He explained that this isn't a desktop OS, but a personal OS. Then he broke down what personal computing has meant through the short history of computing.
I think we all know what KDE gets associated with in the Linux world, and it makes sense to clarify that PC-BSD has more mature, realistic goals than 'to replace Windows on the desktop.'
RTFA, idiot. You didn't read it, you accused someone of being payed off, and you made assumptions based on the context provided by a bunch of tween posts on an Internet forum. You are either playing Slashdot bingo or you're a tool.
OpenGL, and DirectX force you into rendering a specific way.
If the hardware was fully programmable, you wouldn't need to be forced into doing things the OpenGL/DirectX way, and we might see a resurgence of past software rendering techniques. OR, you could still do things the OpenGL/DirectX way... He says this in the God-damned article, you choad.
This guy has no clue at all or has been paid off.
Right, so you are probably too young, or too stupid to know what past software rendering systems were. Why do I fucking bother with you? Because it's fun and you make me laugh.
You use OpenGL so... that you have a portable interface to the graphics system
For Christ's sake, Tim Sweeney makes it perfectly fucking clear that he feels when CPUs are powerful enough or GPUs programmable enough, we'll be able to do all our rendering in C++... again. You know, that PORTABLE language that's older than you are? Holly shit balls, Batman, how does Doom run on dos/windows/mac/linux/game boy/cell phone/my toaster without being written to one of these 'portable interfaces to a graphics system'?!???!111 OH, because all rendering was written in C for a single processor? Yes, and even some fugly non-portable assembler, dick boy. Damn, code 'libraries' aren't going away, just the narrowly focused window through which we access a certain category of hardware.
The whooooooooole point this guy was trying to get across was you won't need a portable little window onto the graphics system when the hardware is fully programmable, and general purpose. At that point a portable language will do, and yes, we already have those, been there, and done that. *WOOSH*
I figured out a long time ago that if I stop reading Internet forums for a while, I feel much happier with my computer(s), and computing in general. Basically, stop listening to other people's complaints, and find your own reasons to like/dislike something.
I am so sick of their control freak bullshit
It's Apple's ridiculous policies that have completely turned me off
I remember when Apple was cool
I'll build me a Hackintosh, just to spite the bastards
So much emotion for a machine... Try closing your eyes, forget all about the Internet, it doesn't exist. Forget all about silly "evil company" memes, boycotts, idealistic bullcrap, what's "cool" , what's not, etc, and separate yourself from the emotional baggage of that... other place. Now, open them and just use your computer. Go try out one of the "evil" company's products. See how it doesn't burn your skin when you touch it? Imagine millions of people using it productively with no regrets, and no worries. That's the real world.
I've also been a Linux sysadmin for several years, so I keep trying out various multimedia software and distros when they come out or get updated, (like dyne:bolic, ubustud, ardour, ecasound, etc). Much to my chagrin, I can never get the multitrack recording to work for me in Linux. It seems jackd is always the problem, no matter which soundcard I try (and I've got several I bought because they were listed as "compatible" but they really are not, like M-audio with the envy24 set). I don't know what the hell is up with the jackd devs, but I do know that sooner or later, there will be a satisfactory Linux solution to multitrack recording
Read that back to yourself, is this really where you want to be? I'm a Linux sysadmin too, I know where you are coming from. It's easy to get all caught up in the free/open idealism, and lose focus on what computers are really here for. That's to make our lives easier & better, not the circular "for us to work on them" that the bulk of you reading this get stuck on.
Make a list of pros/cons for free and open software, their development models, philosophies, and so on. Do you really find the pros contributing much towards your goal of professional audio recording? In a developer driven world, will audio recording ever take a front seat to service hosting and server administration?
You will create a big stir over "DRM in A is BAD", and they will respond with "GOOD DRM in B". See how that's done? It will hit Slashdot, and they will reap tons of free advertising for yet another DRM laden game.
Personally, I don't care, this greatly amuses me. Keep making a bigger deal of DRM, go ahead, maybe someday they will actually release a big title without DRM. With all the hype you'll have generated them by then, they'll make shit-tons of money with "Z is DRM FREE", and you'll just change your tune to "constant internet connection required is bad, mmmmkaaay."
In my opinion, it is impossible to get all the advantages of open source when it isn't cross platform as well.
Open source has little to do with cross platform or Linux in particular. Open source is one possible aspect of free software. Free, as in you are free to port it to whatever platform you desire.
This is also hilariously hypocritical considering the volume of open source software that assumes Linux is the center of the universe.
Well, many of the warranties that come from a piece of software being open source, really go to waste in this case.
WARRANTIES??? Read the GPL fool! The real warranty is that YOU can maintain it, just as YOU can port it. If you can't do either of those, then what exactly is open source to you other than a usability nightmare?
cause there are already hype victims that are staying in windows because there is no chrome for other OSes
Well, the important thing is this is a win for open source right? Do you have a hard time saying that because it doesn't run on Linux? I guess it's also not open source because there isn't an OS X, OpenSolaris, or *BSD port? OS/2? AIX? Solaris? HPUX? It's perfectly fine to use free software on a non-free platform right? NO? This is the problem with freetarded posers in the Linux community. Linux is open/free. Open/free is NOT Linux. Also, please stop redefining "free" to mean "my whole fucking computer must run free software, and be designed from free blueprints". You are missing the whole damned point of free software, and I don't share your insane ideologies.
P.S. Jesus Christ, if you think Chrome is keeping people from evaluating different God-damned OPERATING SYSTEMS, maybe you should rethink why those other OS's exist and why the current users choose them. How about less preaching and more coding from the likes of you?
The specs of Mac models shift over time, just as they do with PC's.
Try another retail outlet, some carry older Mac models at much better prices. Same goes for PC vendors that sell direct, retail will often carry older models. Much like car dealers still carry NEW 06's. The big difference between Macs and PCs here are the Mac prices hold up a bit longer. Major design changes might skew that a little though. Nothing beats the price of a used PC!
Anyway, that thing doesn't run Mac OS X, and that's really a major factor:\
Macs are certainly affordable now, but you seriously cannot tell me Macs are cheaper.
You must be mistaken, because I never said such a thing. Can you show me where I have? Jesus, did you miss all of... "I think PCs are like muscle cars (but many are more like Corolla's;), cheap and powerful where it counts. Macs are a little more well rounded, like mid range four door sedans. You'll always find people scoffing at the heated seats, leather interior, dual climate control, quiet interior, convertible top, etc, and you just can't find many mid range sedans with a 4LV6, 6LV8, or forced induction. Frankly, we need both, and I'm glad PC's are here to fill this role, but it's not what I or many others are looking for in a computer." I mean, I even compared a pretty decent $279 Dell to a damned $599 Mac...
