Well some of the add-in cards are no worse than a slotA/1 pull. And there can be other benefits such as the ability to turn your single processor mac into a dual processor. Or the ability to add a processor from a different family (i.e. upgrade a G3 to a G4). Note that this is also used to great effect on other computers (e.g. Silicon Graphics Indy). It allows the base hardware to remain viable even as processor technology advances.
So no, on most you can not just simply drop in a proccie into a socket, but which is "better" depends on what you consider more important cheap vs flexible.
Re:Not what I'd have predicted.
on
BSA IDC FUD
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· Score: 4, Funny
Think about it: countries like Sudan and Nigeria... who's gonna be pirating Windows XP when they don't have a computer to run it on?
Of course they have computers in Nigeria. How else is John Bako sending out his 419 emails to everyone?
Okay, these may not be really impressive, but the ideas were fairly new to me
No that's fine, it was basically what I was asking for. It is more to give me a sense of what "level" the book was truely at. I realize that even with these two examples that you would have gotten a lot of grief from people who would not agree with his conclusions (you know what they say about opinions). Anyway, given your examples I can make a better judgement as to whether or not it's worth my time to investigate further. Thanks.
He's using NEW parts sold for refurbishing old Macs
Well the article says that he's using parts designed as spares. To me this can also mean refurb parts themselves. Plus if I remember from his actual website, he just mentions maybe having a source for the motherboards and looking into other sources. I took this to mean that there was no guarantee that you'd be getting a brand new never used mobo (and he doesn't seem to state such).
Quick quiz, which came first? Gateway Country or the Apple Store?
Both of which were pre-dated by CompuAdd (and maybe others). So what? Opening a retail store is hardly a hardware design (which was what I was talking about). Anyway, Apple's move was to make up for losing retailers, not to be innovative (though I'm sure they'd be more than happy to let you think that).
Apple's ideas are never innovative: the Mac OS was a rip-off of the Xerox Alto machines and Smalltalk, and even the early Apple machines were based almost entirely on earlier designs by companies like Altair and IMSAI.
Then by your definition, there are no new innovative designs. Since every gui today can be traced back to the PARC work and if by being based on the Altair (sorry, but the IMSAI was direct Altair clone) means that it had a motherboard and a bus then I guess, sorta, well not quite. The Altair was a S100 based machine that didn't even have a "motherboard". AFAIK, the Apple II bus was not derived from the S100 and was more an extension of the 6502 address/data lines. Which also brings up the point that the Altair ran the 8080, vs 6502, two very different chips. In what ways was the Apple II series "based almost entirely on earlier designs"?
As usual, another Apple fanboy misses the mark entirely.
Now that's funny. Apple fanboy. Either you're making sweeping generalities about the computing industry in general (in which case your argument is irrelevant for this particular discussion) or your grasp on history is severly limited and/or short sighted.
This is not really a Mac "clone". It's simply using used Mac parts and repackaging them. It's not like the PC market where you can build a NEW and current pc. Hardly a beige box like clone. People have been doing this for years, I have a repackaged Mac SE (it's in a rack mount case) from way back when.
....So... he's not providing the CPU? What's the fucking point then? Is it even possible to remove the CPU out of a Mac, and if so, what's the point? Or will we have to buy 3rd-party CPU cards. Lame.
Yes, you can remove/replace the cpu. Several different manufacturers (like PowerLogix) make replacement cpus (obstensibly to upgrade your existing Mac) so you can choose the cpu that fit's your price/performance goals. Of course you can always purchase "stock" cpu's off of ebay.
To those in the know re Power PC hardware, what is the performance of a system like this compared to an x86 box, relative to price?
Would it be worthwhile to use as a Linux box?
Basically the same as the original Mac that the mobo's are based from and the speed of the cpu that's in there. So overall probably not quite as good as a pc in the same price range, and maybe slightly worse if you put Linux on it depending on how optimized the PPC/Mac version of Linux is (haven't used it, so don't know).
Apparently nobody is aware that Mac OS X CAN'T BE RUN (legally) on non-Apple hardware? It's in the license. So what's the point?
But it basically is Apple hardware. It's an Apple motherboard so how would/could it know that someone pieced it together vs being put together in the factory. He's just taking used Apple parts and repackaging it, not really a "clone" per say.
