No it is not, and if you really think about it, I am sure you will agree. The Mac Mini is not upgradeable at all. You can stick in a bigger stick of Ram and that is it. You can get tons of better value from a $500 PC. A lot of people try to compare a $500 Dell to the $500 Mac Mini. However, there are even better deals out there then Dell, for example E-Machines.
I am not busting on the Mac Mini since I just placed an order for one. However, the Mac Mini still doesn't position the Mac to compete with a PC. A typical Mac Mini comes with a puny 256MB of Ram, a sad 40GB hard-drive and a _dog_ slow laptop hard-drive to boot. It is missing speakers, keyboard, mouse and monitor.
For that same price you can get a decent PC that included a _real_ hard-drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and usually a printer or scanner.
The Mac Mini is really only a good deal to Mac geeks that are used to paying a premium for a computer. Joe User will continue to look to a PC and sadly MS WinXP to meet their needs.
Seriously, when was the last time Google called Linux or Open Source a "cancer"? When was the last time Google attacked any Open Source? When was the last time Google used _any_ of the tactics that MS has used that got them found to be a monopoly (sadly just a slap on the wrist)?
There is just no comparison between MS and Google as far as being "evil" is concerened.
Um, the people who have the patents are the ones that made the standard. They didn't have to publish it at all if they didn't want to.
No, that is not how the patent system works. They have to publish the patent information to be able to get a patent. Then the government will give them exclusive rigthts to that patent for a certain period of time. Anyone is free to go and look up the text of the patent if they wanted to. Heck, you can even go and implement the patent on your own if you want. However, if you tried to use that patent for-profit, I am sure that a law suit would follow.
What would be the point of a patent system if you were allowed to keep the technology hidden?
And as far as Linux end-users are concerned, there is no issue with MP3 for end-users.
If you read that whole page, you will see this blurb many times
no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities
Since K-Meleon has a native Windows (non-XUL) frontend, it runs faster.
Well, I just tried K-Meleon and it took about 2 seconds to start-up on a 3.06 Ghz P4 w/HT and 1GB ram. It takes about 2 seconds as well for Firefox to start up on this box. I didn't notice K-Meleon to be any faster. The only thing I noticed was a little less memory use.
Oh, and you can get speed optimized Firefox builds. These builds have better 3D-Now, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 optimizations, so you need to download the one that is right for your processor.
These optimized builds of Firefox run just as fast as K-Meleon IMO and I don't lose all the great Firefox plug-ins. I personally can't work on the net without AdBlock.
Huh? If you search Google with the _same_ terms and get A,B,C as results the first time and someone else searches the same terms later and get A,D,E. Wouldn't you be a little suspicious? I know I would.
Oh, and Google is not a _government_ organization paid for by the tax payers money (our money). The FBI, NEED to be held to higher standards. "We" the people have given the FBI certain authority over us, and that authority comes with some restrictions. That means that the FBI _should_ never hide information from us. Sadly, the FBI and the CIA hide information from us U.S. citizens all the time.
I am planning on buying a Mac Mini. However, one thing I have been trying to figure out is what are the specs on the hard-drive. Everywhere I looked, I just was informed of the hard-drive space. Does the Mac Mini come with a _real_ hard-dive, like a 3.5" 7,200 RPM ATA-100 drive? Or does it come with a _dog_ slow "laptop" 4,800/5,200 2.5" hard-drive? Honestly, this will make the choice for me if I buy a Mac Mini or not. I really don't want a computer with a _dog_ slow 2.5" laptop drive.
I was thinking that if the Mac Mini does come with a slow laptop hard-drive, that I could upgrade it. However, does the Mac Mini come with install disks for the latest Mac OS? Or would I have to shell out another $100+ on top of the cost of a hard-drive to upgrade?
I am not trolling here, but this was a really bad article. It was written by a PHB type for PHB types.
The reason most large projects fail at large companies is because of PHB's. The business people with very little technical knowledge are the ones who make projects fail. If I was the head of a big corporation, I would go out and find the biggest geek I could find and make him/her the CTO.