I didn't use "cheaper" or even "cheap" to describe a Mac. I even complimented the PC by comparing them to muscle cars. OK, if you're from the UK, you might not know what that means. Think cheap car, huge engine. Your cheap laptop with a freaking 512MB VRAM is exactly what I was talking about.
It is a shame we can't run OS X on any hardware, or that Apple doesn't at least make a deal with one other PC vendor. I just looked at what HP currently offers in the same line as your laptop, and they do look like pretty nice machines, but neither Vista nor Linux are good OS X replacements.
These guys also think it's just a myth passed around by word of mouth. The US DoD still today requires multiple overwrites or destruction, and that sure as shit isn't just for the fun of it. That probably means that other governments (most likely us as well) have the capability to recover some of this data if it were important enough.
We can guess all we want who can do what how quickly, but there's a whole lot of information outside of the DoD that might be wanted by the organizations with the capability of recovering it.
python - an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language ruby - Interpreted object-oriented scripting language java - Java interpreter
First of all, ruby's man page calls itself a scripting language, and secondly... #!/usr/bin/java println("Hello World!");
Oh right...
You can call all of these "interpreted" languages, but the ones with interactive prompts, or able to execute a source input file I throw at it, those are scripting languages. Java is nowhere NEAR a scripting language, it was not built for this. The other languages WERE built for this. It's an important distinction, and it doesn't make a perl/python/ruby developer any less of a man. Honestly, the interactive portion, and executing with #!/usr/bin/foo are the #1 and #2 indicators that it qualifies as "scripting".
You almost sound like "scripting language" is derogatory. Well, it's not. Many people WANT scripting functionality for the Java platform, but it isn't here until I can run a one liner from the command line.
if you price out a Dell PC with linux preinstalled, and omit the monitor, it's $249 for a dual-core 2 GHz, 2 Gb RAM, 250 Gb hd. The stereotype that was bogus in period #2 -- that macs were for people with too much money on their hands -- is really true now.
I don't know what you were looking at, but this is the cheapest I could find on dell.com. I think a dual core 2GHz proc is $150 to $200 by itself.:P Also, both have a bunch of USB ports, I just looked for differences, Nothing's changed, it's still apples to oranges. Just as you might not have needed built in sound then, you may not need FW, BT, dig audio, wireless net, IR remote, stack of dvds form factor now.
The third era is MacOS X. The big issue now is that low-end PCs can do everything I need
If you look at the growth rate of the PC over the last 20 years, this was/is true for the majority of computer users. Nothing at all wrong with your decision. I think PCs are like muscle cars (but many are more like Corolla's;), cheap and powerful where it counts. Macs are a little more well rounded, like mid range four door sedans. You'll always find people scoffing at the heated seats, leather interior, dual climate control, quiet interior, convertible top, etc, and you just can't find many mid range sedans with a 4LV6, 6LV8, or forced induction. Frankly, we need both, and I'm glad PC's are here to fill this role, but it's not what I or many others are looking for in a computer.
Dell Inspiron 530s - $279 Intel® Celeron ® Processor 440 (2.00GHz, 800 FSB, 512KB L2 cache, single core) 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 2DIMMs 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache(TM) 16X DVD+/-RW Drive Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 next gen, but slower than 950/3000 VGA video output DVI video output (probably same specs as Mac mini) Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio Integrated 10/100 Ethernet (AFAIK, no gig on this model, googling for inspiron 530s returns wildly different machines, $279 - $2000) keyboard & mouse included 1Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
Mac mini - $599 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (1.83GHz, 667 FSB, 2MB L2 cache, dual core) 1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512MB 80GB Serial ATA drive (5400 RPM) Intel GMA 950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory DVI video output to support digital resolutions up to 1920 by 1200 pixels VGA video output analog resolutions up to 1920 by 1080 pixels S-video and composite video output Built-in speaker Combined optical digital audio input/audio line in (minijack) Combined optical digital audio output/headphone out (minijack) Slot-loading Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW): reads DVDs at up to 8x speed Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet Built-in 54-Mbps AirPort Extreme wireless networking Built-in Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) up to 3 Mbps Apple Remote One FireWire 400 port NO keyboard or mouse Your Mac mini comes with 90 days of free telephone support and a one-year limited warranty.
I just don't see a significant difference between what we're calling a prank and a frame up. Someone is going to risk being caught be parking lot surveillance, or neighbors to change someone's pass to a different ID, all to... what? Get that person's pass privileges revoked? Make them give up and not use it? Are those outcomes not utterly pointless?
Nobody on either side will suspect a third party after your second attempt?
So I don't get it, is a "frame up" supposed to be like a prank but more persistent, and more risky, and not done just for fun?
The "NAT is evil" argument just doesn't sit right. Sure it causes some pain, but only in stupid protocols that don't know how to use UPnP or do stupid things like active FTP.
Everything you call "stupid" broke BECAUSE of NAT. We need to upgrade all our "stupid" protocols to work around NAT, because IPv4 is insufficient for our current needs. NAT was a necessary evil, NOT something we should embrace when we have a chance to fix the underlying problems.
Jesus, this is such a silly thing to debate. The Internet needs fewer bolted on pieces of crap that weren't designed to operate together. I just can't understand this defense of NAT. Not wanting to upgrade is OK, but sticking with NAT because it's... NAT, is bizarre. There is no value whatsoever. It is not a free firewall, it takes considerably more effort to make a NAT pass & filter traffic than it does a firewall to filter traffic. Seriously, a NAT is all the intelligence of a firewall plus a ton of unnecessary work to reroute traffic. IPv6 == no more mangling the traffic + same exact firewall logic. All the "good" that you think comes from NAT could be applied to packet filters. You want UPnP to punch holes into your packet filtering firewall automatically? Not impossible. Sounds dumb as hell when I say it like that, but you are the ones telling us NAT is more secure than packet filtering! UPnP was created solely to bypass the NAT "firewall", something that wasn't designed as a security measure in the first place, and just got in people's way. Scary thing is, I don't think most people really WANT a firewall... not if they're all clamoring for UPnP they don't.
If you just want your crap to work and not have to mess with some network appliance, you really DIDN'T want the kind of firewall you think a NATing device is. You might want a host based firewall though.
They would have a hard time clearing their name because computers are "infallible."
It's not magic, if someone's pass had been overwritten as a prank, it would be easy as hell to verify afterwards with a handheld scanner. Then it's down to a _person_ deciding if it was a prank or on purpose, so where does taking the side of the computer fit into this? Are you trying to say the passes might overwrite themselves to another ID, and there is simply no one to blame? HAH!
I'm not saying you don't have the right to give something away and be an asshole about it, but don't expect any fucking reach arounds.