Actually that would be Gateway who are brazenly copying Apple designs and even made commercials that targeted Apple directly (which is a sure sign for any pc manufacturer that you're desperate if you're targeting Apple vs your own).
Hmm, this review lacks meat. The book is about patterns and the reviewer says the author has good ones. Well how about some examples of these patterns, esp one or two that are non trivial (and thus make having a book like this worthwhile). Since this book is obviously geared towards those with a fairly good level of experience/knowledge, that audience would want to see some real meat in the review, vs "it has good stuff, trust me". And no, a book that states "separate presentation and domain logic" does not automatically qualify it as a good book as this is "Programming 101" stuff.
Solution is a more flexible "finder" api
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Perhaps OSX can take a page from the X world and to think of the interface more as a component and less as an integral part of the OS (skin the OS if you will). It would be better than the X world currently is since the "default" Apple interface would rule since most people wouldn't bother to make any substantial changes. But for those "power" users, they can either tweak it themselves or use someone elses "video editing power user interface".
The difference between this and what some people already offer would be on Apple's end. Trying to make a very good desktop alternative is often difficult because it becomes too much of a monumental task to become a true replacement. And if your app just sits on top of the original gui, often times there are many things you either can't do, or can do but in a kludgey way. If the powers that be at Apple sat down and thought of a way to provide hooks into the gui (as well as the most important thing, to make sure that functionality is separated from the gui), then doing these types of things could be much simpler as well as providing a viable market for alternative interfaces.
... they got to the part about being run off of the USB cable, it was actually something that you could see being made. If they were going to spoil it anyway, then the very least they could have done is make it a joint Apple project and have it powered off FireWire and have it play MP3's while it cooks and downloads all it's info from the fddb (FooDDataBase).
I can see the script for the new Kong flick now. King Kong is on a quest to destroy the evil ring, helped by his band of x-rated muppets he must fight hordes of zombie flesh eating gorillas being led by an evil wizard. He is also aided by a mighty priest who "kicks ass for the lord". Kong is startled to find that his evil nemesis is none other than his mother who in the climatic battle transforms into a giant beast far more hideous than even Rosie O'Donnel.
... It's April Fools isn't it? How disappointed we all would have been it there wasn't at least one dupe today. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see this article pop up with several different variants ALL DAY LONG. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a dupe of every April Fools articles posted today.I find it amusing that people are getting soooo worked up about it on this of all days:)
For better or worse, other companies looking to open source their products have a data point. I'm hoping to see many other closed source products become open source and I'm hoping they have learned from Mozilla. It's not an easy road.
But one of the reasons that failing companies DON'T go this route is that usually one of the few assets they have that might be attractive to a suitor is their code. To open source it at that late a stage usually will guarantee that no one will buy you out (just try getting that one past the board).
Re:Mozilla is a development model failure
on
Mozilla Project Turns 5
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· Score: 2, Interesting
They assumed that developers would flock to the open source development effort. Netscape was looking to win the browser war without spending any money.
They didn't assume, they hoped, big difference. They also weren't looking to _win_ the browser war, they were looking to keep from being completely flushed away. It was an act of desperation. In certain ways it has succeeded as someone else mentioned, it is at least in a position of it's existence not being totally tied to a single company (i.e. now that there is viable OSS alternative, it can continue assuming enough interest from the developer community).
Maybe you should get some better-educated IT guys. Knowledge of the way computers and software work can help one make intelligent decisions about how to set them up, help one diagnose problems, and help one write custom software to get a job done.
How does knowledge of how a btree works help someone figure out a driver issue? There is a huge difference in having a basic understanding of how software environments work vs specific algorithms (which is the the OP referred to). What would an IT person be coding to require them to know about the complexities of freeing/allocating memory. Hell, the current thinking is that we don't want PROGRAMMERS (Java, C#, HLL, scripting, etc) to have to deal with such issues, let alone the guy who unpacks the Dell and installs Office a dozen times a day.
Good admins are programmers/engineers, too. That makes them more expensive, but they can be much more efficient and flexible that way.
