparable if you're not a designer. The tools in Photoshop are award-wnning as well as light-years ahead of GIMP. I use GIMP but, for a second here, can we be realistic. I personally don't use Photoshop for day to day image retouching (why use a 500 quid piece of software when a free one will do) but Photoshop is more than just an image retouching app.
As for quality of software. Some open source software is without par. We see them being used every day. Some of it is simply best of class. Some of it, on the other hand, bites.
Tokyo University switched because Macs are easier to maintain. The University of Virginia used G5s running Mac OS X because the Linux software "wasn't there yet". For these cases it doesn't mean you have to stop using Linux so stop being so defensive.
And if you had ANY conviction in your statement, you'd not be an Anonymous Coward.
I don't care if Quicktime is open source, free software, or dictated to a trained monkey by God himself and compiled in secret. It should, however, support full screen video playback without upgrading to Pro for $30.
Dunno if this makes up for it but it is just the PLAYER app that can't handle full-screen without a cash injection. These are freeware apps that will do fullscreen. Plus I'm guessing you can use MPlayer OSX and VLC anyway. http://www.lostminds.com/content/truplaya .shtml http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo /mac/181 83
It's one thing building your own machine if you enjoy it (as some of you weirdoes do) but frankly it's not worth my time. I'd much rather spend my time in work earning money and spending my time outside of work with my family rather than piddling about with Windows OR Linux on cheap hardware.
Moreso, to save Money I could run Linux which would provide me with 50% of what I consider to be a good computing experience - the smashing UNIXy bits. The rest - consistent UI, stable, bug-free apps, sound card support I don't want to work for - I'd have to get elsewhere. The remainder (buggy apps, poor UI, poor documentation) you (and Adobe) can keep.
So, I guess if you work the graveyard shift in a 24 hour supermarket, live with your Mom and think that a well-running x86 box is one with the side off, then I guess building your own computer is worth the time you spend on it.
One of our local colleges had a vote among their students. They were faces with a switch to OSX on one hand or a switch to Windows. Both would require a lot of work and a lot of money but their Mac hardware could run OSX.
The student body voted and came back with Windows.
So, the Macs were carted out, sold off cheaply (Yes, I made out like a bandit) and new PCs were installed.
Then the problems started.
Y'see. When the Macs were there, they were pretty open. There aren't too many viruses available for the Mac and the students could while away their lunchtimes playing UT on the iMacs and no-one would care. There just wasn't much malware and what there was, wasn't unrecoverable. All of the Macs had FireWire and I know of half a dozen really good student films that came out of students with a cheap camcorder and a couple of hours on ANY of the Macs there.
The students came in and eagerly logged into their new Windows PCs and then discovered that they weren't permitted to install software. Or change the system clock. Or the language of the system. So, now there's no UT or CounterStrike during lunch.
The other problems were hardware related. 20% of their CDRW drives have already been replaced and they had to buy extra machines for swap-out when the PCs flatline during or just before a class. There's a separate "Video Suite" which has higher quality PCs but the students involved in the film-making claim that it takes too long to edit video on those machines. Instead they bought a low end iMac and do it at their digs. For general use the PCs are fine - to get rid of registry crud and keep them up to date with patches, they re-image them every month and put a fresh install out there.
Maybe it's not a fair comparison and a lot of the blame lies with the sysadmins but at the same time, due to the amount of malware for Windows, they couldn't just leave the machines completely open.
Rather as Cringley and others have stated, it sounds like a consipiracy to maintain IT jobs and expand their budget.
So, what Crinkley-man is saying and what we all agree with is that the "Macs out, UNIX out" refrain of the corporates in the late 90s is just being repeated in the schoolhouse now?
Sure we all knew Education was 5 years behind in progress.
You've all been to winface.com and bought your UNIX guide to Defenstration? It's a better read than Bob's article to be honest.
I could really tell you which was easier to admin: Linux or Windows because while Windows is easier to set up, keeping it running is a nightmare of updates and the effort grows exponentially as you add more windows machines. In comparison, Linux can be a bitch to set up but it's easy to script the necessary updates so adminning one or a hundred isn't that much more effort.
The nice thing about Mac OS X is that it's got both down pat. It's easy to set up and it's easy to admin. Our company web server (iMac 233 running Mac OS X) has been a lot easier to admin than it's predecessor (same hardware running Linux).
And, yeah, it's true that you don't need a GUI to run a server. So...just turn it off on OSX. It's just an edit of a text file - I'm sure most of the nerds here could manage that.
GPL isn't about individual freedom exclusively, it's about individual freedom in society
Easy for an AC to say.
