you must like having cards jutting out of the side of the laptop!
I know I don't. the PC Card slot isn't as useful on a 12" PB when you already have Bluetooth and 802.11g out of the box. what would you put in there that isn't either already handled by the PB or could be done through USB (such as hooking up a camera to transfer photos)?
I would say "neither." Firebird/Firefox uses code ahead of the last official Mozilla build, so the most accurate description would be that you're using Mozilla 1.7a (in a sense) if you're using Firefox.
It's not Dell we should be worried about, it's Microsoft! I think that if Dell/HP/whoever started selling systems preloaded with Linux, Microsoft's key execs would have a collective heart attack.
It's because iChat AV is considered a pretty good audio/video IM app, and one of its (relatively) few drawbacks was that the advanced functions weren't compatible outside of iChat.
3 Mbps up and 384 Kbps down in theory, though I think my modem or local node are messed up in recent months as the bandwidth fluctuates a lot. However, the potential to go that fast for what I pay ($45 Canadian a month for Rogers Hi-Speed) would make most American geeks cry.
Windows may now be (reasonably) stable and there may be 3rd-party apps to help out with what's missing, but I really do agree with the author when he asks people to get a non-Windows system. Think about it. When you get a new Windows computer these days, you have to:
- put it behind a software firewall or a router - get antivirus software (or else use something besides Outlook/Outlook Express) - get 40-something critical updates, including SP1 - consider anti-spyware and/or pop-up blocking software
Can you imagine expecting a first-time user to know to do all that?
I don't think so, and the worst part is that this may mean the customer having to shell out X amount of extra dollars to speak to a PC tech after their system gets compromised by Blaster or they get so many pop-up ads as to render the system unuseable. A $399 PC won't seem so cheap if you end up paying someone at least once for support or can't use your computer during a critical period.
A Mac is expensive, true, but at least you aren't under serious threat of having an unuseable system just by making a direct connection to the Internet without multiple security programs installed. Even XP SP2 won't get rid of adware and spyware.
I know there are OS X trojans/viruses/worms out there, but since release I haven't heard of a single attack, and certainly nothing on a significant scale.
I'm glad to hear that the user on linux.com is happy with her copy of Mandrake, but I can't help but think that a Mac would be much, much better so long as a given person can afford it (remember, you don't need a dual G5, just an eMac or iBook).
The reason would be the support network for when you do need support. Not everyone is or can afford to drop by, and saying "go check Ars Technica" isn't really helpful. IF they ever need professional support, it would be better to have actual phone and store support for the product.
Not to mention that you can actually expect to find common peripherals which will work out of the box, or at least have company-supported drivers that you can install.
Not everyone can justify the cost when you can get a new Linux box for half the price, but I wouldn't want someone spending extra on tech support (or downtime) just to save some money on the initial purchase.
I can't imagine someone being in a furor over changes to the storyline in the remake of a short-lived and not always universally-liked series like Battlestar Galactica. It would be like complaining that they changed the dolphin in SeaQuest DSV to an Orca!
I don't like these arguments, because they effectively say "sincee other countries are much worse, that absolves the US government and media of what they do now!"
The whole point is to not allow ANY censorship or manipulation of the truth, because companies and governments that are already inclined to selective omission/reinterpretation of facts are liable to do worse if given the opportunity.
Remember Watergate? Woodward and Bernstein were facing thinly-veiled threats of violence for their newspaper articles on the scandal. All it takes is an unscrupulous group at the top and a complacent public for a serious abuse of power to occur.
I agree that they're opinion and should be viewed carefully, but it's a bit fallacious to say "stop complaining, you have it better than someone in country X."
At least in those countries, censorship is patently obvious. In the US (and Canada, to a lesser degree) censorship is simply hidden under the guise of private reporting by corporations and the myth that they're just practicing free speech. Most people assume that CNN, Fox, etc. are accurate because they aren't directly linked to the government and give the appearance of objectivity in their style.
The fact is that these companies are run by people with their own agendas. Whether they're connected to the government or not, they routinely engage in selective omission of stories and images that don't favour their point of view. It wasn't hard to notice this just by watching TV in the run-up to the war in Iraq: most American stations weren't really questioning the validity of the US government's WMD claims, and Fox in particular was in a "rah, rah, go USA" mode.
If you think you live in a country of freedom, watch the CBC in Canada or even the BBC (whether it's BBC World or otherwise). You'll be surprised at just how slanted the US media really is.
