Macs, monitors, scan-rates, ColorSync and electricity:
Apple used to use a different pinout for it's monitors plus they had the H-sync on Green. Therefore one could not simply change the pin-out of the cables but also had to do some funky signal processing which is what those little Mac-to-VGA boxes do. Making it even more complex Macs are built to autodetect information from the monitor which is why those little boxxen usually had a dozen switches or a wheel or whatever so you set it to tell your Mac the appropriate information. This is probably what you found in your monitor box and it was unneeded if you had a current generation Macintosh.
For the past few years Apple has slowly been moving away from it's non-standard material and now uses the usual VGA connectors except for it's new Cube and the latest round of flatscreens (which use a brand new connector pretty much limited to Apple.) The mice and keyboard are all USB and follow the HID standard, the drives are IDE, the bus is PCI and there's an AGP slot - in short they're pretty generic hardware these days with just a custom chip set, built in sound & networking & of course a PowerPC CPU.
Similarly the video cards are pretty much stock ATI's, nothing funky, nothing bizarre. They drive the monitor like any other card and there's no special Mac frequencies that aren't pretty much universally supported. The Apple monitors are high-quality Sonys and aside from being a (suprisingly) pretty good value for their quality there's nothing unique about them. You can plug in any VGA monitor and expect good service out of it. One thing that often does confuse folks is that the MacOS has a different default Gamma setting then other OS's and therefore without correction images can appear darker/lighter when compared.
Lastly ColorSync is just a color-matching technology. If you calibrate it carefully a color will show up the same on other properly calibrated ColorSync monitors. If you use the proper profiles for your printer / film output / whatever you can expect very good color conversion & matching there too. There's nothing electrically unusual about ColorSync, no strange settings or off-frequency stuff happening.
Basically what I'm saying is there's nothing inherently different about Macs or their monitors these days.
What you might want to consider is your electrical service: Get one of those US$5.00 testers from the hardware store and make sure your polarity is correct and your ground is good. Figure out what else is on your circuit and consider the effects other devices might have on eachother. If you're plugged in on the same circuit as an old laserprinter (5 min heavy-draw reheat cycle) or other such device you might well be seriously shortening your monitor's lifespan (as well as damaging your computer's power supply, hard-drive, and even some video cards.) You would do well to consider isolating your relatively expensive computer hardware from 'noisy' devices like those involving electrical motors, radio transmitters, or heavy-draw devices like large appliances.
Why did MS integrate the presentation system so tightly with the underlying OS? Couple of reasons (all IMHO):
They didn't know any better
What became Win3x was never anticipated to become a major product - it was simply a response to everyone ele's GUI's but the standardized drivers (printer, video, etc.) made the thing a big hit
The architecture that originated with Win3x was simply carried forward with each version
Quick, fast, dirty
Very responsive due to close-coupling
Most users never change a driver in the entire time they have the machine - flexibility or efficiency in this area isn't as valuable as checking off another bullet item on some lame review
As to your Detonator 3 driver issues on your Nvidia TNT2-based graphics card:
Set your graphics drivers to Generic VGA drivers
Reboot in "Safe Mode"
Reinstall your Detonator 3 drivers
Reboot into "Normal" mode
Test to make sure everything went allright
By the way - install the "Coolbits" keys into your registry and enable all of the tweak settings in the drivers - built-in overclocking!
Read the inbox for geek-interest press-releases or rumors
Post highest hit-rate-potential press-releases or rumors as 'news'
Ignore previous iterations of exact same or reasonably similar postings
Editorialize upon said rumors - note comments need be only marginally relevant and may contradict source material
When caught out in a particularly egregious mistake make an addendum or simply recycle the correction as a new item some hours or days later
Slashdot Discussion Process:
Post random messages regarding elves, libertarian politics, conspiracy theories, and actors
Attempt lame humor (it was funnier after a few hits in the dorm room)
Proudly state that you already invented this old chestnut yourself years ago but forgot to tell anyone or produce working code or finish all
of the paperwork
Relate this to latest trendy SF novel or film ignoring or ignorent of their premise being as old as the genre
Comment how we don't need to hook up our toaster / blue-screen-of-death / MS is all inherent evil / anything Apple related is for goobers / usability is overhyped / pet OS or UI or chip or whatever does it better / what about insert-lame-ass-dead-project-thats-all-talk-here / linux is best / this doesn't work for linux folks / the site is slashdotted / it's a rumor secretly planted by the subject to increase buzz
Asume everyone reading/. is on your campus or town or region or country
*THE* law is US law and *THE* media is the TV programs you watch
Blithely assert bizarre statements are true 'in Europe' or other places that sound exotic
Post any other random thoughts you have no matter how irrelevant because it's *YOU* and everyone hangs on your every posting!
Well, SCSI is a bit more then a fast way of talking to a drive. It also frees the CPU from many of the drive geometry issues that it would otherwise have to track. SCSI also allows things like multiple devices per channel, request queueing, smarter IO, disconnect/reconnect, etc. These features aren't likely to show up in EIDE drives simply because adding them would cost the same as SCSI and why reinvent the wheel?
Right now the next step in consumer high-speed drives appears to be Firewire/iLink/1394 (depending on the vendor.) USB 2.0 has just appreared in silicon but it's already slower then Firewire/iLink/1394 and not as flexible. Intel is also working on PCI/X as a next generation replacement for the now venerable PCI bus. They appear to be going to a serial-bus design with smart interconnects.
One well regarded scenario for the future of PC's has them turning into black boxes containing little more then a CPU and graphics card. Everything else would be handled through high-speed serial connections.
Er - actually you're kinda dead wrong about a few things.
The Appearance control panel was originally intended to make a lot more substantial changes to how the Finder behaves. What you've got now is a stripped down 1/2-finished control.
The Apple-themes that you can find out on the net ("Platinum", "Gizmo", & the Apple-Japan developed "Drawing Board") are ones that 'escaped' the company and were never officially released.
The format of a theme file is not "well documented" and it is hard to make one. Apple never released the specs and it was over a year before all of the intricacies were widely understood.
The themes were axed because Jobs saw them as a frivolous waste of resources and a complicating factor for developers, trainers, and support persons.
The developers won't have had "~20 days" to lock in the Aqua appearance - DP4 shipped quite awhile ago and beta isn't due for 20 days.
It wouldn't be out of character at all for Jobs to "lock in
" the default Aqua appearence, for precisely the same reasons as he axed this functioniality the first time. Jobs would absolutely "risk pissing off all of his users" 'cause 90% of his users didn't even know these things could be changed, 95% don't care, and for most of the support folks & developers this is anamatha anyway.
The reality is that the ability to play with ones UI is something only a small percentage of folks care about, fewer feel strongly about, and most people who have to deal with the variables this results in rue.
Jini has the classic chicken-and-egg problem: until somebody uses it nobody wants it.
