What would be so cool about OS X on x86 hardware? The exact same things that make OS X as cool as it is on PPC hardware. OS X is just a wonderful operating system, regardless of the hardware behind it.
The fact is that x86 hardware has a huge installed base. Given the assumption that such a port of OS X didn't require any proprietary motherboards or whatnot, (an assumption that may or may not be reasonable,) having an x86 port would be a wonderful opportunity for more people to run this great OS.
On the subject of speed, my eMac is certainly not top of the Mac line and it performs very well on everything I do on it. I'm extremely pleased. The 10.2 Jaguar release will only improve this. Even if Apple was dastardly enough to artificially cripple an x86 OS X port to run at the same speed, I'm pretty darn happy as-is.
Don't presume that moving to Intel hardware will create a Mac with the highly-modifiable box you take for granted on PCs.
Apple survives today because their boxes are designed to make a user's life easier. That means, despite a change to the processor, it is very likely that Apple would still have a custom motherboard available ONLY from Apple, still use Open Firmware rather than a PC BIOS, (this is done on Sun as well) and still not be subject to the resource-hungry design of the aging PC design.
Perhaps I was not clear. I meant to lament the would-be lack of the "complete Mac" experience that we have now. Having a highly-modifiable box and platform would thus be a bad thing in my eyes to an extent. I think it's cooler than a moose that you can give Mac system requirements based on what the box looks like.
I would enjoy having OS X on x86 hardware simply for variety and for accessibility on a larger installed base if your scenario of Apple proprietary boards did not occur.
It's already been covered many a time, but DAMN would I love to see OS X on Intel hardware. It has already moved me to doing everything but my gaming on my new eMac.
Of course, I guess part of the beauty of it is knowing that it will just work on a Mac, probably with little or no difficulty. Moving it to a more open hardware platform might ruin that. *shrug* tradeoffs everywhere....
I don't forsee this initiative going too far. Most people barely know how to use their computers to send email or read Slashdot, much less secure their systems from attack.
On the other hand, if anyone is going to try to design such a package of software, I imagine that the NSA knows their stuff pretty darned well. They have been advertising security-enhanced Linux
on their website for a while now. I've never tried it, so I can't testify to its usefulness.
UnitedLinux may result in less diverse practices and standards between the distributions, (or at least fewer of them,) but, as with any joint venture brought on by competitive pressure, sounds like a really good way for the constituent groups to argue about exactly WHAT becomes the standard and such. That kind of stagnation and bickering is not what needs to happen for success.
Joining under a common banner with common practices and standards is fine and dandy. Someday it might even be a Good Thing, but doing it because you're afraid of RedHat just doesn't seem healthy to me.
Obviously such an Earth/Asteroid collision would be devastating to the surrounding area, but wouldn't a Moon/Asteroid have some Pretty Bad effects of its own?
I almost failed high school physics back in my day, but it seems to me that we ought to worry about collisions with asteroids this size for both the Moon and the Earth. ~23,000 mph (from the article) is pretty frickin' fast and 120 meters is not terribly small. Seems like that could carry a whole lot of energy.
If this is not a problem, how big of an asteroid would we need (roughly, of course,) to cause a problem?
Nice to see Satan Mart (big, red, and evil, it's Satan Mart) doing something of which I approve.
It would be a smoother transition, however, if easy-to-use DVD recorders were widely available for home use. Lots of people don't want to keep two machines around. One to play their beautiful new LOTR DVD and one to record The Price is Right. PVRs are nice, but the subscription fee on the Tivos and the high price of the ReplayTVs turns me and I presume most consumers off of them.
One of my friends was telling me about a feature of quantum mechanics in which things or changes at least can be transmitted instantaneously. Does this have anything to do with how all this laser teleporting business works?
I can't claim to be old enough to remember much passenger train transportation (20 yrs,) but I still feel kind of bad that we don't do more in that department here in the US. Surely it would be less expensive for the end user and more efficient for mass transport than the net of air travel paths that we currently use so frequently.
