No, OS X does not meet Linuxy needs. The two systems each have their own benefits and pitfalls.
OS X is a proprietary, largely untested OS with commercial support and a large number of commercial applications coming to it in the near future. It is BSD-based. The development team focuses mostly on the GUI.
Redhat is an opensource, exellently developed and highly tested OS with a little bit less commercial support, a little bit more community support, and a smaller number of commercial applications... Though I expect that to change in the near future. It is Linux, and comes with a variety of window managers each with their own set of 'skills'.
Do what win-geeks do. Dual boot. =] You just might find that you fall madly in love with RedHat and can't think of using anything else. Or not.
I'll be seriously interested in tests/comparisions between applications running on Redhat and OS X, how they perform differently, etc.
I've always wondered how far the G4 could be pushed. =] Can't wait to have Redhat for the G4. There's half a dozen tests I want to run and having the same "flavor" of Linux on both machines makes it more accurate. I guess I could use "everything-drake" or SuSE or whatnot, but I am quite partial to RedHat.
Now... Decisions.. Decisions. What tests should I run? I wonder what they'll show. Oh the excitement. *Grin*
And how is a rip-off of the 20th anniversary macintosh a ripoff of the iMac?:p The entire point the poster was trying to make was that Apple comes out with a flat panel computer and everyone automatically copies them. Not so. Perhaps they're copying the 20th anniversary Mac, but... Then wouldn't every LCD "all in one" computer be doing that?
Look! Apple made a computer. They're copying Simon
In the world of personal computers it's not about who's copying who. It's about whose copy is better. Right now the iMac is definitely better than the Gateway.
Perhaps you're right and it can be attributed to the higher incidence of geeky topics in Google as opposed to other search engines... But do a search on non geek topics.
Slightly more in all categories, however try the searches with PHP and MySQL as search terms in google and altavista (php:5,440,000/8,925,806 and mysql:1,980,000/16,577,970 respectively.) If anything Google has a lower tech:nontech ratio for search results returned. At least on the topics I've searched for.
The *QUALITY* of the results returned were higher for all categories in Google.
Google is like the command line. It's fast, it's efficient, and it doesn't waste resources or cram trademarks down your throat. That's what geeks look for. Non-geeks very seldom look past what they already have and thus might never find google.
Actually, cannonball_D (the person who submitted the story to Slashdot) was mistaken. The entire take of the article is not focused on how Gateway ripped off the iMac, it's focused on the competing flat panel computers, and how the Gateway wasn't quite selling as many as the iMac (although the Gateway did come out first.)And now Gateway is coming out with the next of their line of flat screen computers and how it will be in the market to compete with the iMac. (Presumably better than the one currently on market.) It's actually a rather good article if you ignore the "lead-in" by cannonball_D.
Quoting from the article.... "The Poway, Calif.-based PC maker got into the all-in-one business with its original Profile computer in June 1999 on the coattails of the first iMac. Gateway, however, did beat Apple to the punch with the first all-in-one computer to feature a flat panel. While Gateway says its current flat panel, Profile 3, is profitable, the Profile line for the most part has experienced only limited success..."
Ok. How is this copying Apple if, according to the article, Gateway beat them to the punch? Does Gateway have spies, now?
Besides which, I was in Gateway last summer before the new iMac came out and I saw something amazingly similar to that. Either they were already moving in that direction when all Apple had on market was the crazy-colored ones, or the computer was hidden inside of a cabinet.
I was a "mac freak" for a year. The hardware was faster, OS 9 felt a LOT better than Windows, and I was just in need of something new after using Win95/98 for several years in a row.
I found myself getting the 'snap' reaction of getting pissed off whenever anyone trashed my OS of choice because they usually had never used a mac, did not know what a mac was like, and had no legitimate reasons to dislike the mac. They were saying "The Mac sucks" because it was something to say.
So I was on the Mac for a year and loved it. Then I realized that there were plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike the Mac. Expensive and limited hardware, bulky case design (I had to bungee cord it to my desk because the handles would extend over the edges and the case bottom wasn't flat), and finally OS X which I just did not like at all.
Platform is a matter of choice, just like anything. Right now I've chosen my PC. Next year I might fall in love with a G4. I'm unfaithful like that.