I don't see how GPL enables freedom in society. The FSF will never accept any license that isn't GPL and they expect all companies to just give away code for free? So, what, we can all rely on sourceforge for our software - brilliant plan - because as we know, only commercial software is riddled with bugs...
Of course, who in their right mind would voluntarily use APSL anyway for stuff that was completely original - it's Apple's license. I get the feeling that the FSF have a GNU up their butt. I mean - what's so flippin' special about the GPL and how come they can get away with calling the GPL "Free"?
"We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do" - Well..you can't under the GPL. Try a BSD license.
that would have worked for our class A subnet and the hundreds of wee subnets we acquired through takeovers. nmap currently has no idea what OS I'm running
Besides, the only OS that fingerprinters can reliably detect in any reasonable time is Windows.
I'd love to know where they get this 1% from anyway.
Last big company worked for there were maybe 150 people with Linux installed at the desk. Out of 96 thousand employees.
I'd REALLY like to know where they get the 1% figure from. (looks at the boxed, downloaded and magazine-front Linux CDs on the shelf and his ZERO Linux installations)
We're a small computer company in a local business park. While some of the other small businesses have computers they are not really USING them other than expensive typewriters. Showing these people that the printers can be shared, that they can fax from their desk, even to the point that they can do more than just type up documents.
We also offer user accounts - people from the business park can log in using their unique details and get email and web hosting. For some small businesses it's cool to be shown how to do a web page.
Picture this, four or five small companies all targetting the same small area. There's enough for all of them to get slim pickings - enough to keep the geeks in hardware and everybody paid on time.
Now, add a few freelancers. They come in, promise the earth, delivery is usually substandard and comeback is absolutely nil. There are a few of them, lone rangers, about but they're not doing terribly well. It's great for a slump in the day job, a period of redundancy or a bit of extra pocket money, but for long term, it bites because customers want culpability, they want guarantees and they want someone who can come in at the drop of a hat.
I don't mind though. The freelancers end up giving us more work. They're like a sales team. They do so well at their job that people are phoning us to help them recover. Most freelancers have no concept of "tax" or "insurance" because a lot of them were working for big dot-boom companies and they had a legion of pen-pushers handling that for them.
The "Ask Slashdot" was about Exchange alternatives. That means we don't want people telling us that we should just use Exchange - we've tried that way and we want something different. The reasons may be manifold: the brand, the vendor, the one-size-fits-all-interface, but for me it's simply the cost.
I'd love a standards based solution that permitted my users to have different clients. Some that were standard to their chosen platform, others that were in-house coded. I'm sorta wondering how hard it would be to take phpgroupware and put a web services front end on it so it could be an actual GUI app for desktop users and a web based one for remote users.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty happy with my own switch to the Mac. My 366 MHz PII and 650MHz P3 laptops (running Win2K) were getting toasted by the first Powerbook I had (a 400MHz Pismo running early OSX). These days I know you can get PC laptops in the GHz range but I've been very happy with my Powerbooks in terms of performance. Sure, sometimes the desktop PCs can beat the desktop Macs at some things and if you want a dedicated code cruncher then a laptop isn't what you want anyway.
Get a Powerbook for you. Get a desktop x86 or G5 for the code crunching. Nothing seems to handle load better than a Powerbook. Compiling while running 8 or 9 GUI apps and nothing gives out. iTunes plays without a hiccup. It's certainly a relief from where I used to be. I still have a screenshot of my last P3 notebook at 89% CPU running only Outlook....and another where Outlook munged the GDI layer. Things like that matter.
Actually that's pretty amazing that you didn't manage to get that all working on a Mac OS X 10.3 machine.
Could be some kind of record.
What, should we demand a 64-bit version of 'ls' and 'cat'?
Worth the effort?
http://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-hotspot.htm
This is a rebranded solution from another company (begins with X...or something) but it does essentially what you want and is simple enough for people who work cash registers to not have to spend too much time learning new stuff unless they want to.
At the end of the day, you can't just plug an alternative fuel source like solar or wind into a computer and expect it to work. Power like this comes in peaks and troughs and will quickly kill a PSU and will make damn short work of any laptop battery.
Now...this means you need a regulator for the power and a capacitor for storage. Batteries are a great addition as well so you can have the light on at night. At the end of the day you'll want something you can start up quickly, shut down quickly, charge quickly and run for a while.
This points at a laptop (although you might want to consider some of the older Jupiter-class Windows CE devices like the Vadem Clio - the instant-on of the PDA-type OSen means they don't waste cycles in booting.
Also, consider using a slower machine with an older OS. Their batteries didn't last as long but using an older processor and an older OS to go along with it you can get very respectable speeds. This is based on the two laptops I have here. One is a 1.25 GHz Powerbook G4 with all the features up the wazoo, the other is a 25 MHz Powerbook 170. The new Powerbook has a note in Mactracker of being 46 Watts. The Powerbook 170 uses 17 Watts - a third of the new Powerbook. Now that's just an example and you may decide to take the hit for a newer, faster machine.