I disagree. Anyone who knows any more than very basic programming will probably be a programmer. You get paid more and you put up with a lot less sh*t, assuming of course you can find a job right now, in which case they would settle for an IT job to pay the bills. The only time I see programmers act as IT guys is in small shops that can't afford full time IT folk (or if their IT folk are like many of the IT folk I've met and sometimes take, umm, a while shall we say to get what seems like the most basic things done, like add more ram to your system). And I would never let an IT guy near any code (other than os scripting).
Actually I've always been very impressed by icon artists. The skill required to represent something in a 16x16 or 32x32 pixel box and make it recognizable (at least the good ones) was like magic. If you look at many icons up close, they quickly start looking like a random pattern of pixels, how one visualizes how that random pattern should be arranged to look like a hand holding a pen writing on a piece of paper is very cool.
It also gave a diagnostic code. How is this any different than some cryptic bios failure code from days gone by in the pc world (or count the led flashes on many unix boxen, or lookup the error code on the led on IBM boxen)? Maybe not as cutsey, but hey, Macs are in graphics mode ALL the time so you could do "fancy" stuff like that even way back then. Seems to me you're the only "elitest" around here.
Actually it's not a beach ball. The current OSX "I'm busy at a very low level" thingy is a spinning multicolored disc, which resembles a beachball (sorta) and hence it's name. The old version was a watch with spinning hands.
Oh well, I guess owning a Mac makes you some sort of IT hero around slashdot.
You know what a Happy Mac is but don't know what 'hashing with buckets' means or what a b-tree does or what a two handed clock algorithm for freeing memory is all about.
Well around here I don't know of ANY IT guys that know any of that. Here IT guys usually refers to the systems support guys (you know, the ones that maintain the network, sets up computers, gives you flack for installing non standard software, etc). The stuff you mention usually is the domain of the developers (or engineers if you prefer).
BTW, the Happy Mac was the icon you saw when your Mac passed all it's boot checks and was booting "normally" (vs the Sad Mac which you saw if your machine was hosed).
Well wouldn't the sandstorm that is obscuring the troops' vision also prevent satellites from spotting enemy positions and movement, thus causing the virtual data to be seriously lacking in important information (i.e. the mortar teams about to start pounding you)?
You're assuming that satellites are the only way to monitor/track/discover troops. There are many different ways, even those that are not affected by sand storms.
Slashdot Mirror
Well some of the add-in cards are no worse than a slotA/1 pull. And there can be other benefits such as the ability to turn your single processor mac into a dual processor. Or the ability to add a processor from a different family (i.e. upgrade a G3 to a G4). Note that this is also used to great effect on other computers (e.g. Silicon Graphics Indy). It allows the base hardware to remain viable even as processor technology advances.
So no, on most you can not just simply drop in a proccie into a socket, but which is "better" depends on what you consider more important cheap vs flexible.
Think about it: countries like Sudan and Nigeria... who's gonna be pirating Windows XP when they don't have a computer to run it on?
Of course they have computers in Nigeria. How else is John Bako sending out his 419 emails to everyone?
Okay, these may not be really impressive, but the ideas were fairly new to me
No that's fine, it was basically what I was asking for. It is more to give me a sense of what "level" the book was truely at. I realize that even with these two examples that you would have gotten a lot of grief from people who would not agree with his conclusions (you know what they say about opinions). Anyway, given your examples I can make a better judgement as to whether or not it's worth my time to investigate further. Thanks.
He's using NEW parts sold for refurbishing old Macs
Well the article says that he's using parts designed as spares. To me this can also mean refurb parts themselves. Plus if I remember from his actual website, he just mentions maybe having a source for the motherboards and looking into other sources. I took this to mean that there was no guarantee that you'd be getting a brand new never used mobo (and he doesn't seem to state such).
Quick quiz, which came first? Gateway Country or the Apple Store?
Both of which were pre-dated by CompuAdd (and maybe others). So what? Opening a retail store is hardly a hardware design (which was what I was talking about). Anyway, Apple's move was to make up for losing retailers, not to be innovative (though I'm sure they'd be more than happy to let you think that).
Apple's ideas are never innovative: the Mac OS was a rip-off of the Xerox Alto machines and Smalltalk, and even the early Apple machines were based almost entirely on earlier designs by companies like Altair and IMSAI.