How to break that cycle? Well, there are a few ways:
Solve a well defined problem. Jini doesn't do this. It can do a lot of things but it's hard to express in the proverbial one sentence.
Become ubiquitious through bundling with the OS. Unfortunately this would mean inclusion with Windows (not gonna happen.) Furthermore Jini indirectly competes with MS's own Active Directory (& Novell's NDS) so it's not going to win even tacit support.
Be trivial and safe to install. Or at the very least be freely downloadable and easily installable. With the cumbersome licensing and convoluted installation process required this isn't happening.
Come included in the hardware. If HP, Xerox, IBM, LexMark, Agfa, Palm, Nokia, Motorola, and other makers of networked or networkable devices were to start including Jini then it'd stand a chance. However with Sun's licensing and lack of momentum this seems unlikely. At this point Sun would have to supply these vendors with quality code and engineering support for customizing - something Sun doesn't seem to appreciate or be able to do.
Sure - Jini could be a great feature. It would allow you to walk onto a campus (educationial, corporate, whatever) and get access to all of the devices publically availiable. It would allow IS folks to just pop devices down wherever they're needed and do a minimum of configuration. Moving to a new building? With Jini-enabled printers, desktops, laptops, scanners, door-locks, phones, etc. it could be done overnight.
With Bluetooth and wireless-LANS finally becoming a reality all of Jini's features become that much more attractive and pressing. Even the US DOD drools over this kind of ability (set up a battlefield HQ in a few minutes) though their process is so glacial and baroque that nothing is likely to result from their support that would apply to the rest of us.
The really suprising thing is that Sun doesn't seem to be evangelizing Jini at all. It's possible they can't figure out how to apply this kewl technology gifted to them (they paid for it but it seems to have pretty much come out of the blue to most folks at Sun.) I've not even noticed any technology demos of it. Is anyone aware of anything outside of a lab?
Yeah - and I've a friend with a copy of WinNT that's reliable...
Sorry to burst your bubble but there's a lot of MacOS X that's still very PPC-centric. Much of it could be ported and it's even likely that much of it is being ported but doubt there's either a running version of it or that your buddy has it.
-- Michael
Why do I even bother to respond to the Anonymous Cowards bragging about their friends software?...
Other features highlighted include a new Aqua Pro Mode option, which changes all the Aqua elements to Graphite, to help reduce the graphic distraction that some graphic artists expressed displeasure over in Aqua.
This is new as Apple has to date refused to support alternate interfaces under prior Mac OS's. There was an Apple project for supported themes that even got shipped with a few demos included but Jobs scrapped it as soon as he returned to power. To date the official word on Aqua was that it's "lickable" interface would be the only option and there was fear Apple would do something to actively block alternatives (Aqua themes appear to be trivially edited text and graphics files.)
What's even more interesting is that the alternate theme is not Apple's previous "Platinum" theme but a new one. As Platinum is already supported under Aqua in "Classic" applications this means that there will now be three different UI's shipping - Platinum under Classic, the default "lickable" under Aqua and it's alternate "Graphite".
There is a freely downloadable Open Source OS from Apple known as "Darwin" that compiles under x86. This is the heart of Mac OS X but is by no means Mac OS X. It lacks the carbon libraries, the ability to run "Classic" applications, the Aqua GUI, etc. and those will not be released by Apple.
Apple has nothing to gain from moving to x86. Anyone familier with their financials will tell you they're a hardware company and any attempt to compete in the x86 market would be suicide. If anything look to see an Alpha-based OS X before an x86 version.
Once again/. misreported. Here's the News.com report that/. used for it's source:
Although Apple named the worker in a court filing, News.com chose not to publish the name because Apple would not confirm whether he is the only employee with that name. An Apple spokesperson also would not say whether the defendant still works at the company.
and here's/.'s article:
Apple Sues Employee Over Cube Leaks
Posted by Hemos on Tuesday August 29, @09:54AM
from the going-after-their-own dept.
Carnage4Life writes:"Apple has found out the employee who leaked pictures of the PowerMac G4 Cube. So Apple has modified its original lawsuit against "unknown individual" for leaking trade secrets and changed the name to that of the employee in court filings. So as not to embarass any employees with the same name Apple has not revealed the employee's name as at now."
As it makes clear the person was named but due to the possibility of slandering other Apple employees with the same name News.com declined to reprint it - Apple in no way tried to supress it.
Boo to/. for once again getting the news wrong and double-boo to all of those who once agin posted without bothering to look up the material for themselves.
We've one example of life: Earth's. Not much to compare & contrast with, eh?
Finding life, of any sort, elsewhere, would give us a great deal more information. If it's similiar to ours it implies that there's similar processes going on elsewhere, or that we're related. If it's different then it gives us entirely new insights into how complexity evolves. Either way it's exciting stuff that could advance our understanding of biology, biochemestry, evolution, complexity, etc. immensely. It could even give us better numbers to plug into those formulas for figuring out how likely we are to have neighbors.
Nobody is expecting anything on Europa to pop up & greet us with a "Codex Universalis" - just there being anything lifelike* would be enough. Even there being nothing will tell us something
-- Michael
* We still don't know enough about life yet to come up with a really good definition anyone is particularly comfortable with.
Ignore all of the yoyo's bleating out "but why does my toaster need to be networked" and 1001 variations of trivial-appliance-with-blue-screen-of-death.
This is about MS moving out of the computer and into your TV. Not the good ole rabbit-ears TV, not even your cable-hooked-plus-VCR TV but tomorrows TV.
Think Smart-Cable-box + WebTV + Tivo + Digital Download of Media (music, movies, special events) + Games + Network Sharing + Remote Applications + Home Automation + Telephony.
One box that plugs in, from one vendor, with massive name recognition and tons of back-end architecture already in place. All of your couch-potato needs from one source.
Smart-Cable-box: Plug it in and it talk to the cable-company. Figures out what the local specs are & automagically configures itself.
WebTV on Steroids: Browse from your couch - or in a window on the screen, or pop directly to the show's website or just point to the starlets outfit and order it online.
Tivo: Wanna watch a show later? All of the features of a Tivo/Replay/etc. but from a big name vendor and more heavily integrated.
Digital Download of Media: Media Player on steroids. Why bother digitizing a program when you can get it already that way? Want to see "Harold & Maude"? Put a request in for it and it'll get downloaded overnight. Pay extra and watch it live. Excited about that special club remix of Brittny Spears? It's on your box for a buck or two. MS has been working on digital delivery for years - this is the terminal.
Games: Think X-Box light. Think Quake I availiable for a rental fee.
Network Sharing: Want to plug in your Windows PC? Hook it up and it'll be automagically configured through MS's gateway.
Remote Applications: Rent MS Money or Word for the evening.
Home Automation: Want to control your hall light? Buy the MS compliant outlet controller and it's taken care of. MS has been involved in a series of these projects over the years but putting the controller in a smart box that's easily upgraded could be the breakthrough.