I am and have been a senior programmer at two fortune 500 companies. I have seen projects fail. The number one reason is because of non-technical people making technical decisions. We have had countless times where PHB's have mandated a product because of some savvy sales person and had nothing to do with how it would actually enhance our IT infrastructure.
Personally I think large companies should be "component oriented". They should develop most stuff in-house, yet look to third party vendors for pre-packaged components. The Java framework and the.Net framework, (both of which we use where I work) are perfect for a component market. There are tons of plug-in components you can use in Java and.Net projects to speed up development without handing the whole project over to a third party. IMO, Java has a little advantage over.Net in the component market. While they are both big and thriving, the Java market is a little larger and you can find a lot more Open Source components that can help save costs. Though both Java and.Net will not let you down for a development framework.
Does anyone remember the/. article about Walmart's IT department? They are the largest company around (much bigger the MS), and they do all development in-house. Their IT department must be a great place to work. Walmart has total control over their _own_ IT. Now I am sure Walmart buys third party products. I doubt they wrote their own operating systems, office suites or databases. However, I bet what they do is look to the third party market for components that will make their development faster while allowing them to have full control over their own IT infrastructure.
The fortune 500 company where I work is fragmented in this regard. In our IT department, we have sub-departments that work on different types of projects. Some of the departments have PHB's that just want to buy every "solution" from a third party. However, most of the time those "solutions" don't work because they don't fit in with our business practices and wind up dying or costing a lot more money to get them to work. Luckily I work for a PHB who was a former Cobol programmer (yeah, I know, I know, but at least he has knowledge of the development process). My PHB usually wants us to program our own solutions and maybe buy some third party components if they could speed up development.
I think the author of this "article" has no clue what he is talking about. He suggested that business change their business process to "fit" the third party solution. I guess he never worked at a large company. I have worked for two and the current one has 140,000 employees. It takes ages for changes to take place. It is just not practical for a large company to change their business processes. That is why, IMO, that the best approach is _custom_ in-house development with third party components to help speed up the development process.
I don't know the status of Linux on a Centrino based laptop, but my guess is that its still sufficiently broken and/or sucky in general
Did you RTFA? The reason Intel is allowing Linux based laptops to use the Centrino brand name now is:
Karen Regis, manager of mobile programs and promotions at the chipmaker said the reason for the change was that with the release of the 2.6.8 Linux kernel, the open source operating system's power management abilities
now meet Intel's requirements for Centrino notebook battery life.
I imagine that it is time for a small time vendor to start making 100% Linux compatible laptops
There have been a few out there for a while now. Emperor Linux has some really nice laptops, though most seem to be on the high-end price-wise. There is also LinuxCertified.com. They have few nice laptops, including a Centrino based laptop and an AMD-64 based laptop.
Remember that GDI+ exploit? Any program that used it _could_ be exploited. That didn't mean it would. For example, I had to download patches for MS Office 2003 and.Net. The chances of someone using MS Office to take advantage of the exploit were slim, however it could have still be an attack choice.
I am not against integrated systems. I just think that developers still using/embedding IE into their apps are silly. Everyone knows of the tons of problems that IE has had. There are plenty of other ways to get a browser core into an application. The Gecko engine can be embedded just like IE and in fact, the Gecko engine has an identical COM interface to the IE interface. Switching between the two requires zero recoding.
The other thing bugging me is that I would like to see Google do more cross-platform development and include Linux and Mac OS at targets for their desktop tools. Google certainly have enough good developers to do it.
A car, on the other hand, is a long term commitement (relatively anyway), and most folks can choose only one car at a time and they're stuck with it for a while.
Huh? Have you ever heard of a rental or a 2 year lease? How do "most" people only choose one car at a time? Everyone I know own at least two cars. I own three and can drive anyone I want to work on any given day. So how are "most folks" stuck with one car for a while?
Do you live in the USA? If so, are you out of school? Maybe in other contries, or for students the average car per household is one. However, in the USA or for wokring Americans, most households have two cars or more. At least every working family I know in my age group, 25 - 35, have at least 2 cars.
Maybe next time base your argument on real fact that are not bound by your current situation.