That line is delivered so well (I would say casually, but Morbo isn't exactly casual) that every time I hear it I can't help but laugh. It shows that all the writing that made the Simpsons (at least in the early years) carried over to Futurama.
Here's hoping that the Simpsons can retire gracefully when their contract is up, and that Futurama shall rise again!
Based on what I have to deal with at my ISP support job, I can agree with the argument that it's often the customer.
Take what happened to me today. It's an extreme example, but it shows just what techies deal with. I had a call come in, and I asked for opening info. I suddenly hear some dialing from the customer again. I tell him that I'm a real person. He pushes some numbers again. It took something around 4 attempts to get him just to actually respond to me! He even said that his version of Windows was "a Pentium." And you expect someone like this to be able to use the Internet properly?
Many customers are just simply unwilling to deal with the fact that the computer is a machine like any other. Instead of treating it like (as an example) a car and learning enough to figure out how to perform maintenance, they feign helplessness and call someone else.
What we really need is mandatory classes and/or reading before someone is allowed to use their first computer. This should also include awareness of terms, and the fact that other computer platforms exist besides what's in the majority. Once someone at least knows how to navigate some basic control panels and access menus, then they can use a computer!
As is noted in another section of the comments, though, it's the compiler. Apple states that the tests use GCC 3.3 (the OS being Red Hat Linux on the P4 and Xeon). So Apple's argument is that, software being as neutral as possible, the G5 is supposed to be faster.
Now, one could dispute this and argue that developers aren't going to only use GCC, and so on... but remember, Intel is interested in skewing tests in their favour at least as much as Apple is.
I apologize for the trivial post, but it's #1000 - I figured that it would only be fair to give one of the biggest apple.slashdot.org comment threads ever the slight nudge to put it into the 4-digit mark.
And apparently that person on macfreak.org is trying to get attention, since that's not how Akamai's setup is supposed to work. You publish the content to your own servers, and Akamai merely caches that content. So in other words, it was someone with access to Apple's own servers (such as an Apple website developer) who put that up.
And you can observe that what Apple was likely trying to do was to update the interface to the store slightly. First: instead of something such as "Step 1: choose your iMac," you now just get "Choose your iMac." Once you do choose your particular system, the buttons are also noticeably different: they're all flat, solid-colour buttons.
Knowing that these changes have been made, we can easily use Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is that Apple unintentionally posted the specs image while they were in the middle of testing and updating other content. There's no sinister conspiracy involving disgruntled employees or clever hackers.
The PPC 970 treats PPC32 code much in the same way that an Athlon 64 or Opteron handles x86-32 code: it's basically seamless, like you were running the code on a pure 32-bit machine.
OS X is supposed to need a few small tweaks to use PPC 970s, but I hear that they're mainly to tell the 970 "hey, this is 32-bit code!" rather than anything dramatic. I wouldn't be surprised if, as AppleInsider said, they just need a small update to 10.2 to make this work.
One thing to remember about PowerPC chips, by the way: PPC64 has always been part and parcel of the PowerPC architecture, it's just that it has taken a long time to get to the point where it's realistic to use it. PPC64 is also just a superset of PPC32 and has more to do with the size of data than any radical new features.
That's not true. I believe the cost is about 25 cents US per port, if that - and I doubt that most companies blanch at the thought of paying 50 cents more per computer or mainboard.
USB is cheaper to implement, but that's mainly because Intel wants to saturate the market with it. I've seen tests where even Firewire 400 is able to sustain a faster connection than USB 2 (which is supposed to have an 80 Mbps advantage). So one could argue that, in a sense, you get what you pay for.
"The fact that the Altivec unit was slapped onto the design, leaving some room for improvement in future iterations, leaves no doubt that the 970 achieved its present form under pressure from Apple and that Apple will be rolling out systems based on the new processor. This is the most plausible and reasonable explanation for the way the vector unit looks. If the 970 were solely intended as a Linux desktop platform for IBM, they would've preferred to reduce the 970's die size, power consumption, time-to-market, etc. by just leaving out the Altivec unit altogether, instead of shoehorning it into the design the way they did."
Most Linux variants and apps aren't Altivec-optimized, so there wouldn't be very much incentive for IBM to include the functionality in a Linux-only box given the engineering work involved in doing so. It makes much more sense to do it when you know that you could easily sell hundreds of thousands of these CPUs to another company whose customers are desperately eager for that level of performance, i.e. Apple.