I'm none too familiar with transportation in Europe (as I've never been there,) but I understand that train transport is much bigger across the pond. In which countries is this most prevalent and how is it working out cost wise for all involved?
I agree with you about the trend, but I don't think that fun games no longer are made.
Look at Super Monkey Ball for the GC and I think the Dreamcast. If everything was all about eye-candy and the ilk then I shudder to think about the market for apes rolling inside plastic balls. What makes SMB so much fun is the quality and variety in its gameplay. One can play for hours and never exhaust the multiplayer with friends, and I've heard even Sega's beta testers couldn't completely master the single player, though it's simultaneously accessible for beginners.
There aren't enough games like Monkey Ball being made, though. You've got a point.
I'm glad to see these projects near completion. I've been looking forward to all three of those big name ones for a while now, since I love my GameCube.
I'm wondering how Nintendo will choose to market these. They haven't been terribly aggressive (at least in my neck of the woods) about even their high-profile games.
In a way, I kind of enjoy this. Let Sony and M$ duke it out with PR and hype. Nintendo has a massive fan base with games that harken back to most of our childhoods. They aren't going anywhere and they don't have to sacrifice game quality for early releases and massive marketing to stay in our minds when we choose a video game platform.
I look forward to the new Netscape release as long as it doesn't feel so freaking bulky to use. That's what kept me in IE for a while, (I know now how bloated _it_ is, as I have discovered Mozilla) Netscape 6's slow loading and generally large feeling.
I keep seeing references to turning Neverwinter Nights into a large multiplayer game. Are people referring to just creating a really kick-ass world on NWN and then hosting a large-capacity server, or can the load be spanned across multiple servers?
Just what kind of crazy things are people thinking up for this game?
Are rumours of what characters appear on the XFiles what Slashdot is all about? I mean, "News for Nerds" and all, but if I want analysis of publicity pictures of a television show I can go to any number of other rumour sites. I come here for some nifty Science, Computing, and Social news, along with some often interesting talking on the boards.
Heh, yeah the love plot was probably the weakest part overall.
I really enjoyed the action sequences quite a bit. The parts where Anakin got to be Evil instead of Uncomfortable made me happy also.
Perhaps I'm just sick, or expecting too much, but I was hoping for the entirety of the Tusken Raider slaughter. I liked the way Anakin kind of snapped afterwards with his admission to Padme, but I wanted to see Evil Anakin® really haul off and whack them all on screen. Nothing graphic, and perhaps 5 full minutes of Raider Massacre would be overkill (*rimshot*), but it felt wrong watching Anakin waste three of them and stop on screen (watch for it, it happens,) waiting for the camera to fade out.
*Shrug* I am not disappointed though. AOTC is imperfect but entertaining.
I really enjoyed EP2, though I feared it would suck.
Did anyone else think that it had the worst Star Wars dialogue yet?
(paraphrasing, but not exaggerating, [also perhaps a spoiler]) "I see that we cannot solve this dispute through our mastery of force powers, Master Yoda. We must settle this with our usage of the light saber." [Dooku]
This just made me cringe.
Also, the constant cutting back and forth between the huge fight and the droids was distracting to me. I thought C3PO's puns were funny, but it distracted from the enormous army of clones, drones, and Jedi raging in battle in the background. *shrug* That just kind of bugged me.
Overall, Episode II really pleased me. I plan on seeing it again.
AMD has (happily in my opinion) made up some ground on Intel, but I count that more towards the Athlon and a period of PIII stagnation rather than Microsoft involvement.
Perhaps I am mistaken *shrug*.
I logged in with my university and it was also marked as $1249. However, I didn't have an option for a CD-ROM only version. The $1249 had the combo drive.
I also had an option for a $1500 model with 512 MB RAM.
Slashdot Mirror
What would be so cool about OS X on x86 hardware? The exact same things that make OS X as cool as it is on PPC hardware. OS X is just a wonderful operating system, regardless of the hardware behind it.
The fact is that x86 hardware has a huge installed base. Given the assumption that such a port of OS X didn't require any proprietary motherboards or whatnot, (an assumption that may or may not be reasonable,) having an x86 port would be a wonderful opportunity for more people to run this great OS.