Telphony: Your cable-co already offers tons of 'free' features if you sign up with them for your phone services but they're all the same ones the copper-wire folks offer. How about a universal inbox including your voice-mail? No "push pound-one to..." just point & click. Gramma calls? The TV flashes her name.
So why a custom chip? Control. Now MS can put all of the anti-piracy / media-control / encryption right into the hardware. Optimize the CPU to run MS architecture material. Heck, with WinHEC they've been setting the specs for years now, it's a small jump to just doing it directly.
Microsoft doesn't want to be your OS vendor, or your applications vendor, not even your ISP or cable-company or channel - it wants to be all of them.
Yesterday the MS WebTV, today the MS Phone, tomorrow the MS Information/Entertainment/Shopping system.
My apologies for my ignorance - perhaps if your company didn't make a point of proclaiming it's compatibility with Netware 4.11 I wouldn't be mis-informed.
Since you're here - can you shed ony more light on your Open-Source NDS? Licensing? Current status? Projected release date? Beta programs?
OK - first off I confess I like Novell's Netware - a lot. It really is a fantastic file & print server. Fast, reliable, efficient, all the things NT isn't. What it also isn't is an applications server. Sure it's got Oracle & some other packages that can run on the server, it's even got some great firewalling & cache server stuff (fastest cache server out there), heck it's even got a great Java implementation but for unwrap-the-box and stick-the-app-on-the-server it's not there, ain't gonna to be there, and frankly no one cares.
What saves Novell's butt outide of the file-&-print world is NDS. Directory Services done right. No crappy NT wierdness, no bizarre limitations, this thing is a true distributed object-oriented directory you can stick about anything into. Novell took all of that time in the field and learned what SysAdmins really want: the ability to manange everything from one point fast, easily, reliably, and in quantity. No six-tools-piped-together-then-hand-added-to-each-s ystem, no custom-scripts-only-their-writer-understands-&-he- left-last-year, no scramble to find & close accounts when someone jumps ship, no you-do-it-this-way-here-and-that-way-there - instead all in one easy to read, easy to architect, very flexible directory. User information? Here. Maiden names? There. Desktop prefs? There. Printer settings? There. Printer drivers? Over there. Notes account? There. AIX acounts? There. Phone numbers? Here. Fax box? There. Billing center? Here. AOL Chat? Here. All there - everywhere.
Unfortunately Novell hasn't figured out how to make this wonder universal. Sure it runs on a couple of platforms but there's little to encourage new folks to move to it. If any product ever needed at 200-user-&-90-day free trial this is it. Let the masses get a taste and they'll want more. Unfortunately Novell hasn't figured out how to do so.
What they have done is put out a few lame Netware-drivers that rely on IPX (remember IPX? Secure, smart, but not TCP/IP) and were closely tied to specific kernels. They want to let other folks in but are afraid of loosing the jewels. NDS on open-source boxes - their fear is how to get them to pay for the intellectual property (& Novell has staked their fortune on developing NDS!) Most of the/.'ers just want their hands on tech they don't want to pay big upfront license fees for but when that's the only model you have then you're stuck. Sell support? Not much use in a business like directory services. Charge for development tools? Yeah - developers don't need anyone that much anymore.
Anyway, this crew from Novell helped develop & pre-market the Novell's next-gen clustering technology and when it was about baked jumped ship and started telling folks they were going to sell pretty much what they'd been developing at Novell. Lawsuits ensue and these folks find out that you can't just walk out the door with the tech. Big bills are paid and so they decide to go off in the Utah desert & reinvent Netware. Unfortunately they hadn't noticed 'till recently that no one needs another Netware, particularly a third party one that couldn't run what apps Netware already has and is only compatible with an obsolete (4.11) version.
So now they're offering is drivers to read Netware file systems (nice but not an overwhelming need in most quarters) and a new OS that can use Linux drivers under a new "MANOS" kernel to integrate with Netware environments. Oh, and there's some talk of an open source NDS clone but no one has seen any evidence of this (at least that I'm aware of.) This of course all has to be done without violating the legal decisions against them from their last run-in with Novell where they had to agree not to use or release any secrets.
Yay. Another open source OS, albiet from a good developer, whose sales feature is the ability to integrate with a platform that's not growing and a promise to deliver an open-source version of NDS - something that has taken a lot of very bright folks a lot of time to develop & tune, all without infringing on trade secrets or legal agreements. Oh, and this thing will be like Netware - no apps for it (the ability to read DLLs and such is interesting but without the infrastructure to host them not much good.) Just what the world needs.
Here's an idea: someone develop a good set of open-source libraries for an NDS clone. Or someone figure out a model for Novell to release theirs yet still make money on them. But please, lets not tie them to another limited-application OS. Enough reinventing the wheel - we're at the point where everyone just wants components that an be added a la carte to their favorite and/or most appropriate OS.
Please, before folks start posting how they recall with disfavor their experiences with Netware in '86 or whenever recall what the competition was also like back then. Also, if you haven't used Netware 5.0 then you really should be quiet - these days it's very different from what you recall; very sophisticated, very polished, and very good at what it does. Frankly if I could use Netware for my file & print serving, Linux for my application hosting, and NDS to tie everything together they'd kick.
confused you that we could be discussing Canada? I explictly named the subject line so that there would be no ambiguity that we were discussing US law and US law only. Heck, the whole thread is about NASA, Huntsville Alabama USA etc. but I just wanted to make it clear for the clueless that we were talking US only. Apparently not even that was enough.
Clue phone ringing!... Wait - too late for you.
I'm rarely this nasty but I'm getting sick of the sheer number of compulsive posters who are obsessed with adding material that's so obviously inane.
The Transmeta Crusoe processor would not be considered for replacing the PowerPC. The Crusoe is designed for low-power emulation of x86. As the PowerPC is already a low-power device there would be no market for an low-power *emulator* of it.
Really the only sales feature of the Transmeta products (aside from their inherent technical wizardry) is the ability to emulate other CPU's (albiet slower) in a low-power design. You won't ever see a Transmeta chip in anything other then a mobile platform.
As to IBM making consumer PowerPC'; Yes, IBM has been manufacturing PowerPCs for Apple under license from Motorola (it's Motorola's design they're using) but not doing any design/development work on them - they're just another outsourced product in the plant along with the Transmeta chips (same plant.)
OK - so/. got rooked by a parody site (note to/. editors: get the Mac fellow from Ars Technica to look over your stuff - he's excellent.)
With that aside what ARE the alternative CPU options for Apple?
PowerPC is doing OK as an architecture. Apple is using it in it's consumer boxes, IBM in servers, & Motorola is suplying Apple while focusing on the embedded market.