-Sara
Re:Free2TwoGrand (try $1488 to $1499)
on
Penguin2Apple
·
· Score: 1
Try a "built to order" dual PC in a Lian-Li case, AMD 1900+ CPUs, 1.5 gigs of RAM (DDR. ECC Registered), 80 GB hard drive, 20 GB hard drive, 24x CDRW, CD-Rom, floppy, ELSA/Gloria 64MB video card, 10/100 ethernet card $2500. Want Firewire? Boost the price up a little bit. Want to be able to write DVDs? drop $50 (CD-ROM) and add $400. You're getting close to the price of the Apple but that doesn't matter, you've still got significantly more horsepower.
"comparable" G4 (with significantly fewer options)Dual 1-GHz PowerPC G4
256K L2 cache
& 2MB L3 cache/processor
512MB SDRAM memory
80GB Ultra ATA drive
SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX (For graphics geeks: slightly disabled version of the GeForce 4)
56K internal modem
Dude, I don't *WANT* a Dell. Or an Apple for that matter.
OS X costs about 120 dollars. Redhat Linux is about $60.
The cheapest retail Mac is the old 500 mhz iMac for $799.
One of the cheapest x86 PCs is a $399 1Ghz eMachine. Pair it up with a $99 monitor (17 inches).
OS X box: $799 (OS included.)
Linux box: $558
So, for $241 less you get a more powerful computer with a larger monitor, and an OS that runs faster. And if you head over to any number of theme sites you can even make it look like OS X. Spend some of the $241 savings on a $99 copy of Windows XP and you've got a dual-boot machine. Who cares about the cost of the OS? It's the cost of the hardware that turns me off.
Yes, they're both Unix, but have you used OS X? OS X is to Linux what a protein bar is to a full meal. Insufficient.
MAYBE if they took the trash off of the dock. MAYBE if they allowed you to easily exit the GUI and be at the command line without all the extra extra stuff going on for the times you just want to compile. MAYBE if they made it so you can easily locate files on other hard drives from the "open" dialog in applications. MAYBE if having a SCSI chain or a certain **Apple standard** video card didn't give you kernel panics. MAYBE if you could more easily choose bash as your shell. MAYBE if my "Linux" workflow could be achieved on OS X. MAYBE if my "Mac" workflow could be achieved on OS X. MAYBE if they didn't make you jump through stupid hoops like having you log in as 'root', su to root, and then enter your password a third time to delete a file or install a program... MAYBE if more of my hardware was compatible...MAYBE then I'd think about switching.
I honestly don't understand why anyone would switch.
No, simply having the source does not ensure that the product is any better unless you can read the source. However, if the opensource project takes on the dimensions that Apache, MySQL, or mozilla do--you almost be sure that someone will catch on that "freeing up disk space" = rm -rf/.
THAT is one of the "securities" behind using opensource. You get an entire community as QA for the software you're using.
Compliling Windows XP from source will not make it any more stable or secure, but releasing it to the opensource community to work on would. Bug patches would come out, stability would be increased, security would be made a priority, and "bumpy" areas would be ironed out. (and hopefully the default style would be replaced by something less repulsive.)
It would be cool if a search engine had a series of checkboxes for different filters to apply. "Search by community via links", "search for community via text", "search by community via metatags", etc. Then you could make the search broader/more narrow both by the checkboxes you choose and by the search terms.
Or maybe a "extensible" search engine where you can enter in your own algorithms in some sort of scripting language. Of course, that would only be useful for/.'ers.
Hm. That's not the problem I see right off the bat-- yeah we'll have a bunch of people trying to scam their way to the top, but we have that now as it is. The problem that I see is that sites that link to a large number of sites, and that have a large number of sites that link to them will be considered part of more communities while sites with a lot of relevant interesting text but who have few links and few linkers will be considered to be part of fewer communities.
The issue of people creating mass pages of links could be resolved by "teaching" the engine to ignore sites that link to too many different threads, thus cutting out search engine directories, blogs, and other "topic-non specific" pages, or lumping them together as another category.
Sort of "If a page has x number of links to y number of topics then it can be considered for category z but if y is higher than the allowed number..."
I think it would be fairly easy to diffrentiate between blogs and "pages of a feather". Blogs would have a highly diverse set of links--one moment linking to slashdot, then linking to a page with the definition of the word "pink".. A porn site, a friends site, etc. "Pages of a feather" would link to all one type of site (usually)and based on that they could lump the pages into two rough categories.
So, you're saying that judges also should not have sat around to debate the philosophy of altering antiquated laws that allow people to be stoned for talking back to their parents?;)
Judges are here because laws and theories pertaining to modern-day-life need debating because they are always less than clear.