Yah, I could have said that in a cleaner manner, but of the spectrum of things the word "free" is associated with, one would think you'd be aiming for the better end of it. Like free healthcare, not free food behind the dumpster.
if M (the amount of memory required) consists of m1 + m2 + m3, where:
m1 is the amount of memory required by the compiled code
m2 is the amount of memory required by the compiler/interpreter/optimizer
m3 is the amount of memory required by the problem data
Then it is pretty easy to see that m2 is zero at runtime for compiled code, and that the difference (if any) in m1 for the (supposedly) superior real-time optimization will be far, FAR less than m2 (which will be zero at runtime for compiled code).
m2 should also include shared library memory, single instance or no. So what if most of m2 for an interpreted app is single instance? http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4416624 "Class data sharing (CDS) has been introduced in the 1.5 release as the first step toward addressing this problem. The CDS code was originally developed by Apple Computer, Inc. during their port of the Java HotSpot VM to Mac OS X and was further developed within Sun primarily by xxxxx@xxxxx. ... The footprint cost of new JVM instances has been reduced in two ways. First, a portion of the shared archive, currently between five and six megabytes, is mapped read-only and therefore shared among multiple JVM processes. Previously this data was replicated in each JVM instance. Second, less data is loaded out of the shared archive because the metadata for unused methods remains completely untouched as opposed to being created and processed during class loading. These savings allow more applications to be run concurrently on the same machine."
The major reasons for using interpretive languages have always been the improvements in the development cycle. Raw execution performance of interpretive code (JIT or otherwise) is unlikely to ever exceed that of compiled code, for C or any other language, for exactly the reasons outlined above.
The major reasons for using interpreted/compiled/assembled languages have always been the improvements in the development cycle. Raw execution performance of interpreted/compiled/assembled code (optimized or otherwise) is unlikely to ever exceed that of machine code, for exactly the reasons outlined above.
There's only ONE way you're going to get a processor to execute exactly what you specify, not one instruction more, and do so using the minimum amount of memory necessary to perform the task. This isn't very important on today's processors (or those of the last decade).
Some of you are saying that Firewire 800 it's fast enough. Remember that for some marketing reason there is no IP over FireWire in Vista
I thought it was mostly used to sync data to a new computer.
I mean, why the hell would anyone use FW800 networking for anything other than an quick/easy point to point transfer when they have a gig ethernet port? Who would have the first one but not the second? But if you plan on networking two PCs with USB3 for the long haul, good luck with that.
The difference is, three PCs can be had for less than three thousand dollars, new, even with monitors and such. How much will one mainframe cost you?
Are we counting the effort your team put into making these PCs work reliably in parallel, and the orders of magnitude more complex a cluster of discrete PC's is? Are we counting all the communications and storage networking infrastructure, and staff to support a cluster of PC's?
Only if there's an irrational need for it to be exactly one machine.
Obviously, where there is a single point of failure, you get a backup. Mainframes are no different. A DR plan for a mainframe doesn't say "move the smoldering remains of our only mainframe to the alternate site and call tech support." That's a silly notion, that mainframes repel each other somehow, or cut the heads off other mainframes so there can be only one.;)
Cluster of PC's > Mainframe is a flawed argument. You might as well say buying a couple quarts of oil is better than going to Jiffy Lube. You're shifting the integration work onto yourself. Even if someday you can just roll a giant PC cluster out the box, fully integrated, with the same features a mainframe provides, I think you'll find that the overall cost differential will not be very high. Then you have to figure out how to make them do work.
I'll add a disclaimer, too: I work on a project which is currently deployed via Amazon EC2.
So now you're talking about leasing time/resources on someone else's cluster environment, skipping the infrastructure ENTIRELY, so we're left with the "make it do work" part.
Now, I'm not trying to tell you a mainframe is cheaper than just three PC's, even after all is said and done, it'll probably cost more. If you look at the resources a mainframe or large integrated system provides, it would take more than a few PC's to match though. Back to DR for a sec, considering the infrastructure to support a good sized PC cluster, how would that affect your DR planning?
See, there are times when buying a couple quarts of oil is more appropriate, and times when going to Jiffy Lube are more appropriate;)
Likewise, an OTP doesn't answer "who you are". I'm not really sure what this headline is about. I get the gist of the journalism industry, with catchy headlines and so-so content, and the is Slashdot after all, but "One-time Passwords Suck For MITM Attacks" implies an awful lot.
What does a OTP have to do with MITM anyway? I can't see how it can suck any more than normal password authentication and MITM attacks. Is there some delusion that OTPs establish identity?? It's just a password you carry in your pocket instead of your brain. It was not meant to solve MITM problems, PKI is.
Please, don't ever just print raw exception or stack trace in the same log files your operations people are expected to read/grep for serious issues. Just think for a second who you are writing to when you decide which direction to print a given message.
It's 11PM, and reports of customer connectivity issues are heard. The late shift sees repeated IOException, blah, blah, blah, in the log file of our messaging application, do they:
A. Ignore it, assuming the client's end is messed up and dropping connections. B. Twiddle with the load balancer, assuming there aren't problems in the back end affecting multiple nodes. C. Start waking up developers because for all I know it could be dropping database connections.
Sounds like the these all center around the background execution thing. I think I understand most people's grief with this thing. Now, I don't want to imply that they picked the best approach to this, but I can kind of understand where they Apple is coming from too. This thing is still a phone first, and blowing it open like a desktop PC could lead to the same sorts of problems we went through with earlier resource constrained desktop PC's.
Compare the iPhone to the Windows 95 desktop era. I could be wrong about the iPhone's relative resources, but in that time, RAM cost so much and virtual memory was new, so PCs regularly shipped with too little RAM to run more than a few apps. Do you remember what facilities windows 95 had for managing applications and system resources? HAH! Some applications didn't even show up in Window's pathetic process manager, and most users had absolutely no idea that the system was under specced for their needs. Running two big apps at the same time could drag a system to it's knees. Problem is you and I might know what "big" apps are, but my folks for example didn't have any clue what kind of resource footprint something like AOL had. Or streets and trips, or MS Works for Ch****'s sake. The PC experience was craptastic, I'm sure you remember, and lack of physical memory probably lead to fairly damned good deal of "BSOD"'s from that time. Even disks were small... swap would be set to a minimum size, and set to grow, except the disk space would be used up, swap couldn't grow past 1/2 * RAM *BOOM*... Was the target audience of Win 95 REALLY expected to understand swap, or even how BASIC PC resources worked? Let me remind you, this is the same time Microsoft Bob was developed.
So.. hopefully Apple figures out a way to solve the problems you listed without treating iPhones like PC's:\
Yah, I know this all comes across as the stereotypical "It's a feature, not a problem" point of view, but you know what, a lot of things the public perceives as problems really are just inconvenient features. Take Windows not allowing you to overwrite files in use, and requiring reboots after updates for example. Every _commercial_ OS vendor understands how dangerous applying updates to a running system can be. Sun *recommends* applying in single user mode and rebooting right after. Microsoft and Apple nearly force the reboot on you. Both have fancy methods of making the updates effective at next boot (Microsoft does this, I'm reasonably certain Apple does also). Linux... trots out with "you don't have to reboot after applying updates". OK, Linux, how did you solve the underlying problem? "What problem? We just reboot. Restart processes that you updated, duh!"/facepalm.