Unfortunately there are strains on the relationship. Apple honked-off Motorola by shelving the 3rd party Mac licensing program abruptly and stiffing Motorola with a many-million dollar inventory of unusable motherboards(Apple had good reason to shelve the program ASAP but it still screwed Motorola.) On the other hand they committed to Motorola as their supplier when Motorola developed the AltiVec material. IBM politely said no-thank-you to licensing the AltiVec as it really doesn't apply to their products and would likely just get in the way of their own evolution plans for PowerPC. They've all committed to continuing the collaboration and at that level it seems to be doing well though the PowerPC "vision" seems to have succumbed to more pragmatic goals.
The problem for Apple is that the PowerPC + AltiVec from Motorola is having trouble ramping up in speed. Apple has tried to fight the percieved speed discrepancy by pointing out that a PowerPC at some speed actually equals an x86 running at a some greater speed. All agree this is more or less true but the same as the Millenium doesn't start 'till next year no-one cares: they want comparable CPU speeds.
Apple finally replied by shipping multiple CPU's. These work fine under MacOS 9 and will do great under MacOS X when it ships but while saying 2x500 = 1000 it still isn't really the same when it comes to bragging.
What makes the whole thing even more ironic for all of the psuedo-knowledgable's pointing out that two CPUs aren't really twice as fast they're all ignoring there are far more fundamental issues like bus bandwidth & memory architecture that hobble Apple, at least until it's next-gen UMA2 motherboard series finally ship in a presumed few months.
So, what are the other choices?
Well, there have been rumors forever of Apple's MacOS-v7/8-on-x86 inhouse projects (claimed name "StarTrek".) With the move to MacOS X these now are realistic as NextStep has run on several platforms already including x86. Indeed the aborted Rhapsody strategy was actually released on x86 and the MacOS-core Darwin project is freely downloadable for x86. It wouldn't be terribly difficult for Apple to move all of MacOS X over to x86 though it would likely require abandoning all of the backwards MacOS compatability (unless something could be salvaged from the rumored "StarTrek" project.)
Of course at that point Apple would only be selling a custom version of Unix on custom x86 boxes to the consumer market and it's doubtefull Apple could make much of a go of that in today's market.
Next choice? Well, go to a third horse. Compaq now has the Alpha processor and it's still a speed demon and shows no signs of slowing down. There are rumors of Apple having an internal team tracking MacOS X but on Alpha. NextStep ran on Alpha so this sounds reasonable and certainly gives Apple some leverage with Motorola. The advantage of Alpha would be a screaming processor but not x86 as so to differentiate themselves.
This would put Apple in the position of selling a custom version of Unix on custom Alpha boxes to the consumer market and this might be doable, particularly if Apple pursues a strategy of selling PowerPC or Alpha CPU's in their boxes.
Technology: It's a new way of performing emulation; neither entirely hardware-based nor software based it's a blend of both taking advantages of each's strengths.
Market: It's an end-run around Intel's & everyone else's inability to produce a competitive low-power x86 processor. There are a number of good other low-power CPUs - StongARM, Dragonball, PowerPC, etc. but the x86 has proven to be remarkably difficult to implement in a low-power version.
So this leaves the question: why run MacOS (9 or X) on Crusoe? The point of Crusoe was to provide a low-power version of a traditionially high-power CPU but PowerPC is already a low-power device. Whoosh - there goes the rationial for producing a Crusoe/PowerPC emulator for running MacOS 9/X.
So what about just running Mac applications under existing Crusoe/x86 technology? Well, Apple has released & continues to polish it's Darwin project which runs well on x86. As Darwin is the core of MacOS X and runs pretty much as a BSD Unix this would imply to some folks there's potential for running Mac applications directly. The problem comes in when one starts to look at the various types of Mac applications.
"Classic" Mac applications that run under MacOS prior to X will run under a emulator in MacOS X. This emulator technology is not being released and considering the problematic history of other Mac-under-Unix emulators over the years (remember even Sun sold one) the odds of a good 3rd party one appearing now are low.
"Carbon" Mac applications are ones that use a cleaned-up subset of the "Classic" API. These require a set of libraries to run that again Apple has not shown any interest in releasing (nor would it be in their commercial interest.)
MacOS-X-native applications can be in a number of formats ranging from pretty much direct ports of traditionial Unix applications to Java-based to ones utilizing the reengineered OpenStep ("Cocoa") technologies. These are the most likely candidates for running under other OS's or using Crusoe considering their cross-platform roots.
The dfficulties with trying to run the MacOS-X-native applications in other environments will be in direct relationship to their reliance on Apple's propriatiery non-Darwin material like Aqua & Cocoa. Aqua, Apple's new PDF-based interface will be one of Apple's crown-jewels and it'll be neither made availiable to outsiders or easy to clone. Cocoa is in pretty much the same situation - it's part of what made Next so attractive to Apple and provides a powerfull set of tools & technologies that Apple has little interest in seeing move out of their fold. Indeed while OpenStep used to be availiable under x86 this has been discontinued and so far appears that it will live on only as part of MacOS X.
So - what do we have? Well, most of the Mac applications out there today aren't going to be runnable practicably. Many of the MacOS-X-native ones will be more portable but will require greater & lesser degrees of porting depending on their Apple-specific technology dependence. For instance the Java-based stuff should move cleanly, things built using Cocoa and requiring Aqua services will be just not worth the effort. Either way there's no particular advantage of running these under Crusoe technology. Indeed one could expect a simpler port and greater efficiency if one just ran them under a PowerPC unix varient at a similiar power consumption as Crusoe.
As a consultant I deal with a number of companies on an ongoing basis. One of the things I do (& charge for) is help them develop policies.
Recently scanning became an issue at one of my clients. They're a big firm that handles financial information online. They have a number of sub-companies all with different IS groups/policies.
It turned out that they were getting hit by an extremely large number of probes by one of the local universities (and for this client to notice it's a LOT of probes.) A polite email was sent to the regular addresses requesting that the activity be halted. No response. As it continued a phone call was made - nobody at the school was willing to take the message. Ok. A letter was sent and they simply cut off the school's block of IP address from all access inbound & outbound.
Two things happened. A few days later my client got a call from the school's Financial Dept - apparently they used some of client's services and after some confused research discovered that they couldn't access them and the trouble was at the financial services co's end. As the school was using free services my client simply responded (after running it past the appropriate depts.) that the school was being blocked - and why. Apparently this caused some internal reaction at the school.
At the same time the client had some graduates of the school working for them, as well as a number of the faculty. They also discovered they couldn't access the school & vice-versa. This also caused a reaction and after some rumors and many calls to the internal support desk an email was sent out internally explaining why they were blocking access to the school. BTW all the while the probes were still getting worse and had they been getting through would have been starting to impact some services in a small way.
Apparently someone finally mentioned this to the President of the school (likely over golf.) Apparently he didn't like the fact that my client was blocking his school, nor that they had notified their employees that they were doing so nor that the school had been portrayed as unresponsive (the company did have a receipt for the certified letter at this point & no one had ever returned any message.)
