Good stuff; the pay version is actually almost worth it, for the nice graphical disk creation utility. Basically, the entire IPMasq/firewall setup runs off a floppy. No hard drive needed. What makes this UBER-sweet is that if your firewall gets cracked, you simply figure out the hole, and rebuild the floppy to fix the hole. No permanent data = no permanant compromise. Beautiful.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I think the difference you are missing here is that Apache and whichever linux distro you are talking about, or Netscape and whichever UNIX, are NOT OWNED BY THE SAME COMPANY. Red Hat includes Apache with their product because it's a fine program that is well known and has a lot of demand from the users. Red Hat doesn't have anything to gain by bundling the software besides the advertising of saying "Includes Apache web server for easy set up blah blah blah." Likewise, Apache has nothing to gain except having their server get used more. Seeing as how Apache is not a for-profit company, this gains the developers nothing except an ego boost, and more end users to report bugs. Microsoft, on the other hand, has MUCH more to gain from bundling. By including the two pieces of software both developed in-house, they can push their own server down people's throats. In the process, they can push down proprietay, non-standards-compliant add-ons. Microsoft includes IIS because it belongs to them. Debian includes Apache because they think it's good stuff.
Seeing as how it's approaching Summer time (here in PA), I will use an anology relative to myself. When I was sold my jet ski, they suggested I used Brand X of engine oil. Not surprisingly, Brand X is a subsidiary of the jet ski manufacturer. Now, if the dealer had suggested Brand Y, which has no affiliation with JetSkiCo, the dealer would merely be adding an extra bit of service by helping the customer choose a good oil, instead of pushing his own interests. Sure, the dealer still benefits (wow guys, if you're gonna buy a jet ski, get it from Bob... he's a really great guy, even suggested a higher performance oil for me that let me squeeze out a few more MPH), but he benefits by HELPING out the customer, not by looking out for his OWN interests.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Geez, am I the *ONLY* one who actually *READS* the moderator guidelines? This is clearly not a troll. Offtopic, maybe. Redundant, seeing as how it shows up in every hardware related/. article sure. But it is most certainly NOT a troll. Watch yourselves, moderators...
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
At Drexel University, I had an opportunity to work with a machine based on the GRAPE 4 architecture, and let me tell you, this thing is amazing. Granted it can only do one thing: take in initial conditions and spit out forces (no if/thens or even add/multiplies here), and FAST! We have two supercomputers in one server room: A 64 node beowulf cluster, and a GRAPE machine. For the type of calculations GRAPE is designed for, it is about a hundred times faster than the beowulf cluster, all in the size of a mid tower PC case. Abso-frickin-lutely amazing! Not to mention the fact that our GRAPE system cost us about 10,000 $US, compared to MUCH MORE for the beowulf cluster (I dont have the number on hand). THATS what I call price/performance.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I happen to be fortunate enough to work on a machine modeled off the GRAPE 4 architecture, so let me clarify. Grape performs ONE calculation. Period. It can't multiply, or divide, or do flow control (if/then). All it can do, is calculate gravitational force between two objects. FAST. We have a 64 node beowulf cluster, and a single GRAPE machine the size of a mid tower pc. For the work it was designed for, our grape machine is nearly a hundred times faster than the beowulf cluster. And the machine cost us less than 10,000 dollars (Compared to quite a bit more for the beowulf cluster)
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