Then by your definition, there are no new innovative designs. Since every gui today can be traced back to the PARC work and if by being based on the Altair (sorry, but the IMSAI was direct Altair clone) means that it had a motherboard and a bus then I guess, sorta, well not quite. The Altair was a S100 based machine that didn't even have a "motherboard". AFAIK, the Apple II bus was not derived from the S100 and was more an extension of the 6502 address/data lines. Which also brings up the point that the Altair ran the 8080, vs 6502, two very different chips. In what ways was the Apple II series "based almost entirely on earlier designs"?
As usual, another Apple fanboy misses the mark entirely.
Now that's funny. Apple fanboy. Either you're making sweeping generalities about the computing industry in general (in which case your argument is irrelevant for this particular discussion) or your grasp on history is severly limited and/or short sighted.
This is not really a Mac "clone". It's simply using used Mac parts and repackaging them. It's not like the PC market where you can build a NEW and current pc. Hardly a beige box like clone. People have been doing this for years, I have a repackaged Mac SE (it's in a rack mount case) from way back when.
Yes, you can remove/replace the cpu. Several different manufacturers (like PowerLogix) make replacement cpus (obstensibly to upgrade your existing Mac) so you can choose the cpu that fit's your price/performance goals. Of course you can always purchase "stock" cpu's off of ebay.
To those in the know re Power PC hardware, what is the performance of a system like this compared to an x86 box, relative to price? Would it be worthwhile to use as a Linux box?
Basically the same as the original Mac that the mobo's are based from and the speed of the cpu that's in there. So overall probably not quite as good as a pc in the same price range, and maybe slightly worse if you put Linux on it depending on how optimized the PPC/Mac version of Linux is (haven't used it, so don't know).
Apparently nobody is aware that Mac OS X CAN'T BE RUN (legally) on non-Apple hardware? It's in the license. So what's the point?
But it basically is Apple hardware. It's an Apple motherboard so how would/could it know that someone pieced it together vs being put together in the factory. He's just taking used Apple parts and repackaging it, not really a "clone" per say.
Isn't that what Dell's trying to do? ;-)
Actually that would be Gateway who are brazenly copying Apple designs and even made commercials that targeted Apple directly (which is a sure sign for any pc manufacturer that you're desperate if you're targeting Apple vs your own).
Hmm, this review lacks meat. The book is about patterns and the reviewer says the author has good ones. Well how about some examples of these patterns, esp one or two that are non trivial (and thus make having a book like this worthwhile). Since this book is obviously geared towards those with a fairly good level of experience/knowledge, that audience would want to see some real meat in the review, vs "it has good stuff, trust me". And no, a book that states "separate presentation and domain logic" does not automatically qualify it as a good book as this is "Programming 101" stuff.
Perhaps OSX can take a page from the X world and to think of the interface more as a component and less as an integral part of the OS (skin the OS if you will). It would be better than the X world currently is since the "default" Apple interface would rule since most people wouldn't bother to make any substantial changes. But for those "power" users, they can either tweak it themselves or use someone elses "video editing power user interface".
The difference between this and what some people already offer would be on Apple's end. Trying to make a very good desktop alternative is often difficult because it becomes too much of a monumental task to become a true replacement. And if your app just sits on top of the original gui, often times there are many things you either can't do, or can do but in a kludgey way. If the powers that be at Apple sat down and thought of a way to provide hooks into the gui (as well as the most important thing, to make sure that functionality is separated from the gui), then doing these types of things could be much simpler as well as providing a viable market for alternative interfaces.
... they got to the part about being run off of the USB cable, it was actually something that you could see being made. If they were going to spoil it anyway, then the very least they could have done is make it a joint Apple project and have it powered off FireWire and have it play MP3's while it cooks and downloads all it's info from the fddb (FooDDataBase).
I can see the script for the new Kong flick now. King Kong is on a quest to destroy the evil ring, helped by his band of x-rated muppets he must fight hordes of zombie flesh eating gorillas being led by an evil wizard. He is also aided by a mighty priest who "kicks ass for the lord". Kong is startled to find that his evil nemesis is none other than his mother who in the climatic battle transforms into a giant beast far more hideous than even Rosie O'Donnel.
But I told you so.