Shortly there after the probes stopped abruptly. The client also got a couple of very nice letters from the school asking them to stop blocking them and implying the school would like them to let their employees know that the school wasn't a bunch of louts (not a rep. most schools want for their graduates apparently.) I also heard through the grapevine that some staff at the school got in some very hot water for neither overseeing the school's network activities nor for responding to complaints and their ensuing fallout.
So - what are the result of probing others sites? Well in this case a bad reputatio & an upset school administration. There's also been a new set of policies put in place at the company regarding folks from the schools and the access they have to the systems. Essentially they're now almost a suspect class and a revaluation is taking place of giving these folks access to proprietary information the client has. This will of course limit exposure on the clients side but also unfortunately dramatically limit what the interns, co-ops & part-timers can do (& learn about) at the company.
Finally there is still somewhat of a bad impression of the school for the whole thing. Indeed the school had been trying to get my client to buy into some net-based telecourses but my client's IS staff decided they simply didn't want to deal with the school's IS staff and kiboshed the idea (I believe it was 'bandwidth reliability concerns'.)
Hmm - if one is willing to turn one's vectors into glyphs then this could be a great format. Create "myvectorimages1thru128.ttf", specify the font and appropriate glyph at the desired size in your code and instant embedded vector image. The only problem is that there's no reliable way (that I know of) of getting a font to a browser.
The Computer Museum (formerly located on Museum Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts USA) has shut down. Their programs and exhibitions went to the Museum of Science in Boston and much of the collection to the Computer Museum History Center in Mountain View, California USA.
As a former manager for The Computer Museum I'm biased towards the inheritor of much of their collection: The Computer Museum History Center (www.computerhistory.org) in Mountain View, California USA.
I must warn you however that most museums already have a number of each of the early 'consumer' computers. Indeed I know The Computer Museum had one Osborne on display and several more in storage as I used to lecture on it regularly. Don't let this discourage you however - even if yours isn't going to be "The Osborne" it can oftentimes still help fill an important role: Spare parts, copies of software & OS or simply backup machines are often welcomed and can be important in preserving the history of the Information Revolution.
Items that are being actively sought are usually ones that were never made in any great numbers or ones that were pioneers in a specific area (first used for this or that, first example of this or that technology.) These machines or code are often of great interest to institutions as they presage the more successful ones and provide future generations an idea of the context that various developments happened in.
I expect Slashdot readers could be an important resource in preserving the chaotic development of free operating systems and applications. It's remarkable to think but years down the road folks might be looking over today's articles, postings, and code to understand the context for their own world. For those involved in creating the next generation of technology or for those simply heavily involved in this generation I suggest that serious thought be given to archiving email, code, web-pages, IRC transcripts, etc. as well as machines & peripherals for the future. Someday a Grad Student may well spend a semester reading your notes to understand the development of whatever topic their thesis is on.
Finally, as a former museum manager I am obligated by former nonprofit-staff-ethics to remind everyone that these institutions can always use not just donations for their collections but also volunteer time and funds to preserve, document, and interpret their materials.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple used to use a different pinout for it's monitors plus they had the H-sync on Green. Therefore one could not simply change the pin-out of the cables but also had to do some funky signal processing which is what those little Mac-to-VGA boxes do. Making it even more complex Macs are built to autodetect information from the monitor which is why those little boxxen usually had a dozen switches or a wheel or whatever so you set it to tell your Mac the appropriate information. This is probably what you found in your monitor box and it was unneeded if you had a current generation Macintosh.
For the past few years Apple has slowly been moving away from it's non-standard material and now uses the usual VGA connectors except for it's new Cube and the latest round of flatscreens (which use a brand new connector pretty much limited to Apple.) The mice and keyboard are all USB and follow the HID standard, the drives are IDE, the bus is PCI and there's an AGP slot - in short they're pretty generic hardware these days with just a custom chip set, built in sound & networking & of course a PowerPC CPU.
Similarly the video cards are pretty much stock ATI's, nothing funky, nothing bizarre. They drive the monitor like any other card and there's no special Mac frequencies that aren't pretty much universally supported. The Apple monitors are high-quality Sonys and aside from being a (suprisingly) pretty good value for their quality there's nothing unique about them. You can plug in any VGA monitor and expect good service out of it. One thing that often does confuse folks is that the MacOS has a different default Gamma setting then other OS's and therefore without correction images can appear darker/lighter when compared.
Lastly ColorSync is just a color-matching technology. If you calibrate it carefully a color will show up the same on other properly calibrated ColorSync monitors. If you use the proper profiles for your printer / film output / whatever you can expect very good color conversion & matching there too. There's nothing electrically unusual about ColorSync, no strange settings or off-frequency stuff happening.
Basically what I'm saying is there's nothing inherently different about Macs or their monitors these days.
What you might want to consider is your electrical service: Get one of those US$5.00 testers from the hardware store and make sure your polarity is correct and your ground is good. Figure out what else is on your circuit and consider the effects other devices might have on eachother. If you're plugged in on the same circuit as an old laserprinter (5 min heavy-draw reheat cycle) or other such device you might well be seriously shortening your monitor's lifespan (as well as damaging your computer's power supply, hard-drive, and even some video cards.) You would do well to consider isolating your relatively expensive computer hardware from 'noisy' devices like those involving electrical motors, radio transmitters, or heavy-draw devices like large appliances.
As to your Detonator 3 driver issues on your Nvidia TNT2-based graphics card:
- Set your graphics drivers to Generic VGA drivers
- Reboot in "Safe Mode"
- Reinstall your Detonator 3 drivers
- Reboot into "Normal" mode
- Test to make sure everything went allright
By the way - install the "Coolbits" keys into your registry and enable all of the tweak settings in the drivers - built-in overclocking!- Read the inbox for geek-interest press-releases or rumors
- Post highest hit-rate-potential press-releases or rumors as 'news'
- Ignore previous iterations of exact same or reasonably similar postings
- Editorialize upon said rumors - note comments need be only marginally relevant and may contradict source material
- When caught out in a particularly egregious mistake make an addendum or simply recycle the correction as a new item some hours or days later
Slashdot Discussion Process:Right now the next step in consumer high-speed drives appears to be Firewire/iLink/1394 (depending on the vendor.) USB 2.0 has just appreared in silicon but it's already slower then Firewire/iLink/1394 and not as flexible. Intel is also working on PCI/X as a next generation replacement for the now venerable PCI bus. They appear to be going to a serial-bus design with smart interconnects.
One well regarded scenario for the future of PC's has them turning into black boxes containing little more then a CPU and graphics card. Everything else would be handled through high-speed serial connections.
- The Appearance control panel was originally intended to make a lot more substantial changes to how the Finder behaves. What you've got now is a stripped down 1/2-finished control.