I wasn't saying that the copyright of music or of literary works should be retained after the author's death--just that as long as the author of those works is alive they should retain the copyright. Code is different. Code has a short "lifecycle" that usually can't even be measured in decades.
The current US copyright law framework should be modified to accomodate this new 'media'.
As for code being speech... I guess you're right, but the message it conveys comes attached to a timer, when the timer runs out it's worth is nil. If it is to ever become public domain then it should become that before it is obsolete.
All laws will be imperfect laws, however the laws dealing with theft, fraud, murder, the stock market, etc. are laws that are usually created by people who have at least some knowledge of the things involved and the implications of the laws they are creating.
By and large, people are scared of technology and uneducated about it. I would prefer to see no laws governing techology than see laws created by those who do not understand the technology they are trying to control. We've already seen the results of that with the DMCA where technologically saavy people with a vendetta have been able to pass a law governing technology because the people that allowed the law to pass most likely did not understand that they were permitting a law that more or less goes against Fair Use which has been part of this country forever.
It's almost as though the lawmakers and courts of this country are "Under the age of consent" with regards to technology. They do not have enough real-life experience to understand the implications of their actions.
There should be different copyright schemes depending on the type of "work" that is copyright. Art and literature have no shelf life--they can be enjoyed thousands of years after the author has passed away. It is reasonable for the author to retain copyright to their work until at least the day they die.
However, technology has a finite lifecycle of a much shorter period than the average person's life. Software is constantly being re-coded and the old code discarded. For 'code' the copyright lifecycle should be a lot shorter, as is the shelflife.
As we saw recently with the MySQL AB vs NuSphere suit [ slashdot.org ] the lawmakers frequently don't have enough of an understanding to deal with technology.
I'd much prefer to have no laws governing new technologies than have a lot of laws created by people who do not understand the technology they're trying to create laws about.
Slashdot Mirror
No, OS X does not meet Linuxy needs. The two systems each have their own benefits and pitfalls.
OS X is a proprietary, largely untested OS with commercial support and a large number of commercial applications coming to it in the near future. It is BSD-based. The development team focuses mostly on the GUI.
Redhat is an opensource, exellently developed and highly tested OS with a little bit less commercial support, a little bit more community support, and a smaller number of commercial applications... Though I expect that to change in the near future. It is Linux, and comes with a variety of window managers each with their own set of 'skills'.
Do what win-geeks do. Dual boot. =] You just might find that you fall madly in love with RedHat and can't think of using anything else. Or not.
I'll be seriously interested in tests/comparisions between applications running on Redhat and OS X, how they perform differently, etc.
-Sara
I've always wondered how far the G4 could be pushed. =] Can't wait to have Redhat for the G4. There's half a dozen tests I want to run and having the same "flavor" of Linux on both machines makes it more accurate. I guess I could use "everything-drake" or SuSE or whatnot, but I am quite partial to RedHat.
Now... Decisions.. Decisions. What tests should I run? I wonder what they'll show. Oh the excitement. *Grin*
-Sara
And how is a rip-off of the 20th anniversary macintosh a ripoff of the iMac? :p The entire point the poster was trying to make was that Apple comes out with a flat panel computer and everyone automatically copies them. Not so. Perhaps they're copying the 20th anniversary Mac, but... Then wouldn't every LCD "all in one" computer be doing that?
Look! Apple made a computer. They're copying Simon
In the world of personal computers it's not about who's copying who. It's about whose copy is better. Right now the iMac is definitely better than the Gateway.
-Sara
Perhaps you're right and it can be attributed to the higher incidence of geeky topics in Google as opposed to other search engines... But do a search on non geek topics.
Lipstick: 251,000 results.
Romance Novel: 471,000 results
Horoscope: 996,000
Sure, not as many results as 'PHP' and 'MySQL', but surely not paltry.
The same searches performed on AltaVista:
Lipstick: 288,076
Romance Novel: 141,561
Horoscope:1,073,632
Slightly more in all categories, however try the searches with PHP and MySQL as search terms in google and altavista (php:5,440,000/8,925,806 and mysql:1,980,000/16,577,970 respectively.) If anything Google has a lower tech:nontech ratio for search results returned. At least on the topics I've searched for.
The *QUALITY* of the results returned were higher for all categories in Google.
-Sara
Google is like the command line. It's fast, it's efficient, and it doesn't waste resources or cram trademarks down your throat. That's what geeks look for. Non-geeks very seldom look past what they already have and thus might never find google.