I see this all over, but especially in the Linux community, where one entity doesn't really take responsibility for the masses, "it's YOUR problem, not mine". So yes, mandatory reboots suck. BUT, it's done because the company representing those products is being responsible. People bitch and moan, attack those explaining how these are *features*, but in the end, the companies made the right choices. UNIX admins are expected to be intelligent enough to understand the update process, and the needs for single user/rebooting, so Sun treats them like big boys with some caution. The average desktop PC user SHOULDN'T be treated this way, so Apple and Microsoft's approaches are more or less correct. The Linux approach of burying your head in the sand, and letting your users figure it out.. that's irresponsible if you ask me.
Like building a car with no rev limiter, calling the lack of one a feature no less, then marketing it to the 16 to 65 year old market. Ka-BOOM! This is almost exactly what Linux is:\
---- Swipe at Linux, Apple & MS apologist, and a car analogy, Slahdot bingo!
Among other things, Apple's applications that come with the iPhone can run in the background and access the contents of the user's iPod...
If the Android SDK can focus on allowing third-party apps to have full access to the available hardware,
But, what you're asking for is full access to all the software. I don't think you're even going to get this on Android (or any phone in the near future).. your code all runs in a VM doesn't it? Hell, we don't even have full access to everything on OS X or Windows systems, just lots of clever work arounds that break in the next SP/release, right? Right now, how do you modify the iTunes DB without iTunes? Look what happened to anti-virus developers and Vista. Even Linux, about as open a system as you can get, doesn't go out of its way to let you do what you want with it. Give me a stable driver API.. errm, now, and for 5+ years? And can we get ZFS support merged please? Anyway, I think "being able to do something" isn't the same as "designed to allow you to do something". It's one notch higher than "designed not to allow you.." though:\
How about we focus more on functional software that helps us do useful things, rather than software that fucks around with our systems for the sake of it? I know, I know, there are going to be many cases where a legitimate piece of functionality is held back because of artificial restrictions or real software limitations, but it just seems like most software is part of a big feedback loop, and when you step back, look at how it improves your life/business... wow... what are computers for again? Programming and fixing?
That's the only thing I really care about any platform, what are it's capabilities, what can it do, what DOES it do for me? In that light, both the iPhone and Android based systems seem to have equal potential to affect our lives, by making a few things a bit easier for us. But only one of them DOES much right now. They're both still just phones, and at best, PDAs:\
Dude, you're still stuck on this brand name thing.
Look in *ANY* marketplace and you will see precisely the same thing
NO, you're generalizing too much. *ANY*, *ALL* ?? You're just asking for trouble with those kinds of thoughts.
Where do you draw the line? How about Porsche, BMW, SUN SPARC, IBM pSeries/zSeries, HP PA-RISC, I could go on forever with products/manufacturers that are undervalued by those who misunderstand them. Hell, even Microsoft has a place in this list. Are Porsche or BMW owners elitist? Mainframers are elitist? RISC owners are elitist? If I pay for software, I am elitist? No, and if you honestly think so, then you've horribly underestimated the value of the above products/companies. Apple, and Rolls-Royce are very much in the above group.
I'm not about to stand up and defend actual fashion accessories, those are not utilitarian and actually are bought largely because of the name. I do want to stand up and defend whole other classes of products that you classify as merely fashion accessories with little/no other value than the brand name. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with anyone else buying actual fashion accessories, just because I choose not to buy them.
Look, I used to be just like you. I bought all my clothes at Walmart because I thought $50 for a pair of jeans was highway robbery. You know what though? I succumbed to peer pressure, and bought a damned $50 pair of jeans one day. They looked fucking fantastic. I didn't look like a damned cowboy anymore. They didn't look like my Dad's jeans. That was one time though, buy that shit on clearance. I started taking care of my clothes better, no more mixing everything together at once in the washer/dryer. Turned my jeans inside out to wash, etc. My stuff started lasting longer, and didn't look like shit.
I don't want to judge every single thing I buy on price alone anymore. Often, I don't need to, maybe that's a luxury in itself. I think anyone can at least go buy some top shelf toilet paper and enjoy the luxury of not sandpapering your ass off. I mean, we can ALL splurge SOMEWHERE. Maybe you don't care how nice something looks. Maybe you don't care to know all the technical details, or engineering behind what you buy. Some people do care, and they pay the premium. So what?
Those are extreme examples... Apple is clearly much more accessible to a wider audience.
Apple's very existence *DEPENDS* on the fact that HP, Dell and Lenovo are selling the computers that MOST people buy...
Be careful here. Do brand name clothes exist because Walmart sells $10 jeans? If Walmart went away, would people stop buying clothes at the mall? Oops. On one end you're competing on price, and the other, features and looks. Neither one NEEDS the other.
Remember the Windows Genuine Advantage fiasco? Microsoft got slaughtered on this very site for it, yet you all sit back and take this from Apple?
Ah, that would be because a rather large percentage of/. posters DIDN'T PAY FOR WINDOWS.
If pirated iPhones were possible, they'd certainly be popular amongst the/. crowd, and if Apple designed a mechanism to disable/gimp pirated iPhones, they'd feel the wrath of hundreds of angry teenage/.ers too.
don't you think someone would be up-in-arms about it?
Look, there are enough asshats on/. to be up-in-arms about EVERYTHING. Maybe this group of people mostly doesn't have enough money to buy iPhones. Beats me, just a theory.
I have a good question for you. What makes you think the relative reactions of people posting to/. is representative of, well.. anything? Are you aware of how narrow a demographic the "up-in-arms about stupid shit on Slashdot" crowd really is? Here, next time you find one, take a moment to get to know them. Exchange a few emails, engage in a few hearty discussions about "where evil lies in the tech industry". HAH, ask them what grade they're in! Not your cup of tea? Ok then, why worry about it?
If this kind of behaviour is not tolerated from Microsoft, why do we accept it from Apple?
That's because it installs its boot loader to the MBR, AND requires booting off the active partition. Kind of weird, yes, but I also don't think it's a recent event. It probably goes back to before multiboot systems were common.
But I don't understand, if you had GRUB in your MBR, and Windows was ALREADY installed, your Linux system should boot fine, active partition or not.
Slashdot Mirror
How much of the Top500 sits around $25K? I don't know, but I imagine not very much.
He explained that this isn't a desktop OS, but a personal OS. Then he broke down what personal computing has meant through the short history of computing.