... It's April Fools isn't it? How disappointed we all would have been it there wasn't at least one dupe today. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see this article pop up with several different variants ALL DAY LONG. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a dupe of every April Fools articles posted today.I find it amusing that people are getting soooo worked up about it on this of all days :)
For better or worse, other companies looking to open source their products have a data point. I'm hoping to see many other closed source products become open source and I'm hoping they have learned from Mozilla. It's not an easy road.
But one of the reasons that failing companies DON'T go this route is that usually one of the few assets they have that might be attractive to a suitor is their code. To open source it at that late a stage usually will guarantee that no one will buy you out (just try getting that one past the board).
They assumed that developers would flock to the open source development effort. Netscape was looking to win the browser war without spending any money.
They didn't assume, they hoped, big difference. They also weren't looking to _win_ the browser war, they were looking to keep from being completely flushed away. It was an act of desperation. In certain ways it has succeeded as someone else mentioned, it is at least in a position of it's existence not being totally tied to a single company (i.e. now that there is viable OSS alternative, it can continue assuming enough interest from the developer community).
What kind of a cake would a computer program want? Strawberry flavor?
:) (and no, I'm not referring to a browser cookie either).
It wouldn't want a cake, it'd want a cookie of course
Maybe you should get some better-educated IT guys. Knowledge of the way computers and software work can help one make intelligent decisions about how to set them up, help one diagnose problems, and help one write custom software to get a job done.
How does knowledge of how a btree works help someone figure out a driver issue? There is a huge difference in having a basic understanding of how software environments work vs specific algorithms (which is the the OP referred to). What would an IT person be coding to require them to know about the complexities of freeing/allocating memory. Hell, the current thinking is that we don't want PROGRAMMERS (Java, C#, HLL, scripting, etc) to have to deal with such issues, let alone the guy who unpacks the Dell and installs Office a dozen times a day.
Good admins are programmers/engineers, too. That makes them more expensive, but they can be much more efficient and flexible that way.
I disagree. Anyone who knows any more than very basic programming will probably be a programmer. You get paid more and you put up with a lot less sh*t, assuming of course you can find a job right now, in which case they would settle for an IT job to pay the bills. The only time I see programmers act as IT guys is in small shops that can't afford full time IT folk (or if their IT folk are like many of the IT folk I've met and sometimes take, umm, a while shall we say to get what seems like the most basic things done, like add more ram to your system). And I would never let an IT guy near any code (other than os scripting).
Actually I've always been very impressed by icon artists. The skill required to represent something in a 16x16 or 32x32 pixel box and make it recognizable (at least the good ones) was like magic. If you look at many icons up close, they quickly start looking like a random pattern of pixels, how one visualizes how that random pattern should be arranged to look like a hand holding a pen writing on a piece of paper is very cool.
It also gave a diagnostic code. How is this any different than some cryptic bios failure code from days gone by in the pc world (or count the led flashes on many unix boxen, or lookup the error code on the led on IBM boxen)? Maybe not as cutsey, but hey, Macs are in graphics mode ALL the time so you could do "fancy" stuff like that even way back then. Seems to me you're the only "elitest" around here.
Actually it's not a beach ball. The current OSX "I'm busy at a very low level" thingy is a spinning multicolored disc, which resembles a beachball (sorta) and hence it's name. The old version was a watch with spinning hands.
Oh well, I guess owning a Mac makes you some sort of IT hero around slashdot. You know what a Happy Mac is but don't know what 'hashing with buckets' means or what a b-tree does or what a two handed clock algorithm for freeing memory is all about.
Well around here I don't know of ANY IT guys that know any of that. Here IT guys usually refers to the systems support guys (you know, the ones that maintain the network, sets up computers, gives you flack for installing non standard software, etc). The stuff you mention usually is the domain of the developers (or engineers if you prefer).
BTW, the Happy Mac was the icon you saw when your Mac passed all it's boot checks and was booting "normally" (vs the Sad Mac which you saw if your machine was hosed).
Well wouldn't the sandstorm that is obscuring the troops' vision also prevent satellites from spotting enemy positions and movement, thus causing the virtual data to be seriously lacking in important information (i.e. the mortar teams about to start pounding you)?
You're assuming that satellites are the only way to monitor/track/discover troops. There are many different ways, even those that are not affected by sand storms.