There is, and have been, PC's which fit exactly what you are talking about for some time. Many comply with the pc/104 standard (www.pc104.org), and are available in everything from 286 up to pentiums. Try www.emjembedded.com for a couple cool embedded size PC's.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I, too, have Flashcom, and they have been nothing but one big headache. They took well over a month to get the install process going, repeatedly telling me they'd contcat me, then failing to. They haven't billed me in close to six months, and I'm fearing when that bill does come in and exceeds my credit card limit. The service has been flaky, the customer service horrific, and the speeds mediocre. The only reason I went with Flashcom is that they gave me multiple dedicated IP's. As soon as I get IP masquerading setup properly at home, I am going to drop flashcom like a bad habit and get Bell Atlantic, which from friends' accounts is much better to deal with.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Thanks for the pointer. I hadn't realized that, because in the test environment we were using, we had no password for the admin account (several people were messing with it). The root password only matches the admin if the admin is non-null. I should have figured out the maitenance mode, but I was too busy being angry at gateway to worry about that:)
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
We have one at work... they are a neat toy, but just that, a toy. In a production environment, its practically worthless. No capability to upgrade or implement security patches. The Admin account is denied access to half the system, and Gateway doesn't bother to tell you the root password. In an uber small business, it would be handy as a quick and dirty firewall/router/dhcp server for 40 or 50 light users, maybe 10 heavy ones. Out of the box it'd be cake to say, share a DSL line or cable modem. The web based interface is admittedly slick... I have seen people who've never touched linux breeze thru the setup of this thing like cake. Things that bothered me included the lack of low level root access (I wanted to change init scripts... no dice.) and the seemingly idiotic out of the box setup to run mgetty on the serial port, instead of an agetty which would be mildly useful, considering the pile of VTx20's we have in the lab. One of these days I'm gonna yank the drive, boot it as a slave, and edit the passwd file so i can use the root account and at least make the thing somewhat useful.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Actually, the SDSS telescope does more than just the visual spectrum; It also does UV and such. The data thats being made available on the web will be a refined, processed, and filtered version of the raw data collected at SDSS. And as far as amateur astronomers go, I know quite a few REAL astronomers and cosmologists who are excited about having the data at their fingertips like this. This will be the largest collection of astronomical data ever made widely available. Also, on a side note, SDSS won't be the only 'scope whose data is included... I forget the names offhand, but there are at least two others, the data from which will be all interlinked and searchable... VERY cool stuff, and quite exciting to us budding physicists
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I had the rare opportunity to study under one of the people involved with this project. Dr. Michael Vogeley, at Drexel University, actually presented a colloquium to us on this very subject. The methods they are using to detect and study some of these objects are actually quite ingenius, using plates with holes packed with optic fiber directing light from specific areas of the sky into the CCD's so that more light can be gathered on that one area and more distant objects studied. Not to mention, their lofty goal of mapping the largest chunk of the local universe ever mapped will be coming in a WELL below what most research projects are costing these days. This was easily the most fascinating colloquim I have ever attended at Drexel. If anyone here ever has a chance to attend a seminar or lecture (or better yet, a class) by Dr. Vogeley, I strongly suggest doing so.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Re:Why Macs are "expensive"
on
SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 1
Ack, I hate when I mistype an HTML tag then accidentally hit "SAVE" instead of "PREVIEW" Stupid laptop trackpad... grrr..
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Re:Why Macs are "expensive"
on
SuSE For PPC
·
· Score: 1
development of some of the best hardware on the planet
Umm. Earth to Jonathan. Best "Desktop" hardware.. MAYBE (only if you consider things like SGI to not be desktops, I for one consider them to be quite useful as desktop machines). Most well integrated hardware, absolutely. Best hardware? When there are Cray's and O2's and BigAss(TM) Mainframes out there all over the place, best hardware on the planet is just plain SILLY. Besides, the main advantage of PPC IMHO is, ironically, the PPC chip, which, correct me if I'm wrong, was developed by motorola. And arent all the latest greatest G4s mostly IBM's doing?
Plus they have to fund development of Mac OS
Heh. 'Cause we all know how Billy G is just getting MURDERED on development costs for the (albeit slightly inferior) hugely more widely distributed Windows.