I think we all know what KDE gets associated with in the Linux world, and it makes sense to clarify that PC-BSD has more mature, realistic goals than 'to replace Windows on the desktop.'
RTFA, idiot. You didn't read it, you accused someone of being payed off, and you made assumptions based on the context provided by a bunch of tween posts on an Internet forum. You are either playing Slashdot bingo or you're a tool.
OpenGL, and DirectX force you into rendering a specific way.
If the hardware was fully programmable, you wouldn't need to be forced into doing things the OpenGL/DirectX way, and we might see a resurgence of past software rendering techniques. OR, you could still do things the OpenGL/DirectX way... He says this in the God-damned article, you choad.
This guy has no clue at all or has been paid off.
Right, so you are probably too young, or too stupid to know what past software rendering systems were. Why do I fucking bother with you? Because it's fun and you make me laugh.
You use OpenGL so ... that you have a portable interface to the graphics system
For Christ's sake, Tim Sweeney makes it perfectly fucking clear that he feels when CPUs are powerful enough or GPUs programmable enough, we'll be able to do all our rendering in C++... again. You know, that PORTABLE language that's older than you are? Holly shit balls, Batman, how does Doom run on dos/windows/mac/linux/game boy/cell phone/my toaster without being written to one of these 'portable interfaces to a graphics system'?!???!111
OH, because all rendering was written in C for a single processor? Yes, and even some fugly non-portable assembler, dick boy. Damn, code 'libraries' aren't going away, just the narrowly focused window through which we access a certain category of hardware.
The whooooooooole point this guy was trying to get across was you won't need a portable little window onto the graphics system when the hardware is fully programmable, and general purpose. At that point a portable language will do, and yes, we already have those, been there, and done that.
*WOOSH*
I figured out a long time ago that if I stop reading Internet forums for a while, I feel much happier with my computer(s), and computing in general. Basically, stop listening to other people's complaints, and find your own reasons to like/dislike something.
I am so sick of their control freak bullshit
It's Apple's ridiculous policies that have completely turned me off
I remember when Apple was cool
I'll build me a Hackintosh, just to spite the bastards
So much emotion for a machine...
Try closing your eyes, forget all about the Internet, it doesn't exist. Forget all about silly "evil company" memes, boycotts, idealistic bullcrap, what's "cool" , what's not, etc, and separate yourself from the emotional baggage of that... other place. Now, open them and just use your computer. Go try out one of the "evil" company's products. See how it doesn't burn your skin when you touch it? Imagine millions of people using it productively with no regrets, and no worries. That's the real world.
I've also been a Linux sysadmin for several years, so I keep trying out various multimedia software and distros when they come out or get updated, (like dyne:bolic, ubustud, ardour, ecasound, etc). Much to my chagrin, I can never get the multitrack recording to work for me in Linux. It seems jackd is always the problem, no matter which soundcard I try (and I've got several I bought because they were listed as "compatible" but they really are not, like M-audio with the envy24 set). I don't know what the hell is up with the jackd devs, but I do know that sooner or later, there will be a satisfactory Linux solution to multitrack recording
Read that back to yourself, is this really where you want to be?
I'm a Linux sysadmin too, I know where you are coming from. It's easy to get all caught up in the free/open idealism, and lose focus on what computers are really here for. That's to make our lives easier & better, not the circular "for us to work on them" that the bulk of you reading this get stuck on.
Make a list of pros/cons for free and open software, their development models, philosophies, and so on. Do you really find the pros contributing much towards your goal of professional audio recording? In a developer driven world, will audio recording ever take a front seat to service hosting and server administration?
Just some food for thought.
They will keep using your methods against you.
You will create a big stir over "DRM in A is BAD", and they will respond with "GOOD DRM in B". See how that's done?
It will hit Slashdot, and they will reap tons of free advertising for yet another DRM laden game.
Personally, I don't care, this greatly amuses me. Keep making a bigger deal of DRM, go ahead, maybe someday they will actually release a big title without DRM. With all the hype you'll have generated them by then, they'll make shit-tons of money with "Z is DRM FREE", and you'll just change your tune to "constant internet connection required is bad, mmmmkaaay."
Go on, fight the good fight though, it's funny.
In my opinion, it is impossible to get all the advantages of open source when it isn't cross platform as well.
Open source has little to do with cross platform or Linux in particular. Open source is one possible aspect of free software. Free, as in you are free to port it to whatever platform you desire.
This is also hilariously hypocritical considering the volume of open source software that assumes Linux is the center of the universe.
Well, many of the warranties that come from a piece of software being open source, really go to waste in this case.
WARRANTIES??? Read the GPL fool! The real warranty is that YOU can maintain it, just as YOU can port it. If you can't do either of those, then what exactly is open source to you other than a usability nightmare?
cause there are already hype victims that are staying in windows because there is no chrome for other OSes
Well, the important thing is this is a win for open source right? Do you have a hard time saying that because it doesn't run on Linux? I guess it's also not open source because there isn't an OS X, OpenSolaris, or *BSD port? OS/2? AIX? Solaris? HPUX?
It's perfectly fine to use free software on a non-free platform right? NO? This is the problem with freetarded posers in the Linux community. Linux is open/free. Open/free is NOT Linux. Also, please stop redefining "free" to mean "my whole fucking computer must run free software, and be designed from free blueprints".
You are missing the whole damned point of free software, and I don't share your insane ideologies.
P.S. Jesus Christ, if you think Chrome is keeping people from evaluating different God-damned OPERATING SYSTEMS, maybe you should rethink why those other OS's exist and why the current users choose them. How about less preaching and more coding from the likes of you?
The specs of Mac models shift over time, just as they do with PC's.
Try another retail outlet, some carry older Mac models at much better prices. Same goes for PC vendors that sell direct, retail will often carry older models. Much like car dealers still carry NEW 06's.
The big difference between Macs and PCs here are the Mac prices hold up a bit longer. Major design changes might skew that a little though.
Nothing beats the price of a used PC!
Anyway, that thing doesn't run Mac OS X, and that's really a major factor :\
Macs are certainly affordable now, but you seriously cannot tell me Macs are cheaper.
You must be mistaken, because I never said such a thing. Can you show me where I have? ;), cheap and powerful where it counts. Macs are a little more well rounded, like mid range four door sedans. You'll always find people scoffing at the heated seats, leather interior, dual climate control, quiet interior, convertible top, etc, and you just can't find many mid range sedans with a 4LV6, 6LV8, or forced induction. Frankly, we need both, and I'm glad PC's are here to fill this role, but it's not what I or many others are looking for in a computer."
Jesus, did you miss all of...
"I think PCs are like muscle cars (but many are more like Corolla's
I mean, I even compared a pretty decent $279 Dell to a damned $599 Mac...