I wouldn't label AMD as against open-source software. It should be noted that the first 64-bit OS ready for the Opteron wasn't Windows, it was Linux. We're still waiting for the Opteron version of Windows, in fact.
Intel, I'm not sure if they care either way. After all, there are definitely major resellers out there who make Linux workstations. IBM is getting a reputation as a Linux-friendly company, and last I heard it was true that most of IBM's Linux boxes run Intel chips.
The only company of the three you've mentioned which is decidedly against open-source is Microsoft, and that's because it threatens to unseat them from their monopoly. They can put the squeeze on AMD and Intel, but they aren't (yet, at least) at the point where they can force CPU companies to only allow Windows on their systems, or where they can force computer manufacturers to toss Linux out the door.
The ongoing rumour (you may want to treat it with as much suspicion as these benchmarks) is that if/when IBM gets the PPC 970 on to an 0.09-micron process, the chips will be able to run in all the PowerBook models at a good clip. I'm guessing that this would be at 1.2 and 1.4 GHz (maybe 1.5) to start with, since it's quite likely that the last PowerBook G4s will run at 1.0 and 1.25 GHz in the respective low-end and high-end models.
Hey, we (Canada) allow people to have guns, we just don't consider it a sacred right. I think that mentality actually seems to benefit us, since we don't live in perpetual fear of being robbed or have metal detectors at high schools.
Also: we might have higher taxes, but yet somehow our economy is experiencing considerably stronger growth than yours. I suppose it helps that we weren't broadsided with terrorist attacks, but that wasn't exactly unexpected if you know the long-term history of US involvement in the Middle East.
And I don't think that socialized medicine is exactly some kind of tyranny. Why shouldn't we EXPECT good treatment if we're sick, rather than have to shop around or (in a worst-case scenario) go without? It's not as though you're buying a car or your clothes, we're talking about basic survival here. Besides, you probably wouldn't like the direction privatization efforts (mostly by conservatives) go here. They're usually geared more towards satisfying the business partners of MPs than making sure that everyone can get proper health care.
Slashdot Mirror
you must like having cards jutting out of the side of the laptop!
I know I don't. the PC Card slot isn't as useful on a 12" PB when you already have Bluetooth and 802.11g out of the box. what would you put in there that isn't either already handled by the PB or could be done through USB (such as hooking up a camera to transfer photos)?
I would say "neither." Firebird/Firefox uses code ahead of the last official Mozilla build, so the most accurate description would be that you're using Mozilla 1.7a (in a sense) if you're using Firefox.
It's not Dell we should be worried about, it's Microsoft! I think that if Dell/HP/whoever started selling systems preloaded with Linux, Microsoft's key execs would have a collective heart attack.
So how many seconds will it take before Microsoft pulls its license agreement with Dell and files a lawsuit? :)
It's because iChat AV is considered a pretty good audio/video IM app, and one of its (relatively) few drawbacks was that the advanced functions weren't compatible outside of iChat.
3 Mbps up and 384 Kbps down in theory, though I think my modem or local node are messed up in recent months as the bandwidth fluctuates a lot. However, the potential to go that fast for what I pay ($45 Canadian a month for Rogers Hi-Speed) would make most American geeks cry.
For reference: I'm located in Ottawa, Canada
My post was relating to the Mac, but I do agree with you on Linux: as many strides as it has made, it's not going to help a novice out.
Windows may now be (reasonably) stable and there may be 3rd-party apps to help out with what's missing, but I really do agree with the author when he asks people to get a non-Windows system. Think about it. When you get a new Windows computer these days, you have to:
- put it behind a software firewall or a router
- get antivirus software (or else use something besides Outlook/Outlook Express)
- get 40-something critical updates, including SP1
- consider anti-spyware and/or pop-up blocking software
Can you imagine expecting a first-time user to know to do all that?
I don't think so, and the worst part is that this may mean the customer having to shell out X amount of extra dollars to speak to a PC tech after their system gets compromised by Blaster or they get so many pop-up ads as to render the system unuseable. A $399 PC won't seem so cheap if you end up paying someone at least once for support or can't use your computer during a critical period.
A Mac is expensive, true, but at least you aren't under serious threat of having an unuseable system just by making a direct connection to the Internet without multiple security programs installed. Even XP SP2 won't get rid of adware and spyware.
I know there are OS X trojans/viruses/worms out there, but since release I haven't heard of a single attack, and certainly nothing on a significant scale.