No you dumbass. He's saying using more then one search engine is redundant and that a car would become redundant if you owned 2 and could drive them whenever you wanted.
Hey dumbass, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. How in the world is using more than one search engine redundant? None of the major search engines share the same search database, so you are searching _differnt_ data. Oh, and who would own 2 or more cars and not be able to drive them whenever they wanted? I own three cars and drive them when I want to. Man, you really need to learn how to make a point.
I know this is over your head, so I will go slow for dumbasses like you. If every search engine used the same search database, than yes, it would be redundant. However, that is not the case.
I can understand that this is over your head and I am going too fast for you. Maybe next time we all can go slower so that you might be able to keep up.
Are you suggesting that people do not have choice in what search engine to use? If that were the case, I don't see how Google could have ever become number #1 wrt the search market.
Has anyone (especially a lawyer) read the summons to this guy? Scroll down and read item number 22. It states:
The defendant has repeatedly contacted the third parties who provided Internet access the Plaintiff[sic],
knowing that a contract existed at the time between the third party and ATRIKS, and has convinced the third parties to terminate their contracts with ATRIKS.
Please. Is the prosecuting attorney trying to claim that this guy had knowledge of the third party contracts for this "company" ATRIKS? Come on now. Any lawyer with more then 4 brain-cells should be able to beat this case.
Thankfully, some other/.ers pointed me to this donation site. I will certainly drink some crap beer for a night and give the extra money to help this guy out!
Is there anywhere we geeks and donate a few bucks to help this guy out?
Seriously, we need to pull together and help this guy. It could have been anyone of us that reports spam. Maybe we, as a community, can donate enough cash and help this poor guy get the EFF to defend him?
I know NPTL is much better. I have been using them on my Linux boxes for a while now. The GP was talking about how MS windows threads were "faster" then Linux threads. That is why I posted a link to the _older_ Linux threads showing how much faster they were. And since NPTL, there is no compitiion.
The Mozilla/Firfox gecko engine is just as easy to embed. In fact, there is an exact COM interface to Gecko under MS Windows. That means you can drop the Gecko engine in place of the IE engine without changing any code.
If IE wasn't such a POS security hole, I wouldn't think it is a bad idea to use the IE engine in apps. However, there have been better alternatives for some time now.
It looks like the Itaniums are really only good for number crunching
That is what the Itanium was made for. However, that is also why they failed. Xeon and now AMD Opterons give just about the same amount of "number crunching" at much less cost. Not many people wanted Itaniums. I think SGI is the only company that really made any decent Itanium servers and they were mostly for scientific processing. Real work gets done by regular AMD and Intel processors.
Unlike other implementations of Posix threads for Linux, LinuxThreads provides
kernel-level threads: threads are created with the new clone() system call and all scheduling is done in the kernel.
The main strength of this approach is that it can take full advantage of multiprocessors. It also results in a simpler, more robust thread library, especially w.r.t. blocking system calls.
Oh, and if you think the latest implementation of Linux thread are slower, especially slower then MS Windows, you are an idiot.
Here is are some test from IBM. Current Linux threads were spawning at more then 10,000 PER SECOND while MS Windows was spawning barely 6,000. Linux Thread performance, scroll down to the "pretty" graphs. Oh, and these numbers are higher then Solaris. Linux threads and Linux processes spawn _MUCH_ faster then the best MS has to offer and faster then Solaris.
Why would I want a 16-way processor in place of 8 dual processor boxes with a gigabit backbone network to them?
It all depends on what you are doing. Where I work we replaced a few bigger boxes with a bunch of smaller/cheaper boxes behind a load balancer for web apps. However, when it came to DB performance, the bigger boxes were much better. Well, at least to a point. Our 8-way DB was much better then are 4 2-way DB's. The cost wasn't much more, so an 8-way worked well.
I do agree, that "big iron" is losing the power it once had. Especially when one can cluster a bunch of much cheaper 2-way boxes.
In the STREAM benchmark, memory bandwidth rose from 5GB/s with one 'cell' of four processors, to 10GB/s with two cells, and continued to double until all 64 processors -- or all 16 cells -- were switched on to provide 80GB/s of bandwidth.