I didn't use "cheaper" or even "cheap" to describe a Mac. I even complimented the PC by comparing them to muscle cars. OK, if you're from the UK, you might not know what that means. Think cheap car, huge engine. Your cheap laptop with a freaking 512MB VRAM is exactly what I was talking about.
It is a shame we can't run OS X on any hardware, or that Apple doesn't at least make a deal with one other PC vendor. I just looked at what HP currently offers in the same line as your laptop, and they do look like pretty nice machines, but neither Vista nor Linux are good OS X replacements.
These guys also think it's just a myth passed around by word of mouth. The US DoD still today requires multiple overwrites or destruction, and that sure as shit isn't just for the fun of it.
That probably means that other governments (most likely us as well) have the capability to recover some of this data if it were important enough.
We can guess all we want who can do what how quickly, but there's a whole lot of information outside of the DoD that might be wanted by the organizations with the capability of recovering it.
python - an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language
ruby - Interpreted object-oriented scripting language
java - Java interpreter
First of all, ruby's man page calls itself a scripting language, and secondly...
#!/usr/bin/java
println("Hello World!");
Oh right...
You can call all of these "interpreted" languages, but the ones with interactive prompts, or able to execute a source input file I throw at it, those are scripting languages. Java is nowhere NEAR a scripting language, it was not built for this. The other languages WERE built for this. It's an important distinction, and it doesn't make a perl/python/ruby developer any less of a man. Honestly, the interactive portion, and executing with #!/usr/bin/foo are the #1 and #2 indicators that it qualifies as "scripting".
You almost sound like "scripting language" is derogatory. Well, it's not.
Many people WANT scripting functionality for the Java platform, but it isn't here until I can run a one liner from the command line.
if you price out a Dell PC with linux preinstalled, and omit the monitor, it's $249 for a dual-core 2 GHz, 2 Gb RAM, 250 Gb hd. The stereotype that was bogus in period #2 -- that macs were for people with too much money on their hands -- is really true now.
I don't know what you were looking at, but this is the cheapest I could find on dell.com. I think a dual core 2GHz proc is $150 to $200 by itself. :P Also, both have a bunch of USB ports, I just looked for differences,
Nothing's changed, it's still apples to oranges. Just as you might not have needed built in sound then, you may not need FW, BT, dig audio, wireless net, IR remote, stack of dvds form factor now.
The third era is MacOS X. The big issue now is that low-end PCs can do everything I need
If you look at the growth rate of the PC over the last 20 years, this was/is true for the majority of computer users. ;), cheap and powerful where it counts. Macs are a little more well rounded, like mid range four door sedans. You'll always find people scoffing at the heated seats, leather interior, dual climate control, quiet interior, convertible top, etc, and you just can't find many mid range sedans with a 4LV6, 6LV8, or forced induction. Frankly, we need both, and I'm glad PC's are here to fill this role, but it's not what I or many others are looking for in a computer.
Nothing at all wrong with your decision. I think PCs are like muscle cars (but many are more like Corolla's
Dell Inspiron 530s - $279
Intel® Celeron ® Processor 440 (2.00GHz, 800 FSB, 512KB L2 cache, single core)
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 2DIMMs
250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache(TM)
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 next gen, but slower than 950/3000
VGA video output
DVI video output (probably same specs as Mac mini)
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet (AFAIK, no gig on this model, googling for inspiron 530s returns wildly different machines, $279 - $2000)
keyboard & mouse included
1Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
Mac mini - $599
1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (1.83GHz, 667 FSB, 2MB L2 cache, dual core)
1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512MB
80GB Serial ATA drive (5400 RPM)
Intel GMA 950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory
DVI video output to support digital resolutions up to 1920 by 1200 pixels
VGA video output analog resolutions up to 1920 by 1080 pixels
S-video and composite video output
Built-in speaker
Combined optical digital audio input/audio line in (minijack)
Combined optical digital audio output/headphone out (minijack)
Slot-loading Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW): reads DVDs at up to 8x speed
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
Built-in 54-Mbps AirPort Extreme wireless networking
Built-in Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) up to 3 Mbps
Apple Remote
One FireWire 400 port
NO keyboard or mouse
Your Mac mini comes with 90 days of free telephone support and a one-year limited warranty.
I just don't see a significant difference between what we're calling a prank and a frame up. ... what? Get that person's pass privileges revoked? Make them give up and not use it? Are those outcomes not utterly pointless?
Someone is going to risk being caught be parking lot surveillance, or neighbors to change someone's pass to a different ID, all to
Nobody on either side will suspect a third party after your second attempt?
So I don't get it, is a "frame up" supposed to be like a prank but more persistent, and more risky, and not done just for fun?
The "NAT is evil" argument just doesn't sit right. Sure it causes some pain, but only in stupid protocols that don't know how to use UPnP or do stupid things like active FTP.
Everything you call "stupid" broke BECAUSE of NAT. We need to upgrade all our "stupid" protocols to work around NAT, because IPv4 is insufficient for our current needs. NAT was a necessary evil, NOT something we should embrace when we have a chance to fix the underlying problems.
Jesus, this is such a silly thing to debate. The Internet needs fewer bolted on pieces of crap that weren't designed to operate together. I just can't understand this defense of NAT. Not wanting to upgrade is OK, but sticking with NAT because it's... NAT, is bizarre. There is no value whatsoever. It is not a free firewall, it takes considerably more effort to make a NAT pass & filter traffic than it does a firewall to filter traffic. Seriously, a NAT is all the intelligence of a firewall plus a ton of unnecessary work to reroute traffic. IPv6 == no more mangling the traffic + same exact firewall logic. All the "good" that you think comes from NAT could be applied to packet filters. You want UPnP to punch holes into your packet filtering firewall automatically? Not impossible. Sounds dumb as hell when I say it like that, but you are the ones telling us NAT is more secure than packet filtering! UPnP was created solely to bypass the NAT "firewall", something that wasn't designed as a security measure in the first place, and just got in people's way. Scary thing is, I don't think most people really WANT a firewall... not if they're all clamoring for UPnP they don't.
If you just want your crap to work and not have to mess with some network appliance, you really DIDN'T want the kind of firewall you think a NATing device is. You might want a host based firewall though.
They would have a hard time clearing their name because computers are "infallible."
It's not magic, if someone's pass had been overwritten as a prank, it would be easy as hell to verify afterwards with a handheld scanner.
Then it's down to a _person_ deciding if it was a prank or on purpose, so where does taking the side of the computer fit into this? Are you trying to say the passes might overwrite themselves to another ID, and there is simply no one to blame? HAH!
3) Demand his money back
I'm not saying you don't have the right to give something away and be an asshole about it, but don't expect any fucking reach arounds.