- The Apple-themes that you can find out on the net ("Platinum", "Gizmo", & the Apple-Japan developed "Drawing Board") are ones that 'escaped' the company and were never officially released.
- The format of a theme file is not "well documented" and it is hard to make one. Apple never released the specs and it was over a year before all of the intricacies were widely understood.
- The themes were axed because Jobs saw them as a frivolous waste of resources and a complicating factor for developers, trainers, and support persons.
- The developers won't have had "~20 days" to lock in the Aqua appearance - DP4 shipped quite awhile ago and beta isn't due for 20 days.
- It wouldn't be out of character at all for Jobs to "lock in
" the default Aqua appearence, for precisely the same reasons as he axed this functioniality the first time. Jobs would absolutely "risk pissing off all of his users" 'cause 90% of his users didn't even know these things could be changed, 95% don't care, and for most of the support folks & developers this is anamatha anyway.
The reality is that the ability to play with ones UI is something only a small percentage of folks care about, fewer feel strongly about, and most people who have to deal with the variables this results in rue.How to break that cycle? Well, there are a few ways:
- Solve a well defined problem. Jini doesn't do this. It can do a lot of things but it's hard to express in the proverbial one sentence.
- Become ubiquitious through bundling with the OS. Unfortunately this would mean inclusion with Windows (not gonna happen.) Furthermore Jini indirectly competes with MS's own Active Directory (& Novell's NDS) so it's not going to win even tacit support.
- Be trivial and safe to install. Or at the very least be freely downloadable and easily installable. With the cumbersome licensing and convoluted installation process required this isn't happening.
- Come included in the hardware. If HP, Xerox, IBM, LexMark, Agfa, Palm, Nokia, Motorola, and other makers of networked or networkable devices were to start including Jini then it'd stand a chance. However with Sun's licensing and lack of momentum this seems unlikely. At this point Sun would have to supply these vendors with quality code and engineering support for customizing - something Sun doesn't seem to appreciate or be able to do.
Sure - Jini could be a great feature. It would allow you to walk onto a campus (educationial, corporate, whatever) and get access to all of the devices publically availiable. It would allow IS folks to just pop devices down wherever they're needed and do a minimum of configuration. Moving to a new building? With Jini-enabled printers, desktops, laptops, scanners, door-locks, phones, etc. it could be done overnight.With Bluetooth and wireless-LANS finally becoming a reality all of Jini's features become that much more attractive and pressing. Even the US DOD drools over this kind of ability (set up a battlefield HQ in a few minutes) though their process is so glacial and baroque that nothing is likely to result from their support that would apply to the rest of us.
The really suprising thing is that Sun doesn't seem to be evangelizing Jini at all. It's possible they can't figure out how to apply this kewl technology gifted to them (they paid for it but it seems to have pretty much come out of the blue to most folks at Sun.) I've not even noticed any technology demos of it. Is anyone aware of anything outside of a lab?
Check here for a recent evaluation of the PPC market for Apple & it's alternatives.
Sorry to burst your bubble but there's a lot of MacOS X that's still very PPC-centric. Much of it could be ported and it's even likely that much of it is being ported but doubt there's either a running version of it or that your buddy has it.
-- Michael
Why do I even bother to respond to the Anonymous Cowards bragging about their friends software?...
What's even more interesting is that the alternate theme is not Apple's previous "Platinum" theme but a new one. As Platinum is already supported under Aqua in "Classic" applications this means that there will now be three different UI's shipping - Platinum under Classic, the default "lickable" under Aqua and it's alternate "Graphite".
There is a freely downloadable Open Source OS from Apple known as "Darwin" that compiles under x86. This is the heart of Mac OS X but is by no means Mac OS X. It lacks the carbon libraries, the ability to run "Classic" applications, the Aqua GUI, etc. and those will not be released by Apple.
Apple has nothing to gain from moving to x86. Anyone familier with their financials will tell you they're a hardware company and any attempt to compete in the x86 market would be suicide. If anything look to see an Alpha-based OS X before an x86 version.
Boo to /. for once again getting the news wrong and double-boo to all of those who once agin posted without bothering to look up the material for themselves.
Finding life, of any sort, elsewhere, would give us a great deal more information. If it's similiar to ours it implies that there's similar processes going on elsewhere, or that we're related. If it's different then it gives us entirely new insights into how complexity evolves. Either way it's exciting stuff that could advance our understanding of biology, biochemestry, evolution, complexity, etc. immensely. It could even give us better numbers to plug into those formulas for figuring out how likely we are to have neighbors.
Nobody is expecting anything on Europa to pop up & greet us with a "Codex Universalis" - just there being anything lifelike* would be enough. Even there being nothing will tell us something
-- Michael
* We still don't know enough about life yet to come up with a really good definition anyone is particularly comfortable with.
This is about MS moving out of the computer and into your TV. Not the good ole rabbit-ears TV, not even your cable-hooked-plus-VCR TV but tomorrows TV.
Think Smart-Cable-box + WebTV + Tivo + Digital Download of Media (music, movies, special events) + Games + Network Sharing + Remote Applications + Home Automation + Telephony.
One box that plugs in, from one vendor, with massive name recognition and tons of back-end architecture already in place. All of your couch-potato needs from one source.
So why a custom chip? Control. Now MS can put all of the anti-piracy / media-control / encryption right into the hardware. Optimize the CPU to run MS architecture material. Heck, with WinHEC they've been setting the specs for years now, it's a small jump to just doing it directly.
Microsoft doesn't want to be your OS vendor, or your applications vendor, not even your ISP or cable-company or channel - it wants to be all of them.
Yesterday the MS WebTV, today the MS Phone, tomorrow the MS Information/Entertainment/Shopping system.
Convergence.
Since you're here - can you shed ony more light on your Open-Source NDS? Licensing? Current status? Projected release date? Beta programs?
What saves Novell's butt outide of the file-&-print world is NDS. Directory Services done right. No crappy NT wierdness, no bizarre limitations, this thing is a true distributed object-oriented directory you can stick about anything into. Novell took all of that time in the field and learned what SysAdmins really want : the ability to manange everything from one point fast, easily, reliably, and in quantity. No six-tools-piped-together-then-hand-added-to-each-s ystem, no custom-scripts-only-their-writer-understands-&-he- left-last-year, no scramble to find & close accounts when someone jumps ship, no you-do-it-this-way-here-and-that-way-there - instead all in one easy to read, easy to architect, very flexible directory. User information? Here. Maiden names? There. Desktop prefs? There. Printer settings? There. Printer drivers? Over there. Notes account? There. AIX acounts? There. Phone numbers? Here. Fax box? There. Billing center? Here. AOL Chat? Here. All there - everywhere.
Unfortunately Novell hasn't figured out how to make this wonder universal. Sure it runs on a couple of platforms but there's little to encourage new folks to move to it. If any product ever needed at 200-user-&-90-day free trial this is it. Let the masses get a taste and they'll want more. Unfortunately Novell hasn't figured out how to do so.