Any way you slice it, Mac prices are high because Apple's got a strangle hold on the platform and can charge whatever the hell they want. Granted, they have to charge a lot these days to pay off the loan sharks they had to turn to in some of their worse years (heh)
The last time I checked, Gateways were actually kind of expensive as well, custom building dont come cheap. What makes the PC platform cost effective for folks like me is the freedom to do it ourselves. For under 2 grand I put together a dual pentium box with a half gig of RAM that will blow the pants off your G4... put that in your pipe and smoke it. And Gateway can kiss my ass too!
they just throw cheap components into boring gray boxes
Not to be a troll or anything... but this is SO FREAKING TYPICAL of a mac user... ooo ooo look at my pretty clearish blue Computer Thingy with all these nifty animated Aqua buttons and stuffies!! OOO OOO Look how I can play snood and surf the web on my iMac. If I GAVE A DAMN about what the box under my desk looked like I could go to www.colorcase.com and get a case whose styling I personally prefer to the hideous G4 cases, but I don't, so I saved the hundred or so bucks. I didnt have the extra case cost rammed down my throat by a big closed proprietary pigdog. The point is choice. With Intel (or Alpha for that matter) I can CHOOSE what components go into my system, where I get them, and who puts them together (me me me!). With apple, that option is not there. I personally don't like the idea of paying MORE for less freedom.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
It's not a question of just the newest revolutionary buzzword OS of the minute. It's a question of being willing to make trade-offs for the cost effectiveness and freedom that comes with Linux. When I made the switch from Windows to Linux it was a very carefully weighed out decision. I gave up a lot in that first FTP install of Debian... It was terribly configured, had loads of bugs, looked ugly as sin, and had half the functionality. And, as much as the/. crowd hates to admit it, I gave up a lot of other nice features when going from Windows to Linux. The biggest, MS word is pretty much a universal standard in the world, and until recently I couldn't even think about opening a Word doc, let alone viewing it properly. BUT, I got an open, free (speech and beer) OS that I could muck around with to my heart's content, and it did everything I needed it to do. So, I guess you could say my first FVWM interface was, for me, a "close-enough-to-Windows" interface.
Remember, "close enough" is relative. My vt320 terminal is "close enough" to sitting at a console for basic programming... I wouldnt want to write a few thousand lines of code on it though.
Now for my next question... since you are so quick to attack someone for not knowing all you do, oh mighty Mac God... do you honestly KNOW what a "vector based UI system based on PDF technology" is? Or did you cut and paste that directly from MacOSRumors? I mean, honestly, WHO CARES? So it's got different guts behind it. Does that change what I see on the end? My buttons don't animate themselves... DAMN IT TO HELL!!! You are absolutely right, OS X does have better technology, and yes, there is some revolutionary stuff in there. For years Mac hardware has been superior to PC hardware, yet the linux crowd has migrated mostly towards PC... do you wanna know why? Because of COST. I built myself a dual pIII box for way less than a G3 would have cost me at the time, and it was faster than anything Apple had on the market. At to that a free and open OS, and my needs were met pretty well. You are absolutely right, there is a lot more to OS X than buttons, but to me, there is not ENOUGH more to justify the extra cost. It is a matter of what is important to you. I once saw BeOS on ancient hardware rotating a cube with mpegs mapped onto all the faces... it was absolutely amazing. BUT, how in the hell does a rotating cube help me get work done? It's beautiful eye candy, and a great toy, but until I have money to spend on that particular toy, I will wait. To me, having the latest Apple buzzword crammed down my throat is not my primary concern. If you like apple, more power to you, run your G4 and be happy, but don't attack others for wanting a more cost effective and community minded solution. We all have our priorities, don't try to push yours on others.
In this case, the priority is a specific piece of software. I knew a guy who didnt switch to Linux till he saw Gnumeric, because Excel was the primary program he used on windows. In this case, the availability of a popular game makes the need for this specific platform less an issue. The only reason I have windows sitting around on my laptop is for Starcraft. If tomorrow a starcraft port were announced, my Red Hat cd would be in the drive faster than you can say "Stable, Powerful, and Robust." Surprising as it may be, not all of us PREFER OS X, and if we can emulate those features we want, Linux is an acceptable replacement.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Really now, for 750 bucks is this thing really worth it? I would rather build my own for much less money, using PC104 boards, and pick a hard drive of my own choosing. This would cost less, and have MUCH more functionality than just a simple mp3 player. The Lizzy design by Thad Starner at MIT Wearables is a good example of how a machine using these PC104 boards gives flexibility and a fairly decent amount of power in a small package. I know what the first thing I will do when I start my new job is...
