Those virtual desktop addons are all rather klunky, and usually work by hiding and unhiding windows as you move through workspaces, slowly... The way unix window managers implement them is far cleaner and more seamless. OSX has the same problem with third party addons, but hopefully leopard will fix that, as it's the biggest problem i find with OSX.
Explorer is not the window manager... You can still manage windows when explorer is not running, compare that to X without a window manager where you can't move windows around... Explorer is just a file manager and launch bar.
If you turn on the disk-mode of the ipod, then you can open it up with finder and drag the files back into itunes. They all have obscure filenames, but itunes will rename them from the metadata when it imports them into your library. I had to do this recently when my old G4 mac blew a drive and i had to rebuild it from scratch
Well, we already have many un-crippled DVI devices... If someone were to introduce an inferior DVI device nowadays, people wouldn't buy it. HDMI on the other hand, being new, people aren't used to what it's capable of and therefore won't consider an HDCP crippled device to be inferior.
I don't understand comments like this... Adobe's reader does suck, badly, but it's only a reference implementation adobe make available to demonstrate the format. If you want a better PDF reader, there are loads out there and your free to write your own if none of them suit you. The default preview app in OSX works well, and i often use kpdf under Linux, but there are many PDF readers for pretty much every platform in existance, there's even a PDF reader for AmigaOS, and no adobe don't make an official one for Amiga.
This has very little to do with adobe's pdf reader (which is one of the worst). Why not use kpdf, that uses qt and works considerably better. PDF being an open standard means that there are plenty of programs which support it.
> You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
1 minute every 8 miles... 10 minutes for 80 miles... 20 minutes for 160 miles... Those minutes can mean the difference between getting stuck in a traffic jam and getting through before the jam forms. Not to mention many people make considerably longer trips and travel considerably faster than 75 (on british motorways, the speed limit is 70 and a lot of people travel around 90 and some people go a lot quicker than that) As for passing "that guy"... You might get stuck behind a slow set of traffic signals with him infront of you, yet had you been 30 seconds ahead of him you'd have got through before the signal turned red. Worst case, your still stuck at the signal and he pulls up behind you, you've not lost anything relative to being behind him at that point.
The problem with running a mix of stable and unstable on debian, is the use of binary packages... Recently i needed to install TeTeX version 3 and several other packages onto a debian stable system, yet stable only supported 2. So i tried to install the unstable version. The unstable version was compiled using a newer version of gcc, and linked against a newer version of glibc so i had to install those too, the newer glibc needed a newer kernel and the newer gcc needed a newer binutils. I ended up with all my core packages being from unstable, thus rendering the idea of running stable useless.
Gentoo is fine if you have time to maintain it, the issues of merging config files are not insurmountable, afterall you did write those configuration files in the first place didn't you? It will auto merge new default configs in cases where you've not modified the old defaults, so all you have to do is merge your configuration changes into the new configs, if necessary.
What gentoo does need, however:
A bootup sanity checker - a script to check your essential configs so that *At the very least* the system will boot, configure networking and start SSH, so that whatever else you do, you can always get in to fix it. A grub equivalent to lilo -R, or just use lilo, single boot mode is awesome for remotely testing a new kernel, if it panics the machine auto reboots and goes back to the old kernel.
Checkpoint stable releases, perhaps once a year or so, where a set of packages are marked "stable" and you can install a system using them. Then, any subsequent updates are only small security fixes, ala debian stable. However, with the optional flexibility of being able to install unstable (with associated warnings) or later-checkpoint versions of packages (a system using a 2005 stable kernel and a 2006 stable apache should still be considered stable) Basically, to let you lock particular packages (all by default) to a particular checkpoint release (with incremental security updates), but with the flexibility to update if necessary, either to newer checkpointed versions or to the bleeding edge.
If an ISP disconnects a customer because he's infected with a bot, most of those clueless customers will just blame the ISP and move to another one, consequently the ISPs don't do this for fear of losing customers.
Actually, many network providers charge their customers according to the amount of bandwidth used. Especially the large backbone providers... They don't care what your using the bandwidth for, they're just happy to be selling you more of it. They're not going to cut off a revenue stream by clamping down on spam, they will only ever deal with isolated cases where the hassle and risk to their network is greater than the money theyre making off the spammer.
