I think he means OSS source is hard to maintain. He may feel this way because many changing sets of people contribute to the project. I don't know if he has ever worked on OSS.
For me, the more interesting problem I see with the current OSS model is the conflict of interest. OSS is supposed to make money from support. Unfortunately, well designed, easy to use software may require less support. So there is no incentive to make plug and play, one click systems.
I love OSS. But the conventional wisdom OSS financial model needs work.
...but Klingons throw things together until they work. The best of the hacker culture. I imagine shell scripts, Perl, REALBasic... whatever works at the time.
The Klingons are also known for redundancy. I imagine the hardware could be thrown across the room and it would still work. The OS would have to be distributed in such a hacked, complex fashion as to be not understandable.
This reminded me of an interesting quote of Bin Laden on the BBC this morning:
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The US Government will lead the American people - and the West in general - into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
I don't know what university or what department you work for, but at every single one I have seen, they buy brand-name desktops. Heck, my department is computer science, and even we buy Dells. Biology and Physics sure as hell aren't going to start building pricewatch boxes or buying bargin-basement computers with shady support.
Or don't buy the model with the Superdrive. G4s start at $1,250 for the education market. It's a cluster, people, just add more machines to make up for the performance difference between bleeding-edge and price/performance champ, and you come out way ahead.
Sorry to say it, but Apple doesn't care about your market (the build-it-yourselfers). They cater to the computer-as-a-device consumers. And if they did move into another market, it would probably be the server-as-a-device market and never you, because you can't give them the margins they want.
It all depends on what you use them for. If you are doing much multimedia work using tools like Photoshop, or if you are playing state of the art video games, you will quickly appreciate the advantage that you get from higher speed CPUs.
If you are doing multimedia work, the Altivec unit on the G4 makes Megahertz comparisons with x86 irrelevant.
Also wanted to point out that G4 towers start at $1250 for students.
Sorry, musta not had enough coffee that evening, but her/his tone caught a nerve.
It really doesn't have anything to do with Macs though (and certainly nothing to do with the hardware); it is no different than ftp and a shell script.
I take exception to your think-before-you-post comment though: a reasonable assumption is perfectly valid. I could have gone through all the other possibilities, but in effect they are the same: owner and thief had the same privs.
You still seem confused, although some of your facts are correct.
You say Darwin is bloated, yes. It needs 96MB to perform, and it's pretty monolithic. Sorry, Darwin is not monolithic, it is based on a microkernel. Linux OTOH is monolithic.
Yes, everyone has read the exchange between Tannenbaum and a rather immature Torvalds. And everyone with a brain realises that Linus' opinions are just that, opinions. This may come as a surprise to you, but he is not a god, and he gets it wrong quite a bit.
I still can't tell if you are supporting microkernels or monolithic kernels. And I still don't understand why you think Hurd will be this wonderful thing but Darwin is not. They are both based on Mach, you know?
How can you compete by porting something that's already out for Windows, if most of your user base can already dual-boot into Windows...
You've hit the nail on the head. Mac ports are successful precisely because you can't do this. Linux on the desktop will receive a big boost the day you can easily buy a desktop without Windows for significantly less than with.
This is why, despite repeated crys from "the pundits" for Apple to bundle a Windows emulator, Apple has refused. The day most Macs dual-boot Windows is the day software publishers tell users to just use the Windows version. Jobs treads a fine line in many things and gets them right, and this is one of them.
There is a healthy, profitable, Mac-only gaming market, with plenty of interesting, fun games. But there are no Mac-only blockbusters, because they neccesarily get ported to the largest marketshares. Like Myst. And Marathon. And Halo.
In the end, the Mac has enough fun games and blockbusters that it makes a good desktop platform. A platform doesn't need Nintendo-sized game selection to be succesful on the desktop.
Yes, I have to take issue with this statement: Finally, I doubt that it could be economically implemented anywhere on earth, as buses and trains are cheaper because they use economically feasible infrastructures (existing roads and tracks) , and many more specially designed small cars would have to be designed and built from scratch. Of course that's silly. Everything had to be built from scratch at some point.
Also, Pittsburgh's culture supports individuality. suggests that public transport somehow impinges on individuality. It doesn't. By efficiently getting people where they want to go, it supports individuality, and this personalized system seems to do better than others.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he means OSS source is hard to maintain. He may feel this way because many changing sets of people contribute to the project. I don't know if he has ever worked on OSS.
For me, the more interesting problem I see with the current OSS model is the conflict of interest. OSS is supposed to make money from support. Unfortunately, well designed, easy to use software may require less support. So there is no incentive to make plug and play, one click systems.
I love OSS. But the conventional wisdom OSS financial model needs work.
Good recommendations in the last couple of Ask /.s about OS X. Also, hang out on Apple's developer site and Macslash.com.
Gates even got arrested for driving his Porche too fast. And Jobs apparently had to beat the ladies off with a stick.
There, it is all fun and games until someone gets killed. No, seriously.
...but Klingons throw things together until they work. The best of the hacker culture. I imagine shell scripts, Perl, REALBasic... whatever works at the time.