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
First: A disclaimer. I know admittedly little about the hardware, etc in these things, so I know now how accurate the following statement will be.
That said, this might very well be another possibility in some ideas I have been tossin around for a wearable linux based machine I plan to build over the summer. My previous plan called for using some pc104 boards and building a cheezy led based i/o device till i could afford a spiffy glasses mount. With this, I could use the color screen when I really needed that functionality, yet still have the leds for my more minute to minute uses. More importantly, though, will I be able to hack a way to hook up a twiddler to this thing for typing? And for that matter, how open will the interface be? I might want to hack around the windoze based interface and get something much more basic and fvwm-like to save resources for other things, like context-aware applications and the such.
Just my $0.02US... I'd appreciate any feedback from those who might be more knowledgeable about these things.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
This hardly induces thoughts of rockage... any script kiddie could write something to do this in a matter of minutes. Maybe when I was 12 I would have thought this was cool. Then again when I was 12 I thought I was a l331 h@x0r d00d. Now I realize I am just a nominal linux user whose only code is pretty much replicating already well documented numerical recipes.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Yeah I broke the link, so shoot me
on
A New DeCSS
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· Score: 1
The scary thing is, this is the closet I've ever gotten to putting something useful up on the apache server I've been wasting clock cycles with all this time.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I personally would like to see an occasional column when the list reaches 10 or so. I realize I don't speak for everyone, but I am not all that interested in seeing every time xyz company ports some incredibly obscure enterprise software package to Linux. On the other hand, if more well known software gets a port, by all means give it a seperate article. A good guideline would be, when deciding whether to make it an article, think whether greater than 50% of the/. audience has heard of the software in question. This could allow a grouping of less major announcements, just as the quickies allow an outlet for news items not quite important enough for their own seperate articles. (Realize that by important I mean directly relevant to the majority of/. readers. While the linux porting of something like Maya is certainly a great achievement and makes a huge difference in the real world, I would guess that the majority of readers don't even know or care what Maya is).
anyways, just my $0.02 US
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Slashdot Mirror
up down up down left right left right b a select start
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
www.coyotelinux.com
Good stuff; the pay version is actually almost worth it, for the nice graphical disk creation utility. Basically, the entire IPMasq/firewall setup runs off a floppy. No hard drive needed. What makes this UBER-sweet is that if your firewall gets cracked, you simply figure out the hole, and rebuild the floppy to fix the hole. No permanent data = no permanant compromise. Beautiful.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I think the difference you are missing here is that Apache and whichever linux distro you are talking about, or Netscape and whichever UNIX, are NOT OWNED BY THE SAME COMPANY. Red Hat includes Apache with their product because it's a fine program that is well known and has a lot of demand from the users. Red Hat doesn't have anything to gain by bundling the software besides the advertising of saying "Includes Apache web server for easy set up blah blah blah." Likewise, Apache has nothing to gain except having their server get used more. Seeing as how Apache is not a for-profit company, this gains the developers nothing except an ego boost, and more end users to report bugs. Microsoft, on the other hand, has MUCH more to gain from bundling. By including the two pieces of software both developed in-house, they can push their own server down people's throats. In the process, they can push down proprietay, non-standards-compliant add-ons. Microsoft includes IIS because it belongs to them. Debian includes Apache because they think it's good stuff.