Because they can play CD based content and do everything else they want to with it. What if users want to play the content in their car, or transfer it to a portable player, or make a CD they can play in their lounge etc... Windows won't let them do that, that's a flaw. Linux users would never have been tricked into buying DRM content in the first place.
Some of the advantages would switch, but not totally...
Linux would have more malware targetting it, but would still offer greater resillience to it due to a better design (Malware would need to social engineer the user into giving away his rootpass etc).
Linux itself would still be free, open and flexible.
Driver support for linux would be hugely improved, since hardware makers would support it out of necessity, conversely poorly written third party drivers could decrease stability. Writing drivers would be easier for third parties with complete kernel sources available.
Commercial software and games would be far more widely available, but this would reduce the incentive to produce open replacements for proprietary software.
Far more apps would also be available for OSX, Solaris and other unixes, due to the ease of porting from Linux.
Third party support would be far more widespread, and would be better than windows support ever could be (sufficiently skilled companies with access to the source)
9 different power cords, but it's not like you get all 9 with each machine. And it's only one end of the power cord that needs to change anyway. $100 so they can take away the american power cord and replace it with a european one that cost exactly the same to produce? ridiculous.
I always found the sequential nature of alt-tab very annoying, especially with lots of programs open... Expose' on OSX is better, but virtual workspaces (Switchable using the keyboard) are by far the easiest. One of the problems tho, comes from trying to use OSX (or any other os for that matter) as if it was windows, the clunky alt-tab interface may be implemented, but it's usually not the best or preferred way of switching apps.
There are no barriers to switching to another brand of car. Most people have to change cars every few years, this is usually due to external factors (physical damage from crashes, wear and tear due to moving parts, theft etc) rather than an artificial obsolescence. Car vendors don't have any form of lockin, when you buy a new car a few years from now there's nothing forcing you to buy any particular brand... And most people are not loyal to any particular brand, they buy what they perceive to be the best value for money and/or satisfies their needs best. If you offered most people a hugely superior vehicle of another brand for free, they would happily take it.
Here's the thing, windows often DOESNT do what the users want, and it's only getting worse (DRM etc)... Linux on the other hand, does exactly what the user wants providing the user has sufficient knowledge to tell it what he wants, and the required level of knowledge is decreasing all the time.
Real life is exactly a pyramid scheme too, all the money gradually filters upwards to the top 5% of people who are filthy rich. Those who are filthy rich will remain so, while those who are not never will be.
But if you consider the length of time between AES encryption being available for SSL/TLS use, and microsoft actually supporting it (i believe they still don't) it's going to be years before these new hashing algorithms appear in microsoft products.
Most of the original code was C, but AmigaOS 2.04 was rewritten in mostly assembler, that's why the port to PPC took so long...
Re:The Amiga was a quantum leap for computers
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Port AmigaOS to the PS3 or one of the other games consoles (not a huge step because theyre all PPC based), provide a keyboard and mouse and a developer environment to write homebrew apps as well as some educational programs etc. Most people i knew who's parents bought them amigas did so because they _WERENT_ just games consoles, and could be used for doing homework etc.
Also the fact that programs could remain resident in memory over a soft reset... So a virus puts itself into the bootblock of a bootable disk, and when youve finished playing that game and reboot to play another, that one gets infected too.
The drives themselves were standard, at least the double density ones... The high density ones found in the A4000 and some A3000 systems were specially modified to spin at half speed in high density mode because the floppy controller couldn't handle the higher transfer rate of HD drives. On the other hand, the floppy controller is far more powerfull than the ones typically available in other systems, and you could use areas of the disk that were usually reserved, such as the outer most edge, but all this was done in the controller chip, not in the actual drive. As for storing 880kb/1.76mb, that was achieved by having more sectors per track (11 as opposed to 9 used by ms-dos), but you could use tools like diskspare.device to put up to 1.1mb on a DD disk and potentially 2.2 on an HD.
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Those virtual desktop addons are all rather klunky, and usually work by hiding and unhiding windows as you move through workspaces, slowly... The way unix window managers implement them is far cleaner and more seamless. OSX has the same problem with third party addons, but hopefully leopard will fix that, as it's the biggest problem i find with OSX.