Actually, cannonball_D (the person who submitted the story to Slashdot) was mistaken. The entire take of the article is not focused on how Gateway ripped off the iMac, it's focused on the competing flat panel computers, and how the Gateway wasn't quite selling as many as the iMac (although the Gateway did come out first.)And now Gateway is coming out with the next of their line of flat screen computers and how it will be in the market to compete with the iMac. (Presumably better than the one currently on market.) It's actually a rather good article if you ignore the "lead-in" by cannonball_D.
-Sara
Quoting from the article.... "The Poway, Calif.-based PC maker got into the all-in-one business with its original Profile computer in June 1999 on the coattails of the first iMac. Gateway, however, did beat Apple to the punch with the first all-in-one computer to feature a flat panel. While Gateway says its current flat panel, Profile 3, is profitable, the Profile line for the most part has experienced only limited success..."
Ok. How is this copying Apple if, according to the article, Gateway beat them to the punch? Does Gateway have spies, now?
-Sara
Besides which, I was in Gateway last summer before the new iMac came out and I saw something amazingly similar to that. Either they were already moving in that direction when all Apple had on market was the crazy-colored ones, or the computer was hidden inside of a cabinet.
-Sara
I was a "mac freak" for a year. The hardware was faster, OS 9 felt a LOT better than Windows, and I was just in need of something new after using Win95/98 for several years in a row.
I found myself getting the 'snap' reaction of getting pissed off whenever anyone trashed my OS of choice because they usually had never used a mac, did not know what a mac was like, and had no legitimate reasons to dislike the mac. They were saying "The Mac sucks" because it was something to say.
So I was on the Mac for a year and loved it. Then I realized that there were plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike the Mac. Expensive and limited hardware, bulky case design (I had to bungee cord it to my desk because the handles would extend over the edges and the case bottom wasn't flat), and finally OS X which I just did not like at all.
Platform is a matter of choice, just like anything. Right now I've chosen my PC. Next year I might fall in love with a G4. I'm unfaithful like that.
-Sara
Try a "built to order" dual PC in a Lian-Li case, AMD 1900+ CPUs, 1.5 gigs of RAM (DDR. ECC Registered), 80 GB hard drive, 20 GB hard drive, 24x CDRW, CD-Rom, floppy, ELSA/Gloria 64MB video card, 10/100 ethernet card $2500. Want Firewire? Boost the price up a little bit. Want to be able to write DVDs? drop $50 (CD-ROM) and add $400. You're getting close to the price of the Apple but that doesn't matter, you've still got significantly more horsepower.
"comparable" G4 (with significantly fewer options)Dual 1-GHz PowerPC G4 256K L2 cache & 2MB L3 cache/processor 512MB SDRAM memory 80GB Ultra ATA drive SuperDrive NVIDIA GeForce4 MX (For graphics geeks: slightly disabled version of the GeForce 4) 56K internal modem
Dude, I don't *WANT* a Dell. Or an Apple for that matter.
-Sara
OS X costs about 120 dollars. Redhat Linux is about $60.
The cheapest retail Mac is the old 500 mhz iMac for $799.
One of the cheapest x86 PCs is a $399 1Ghz eMachine. Pair it up with a $99 monitor (17 inches).
OS X box: $799 (OS included.)
Linux box: $558
So, for $241 less you get a more powerful computer with a larger monitor, and an OS that runs faster. And if you head over to any number of theme sites you can even make it look like OS X. Spend some of the $241 savings on a $99 copy of Windows XP and you've got a dual-boot machine. Who cares about the cost of the OS? It's the cost of the hardware that turns me off.
Hm.
-Sara
Yes, they're both Unix, but have you used OS X? OS X is to Linux what a protein bar is to a full meal. Insufficient.
MAYBE if they took the trash off of the dock. MAYBE if they allowed you to easily exit the GUI and be at the command line without all the extra extra stuff going on for the times you just want to compile. MAYBE if they made it so you can easily locate files on other hard drives from the "open" dialog in applications. MAYBE if having a SCSI chain or a certain **Apple standard** video card didn't give you kernel panics. MAYBE if you could more easily choose bash as your shell. MAYBE if my "Linux" workflow could be achieved on OS X. MAYBE if my "Mac" workflow could be achieved on OS X. MAYBE if they didn't make you jump through stupid hoops like having you log in as 'root', su to root, and then enter your password a third time to delete a file or install a program... MAYBE if more of my hardware was compatible...MAYBE then I'd think about switching.
I honestly don't understand why anyone would switch.