On the subject of speed, my eMac is certainly not top of the Mac line and it performs very well on everything I do on it. I'm extremely pleased. The 10.2 Jaguar release will only improve this. Even if Apple was dastardly enough to artificially cripple an x86 OS X port to run at the same speed, I'm pretty darn happy as-is.
Don't presume that moving to Intel hardware will create a Mac with the highly-modifiable box you take for granted on PCs. Apple survives today because their boxes are designed to make a user's life easier. That means, despite a change to the processor, it is very likely that Apple would still have a custom motherboard available ONLY from Apple, still use Open Firmware rather than a PC BIOS, (this is done on Sun as well) and still not be subject to the resource-hungry design of the aging PC design.
Perhaps I was not clear. I meant to lament the would-be lack of the "complete Mac" experience that we have now. Having a highly-modifiable box and platform would thus be a bad thing in my eyes to an extent. I think it's cooler than a moose that you can give Mac system requirements based on what the box looks like.
I would enjoy having OS X on x86 hardware simply for variety and for accessibility on a larger installed base if your scenario of Apple proprietary boards did not occur.
It's already been covered many a time, but DAMN would I love to see OS X on Intel hardware. It has already moved me to doing everything but my gaming on my new eMac.
Of course, I guess part of the beauty of it is knowing that it will just work on a Mac, probably with little or no difficulty. Moving it to a more open hardware platform might ruin that. *shrug* tradeoffs everywhere....
I don't forsee this initiative going too far. Most people barely know how to use their computers to send email or read Slashdot, much less secure their systems from attack.
On the other hand, if anyone is going to try to design such a package of software, I imagine that the NSA knows their stuff pretty darned well. They have been advertising security-enhanced Linux on their website for a while now. I've never tried it, so I can't testify to its usefulness.
I think 2005 is quite a bit early to start expecting Warcraft IV :)
UnitedLinux may result in less diverse practices and standards between the distributions, (or at least fewer of them,) but, as with any joint venture brought on by competitive pressure, sounds like a really good way for the constituent groups to argue about exactly WHAT becomes the standard and such. That kind of stagnation and bickering is not what needs to happen for success.
Joining under a common banner with common practices and standards is fine and dandy. Someday it might even be a Good Thing, but doing it because you're afraid of RedHat just doesn't seem healthy to me.
Obviously such an Earth/Asteroid collision would be devastating to the surrounding area, but wouldn't a Moon/Asteroid have some Pretty Bad effects of its own?
I almost failed high school physics back in my day, but it seems to me that we ought to worry about collisions with asteroids this size for both the Moon and the Earth. ~23,000 mph (from the article) is pretty frickin' fast and 120 meters is not terribly small. Seems like that could carry a whole lot of energy.
If this is not a problem, how big of an asteroid would we need (roughly, of course,) to cause a problem?
Is this the same Stanislaw Lem that wrote Solaris, that Steven Soderburgh is about to/in the process of remaking?
I must find out more about this Lem fellow. Does he have many other noteworthy pieces?
Nice to see Satan Mart (big, red, and evil, it's Satan Mart) doing something of which I approve.
It would be a smoother transition, however, if easy-to-use DVD recorders were widely available for home use. Lots of people don't want to keep two machines around. One to play their beautiful new LOTR DVD and one to record The Price is Right. PVRs are nice, but the subscription fee on the Tivos and the high price of the ReplayTVs turns me and I presume most consumers off of them.
One of my friends was telling me about a feature of quantum mechanics in which things or changes at least can be transmitted instantaneously. Does this have anything to do with how all this laser teleporting business works?
I can't claim to be old enough to remember much passenger train transportation (20 yrs,) but I still feel kind of bad that we don't do more in that department here in the US. Surely it would be less expensive for the end user and more efficient for mass transport than the net of air travel paths that we currently use so frequently.
I'm none too familiar with transportation in Europe (as I've never been there,) but I understand that train transport is much bigger across the pond. In which countries is this most prevalent and how is it working out cost wise for all involved?