Yah, I could have said that in a cleaner manner, but of the spectrum of things the word "free" is associated with, one would think you'd be aiming for the better end of it. Like free healthcare, not free food behind the dumpster.
if M (the amount of memory required) consists of m1 + m2 + m3, where:
m1 is the amount of memory required by the compiled code
m2 is the amount of memory required by the compiler/interpreter/optimizer
m3 is the amount of memory required by the problem data
Then it is pretty easy to see that m2 is zero at runtime for compiled code, and that the difference (if any) in m1 for the (supposedly) superior real-time optimization will be far, FAR less than m2 (which will be zero at runtime for compiled code).
m2 should also include shared library memory, single instance or no. So what if most of m2 for an interpreted app is single instance? .
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4416624
"Class data sharing (CDS) has been introduced in the 1.5 release as the
first step toward addressing this problem. The CDS code was originally
developed by Apple Computer, Inc. during their port of the Java
HotSpot VM to Mac OS X and was further developed within Sun primarily
by xxxxx@xxxxx
...
The footprint cost of new JVM instances has been reduced in two ways.
First, a portion of the shared archive, currently between five and six
megabytes, is mapped read-only and therefore shared among multiple JVM
processes. Previously this data was replicated in each JVM instance.
Second, less data is loaded out of the shared archive because the
metadata for unused methods remains completely untouched as opposed to
being created and processed during class loading. These savings allow
more applications to be run concurrently on the same machine."
The major reasons for using interpretive languages have always been the improvements in the development cycle. Raw execution performance of interpretive code (JIT or otherwise) is unlikely to ever exceed that of compiled code, for C or any other language, for exactly the reasons outlined above.
The major reasons for using interpreted/compiled/assembled languages have always been the improvements in the development cycle. Raw execution performance of interpreted/compiled/assembled code (optimized or otherwise) is unlikely to ever exceed that of machine code, for exactly the reasons outlined above.
There's only ONE way you're going to get a processor to execute exactly what you specify, not one instruction more, and do so using the minimum amount of memory necessary to perform the task. This isn't very important on today's processors (or those of the last decade).
Some of you are saying that Firewire 800 it's fast enough.
Remember that for some marketing reason there is no IP over FireWire in Vista
I thought it was mostly used to sync data to a new computer.
I mean, why the hell would anyone use FW800 networking for anything other than an quick/easy point to point transfer when they have a gig ethernet port? Who would have the first one but not the second?
But if you plan on networking two PCs with USB3 for the long haul, good luck with that.
The difference is, three PCs can be had for less than three thousand dollars, new, even with monitors and such. How much will one mainframe cost you?
Are we counting the effort your team put into making these PCs work reliably in parallel, and the orders of magnitude more complex a cluster of discrete PC's is? Are we counting all the communications and storage networking infrastructure, and staff to support a cluster of PC's?
Only if there's an irrational need for it to be exactly one machine.
Obviously, where there is a single point of failure, you get a backup. ;)
Mainframes are no different. A DR plan for a mainframe doesn't say "move the smoldering remains of our only mainframe to the alternate site and call tech support." That's a silly notion, that mainframes repel each other somehow, or cut the heads off other mainframes so there can be only one.
Cluster of PC's > Mainframe is a flawed argument.
You might as well say buying a couple quarts of oil is better than going to Jiffy Lube.
You're shifting the integration work onto yourself. Even if someday you can just roll a giant PC cluster out the box, fully integrated, with the same features a mainframe provides, I think you'll find that the overall cost differential will not be very high. Then you have to figure out how to make them do work.
I'll add a disclaimer, too: I work on a project which is currently deployed via Amazon EC2.
So now you're talking about leasing time/resources on someone else's cluster environment, skipping the infrastructure ENTIRELY, so we're left with the "make it do work" part.
Now, I'm not trying to tell you a mainframe is cheaper than just three PC's, even after all is said and done, it'll probably cost more. If you look at the resources a mainframe or large integrated system provides, it would take more than a few PC's to match though. Back to DR for a sec, considering the infrastructure to support a good sized PC cluster, how would that affect your DR planning?
See, there are times when buying a couple quarts of oil is more appropriate, and times when going to Jiffy Lube are more appropriate ;)
What the hell? Did routers and firewalls all up and disappear with the advent of IPv6?
Likewise, an OTP doesn't answer "who you are". I'm not really sure what this headline is about.
I get the gist of the journalism industry, with catchy headlines and so-so content, and the is Slashdot after all, but
"One-time Passwords Suck For MITM Attacks" implies an awful lot.
What does a OTP have to do with MITM anyway? I can't see how it can suck any more than normal password authentication and MITM attacks.
Is there some delusion that OTPs establish identity?? It's just a password you carry in your pocket instead of your brain. It was not meant to solve MITM problems, PKI is.
I'll second those.
Please, don't ever just print raw exception or stack trace in the same log files your operations people are expected to read/grep for serious issues. Just think for a second who you are writing to when you decide which direction to print a given message.
It's 11PM, and reports of customer connectivity issues are heard.
The late shift sees repeated IOException, blah, blah, blah, in the log file of our messaging application, do they:
A. Ignore it, assuming the client's end is messed up and dropping connections.
B. Twiddle with the load balancer, assuming there aren't problems in the back end affecting multiple nodes.
C. Start waking up developers because for all I know it could be dropping database connections.
Sounds like the these all center around the background execution thing. I think I understand most people's grief with this thing.
Now, I don't want to imply that they picked the best approach to this, but I can kind of understand where they Apple is coming from too. This thing is still a phone first, and blowing it open like a desktop PC could lead to the same sorts of problems we went through with earlier resource constrained desktop PC's.
Compare the iPhone to the Windows 95 desktop era. I could be wrong about the iPhone's relative resources, but in that time, RAM cost so much and virtual memory was new, so PCs regularly shipped with too little RAM to run more than a few apps. Do you remember what facilities windows 95 had for managing applications and system resources? HAH! Some applications didn't even show up in Window's pathetic process manager, and most users had absolutely no idea that the system was under specced for their needs. Running two big apps at the same time could drag a system to it's knees. Problem is you and I might know what "big" apps are, but my folks for example didn't have any clue what kind of resource footprint something like AOL had. Or streets and trips, or MS Works for Ch****'s sake.
The PC experience was craptastic, I'm sure you remember, and lack of physical memory probably lead to fairly damned good deal of "BSOD"'s from that time. Even disks were small... swap would be set to a minimum size, and set to grow, except the disk space would be used up, swap couldn't grow past 1/2 * RAM *BOOM*... Was the target audience of Win 95 REALLY expected to understand swap, or even how BASIC PC resources worked? Let me remind you, this is the same time Microsoft Bob was developed.