I'm glad to hear that the user on linux.com is happy with her copy of Mandrake, but I can't help but think that a Mac would be much, much better so long as a given person can afford it (remember, you don't need a dual G5, just an eMac or iBook).
The reason would be the support network for when you do need support. Not everyone is or can afford to drop by, and saying "go check Ars Technica" isn't really helpful. IF they ever need professional support, it would be better to have actual phone and store support for the product.
Not to mention that you can actually expect to find common peripherals which will work out of the box, or at least have company-supported drivers that you can install.
Not everyone can justify the cost when you can get a new Linux box for half the price, but I wouldn't want someone spending extra on tech support (or downtime) just to save some money on the initial purchase.
I can't imagine someone being in a furor over changes to the storyline in the remake of a short-lived and not always universally-liked series like Battlestar Galactica. It would be like complaining that they changed the dolphin in SeaQuest DSV to an Orca!
I don't like these arguments, because they effectively say "sincee other countries are much worse, that absolves the US government and media of what they do now!"
The whole point is to not allow ANY censorship or manipulation of the truth, because companies and governments that are already inclined to selective omission/reinterpretation of facts are liable to do worse if given the opportunity.
Remember Watergate? Woodward and Bernstein were facing thinly-veiled threats of violence for their newspaper articles on the scandal. All it takes is an unscrupulous group at the top and a complacent public for a serious abuse of power to occur.
I agree that they're opinion and should be viewed carefully, but it's a bit fallacious to say "stop complaining, you have it better than someone in country X."
At least in those countries, censorship is patently obvious. In the US (and Canada, to a lesser degree) censorship is simply hidden under the guise of private reporting by corporations and the myth that they're just practicing free speech. Most people assume that CNN, Fox, etc. are accurate because they aren't directly linked to the government and give the appearance of objectivity in their style.
The fact is that these companies are run by people with their own agendas. Whether they're connected to the government or not, they routinely engage in selective omission of stories and images that don't favour their point of view. It wasn't hard to notice this just by watching TV in the run-up to the war in Iraq: most American stations weren't really questioning the validity of the US government's WMD claims, and Fox in particular was in a "rah, rah, go USA" mode.
If you think you live in a country of freedom, watch the CBC in Canada or even the BBC (whether it's BBC World or otherwise). You'll be surprised at just how slanted the US media really is.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
That line is delivered so well (I would say casually, but Morbo isn't exactly casual) that every time I hear it I can't help but laugh. It shows that all the writing that made the Simpsons (at least in the early years) carried over to Futurama.
Here's hoping that the Simpsons can retire gracefully when their contract is up, and that Futurama shall rise again!
Based on what I have to deal with at my ISP support job, I can agree with the argument that it's often the customer.
Take what happened to me today. It's an extreme example, but it shows just what techies deal with. I had a call come in, and I asked for opening info. I suddenly hear some dialing from the customer again. I tell him that I'm a real person. He pushes some numbers again. It took something around 4 attempts to get him just to actually respond to me! He even said that his version of Windows was "a Pentium." And you expect someone like this to be able to use the Internet properly?
Many customers are just simply unwilling to deal with the fact that the computer is a machine like any other. Instead of treating it like (as an example) a car and learning enough to figure out how to perform maintenance, they feign helplessness and call someone else.
What we really need is mandatory classes and/or reading before someone is allowed to use their first computer. This should also include awareness of terms, and the fact that other computer platforms exist besides what's in the majority. Once someone at least knows how to navigate some basic control panels and access menus, then they can use a computer!
As is noted in another section of the comments, though, it's the compiler. Apple states that the tests use GCC 3.3 (the OS being Red Hat Linux on the P4 and Xeon). So Apple's argument is that, software being as neutral as possible, the G5 is supposed to be faster.
Now, one could dispute this and argue that developers aren't going to only use GCC, and so on... but remember, Intel is interested in skewing tests in their favour at least as much as Apple is.
I apologize for the trivial post, but it's #1000 - I figured that it would only be fair to give one of the biggest apple.slashdot.org comment threads ever the slight nudge to put it into the 4-digit mark.
Can't wait to see those G5s.
And apparently that person on macfreak.org is trying to get attention, since that's not how Akamai's setup is supposed to work. You publish the content to your own servers, and Akamai merely caches that content. So in other words, it was someone with access to Apple's own servers (such as an Apple website developer) who put that up.