Seeing as how it's approaching Summer time (here in PA), I will use an anology relative to myself. When I was sold my jet ski, they suggested I used Brand X of engine oil. Not surprisingly, Brand X is a subsidiary of the jet ski manufacturer. Now, if the dealer had suggested Brand Y, which has no affiliation with JetSkiCo, the dealer would merely be adding an extra bit of service by helping the customer choose a good oil, instead of pushing his own interests. Sure, the dealer still benefits (wow guys, if you're gonna buy a jet ski, get it from Bob... he's a really great guy, even suggested a higher performance oil for me that let me squeeze out a few more MPH), but he benefits by HELPING out the customer, not by looking out for his OWN interests.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Geez, am I the *ONLY* one who actually *READS* the moderator guidelines? This is clearly not a troll. Offtopic, maybe. Redundant, seeing as how it shows up in every hardware related /. article sure. But it is most certainly NOT a troll. Watch yourselves, moderators...
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
oh come on.. Neccesary Roughness was GREAT... the scene where the dude's runnin down the field kickin peoples' faces in is classic!
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
there once was a great karma whore
whos poems were trite and a bore
the AC's they whined
he responded in kind
and got moderated some more
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
At Drexel University, I had an opportunity to work with a machine based on the GRAPE 4 architecture, and let me tell you, this thing is amazing. Granted it can only do one thing: take in initial conditions and spit out forces (no if/thens or even add/multiplies here), and FAST! We have two supercomputers in one server room: A 64 node beowulf cluster, and a GRAPE machine. For the type of calculations GRAPE is designed for, it is about a hundred times faster than the beowulf cluster, all in the size of a mid tower PC case. Abso-frickin-lutely amazing! Not to mention the fact that our GRAPE system cost us about 10,000 $US, compared to MUCH MORE for the beowulf cluster (I dont have the number on hand). THATS what I call price/performance.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I happen to be fortunate enough to work on a machine modeled off the GRAPE 4 architecture, so let me clarify. Grape performs ONE calculation. Period. It can't multiply, or divide, or do flow control (if/then). All it can do, is calculate gravitational force between two objects. FAST. We have a 64 node beowulf cluster, and a single GRAPE machine the size of a mid tower pc. For the work it was designed for, our grape machine is nearly a hundred times faster than the beowulf cluster. And the machine cost us less than 10,000 dollars (Compared to quite a bit more for the beowulf cluster)
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
There is, and have been, PC's which fit exactly what you are talking about for some time. Many comply with the pc/104 standard (www.pc104.org), and are available in everything from 286 up to pentiums. Try www.emjembedded.com for a couple cool embedded size PC's.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I, too, have Flashcom, and they have been nothing but one big headache. They took well over a month to get the install process going, repeatedly telling me they'd contcat me, then failing to. They haven't billed me in close to six months, and I'm fearing when that bill does come in and exceeds my credit card limit. The service has been flaky, the customer service horrific, and the speeds mediocre. The only reason I went with Flashcom is that they gave me multiple dedicated IP's. As soon as I get IP masquerading setup properly at home, I am going to drop flashcom like a bad habit and get Bell Atlantic, which from friends' accounts is much better to deal with.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Thanks for the pointer. I hadn't realized that, because in the test environment we were using, we had no password for the admin account (several people were messing with it). The root password only matches the admin if the admin is non-null. I should have figured out the maitenance mode, but I was too busy being angry at gateway to worry about that :)
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