As long as you remember that an extra hour of typing could mean an hour or two less cooking time, or less light, or reduced refrigeration...
It's quite an unfair brush that we are painted with.
Some of us do put our user requests at the top of the pile - yards ahead of the bulk of procedure. We strive to have a can-do attitude to everything. This even includes taking requests seriously when we know they could prove negative to the environment.
While many of we sysadmins are not developers and in many cases, can never be developers, it is also true to say that many developers are not sysadmins and don't have the temperament for it.
In my experience, sysadmin is 20% technology and 80% personality.
This isn't a "remote root exploit vulnerability" as much as it is a "stupidly turned on by default" and fixed by
This sort of thing has been an issue in a network running NFS for years, is an issue in any network running DHCP (just how much configuration do you permit to be dynamic?)..
I mean, if you came onto my network, nabbed your DHCP address and my DNS servers forwarded every request of yours to whitehouse.gov...then is it your fault or the vendors fault? Like so many "explots", it requires non-trustworthy infrastructure.
Evidently the chimps permitted this question. Is /. a support site?
Complain.
Anyone think this one is misleading?
Intel Centrino Advert
I think you may need to be careful with your mud slinging.
"Another Mac User talking crap", like, CmdrTaco, Moshe Bar, James Gosling? All Mac users talking crap?
Sure, it's a bit of a blow for Linux adoption and a big plus for Mac OS X adoption but frankly I don't see a conflict here. If you would spend more time convincing people on Windows to go to Linux then wouldn't we all be in a better place.
GIMP is a great app - for the price. I've been using it for years but it is laughable to compare it to Photoshop. It's only comparable if you're not a designer. The tools in Photoshop are award-wnning as well as light-years ahead of GIMP. I use GIMP but, for a second here, can we be realistic. I personally don't use Photoshop for day to day image retouching (why use a 500 quid piece of software when a free one will do) but Photoshop is more than just an image retouching app.
As for quality of software. Some open source software is without par. We see them being used every day. Some of it is simply best of class. Some of it, on the other hand, bites.
Tokyo University switched because Macs are easier to maintain. The University of Virginia used G5s running Mac OS X because the Linux software "wasn't there yet". For these cases it doesn't mean you have to stop using Linux so stop being so defensive.
And if you had ANY conviction in your statement, you'd not be an Anonymous Coward.
I'd have expected more from a native of Comber.
Shame on you.
I don't care if Quicktime is open source, free software, or dictated to a trained monkey by God himself and compiled in secret. It should, however, support full screen video playback without upgrading to Pro for $30.
a .shtmlo /mac/181 83
Dunno if this makes up for it but it is just the PLAYER app that can't handle full-screen without a cash injection. These are freeware apps that will do fullscreen. Plus I'm guessing you can use MPlayer OSX and VLC anyway.
http://www.lostminds.com/content/truplay
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinf
HTH
It's one thing building your own machine if you enjoy it (as some of you weirdoes do) but frankly it's not worth my time. I'd much rather spend my time in work earning money and spending my time outside of work with my family rather than piddling about with Windows OR Linux on cheap hardware.
Moreso, to save Money I could run Linux which would provide me with 50% of what I consider to be a good computing experience - the smashing UNIXy bits. The rest - consistent UI, stable, bug-free apps, sound card support I don't want to work for - I'd have to get elsewhere. The remainder (buggy apps, poor UI, poor documentation) you (and Adobe) can keep.
So, I guess if you work the graveyard shift in a 24 hour supermarket, live with your Mom and think that a well-running x86 box is one with the side off, then I guess building your own computer is worth the time you spend on it.
One of our local colleges had a vote among their students. They were faces with a switch to OSX on one hand or a switch to Windows. Both would require a lot of work and a lot of money but their Mac hardware could run OSX.
The student body voted and came back with Windows.
So, the Macs were carted out, sold off cheaply (Yes, I made out like a bandit) and new PCs were installed.
Then the problems started.
Y'see. When the Macs were there, they were pretty open. There aren't too many viruses available for the Mac and the students could while away their lunchtimes playing UT on the iMacs and no-one would care. There just wasn't much malware and what there was, wasn't unrecoverable. All of the Macs had FireWire and I know of half a dozen really good student films that came out of students with a cheap camcorder and a couple of hours on ANY of the Macs there.
The students came in and eagerly logged into their new Windows PCs and then discovered that they weren't permitted to install software. Or change the system clock. Or the language of the system. So, now there's no UT or CounterStrike during lunch.