The HPL benchmark, which is used to measure performance when solving large linear equations, produced similar results, rising from 18 gigaflops with one cell of four processors to 277 gigaflops with all 16 cells, or 64 processors, running.
There are still many uses for this many processors. Think of a monster DB. It is much easier to have more processors on you DB than to have many small systems and have to worry about syncing the data.
Think about virtualization. I would love to have a 64-way system and break that up into 32 2-way systems or 16 4-ways systems. It would make system management much easier. And with software, you can instantly assign more processors in a virtualized system to a server that was being hit hard. So your 4-way DB can turn into a 8-way or 16-way DB in an instant. Once the load is gone, you set it back to a 4-way DB.
I personally still prefer to load balance many smaller servers to save costs. However, this could be an excellent option for some enterprises. I know where I work we have some big Sun boxes and we just add processors as we need. However, that has proven to be rather expensive and virtualizing could help save some big costs.
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I am not busting on the Mac Mini since I just placed an order for one. However, the Mac Mini still doesn't position the Mac to compete with a PC. A typical Mac Mini comes with a puny 256MB of Ram, a sad 40GB hard-drive and a _dog_ slow laptop hard-drive to boot. It is missing speakers, keyboard, mouse and monitor.
For that same price you can get a decent PC that included a _real_ hard-drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and usually a printer or scanner.
The Mac Mini is really only a good deal to Mac geeks that are used to paying a premium for a computer. Joe User will continue to look to a PC and sadly MS WinXP to meet their needs.
Seriously, when was the last time Google called Linux or Open Source a "cancer"? When was the last time Google attacked any Open Source? When was the last time Google used _any_ of the tactics that MS has used that got them found to be a monopoly (sadly just a slap on the wrist)?
There is just no comparison between MS and Google as far as being "evil" is concerened.
What would be the point of a patent system if you were allowed to keep the technology hidden?
And as far as Linux end-users are concerned, there is no issue with MP3 for end-users. If you read that whole page, you will see this blurb many times
Oh, and you can get speed optimized Firefox builds. These builds have better 3D-Now, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 optimizations, so you need to download the one that is right for your processor.
These optimized builds of Firefox run just as fast as K-Meleon IMO and I don't lose all the great Firefox plug-ins. I personally can't work on the net without AdBlock.
Oh, and Google is not a _government_ organization paid for by the tax payers money (our money). The FBI, NEED to be held to higher standards. "We" the people have given the FBI certain authority over us, and that authority comes with some restrictions. That means that the FBI _should_ never hide information from us. Sadly, the FBI and the CIA hide information from us U.S. citizens all the time.
I was thinking that if the Mac Mini does come with a slow laptop hard-drive, that I could upgrade it. However, does the Mac Mini come with install disks for the latest Mac OS? Or would I have to shell out another $100+ on top of the cost of a hard-drive to upgrade?
The reason most large projects fail at large companies is because of PHB's. The business people with very little technical knowledge are the ones who make projects fail. If I was the head of a big corporation, I would go out and find the biggest geek I could find and make him/her the CTO.
I am and have been a senior programmer at two fortune 500 companies. I have seen projects fail. The number one reason is because of non-technical people making technical decisions. We have had countless times where PHB's have mandated a product because of some savvy sales person and had nothing to do with how it would actually enhance our IT infrastructure.
Personally I think large companies should be "component oriented". They should develop most stuff in-house, yet look to third party vendors for pre-packaged components. The Java framework and the .Net framework, (both of which we use where I work) are perfect for a component market. There are tons of plug-in components you can use in Java and .Net projects to speed up development without handing the whole project over to a third party. IMO, Java has a little advantage over .Net in the component market. While they are both big and thriving, the Java market is a little larger and you can find a lot more Open Source components that can help save costs. Though both Java and .Net will not let you down for a development framework.
Does anyone remember the /. article about Walmart's IT department? They are the largest company around (much bigger the MS), and they do all development in-house. Their IT department must be a great place to work. Walmart has total control over their _own_ IT. Now I am sure Walmart buys third party products. I doubt they wrote their own operating systems, office suites or databases. However, I bet what they do is look to the third party market for components that will make their development faster while allowing them to have full control over their own IT infrastructure.