-Sara
No, simply having the source does not ensure that the product is any better unless you can read the source. However, if the opensource project takes on the dimensions that Apache, MySQL, or mozilla do--you almost be sure that someone will catch on that "freeing up disk space" = rm -rf /.
THAT is one of the "securities" behind using opensource. You get an entire community as QA for the software you're using.
Compliling Windows XP from source will not make it any more stable or secure, but releasing it to the opensource community to work on would. Bug patches would come out, stability would be increased, security would be made a priority, and "bumpy" areas would be ironed out. (and hopefully the default style would be replaced by something less repulsive.)
-Sara
Linux isn't everything? !^#@$(^ The SKY IS FALLING!
-Sara
It would be cool if a search engine had a series of checkboxes for different filters to apply. "Search by community via links", "search for community via text", "search by community via metatags", etc. Then you could make the search broader/more narrow both by the checkboxes you choose and by the search terms.
/.'ers.
Or maybe a "extensible" search engine where you can enter in your own algorithms in some sort of scripting language. Of course, that would only be useful for
-Sara
Hm. That's not the problem I see right off the bat-- yeah we'll have a bunch of people trying to scam their way to the top, but we have that now as it is. The problem that I see is that sites that link to a large number of sites, and that have a large number of sites that link to them will be considered part of more communities while sites with a lot of relevant interesting text but who have few links and few linkers will be considered to be part of fewer communities.
The issue of people creating mass pages of links could be resolved by "teaching" the engine to ignore sites that link to too many different threads, thus cutting out search engine directories, blogs, and other "topic-non specific" pages, or lumping them together as another category.
Sort of "If a page has x number of links to y number of topics then it can be considered for category z but if y is higher than the allowed number..."
Or something... Oh God. I need my caffiene.
-Sara
I think it would be fairly easy to diffrentiate between blogs and "pages of a feather". Blogs would have a highly diverse set of links--one moment linking to slashdot, then linking to a page with the definition of the word "pink".. A porn site, a friends site, etc. "Pages of a feather" would link to all one type of site (usually)and based on that they could lump the pages into two rough categories.
-Sara
Is even 70 percent of America connected? Britain? Japan?
-Sara
So, you're saying that judges also should not have sat around to debate the philosophy of altering antiquated laws that allow people to be stoned for talking back to their parents? ;)
Judges are here because laws and theories pertaining to modern-day-life need debating because they are always less than clear.
-Sara
I wasn't saying that the copyright of music or of literary works should be retained after the author's death--just that as long as the author of those works is alive they should retain the copyright. Code is different. Code has a short "lifecycle" that usually can't even be measured in decades.
The current US copyright law framework should be modified to accomodate this new 'media'.
As for code being speech... I guess you're right, but the message it conveys comes attached to a timer, when the timer runs out it's worth is nil. If it is to ever become public domain then it should become that before it is obsolete.
-Sara
All laws will be imperfect laws, however the laws dealing with theft, fraud, murder, the stock market, etc. are laws that are usually created by people who have at least some knowledge of the things involved and the implications of the laws they are creating.
By and large, people are scared of technology and uneducated about it. I would prefer to see no laws governing techology than see laws created by those who do not understand the technology they are trying to control. We've already seen the results of that with the DMCA where technologically saavy people with a vendetta have been able to pass a law governing technology because the people that allowed the law to pass most likely did not understand that they were permitting a law that more or less goes against Fair Use which has been part of this country forever.
It's almost as though the lawmakers and courts of this country are "Under the age of consent" with regards to technology. They do not have enough real-life experience to understand the implications of their actions.
-Sara
There should be different copyright schemes depending on the type of "work" that is copyright. Art and literature have no shelf life--they can be enjoyed thousands of years after the author has passed away. It is reasonable for the author to retain copyright to their work until at least the day they die.
However, technology has a finite lifecycle of a much shorter period than the average person's life. Software is constantly being re-coded and the old code discarded. For 'code' the copyright lifecycle should be a lot shorter, as is the shelflife.
-Sara
As we saw recently with the MySQL AB vs NuSphere suit [ slashdot.org ] the lawmakers frequently don't have enough of an understanding to deal with technology.
I'd much prefer to have no laws governing new technologies than have a lot of laws created by people who do not understand the technology they're trying to create laws about.
-Sara
There is a difference between killing off passive species and killing off aggressive viruses. The difference between self defense and murder.
-Sara
Where do I sign? It would be cheaper to pay to go to college than to buy all the MS products. =]
-Sara