So.. hopefully Apple figures out a way to solve the problems you listed without treating iPhones like PC's :\
Yah, I know this all comes across as the stereotypical "It's a feature, not a problem" point of view, but you know what, a lot of things the public perceives as problems really are just inconvenient features. Take Windows not allowing you to overwrite files in use, and requiring reboots after updates for example. Every _commercial_ OS vendor understands how dangerous applying updates to a running system can be. Sun *recommends* applying in single user mode and rebooting right after. Microsoft and Apple nearly force the reboot on you. Both have fancy methods of making the updates effective at next boot (Microsoft does this, I'm reasonably certain Apple does also). Linux... trots out with "you don't have to reboot after applying updates". /facepalm.
OK, Linux, how did you solve the underlying problem? "What problem? We just reboot. Restart processes that you updated, duh!"
I see this all over, but especially in the Linux community, where one entity doesn't really take responsibility for the masses, "it's YOUR problem, not mine".
So yes, mandatory reboots suck. BUT, it's done because the company representing those products is being responsible. People bitch and moan, attack those explaining how these are *features*, but in the end, the companies made the right choices. UNIX admins are expected to be intelligent enough to understand the update process, and the needs for single user/rebooting, so Sun treats them like big boys with some caution. The average desktop PC user SHOULDN'T be treated this way, so Apple and Microsoft's approaches are more or less correct. The Linux approach of burying your head in the sand, and letting your users figure it out.. that's irresponsible if you ask me.
Like building a car with no rev limiter, calling the lack of one a feature no less, then marketing it to the 16 to 65 year old market. Ka-BOOM! This is almost exactly what Linux is :\
----
Swipe at Linux, Apple & MS apologist, and a car analogy, Slahdot bingo!
Among other things, Apple's applications that come with the iPhone can run in the background and access the contents of the user's iPod...
If the Android SDK can focus on allowing third-party apps to have full access to the available hardware,
But, what you're asking for is full access to all the software. I don't think you're even going to get this on Android (or any phone in the near future).. your code all runs in a VM doesn't it? Hell, we don't even have full access to everything on OS X or Windows systems, just lots of clever work arounds that break in the next SP/release, right? Right now, how do you modify the iTunes DB without iTunes? Look what happened to anti-virus developers and Vista. Even Linux, about as open a system as you can get, doesn't go out of its way to let you do what you want with it. Give me a stable driver API.. errm, now, and for 5+ years? And can we get ZFS support merged please? Anyway, I think "being able to do something" isn't the same as "designed to allow you to do something". It's one notch higher than "designed not to allow you.." though :\
How about we focus more on functional software that helps us do useful things, rather than software that fucks around with our systems for the sake of it?
I know, I know, there are going to be many cases where a legitimate piece of functionality is held back because of artificial restrictions or real software limitations, but it just seems like most software is part of a big feedback loop, and when you step back, look at how it improves your life/business... wow... what are computers for again? Programming and fixing?
That's the only thing I really care about any platform, what are it's capabilities, what can it do, what DOES it do for me? In that light, both the iPhone and Android based systems seem to have equal potential to affect our lives, by making a few things a bit easier for us. But only one of them DOES much right now. They're both still just phones, and at best, PDAs :\
Dude, you're still stuck on this brand name thing.
Look in *ANY* marketplace and you will see precisely the same thing
NO, you're generalizing too much. *ANY*, *ALL* ?? You're just asking for trouble with those kinds of thoughts.
Where do you draw the line? How about Porsche, BMW, SUN SPARC, IBM pSeries/zSeries, HP PA-RISC, I could go on forever with products/manufacturers that are undervalued by those who misunderstand them. Hell, even Microsoft has a place in this list.
Are Porsche or BMW owners elitist? Mainframers are elitist? RISC owners are elitist? If I pay for software, I am elitist?
No, and if you honestly think so, then you've horribly underestimated the value of the above products/companies.
Apple, and Rolls-Royce are very much in the above group.
I'm not about to stand up and defend actual fashion accessories, those are not utilitarian and actually are bought largely because of the name. I do want to stand up and defend whole other classes of products that you classify as merely fashion accessories with little/no other value than the brand name. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with anyone else buying actual fashion accessories, just because I choose not to buy them.
Look, I used to be just like you. I bought all my clothes at Walmart because I thought $50 for a pair of jeans was highway robbery. You know what though? I succumbed to peer pressure, and bought a damned $50 pair of jeans one day. They looked fucking fantastic. I didn't look like a damned cowboy anymore. They didn't look like my Dad's jeans. That was one time though, buy that shit on clearance. I started taking care of my clothes better, no more mixing everything together at once in the washer/dryer. Turned my jeans inside out to wash, etc. My stuff started lasting longer, and didn't look like shit.
I don't want to judge every single thing I buy on price alone anymore. Often, I don't need to, maybe that's a luxury in itself. I think anyone can at least go buy some top shelf toilet paper and enjoy the luxury of not sandpapering your ass off. I mean, we can ALL splurge SOMEWHERE.
Maybe you don't care how nice something looks. Maybe you don't care to know all the technical details, or engineering behind what you buy. Some people do care, and they pay the premium. So what?
Those are extreme examples... Apple is clearly much more accessible to a wider audience.
Apple's very existence *DEPENDS* on the fact that HP, Dell and Lenovo are selling the computers that MOST people buy...
Be careful here. Do brand name clothes exist because Walmart sells $10 jeans? If Walmart went away, would people stop buying clothes at the mall? Oops.
On one end you're competing on price, and the other, features and looks. Neither one NEEDS the other.
Remember the Windows Genuine Advantage fiasco? Microsoft got slaughtered on this very site for it, yet you all sit back and take this from Apple?
Ah, that would be because a rather large percentage of /. posters DIDN'T PAY FOR WINDOWS.
If pirated iPhones were possible, they'd certainly be popular amongst the /. crowd, and if Apple designed a mechanism to disable/gimp pirated iPhones, they'd feel the wrath of hundreds of angry teenage /.ers too.
don't you think someone would be up-in-arms about it?
Look, there are enough asshats on /. to be up-in-arms about EVERYTHING. Maybe this group of people mostly doesn't have enough money to buy iPhones. Beats me, just a theory.
I have a good question for you. What makes you think the relative reactions of people posting to /. is representative of, well.. anything?
Are you aware of how narrow a demographic the "up-in-arms about stupid shit on Slashdot" crowd really is? Here, next time you find one, take a moment to get to know them. Exchange a few emails, engage in a few hearty discussions about "where evil lies in the tech industry". HAH, ask them what grade they're in! Not your cup of tea? Ok then, why worry about it?
If this kind of behaviour is not tolerated from Microsoft, why do we accept it from Apple?
They did the same thing? Explain
That's because it installs its boot loader to the MBR, AND requires booting off the active partition. Kind of weird, yes, but I also don't think it's a recent event. It probably goes back to before multiboot systems were common.
But I don't understand, if you had GRUB in your MBR, and Windows was ALREADY installed, your Linux system should boot fine, active partition or not.