And you can observe that what Apple was likely trying to do was to update the interface to the store slightly. First: instead of something such as "Step 1: choose your iMac," you now just get "Choose your iMac." Once you do choose your particular system, the buttons are also noticeably different: they're all flat, solid-colour buttons.
Knowing that these changes have been made, we can easily use Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is that Apple unintentionally posted the specs image while they were in the middle of testing and updating other content. There's no sinister conspiracy involving disgruntled employees or clever hackers.
The PPC 970 treats PPC32 code much in the same way that an Athlon 64 or Opteron handles x86-32 code: it's basically seamless, like you were running the code on a pure 32-bit machine.
OS X is supposed to need a few small tweaks to use PPC 970s, but I hear that they're mainly to tell the 970 "hey, this is 32-bit code!" rather than anything dramatic. I wouldn't be surprised if, as AppleInsider said, they just need a small update to 10.2 to make this work.
One thing to remember about PowerPC chips, by the way: PPC64 has always been part and parcel of the PowerPC architecture, it's just that it has taken a long time to get to the point where it's realistic to use it. PPC64 is also just a superset of PPC32 and has more to do with the size of data than any radical new features.
That's not true. I believe the cost is about 25 cents US per port, if that - and I doubt that most companies blanch at the thought of paying 50 cents more per computer or mainboard.
USB is cheaper to implement, but that's mainly because Intel wants to saturate the market with it. I've seen tests where even Firewire 400 is able to sustain a faster connection than USB 2 (which is supposed to have an 80 Mbps advantage). So one could argue that, in a sense, you get what you pay for.
As Hannibal (Jon Stokes) notes in the article in question:
"The fact that the Altivec unit was slapped onto the design, leaving some room for improvement in future iterations, leaves no doubt that the 970 achieved its present form under pressure from Apple and that Apple will be rolling out systems based on the new processor. This is the most plausible and reasonable explanation for the way the vector unit looks. If the 970 were solely intended as a Linux desktop platform for IBM, they would've preferred to reduce the 970's die size, power consumption, time-to-market, etc. by just leaving out the Altivec unit altogether, instead of shoehorning it into the design the way they did."
Most Linux variants and apps aren't Altivec-optimized, so there wouldn't be very much incentive for IBM to include the functionality in a Linux-only box given the engineering work involved in doing so. It makes much more sense to do it when you know that you could easily sell hundreds of thousands of these CPUs to another company whose customers are desperately eager for that level of performance, i.e. Apple.
I wouldn't label AMD as against open-source software. It should be noted that the first 64-bit OS ready for the Opteron wasn't Windows, it was Linux. We're still waiting for the Opteron version of Windows, in fact.
Intel, I'm not sure if they care either way. After all, there are definitely major resellers out there who make Linux workstations. IBM is getting a reputation as a Linux-friendly company, and last I heard it was true that most of IBM's Linux boxes run Intel chips.
The only company of the three you've mentioned which is decidedly against open-source is Microsoft, and that's because it threatens to unseat them from their monopoly. They can put the squeeze on AMD and Intel, but they aren't (yet, at least) at the point where they can force CPU companies to only allow Windows on their systems, or where they can force computer manufacturers to toss Linux out the door.
The ongoing rumour (you may want to treat it with as much suspicion as these benchmarks) is that if/when IBM gets the PPC 970 on to an 0.09-micron process, the chips will be able to run in all the PowerBook models at a good clip. I'm guessing that this would be at 1.2 and 1.4 GHz (maybe 1.5) to start with, since it's quite likely that the last PowerBook G4s will run at 1.0 and 1.25 GHz in the respective low-end and high-end models.
Here's a fixed link (with HTML in it): PowerPC 970 Annoucement
Hey, we (Canada) allow people to have guns, we just don't consider it a sacred right. I think that mentality actually seems to benefit us, since we don't live in perpetual fear of being robbed or have metal detectors at high schools.
Also: we might have higher taxes, but yet somehow our economy is experiencing considerably stronger growth than yours. I suppose it helps that we weren't broadsided with terrorist attacks, but that wasn't exactly unexpected if you know the long-term history of US involvement in the Middle East.
And I don't think that socialized medicine is exactly some kind of tyranny. Why shouldn't we EXPECT good treatment if we're sick, rather than have to shop around or (in a worst-case scenario) go without? It's not as though you're buying a car or your clothes, we're talking about basic survival here. Besides, you probably wouldn't like the direction privatization efforts (mostly by conservatives) go here. They're usually geared more towards satisfying the business partners of MPs than making sure that everyone can get proper health care.