We have one at work... they are a neat toy, but just that, a toy. In a production environment, its practically worthless. No capability to upgrade or implement security patches. The Admin account is denied access to half the system, and Gateway doesn't bother to tell you the root password. In an uber small business, it would be handy as a quick and dirty firewall/router/dhcp server for 40 or 50 light users, maybe 10 heavy ones. Out of the box it'd be cake to say, share a DSL line or cable modem. The web based interface is admittedly slick... I have seen people who've never touched linux breeze thru the setup of this thing like cake. Things that bothered me included the lack of low level root access (I wanted to change init scripts... no dice.) and the seemingly idiotic out of the box setup to run mgetty on the serial port, instead of an agetty which would be mildly useful, considering the pile of VTx20's we have in the lab. One of these days I'm gonna yank the drive, boot it as a slave, and edit the passwd file so i can use the root account and at least make the thing somewhat useful.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Actually, the SDSS telescope does more than just the visual spectrum; It also does UV and such. The data thats being made available on the web will be a refined, processed, and filtered version of the raw data collected at SDSS. And as far as amateur astronomers go, I know quite a few REAL astronomers and cosmologists who are excited about having the data at their fingertips like this. This will be the largest collection of astronomical data ever made widely available. Also, on a side note, SDSS won't be the only 'scope whose data is included... I forget the names offhand, but there are at least two others, the data from which will be all interlinked and searchable... VERY cool stuff, and quite exciting to us budding physicists
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
I had the rare opportunity to study under one of the people involved with this project. Dr. Michael Vogeley, at Drexel University, actually presented a colloquium to us on this very subject. The methods they are using to detect and study some of these objects are actually quite ingenius, using plates with holes packed with optic fiber directing light from specific areas of the sky into the CCD's so that more light can be gathered on that one area and more distant objects studied. Not to mention, their lofty goal of mapping the largest chunk of the local universe ever mapped will be coming in a WELL below what most research projects are costing these days. This was easily the most fascinating colloquim I have ever attended at Drexel. If anyone here ever has a chance to attend a seminar or lecture (or better yet, a class) by Dr. Vogeley, I strongly suggest doing so.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Ack, I hate when I mistype an HTML tag then accidentally hit "SAVE" instead of "PREVIEW" Stupid laptop trackpad... grrr..
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Umm. Earth to Jonathan. Best "Desktop" hardware.. MAYBE (only if you consider things like SGI to not be desktops, I for one consider them to be quite useful as desktop machines). Most well integrated hardware, absolutely. Best hardware? When there are Cray's and O2's and BigAss(TM) Mainframes out there all over the place, best hardware on the planet is just plain SILLY. Besides, the main advantage of PPC IMHO is, ironically, the PPC chip, which, correct me if I'm wrong, was developed by motorola. And arent all the latest greatest G4s mostly IBM's doing?
Plus they have to fund development of Mac OS
Heh. 'Cause we all know how Billy G is just getting MURDERED on development costs for the (albeit slightly inferior) hugely more widely distributed Windows.
Any way you slice it, Mac prices are high because Apple's got a strangle hold on the platform and can charge whatever the hell they want. Granted, they have to charge a lot these days to pay off the loan sharks they had to turn to in some of their worse years (heh)
The last time I checked, Gateways were actually kind of expensive as well, custom building dont come cheap. What makes the PC platform cost effective for folks like me is the freedom to do it ourselves. For under 2 grand I put together a dual pentium box with a half gig of RAM that will blow the pants off your G4... put that in your pipe and smoke it. And Gateway can kiss my ass too!
they just throw cheap components into boring gray boxes
Not to be a troll or anything... but this is SO FREAKING TYPICAL of a mac user... ooo ooo look at my pretty clearish blue Computer Thingy with all these nifty animated Aqua buttons and stuffies!! OOO OOO Look how I can play snood and surf the web on my iMac. If I GAVE A DAMN about what the box under my desk looked like I could go to www.colorcase.com and get a case whose styling I personally prefer to the hideous G4 cases, but I don't, so I saved the hundred or so bucks. I didnt have the extra case cost rammed down my throat by a big closed proprietary pigdog. The point is choice. With Intel (or Alpha for that matter) I can CHOOSE what components go into my system, where I get them, and who puts them together (me me me!). With apple, that option is not there. I personally don't like the idea of paying MORE for less freedom.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
On a G3, maybe not, but on a 486... that's pretty goddamned impressive.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Remember, "close enough" is relative. My vt320 terminal is "close enough" to sitting at a console for basic programming... I wouldnt want to write a few thousand lines of code on it though.