The other problems were hardware related. 20% of their CDRW drives have already been replaced and they had to buy extra machines for swap-out when the PCs flatline during or just before a class. There's a separate "Video Suite" which has higher quality PCs but the students involved in the film-making claim that it takes too long to edit video on those machines. Instead they bought a low end iMac and do it at their digs. For general use the PCs are fine - to get rid of registry crud and keep them up to date with patches, they re-image them every month and put a fresh install out there.
Maybe it's not a fair comparison and a lot of the blame lies with the sysadmins but at the same time, due to the amount of malware for Windows, they couldn't just leave the machines completely open.
Rather as Cringley and others have stated, it sounds like a consipiracy to maintain IT jobs and expand their budget.
So, what Crinkley-man is saying and what we all agree with is that the "Macs out, UNIX out" refrain of the corporates in the late 90s is just being repeated in the schoolhouse now?
Sure we all knew Education was 5 years behind in progress.
You've all been to winface.com and bought your UNIX guide to Defenstration? It's a better read than Bob's article to be honest.
I could really tell you which was easier to admin: Linux or Windows because while Windows is easier to set up, keeping it running is a nightmare of updates and the effort grows exponentially as you add more windows machines. In comparison, Linux can be a bitch to set up but it's easy to script the necessary updates so adminning one or a hundred isn't that much more effort.
The nice thing about Mac OS X is that it's got both down pat. It's easy to set up and it's easy to admin. Our company web server (iMac 233 running Mac OS X) has been a lot easier to admin than it's predecessor (same hardware running Linux).
And, yeah, it's true that you don't need a GUI to run a server. So...just turn it off on OSX. It's just an edit of a text file - I'm sure most of the nerds here could manage that.
Frankly the idea of some government-sponsored pedo-ring really bothers me. Not a worthwhile use of tax dollars I think.
GPL isn't about individual freedom exclusively, it's about individual freedom in society
Easy for an AC to say.
I don't see how GPL enables freedom in society. The FSF will never accept any license that isn't GPL and they expect all companies to just give away code for free? So, what, we can all rely on sourceforge for our software - brilliant plan - because as we know, only commercial software is riddled with bugs...
Of course, who in their right mind would voluntarily use APSL anyway for stuff that was completely original - it's Apple's license. I get the feeling that the FSF have a GNU up their butt. I mean - what's so flippin' special about the GPL and how come they can get away with calling the GPL "Free"?
"We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do"
- Well..you can't under the GPL. Try a BSD license.
that would have worked for our class A subnet and the hundreds of wee subnets we acquired through takeovers. nmap currently has no idea what OS I'm running
Besides, the only OS that fingerprinters can reliably detect in any reasonable time is Windows.
I'd love to know where they get this 1% from anyway.
Last big company worked for there were maybe 150 people with Linux installed at the desk. Out of 96 thousand employees.
I'd REALLY like to know where they get the 1% figure from. (looks at the boxed, downloaded and magazine-front Linux CDs on the shelf and his ZERO Linux installations)
We're a small computer company in a local business park. While some of the other small businesses have computers they are not really USING them other than expensive typewriters. Showing these people that the printers can be shared, that they can fax from their desk, even to the point that they can do more than just type up documents.
We also offer user accounts - people from the business park can log in using their unique details and get email and web hosting. For some small businesses it's cool to be shown how to do a web page.
It costs a fortune to advertise on TV yet virtually nothing to advertise on the net. And this is the demographic that has high disposable cash.
Either the cost of TV advertising needs to come down or perhaps internet advertising is being sold wrong.
Okay, time for an anecdote.
Picture this, four or five small companies all targetting the same small area. There's enough for all of them to get slim pickings - enough to keep the geeks in hardware and everybody paid on time.
Now, add a few freelancers. They come in, promise the earth, delivery is usually substandard and comeback is absolutely nil. There are a few of them, lone rangers, about but they're not doing terribly well. It's great for a slump in the day job, a period of redundancy or a bit of extra pocket money, but for long term, it bites because customers want culpability, they want guarantees and they want someone who can come in at the drop of a hat.
I don't mind though. The freelancers end up giving us more work. They're like a sales team. They do so well at their job that people are phoning us to help them recover. Most freelancers have no concept of "tax" or "insurance" because a lot of them were working for big dot-boom companies and they had a legion of pen-pushers handling that for them.
I'd love a standards based solution that permitted my users to have different clients. Some that were standard to their chosen platform, others that were in-house coded. I'm sorta wondering how hard it would be to take phpgroupware and put a web services front end on it so it could be an actual GUI app for desktop users and a web based one for remote users.
Of course, I'd be using the open source computer of choice :) A *nix for the rest of us