Expose is good, but not quite as useful as multiple workspaces... I'm waiting for Leopard to see how apple implement that.
Explorer is not the window manager...
You can still manage windows when explorer is not running, compare that to X without a window manager where you can't move windows around... Explorer is just a file manager and launch bar.
Shouldn't a cube have 6 sides?
If you turn on the disk-mode of the ipod, then you can open it up with finder and drag the files back into itunes. They all have obscure filenames, but itunes will rename them from the metadata when it imports them into your library. I had to do this recently when my old G4 mac blew a drive and i had to rebuild it from scratch
Well, we already have many un-crippled DVI devices... If someone were to introduce an inferior DVI device nowadays, people wouldn't buy it. HDMI on the other hand, being new, people aren't used to what it's capable of and therefore won't consider an HDCP crippled device to be inferior.
I don't understand comments like this... Adobe's reader does suck, badly, but it's only a reference implementation adobe make available to demonstrate the format. If you want a better PDF reader, there are loads out there and your free to write your own if none of them suit you.
The default preview app in OSX works well, and i often use kpdf under Linux, but there are many PDF readers for pretty much every platform in existance, there's even a PDF reader for AmigaOS, and no adobe don't make an official one for Amiga.
This has very little to do with adobe's pdf reader (which is one of the worst). Why not use kpdf, that uses qt and works considerably better. PDF being an open standard means that there are plenty of programs which support it.
> You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
1 minute every 8 miles...
10 minutes for 80 miles...
20 minutes for 160 miles...
Those minutes can mean the difference between getting stuck in a traffic jam and getting through before the jam forms. Not to mention many people make considerably longer trips and travel considerably faster than 75 (on british motorways, the speed limit is 70 and a lot of people travel around 90 and some people go a lot quicker than that)
As for passing "that guy"... You might get stuck behind a slow set of traffic signals with him infront of you, yet had you been 30 seconds ahead of him you'd have got through before the signal turned red. Worst case, your still stuck at the signal and he pulls up behind you, you've not lost anything relative to being behind him at that point.
The problem with running a mix of stable and unstable on debian, is the use of binary packages...
Recently i needed to install TeTeX version 3 and several other packages onto a debian stable system, yet stable only supported 2. So i tried to install the unstable version. The unstable version was compiled using a newer version of gcc, and linked against a newer version of glibc so i had to install those too, the newer glibc needed a newer kernel and the newer gcc needed a newer binutils.
I ended up with all my core packages being from unstable, thus rendering the idea of running stable useless.
Gentoo is fine if you have time to maintain it, the issues of merging config files are not insurmountable, afterall you did write those configuration files in the first place didn't you? It will auto merge new default configs in cases where you've not modified the old defaults, so all you have to do is merge your configuration changes into the new configs, if necessary.
What gentoo does need, however:
A bootup sanity checker - a script to check your essential configs so that *At the very least* the system will boot, configure networking and start SSH, so that whatever else you do, you can always get in to fix it.
A grub equivalent to lilo -R, or just use lilo, single boot mode is awesome for remotely testing a new kernel, if it panics the machine auto reboots and goes back to the old kernel.
Checkpoint stable releases, perhaps once a year or so, where a set of packages are marked "stable" and you can install a system using them. Then, any subsequent updates are only small security fixes, ala debian stable. However, with the optional flexibility of being able to install unstable (with associated warnings) or later-checkpoint versions of packages (a system using a 2005 stable kernel and a 2006 stable apache should still be considered stable) Basically, to let you lock particular packages (all by default) to a particular checkpoint release (with incremental security updates), but with the flexibility to update if necessary, either to newer checkpointed versions or to the bleeding edge.
If an ISP disconnects a customer because he's infected with a bot, most of those clueless customers will just blame the ISP and move to another one, consequently the ISPs don't do this for fear of losing customers.
Actually, many network providers charge their customers according to the amount of bandwidth used. Especially the large backbone providers...
They don't care what your using the bandwidth for, they're just happy to be selling you more of it. They're not going to cut off a revenue stream by clamping down on spam, they will only ever deal with isolated cases where the hassle and risk to their network is greater than the money theyre making off the spammer.