Now for my next question... since you are so quick to attack someone for not knowing all you do, oh mighty Mac God... do you honestly KNOW what a "vector based UI system based on PDF technology" is? Or did you cut and paste that directly from MacOSRumors? I mean, honestly, WHO CARES? So it's got different guts behind it. Does that change what I see on the end? My buttons don't animate themselves... DAMN IT TO HELL!!! You are absolutely right, OS X does have better technology, and yes, there is some revolutionary stuff in there. For years Mac hardware has been superior to PC hardware, yet the linux crowd has migrated mostly towards PC... do you wanna know why? Because of COST. I built myself a dual pIII box for way less than a G3 would have cost me at the time, and it was faster than anything Apple had on the market. At to that a free and open OS, and my needs were met pretty well. You are absolutely right, there is a lot more to OS X than buttons, but to me, there is not ENOUGH more to justify the extra cost. It is a matter of what is important to you. I once saw BeOS on ancient hardware rotating a cube with mpegs mapped onto all the faces... it was absolutely amazing. BUT, how in the hell does a rotating cube help me get work done? It's beautiful eye candy, and a great toy, but until I have money to spend on that particular toy, I will wait. To me, having the latest Apple buzzword crammed down my throat is not my primary concern. If you like apple, more power to you, run your G4 and be happy, but don't attack others for wanting a more cost effective and community minded solution. We all have our priorities, don't try to push yours on others.
In this case, the priority is a specific piece of software. I knew a guy who didnt switch to Linux till he saw Gnumeric, because Excel was the primary program he used on windows. In this case, the availability of a popular game makes the need for this specific platform less an issue. The only reason I have windows sitting around on my laptop is for Starcraft. If tomorrow a starcraft port were announced, my Red Hat cd would be in the drive faster than you can say "Stable, Powerful, and Robust." Surprising as it may be, not all of us PREFER OS X, and if we can emulate those features we want, Linux is an acceptable replacement.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
For some reason, the HTML formatting I entered didnt work, so here's a good old fashioned plain text version of the URL at MIT:
z y/index.html
http://www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/liz
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Really now, for 750 bucks is this thing really worth it? I would rather build my own for much less money, using PC104 boards, and pick a hard drive of my own choosing. This would cost less, and have MUCH more functionality than just a simple mp3 player. The Lizzy design by Thad Starner at MIT Wearables is a good example of how a machine using these PC104 boards gives flexibility and a fairly decent amount of power in a small package. I know what the first thing I will do when I start my new job is...
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
First: A disclaimer. I know admittedly little about the hardware, etc in these things, so I know now how accurate the following statement will be.
That said, this might very well be another possibility in some ideas I have been tossin around for a wearable linux based machine I plan to build over the summer. My previous plan called for using some pc104 boards and building a cheezy led based i/o device till i could afford a spiffy glasses mount. With this, I could use the color screen when I really needed that functionality, yet still have the leds for my more minute to minute uses. More importantly, though, will I be able to hack a way to hook up a twiddler to this thing for typing? And for that matter, how open will the interface be? I might want to hack around the windoze based interface and get something much more basic and fvwm-like to save resources for other things, like context-aware applications and the such.
Just my $0.02US... I'd appreciate any feedback from those who might be more knowledgeable about these things.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
This hardly induces thoughts of rockage... any script kiddie could write something to do this in a matter of minutes. Maybe when I was 12 I would have thought this was cool. Then again when I was 12 I thought I was a l331 h@x0r d00d. Now I realize I am just a nominal linux user whose only code is pretty much replicating already well documented numerical recipes.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
That should be http://jamie.ufies.org
/. crowd would be able to figure that out anyway :)
Although I would hope most of the
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
My copy of the DeCSS program is at My Utterly Useless Web Page
The scary thing is, this is the closet I've ever gotten to putting something useful up on the apache server I've been wasting clock cycles with all this time.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
anyways, just my $0.02 US
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you