What they have done is put out a few lame Netware-drivers that rely on IPX (remember IPX? Secure, smart, but not TCP/IP) and were closely tied to specific kernels. They want to let other folks in but are afraid of loosing the jewels. NDS on open-source boxes - their fear is how to get them to pay for the intellectual property (& Novell has staked their fortune on developing NDS!) Most of the /.'ers just want their hands on tech they don't want to pay big upfront license fees for but when that's the only model you have then you're stuck. Sell support? Not much use in a business like directory services. Charge for development tools? Yeah - developers don't need anyone that much anymore.
Anyway, this crew from Novell helped develop & pre-market the Novell's next-gen clustering technology and when it was about baked jumped ship and started telling folks they were going to sell pretty much what they'd been developing at Novell. Lawsuits ensue and these folks find out that you can't just walk out the door with the tech. Big bills are paid and so they decide to go off in the Utah desert & reinvent Netware. Unfortunately they hadn't noticed 'till recently that no one needs another Netware, particularly a third party one that couldn't run what apps Netware already has and is only compatible with an obsolete (4.11) version.
So now they're offering is drivers to read Netware file systems (nice but not an overwhelming need in most quarters) and a new OS that can use Linux drivers under a new "MANOS" kernel to integrate with Netware environments. Oh, and there's some talk of an open source NDS clone but no one has seen any evidence of this (at least that I'm aware of.) This of course all has to be done without violating the legal decisions against them from their last run-in with Novell where they had to agree not to use or release any secrets.
Yay. Another open source OS, albiet from a good developer, whose sales feature is the ability to integrate with a platform that's not growing and a promise to deliver an open-source version of NDS - something that has taken a lot of very bright folks a lot of time to develop & tune, all without infringing on trade secrets or legal agreements. Oh, and this thing will be like Netware - no apps for it (the ability to read DLLs and such is interesting but without the infrastructure to host them not much good.) Just what the world needs.
Here's an idea: someone develop a good set of open-source libraries for an NDS clone. Or someone figure out a model for Novell to release theirs yet still make money on them. But please, lets not tie them to another limited-application OS. Enough reinventing the wheel - we're at the point where everyone just wants components that an be added a la carte to their favorite and/or most appropriate OS.
Please, before folks start posting how they recall with disfavor their experiences with Netware in '86 or whenever recall what the competition was also like back then. Also, if you haven't used Netware 5.0 then you really should be quiet - these days it's very different from what you recall; very sophisticated, very polished, and very good at what it does. Frankly if I could use Netware for my file & print serving, Linux for my application hosting, and NDS to tie everything together they'd kick.
Clue phone ringing!... Wait - too late for you.
I'm rarely this nasty but I'm getting sick of the sheer number of compulsive posters who are obsessed with adding material that's so obviously inane.
Employees, contractors, contracts, etc. are all under Federal law when you're working for a Federal agency.
Really the only sales feature of the Transmeta products (aside from their inherent technical wizardry) is the ability to emulate other CPU's (albiet slower) in a low-power design. You won't ever see a Transmeta chip in anything other then a mobile platform.
As to IBM making consumer PowerPC'; Yes, IBM has been manufacturing PowerPCs for Apple under license from Motorola (it's Motorola's design they're using) but not doing any design/development work on them - they're just another outsourced product in the plant along with the Transmeta chips (same plant.)
With that aside what ARE the alternative CPU options for Apple?
PowerPC is doing OK as an architecture. Apple is using it in it's consumer boxes, IBM in servers, & Motorola is suplying Apple while focusing on the embedded market.
Unfortunately there are strains on the relationship. Apple honked-off Motorola by shelving the 3rd party Mac licensing program abruptly and stiffing Motorola with a many-million dollar inventory of unusable motherboards(Apple had good reason to shelve the program ASAP but it still screwed Motorola.) On the other hand they committed to Motorola as their supplier when Motorola developed the AltiVec material. IBM politely said no-thank-you to licensing the AltiVec as it really doesn't apply to their products and would likely just get in the way of their own evolution plans for PowerPC. They've all committed to continuing the collaboration and at that level it seems to be doing well though the PowerPC "vision" seems to have succumbed to more pragmatic goals.
The problem for Apple is that the PowerPC + AltiVec from Motorola is having trouble ramping up in speed. Apple has tried to fight the percieved speed discrepancy by pointing out that a PowerPC at some speed actually equals an x86 running at a some greater speed. All agree this is more or less true but the same as the Millenium doesn't start 'till next year no-one cares: they want comparable CPU speeds.
Apple finally replied by shipping multiple CPU's. These work fine under MacOS 9 and will do great under MacOS X when it ships but while saying 2x500 = 1000 it still isn't really the same when it comes to bragging.
What makes the whole thing even more ironic for all of the psuedo-knowledgable's pointing out that two CPUs aren't really twice as fast they're all ignoring there are far more fundamental issues like bus bandwidth & memory architecture that hobble Apple, at least until it's next-gen UMA2 motherboard series finally ship in a presumed few months.
So, what are the other choices?
Well, there have been rumors forever of Apple's MacOS-v7/8-on-x86 inhouse projects (claimed name "StarTrek".) With the move to MacOS X these now are realistic as NextStep has run on several platforms already including x86. Indeed the aborted Rhapsody strategy was actually released on x86 and the MacOS-core Darwin project is freely downloadable for x86. It wouldn't be terribly difficult for Apple to move all of MacOS X over to x86 though it would likely require abandoning all of the backwards MacOS compatability (unless something could be salvaged from the rumored "StarTrek" project.)
Of course at that point Apple would only be selling a custom version of Unix on custom x86 boxes to the consumer market and it's doubtefull Apple could make much of a go of that in today's market.
Next choice? Well, go to a third horse. Compaq now has the Alpha processor and it's still a speed demon and shows no signs of slowing down. There are rumors of Apple having an internal team tracking MacOS X but on Alpha. NextStep ran on Alpha so this sounds reasonable and certainly gives Apple some leverage with Motorola. The advantage of Alpha would be a screaming processor but not x86 as so to differentiate themselves.
This would put Apple in the position of selling a custom version of Unix on custom Alpha boxes to the consumer market and this might be doable, particularly if Apple pursues a strategy of selling PowerPC or Alpha CPU's in their boxes.
Now, there is an interesting rumor to discuss.
- Technology: It's a new way of performing emulation; neither entirely hardware-based nor software based it's a blend of both taking advantages of each's strengths.
- Market: It's an end-run around Intel's & everyone else's inability to produce a competitive low-power x86 processor. There are a number of good other low-power CPUs - StongARM, Dragonball, PowerPC, etc. but the x86 has proven to be remarkably difficult to implement in a low-power version.