If you control the network, you could setup a transparent web proxy that pushes browser exploits with every page you view.
Most of the large banks and credit card companies mandate the use of SSL if you want to conduct business with them online...
Because they can play CD based content and do everything else they want to with it.
What if users want to play the content in their car, or transfer it to a portable player, or make a CD they can play in their lounge etc...
Windows won't let them do that, that's a flaw. Linux users would never have been tricked into buying DRM content in the first place.
Some of the advantages would switch, but not totally...
Linux would have more malware targetting it, but would still offer greater resillience to it due to a better design (Malware would need to social engineer the user into giving away his rootpass etc).
Linux itself would still be free, open and flexible.
Driver support for linux would be hugely improved, since hardware makers would support it out of necessity, conversely poorly written third party drivers could decrease stability. Writing drivers would be easier for third parties with complete kernel sources available.
Commercial software and games would be far more widely available, but this would reduce the incentive to produce open replacements for proprietary software.
Far more apps would also be available for OSX, Solaris and other unixes, due to the ease of porting from Linux.
Third party support would be far more widespread, and would be better than windows support ever could be (sufficiently skilled companies with access to the source)
9 different power cords, but it's not like you get all 9 with each machine.
And it's only one end of the power cord that needs to change anyway. $100 so they can take away the american power cord and replace it with a european one that cost exactly the same to produce? ridiculous.
I always found the sequential nature of alt-tab very annoying, especially with lots of programs open...
Expose' on OSX is better, but virtual workspaces (Switchable using the keyboard) are by far the easiest.
One of the problems tho, comes from trying to use OSX (or any other os for that matter) as if it was windows, the clunky alt-tab interface may be implemented, but it's usually not the best or preferred way of switching apps.
There are no barriers to switching to another brand of car. Most people have to change cars every few years, this is usually due to external factors (physical damage from crashes, wear and tear due to moving parts, theft etc) rather than an artificial obsolescence.
Car vendors don't have any form of lockin, when you buy a new car a few years from now there's nothing forcing you to buy any particular brand... And most people are not loyal to any particular brand, they buy what they perceive to be the best value for money and/or satisfies their needs best. If you offered most people a hugely superior vehicle of another brand for free, they would happily take it.
> and they do what the drivers want.
Here's the thing, windows often DOESNT do what the users want, and it's only getting worse (DRM etc)... Linux on the other hand, does exactly what the user wants providing the user has sufficient knowledge to tell it what he wants, and the required level of knowledge is decreasing all the time.
Real life is exactly a pyramid scheme too, all the money gradually filters upwards to the top 5% of people who are filthy rich. Those who are filthy rich will remain so, while those who are not never will be.
But if you consider the length of time between AES encryption being available for SSL/TLS use, and microsoft actually supporting it (i believe they still don't) it's going to be years before these new hashing algorithms appear in microsoft products.
Most of the original code was C, but AmigaOS 2.04 was rewritten in mostly assembler, that's why the port to PPC took so long...
Port AmigaOS to the PS3 or one of the other games consoles (not a huge step because theyre all PPC based), provide a keyboard and mouse and a developer environment to write homebrew apps as well as some educational programs etc. Most people i knew who's parents bought them amigas did so because they _WERENT_ just games consoles, and could be used for doing homework etc.
Also the fact that programs could remain resident in memory over a soft reset...
So a virus puts itself into the bootblock of a bootable disk, and when youve finished playing that game and reboot to play another, that one gets infected too.
The drives themselves were standard, at least the double density ones... The high density ones found in the A4000 and some A3000 systems were specially modified to spin at half speed in high density mode because the floppy controller couldn't handle the higher transfer rate of HD drives. On the other hand, the floppy controller is far more powerfull than the ones typically available in other systems, and you could use areas of the disk that were usually reserved, such as the outer most edge, but all this was done in the controller chip, not in the actual drive.
As for storing 880kb/1.76mb, that was achieved by having more sectors per track (11 as opposed to 9 used by ms-dos), but you could use tools like diskspare.device to put up to 1.1mb on a DD disk and potentially 2.2 on an HD.