Ack, you know what, f*kk me, didn't read the part about not being able to be propelled again once in flight.
Bah, it's late.
How big (surface area of wings perhaps?) do you reckon such a plane would have to be to actually support such a commercial laser for its drive?
I guess such things (plus their power sources) would be quite heavy and it would be impractical, but kind of nifty.
I agree with you about the trend, but I don't think that fun games no longer are made.
Look at Super Monkey Ball for the GC and I think the Dreamcast. If everything was all about eye-candy and the ilk then I shudder to think about the market for apes rolling inside plastic balls. What makes SMB so much fun is the quality and variety in its gameplay. One can play for hours and never exhaust the multiplayer with friends, and I've heard even Sega's beta testers couldn't completely master the single player, though it's simultaneously accessible for beginners.
There aren't enough games like Monkey Ball being made, though. You've got a point.
I'm glad to see these projects near completion. I've been looking forward to all three of those big name ones for a while now, since I love my GameCube.
I'm wondering how Nintendo will choose to market these. They haven't been terribly aggressive (at least in my neck of the woods) about even their high-profile games.
In a way, I kind of enjoy this. Let Sony and M$ duke it out with PR and hype. Nintendo has a massive fan base with games that harken back to most of our childhoods. They aren't going anywhere and they don't have to sacrifice game quality for early releases and massive marketing to stay in our minds when we choose a video game platform.
I look forward to the new Netscape release as long as it doesn't feel so freaking bulky to use. That's what kept me in IE for a while, (I know now how bloated _it_ is, as I have discovered Mozilla) Netscape 6's slow loading and generally large feeling.
I keep seeing references to turning Neverwinter Nights into a large multiplayer game. Are people referring to just creating a really kick-ass world on NWN and then hosting a large-capacity server, or can the load be spanned across multiple servers?
Just what kind of crazy things are people thinking up for this game?
Are rumours of what characters appear on the XFiles what Slashdot is all about? I mean, "News for Nerds" and all, but if I want analysis of publicity pictures of a television show I can go to any number of other rumour sites. I come here for some nifty Science, Computing, and Social news, along with some often interesting talking on the boards.
Oh well, it's just my two cents.
Heh, yeah the love plot was probably the weakest part overall.
I really enjoyed the action sequences quite a bit. The parts where Anakin got to be Evil instead of Uncomfortable made me happy also.
Perhaps I'm just sick, or expecting too much, but I was hoping for the entirety of the Tusken Raider slaughter. I liked the way Anakin kind of snapped afterwards with his admission to Padme, but I wanted to see Evil Anakin® really haul off and whack them all on screen. Nothing graphic, and perhaps 5 full minutes of Raider Massacre would be overkill (*rimshot*), but it felt wrong watching Anakin waste three of them and stop on screen (watch for it, it happens,) waiting for the camera to fade out.
*Shrug* I am not disappointed though. AOTC is imperfect but entertaining.
I really enjoyed EP2, though I feared it would suck.
Did anyone else think that it had the worst Star Wars dialogue yet?
(paraphrasing, but not exaggerating, [also perhaps a spoiler]) "I see that we cannot solve this dispute through our mastery of force powers, Master Yoda. We must settle this with our usage of the light saber." [Dooku]
This just made me cringe.
Also, the constant cutting back and forth between the huge fight and the droids was distracting to me. I thought C3PO's puns were funny, but it distracted from the enormous army of clones, drones, and Jedi raging in battle in the background. *shrug* That just kind of bugged me.
Overall, Episode II really pleased me. I plan on seeing it again.
AMD has (happily in my opinion) made up some ground on Intel, but I count that more towards the Athlon and a period of PIII stagnation rather than Microsoft involvement. Perhaps I am mistaken *shrug*.
The memo was dated August 2000?
Sounds to me like they haven't been terribly successful thus far.
I logged in with my university and it was also marked as $1249. However, I didn't have an option for a CD-ROM only version. The $1249 had the combo drive.
I also had an option for a $1500 model with 512 MB RAM.