So this leaves the question: why run MacOS (9 or X) on Crusoe? The point of Crusoe was to provide a low-power version of a traditionially high-power CPU but PowerPC is already a low-power device. Whoosh - there goes the rationial for producing a Crusoe/PowerPC emulator for running MacOS 9/X.So what about just running Mac applications under existing Crusoe/x86 technology? Well, Apple has released & continues to polish it's Darwin project which runs well on x86. As Darwin is the core of MacOS X and runs pretty much as a BSD Unix this would imply to some folks there's potential for running Mac applications directly. The problem comes in when one starts to look at the various types of Mac applications.
- "Classic" Mac applications that run under MacOS prior to X will run under a emulator in MacOS X. This emulator technology is not being released and considering the problematic history of other Mac-under-Unix emulators over the years (remember even Sun sold one) the odds of a good 3rd party one appearing now are low.
- "Carbon" Mac applications are ones that use a cleaned-up subset of the "Classic" API. These require a set of libraries to run that again Apple has not shown any interest in releasing (nor would it be in their commercial interest.)
- MacOS-X-native applications can be in a number of formats ranging from pretty much direct ports of traditionial Unix applications to Java-based to ones utilizing the reengineered OpenStep ("Cocoa") technologies. These are the most likely candidates for running under other OS's or using Crusoe considering their cross-platform roots.
The dfficulties with trying to run the MacOS-X-native applications in other environments will be in direct relationship to their reliance on Apple's propriatiery non-Darwin material like Aqua & Cocoa. Aqua, Apple's new PDF-based interface will be one of Apple's crown-jewels and it'll be neither made availiable to outsiders or easy to clone. Cocoa is in pretty much the same situation - it's part of what made Next so attractive to Apple and provides a powerfull set of tools & technologies that Apple has little interest in seeing move out of their fold. Indeed while OpenStep used to be availiable under x86 this has been discontinued and so far appears that it will live on only as part of MacOS X.So - what do we have? Well, most of the Mac applications out there today aren't going to be runnable practicably. Many of the MacOS-X-native ones will be more portable but will require greater & lesser degrees of porting depending on their Apple-specific technology dependence. For instance the Java-based stuff should move cleanly, things built using Cocoa and requiring Aqua services will be just not worth the effort. Either way there's no particular advantage of running these under Crusoe technology. Indeed one could expect a simpler port and greater efficiency if one just ran them under a PowerPC unix varient at a similiar power consumption as Crusoe.
Recently scanning became an issue at one of my clients. They're a big firm that handles financial information online. They have a number of sub-companies all with different IS groups/policies.
It turned out that they were getting hit by an extremely large number of probes by one of the local universities (and for this client to notice it's a LOT of probes.) A polite email was sent to the regular addresses requesting that the activity be halted. No response. As it continued a phone call was made - nobody at the school was willing to take the message. Ok. A letter was sent and they simply cut off the school's block of IP address from all access inbound & outbound.
Two things happened. A few days later my client got a call from the school's Financial Dept - apparently they used some of client's services and after some confused research discovered that they couldn't access them and the trouble was at the financial services co's end. As the school was using free services my client simply responded (after running it past the appropriate depts.) that the school was being blocked - and why. Apparently this caused some internal reaction at the school.
At the same time the client had some graduates of the school working for them, as well as a number of the faculty. They also discovered they couldn't access the school & vice-versa. This also caused a reaction and after some rumors and many calls to the internal support desk an email was sent out internally explaining why they were blocking access to the school. BTW all the while the probes were still getting worse and had they been getting through would have been starting to impact some services in a small way.
Apparently someone finally mentioned this to the President of the school (likely over golf.) Apparently he didn't like the fact that my client was blocking his school, nor that they had notified their employees that they were doing so nor that the school had been portrayed as unresponsive (the company did have a receipt for the certified letter at this point & no one had ever returned any message.)
Shortly there after the probes stopped abruptly. The client also got a couple of very nice letters from the school asking them to stop blocking them and implying the school would like them to let their employees know that the school wasn't a bunch of louts (not a rep. most schools want for their graduates apparently.) I also heard through the grapevine that some staff at the school got in some very hot water for neither overseeing the school's network activities nor for responding to complaints and their ensuing fallout.
So - what are the result of probing others sites? Well in this case a bad reputatio & an upset school administration. There's also been a new set of policies put in place at the company regarding folks from the schools and the access they have to the systems. Essentially they're now almost a suspect class and a revaluation is taking place of giving these folks access to proprietary information the client has. This will of course limit exposure on the clients side but also unfortunately dramatically limit what the interns, co-ops & part-timers can do (& learn about) at the company.
Finally there is still somewhat of a bad impression of the school for the whole thing. Indeed the school had been trying to get my client to buy into some net-based telecourses but my client's IS staff decided they simply didn't want to deal with the school's IS staff and kiboshed the idea (I believe it was 'bandwidth reliability concerns'.)
Hmm - if one is willing to turn one's vectors into glyphs then this could be a great format. Create "myvectorimages1thru128.ttf", specify the font and appropriate glyph at the desired size in your code and instant embedded vector image. The only problem is that there's no reliable way (that I know of) of getting a font to a browser.
-- Michael
The Computer Museum (formerly located on Museum Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts USA) has shut down. Their programs and exhibitions went to the Museum of Science in Boston and much of the collection to the Computer Museum History Center in Mountain View, California USA.
-- Michael
As a former manager for The Computer Museum I'm biased towards the inheritor of much of their collection: The Computer Museum History Center (www.computerhistory.org) in Mountain View, California USA.
I must warn you however that most museums already have a number of each of the early 'consumer' computers. Indeed I know The Computer Museum had one Osborne on display and several more in storage as I used to lecture on it regularly. Don't let this discourage you however - even if yours isn't going to be "The Osborne" it can oftentimes still help fill an important role: Spare parts, copies of software & OS or simply backup machines are often welcomed and can be important in preserving the history of the Information Revolution.
Items that are being actively sought are usually ones that were never made in any great numbers or ones that were pioneers in a specific area (first used for this or that, first example of this or that technology.) These machines or code are often of great interest to institutions as they presage the more successful ones and provide future generations an idea of the context that various developments happened in.
I expect Slashdot readers could be an important resource in preserving the chaotic development of free operating systems and applications. It's remarkable to think but years down the road folks might be looking over today's articles, postings, and code to understand the context for their own world. For those involved in creating the next generation of technology or for those simply heavily involved in this generation I suggest that serious thought be given to archiving email, code, web-pages, IRC transcripts, etc. as well as machines & peripherals for the future. Someday a Grad Student may well spend a semester reading your notes to understand the development of whatever topic their thesis is on.
Finally, as a former museum manager I am obligated by former nonprofit-staff-ethics to remind everyone that these institutions can always use not just donations for their collections but also volunteer time and funds to preserve, document, and interpret their materials.
-- Michael