The Klingons are also known for redundancy. I imagine the hardware could be thrown across the room and it would still work. The OS would have to be distributed in such a hacked, complex fashion as to be not understandable.
This reminded me of an interesting quote of Bin Laden on the BBC this morning:
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The US Government will lead the American people - and the West in general - into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_ea st /newsid_1795000/1795531.stm
That's why it's called the Pentium 4.
At least four cycles for anything useful.
I don't know what university or what department you work for, but at every single one I have seen, they buy brand-name desktops. Heck, my department is computer science, and even we buy Dells. Biology and Physics sure as hell aren't going to start building pricewatch boxes or buying bargin-basement computers with shady support.
Or don't buy the model with the Superdrive. G4s start at $1,250 for the education market. It's a cluster, people, just add more machines to make up for the performance difference between bleeding-edge and price/performance champ, and you come out way ahead.
I'm sorry, but hasn't HP been saying that they are /exiting/ the desktop?
Sorry to say it, but Apple doesn't care about your market (the build-it-yourselfers). They cater to the computer-as-a-device consumers. And if they did move into another market, it would probably be the server-as-a-device market and never you, because you can't give them the margins they want.
It all depends on what you use them for. If you are doing much multimedia work using tools like Photoshop, or if you are playing state of the art video games, you will quickly appreciate the advantage that you get from higher speed CPUs.
If you are doing multimedia work, the Altivec unit on the G4 makes Megahertz comparisons with x86 irrelevant.
Also wanted to point out that G4 towers start at $1250 for students.
Fatbrain publishes Apple Mac OS X documentation, a couple of which are relevant to administration:
Mac OS X System OverviewOS X Server Administrator's Guide
There is also a document on understanding Netinfo and info on administrator training.
Unfortunately, no one has the time to blacklist these morons. They just get deleted. And no one remembers their name so there really is no penalty.
Except Shiftman. He's fucked. He'll have to change his name.
Did you read Shiftman's emails? I don't think I would call him a techie.
Sorry, musta not had enough coffee that evening, but her/his tone caught a nerve.
It really doesn't have anything to do with Macs though (and certainly nothing to do with the hardware); it is no different than ftp and a shell script.
I take exception to your think-before-you-post comment though: a reasonable assumption is perfectly valid. I could have gone through all the other possibilities, but in effect they are the same: owner and thief had the same privs.
You still seem confused, although some of your facts are correct.
You say Darwin is bloated, yes. It needs 96MB to perform, and it's pretty monolithic. Sorry, Darwin is not monolithic, it is based on a microkernel. Linux OTOH is monolithic.
Yes, everyone has read the exchange between Tannenbaum and a rather immature Torvalds. And everyone with a brain realises that Linus' opinions are just that, opinions. This may come as a surprise to you, but he is not a god, and he gets it wrong quite a bit.
I still can't tell if you are supporting microkernels or monolithic kernels. And I still don't understand why you think Hurd will be this wonderful thing but Darwin is not. They are both based on Mach, you know?
MS may now be trying to move into to a different market, one that values security above point-and-click.
The BBC sums it up nicely.
How can you compete by porting something that's already out for Windows, if most of your user base can already dual-boot into Windows...
You've hit the nail on the head. Mac ports are successful precisely because you can't do this. Linux on the desktop will receive a big boost the day you can easily buy a desktop without Windows for significantly less than with.
This is why, despite repeated crys from "the pundits" for Apple to bundle a Windows emulator, Apple has refused. The day most Macs dual-boot Windows is the day software publishers tell users to just use the Windows version. Jobs treads a fine line in many things and gets them right, and this is one of them.
Or Freeverse.
There is a healthy, profitable, Mac-only gaming market, with plenty of interesting, fun games. But there are no Mac-only blockbusters, because they neccesarily get ported to the largest marketshares. Like Myst. And Marathon. And Halo.
In the end, the Mac has enough fun games and blockbusters that it makes a good desktop platform. A platform doesn't need Nintendo-sized game selection to be succesful on the desktop.
1. No. But the owner probably set herself to auto-login, so the owner and theif had the same permissions;
2. Only if they have the username and password to that account, and Timbuktu is set to allow remote connections.
Maybe think-before-post next time?
Yes, I have to take issue with this statement: Finally, I doubt that it could be economically implemented anywhere on earth, as buses and trains are cheaper because they use economically feasible infrastructures (existing roads and tracks) , and many more specially designed small cars would have to be designed and built from scratch. Of course that's silly. Everything had to be built from scratch at some point.
Also, Pittsburgh's culture supports individuality. suggests that public transport somehow impinges on individuality. It doesn't. By efficiently getting people where they want to go, it supports individuality, and this personalized system seems to do better than others.
Even single-server microkernels like Windows NT and Apple Darwin haven't much to offer, being bloated, slow and not flexible at all.
Do you have any facts to support this, or are you just parroting Linux conventional "wisdom"?
You don't think Darwin's microkernel has anything to offer, but you hold Linux's hope in Hurd?!
After a decent way of intalling them, you need consumer apps compatible with the dominant file formats. Think Office and iMovie.