The fortune 500 company where I work is fragmented in this regard. In our IT department, we have sub-departments that work on different types of projects. Some of the departments have PHB's that just want to buy every "solution" from a third party. However, most of the time those "solutions" don't work because they don't fit in with our business practices and wind up dying or costing a lot more money to get them to work. Luckily I work for a PHB who was a former Cobol programmer (yeah, I know, I know, but at least he has knowledge of the development process). My PHB usually wants us to program our own solutions and maybe buy some third party components if they could speed up development.
I think the author of this "article" has no clue what he is talking about. He suggested that business change their business process to "fit" the third party solution. I guess he never worked at a large company. I have worked for two and the current one has 140,000 employees. It takes ages for changes to take place. It is just not practical for a large company to change their business processes. That is why, IMO, that the best approach is _custom_ in-house development with third party components to help speed up the development process.
I am not against integrated systems. I just think that developers still using/embedding IE into their apps are silly. Everyone knows of the tons of problems that IE has had. There are plenty of other ways to get a browser core into an application. The Gecko engine can be embedded just like IE and in fact, the Gecko engine has an identical COM interface to the IE interface. Switching between the two requires zero recoding.
The other thing bugging me is that I would like to see Google do more cross-platform development and include Linux and Mac OS at targets for their desktop tools. Google certainly have enough good developers to do it.
Do you live in the USA? If so, are you out of school? Maybe in other contries, or for students the average car per household is one. However, in the USA or for wokring Americans, most households have two cars or more. At least every working family I know in my age group, 25 - 35, have at least 2 cars.
Maybe next time base your argument on real fact that are not bound by your current situation.
I know this is over your head, so I will go slow for dumbasses like you. If every search engine used the same search database, than yes, it would be redundant. However, that is not the case.
I can understand that this is over your head and I am going too fast for you. Maybe next time we all can go slower so that you might be able to keep up.
Thankfully, some other /.ers pointed me to this donation site. I will certainly drink some crap beer for a night and give the extra money to help this guy out!
Seriously, we need to pull together and help this guy. It could have been anyone of us that reports spam. Maybe we, as a community, can donate enough cash and help this poor guy get the EFF to defend him?
I know NPTL is much better. I have been using them on my Linux boxes for a while now. The GP was talking about how MS windows threads were "faster" then Linux threads. That is why I posted a link to the _older_ Linux threads showing how much faster they were. And since NPTL, there is no compitiion.
If IE wasn't such a POS security hole, I wouldn't think it is a bad idea to use the IE engine in apps. However, there have been better alternatives for some time now.
Oh, and if you think the latest implementation of Linux thread are slower, especially slower then MS Windows, you are an idiot. Here is are some test from IBM. Current Linux threads were spawning at more then 10,000 PER SECOND while MS Windows was spawning barely 6,000. Linux Thread performance, scroll down to the "pretty" graphs. Oh, and these numbers are higher then Solaris. Linux threads and Linux processes spawn _MUCH_ faster then the best MS has to offer and faster then Solaris.
Comparing the Itanium complie times to anything is just stupid. I can compile my Linux kernel on a P4 or AMD _much_ faster then 19 minutes.
Are they 512-way single image systems? If so, that is pretty impressive!
I do agree, that "big iron" is losing the power it once had. Especially when one can cluster a bunch of much cheaper 2-way boxes.
Are you saying that the splinter I got from working with Pine the other day was "alive"?
Think about virtualization. I would love to have a 64-way system and break that up into 32 2-way systems or 16 4-ways systems. It would make system management much easier. And with software, you can instantly assign more processors in a virtualized system to a server that was being hit hard. So your 4-way DB can turn into a 8-way or 16-way DB in an instant. Once the load is gone, you set it back to a 4-way DB.
I personally still prefer to load balance many smaller servers to save costs. However, this could be an excellent option for some enterprises. I know where I work we have some big Sun boxes and we just add processors as we need. However, that has proven to be rather expensive and virtualizing could help save some big costs.