Ah, but as the article and the company's site point out, you could be maintaing a hot spare with a snap of the drive's contents automatically via their management app.
VMs work great as long as each user doesn't use many resources, but fall on their face when 20 users need the full resources of a dedicated machine at the same time. Example, where I work we have about 20 identical workstations, with near identical software payloads. Staffers use roaming profiles to store data/prefs on a backed up domain controller. So far, this sounds like the perfect application for a VM/Thin Client solution, until you look at what each client runs. Just the phone app itself hogs upwards of 256mb of ram, and a fair amount of CPU time. Add in the other apps they need to switch in and out of frequently, we're tossing a gig of ram in each box and spec'ing mid range P4s for each system.
When a system dies, the staffer is told to find an empty cube, relogin, and resume working. We then wander over, swap hardware, tote the busted system back to ops and repair/refurb it. The win with this setup, the tech never moves, doesn't have to shuffle personal belongings around, and we never have to wander away from our workstations here in ops. Without seeing the costs, I don't know if it's worth it or not, but it's an interesting application.
By Cat5 I do NOT mean ethernet, It's just using Cat5 as raw cabling. So this setup requires point to point Cat5 runs from the desktop to the blade rack, no switches / etc allowed. You want to do it on ethernet, use the IP node.
These are not thin terms. It's a bunch of full function blade servers, on a managed KVM backplane. You then have remote 'end nodes' that supply DVI/USB/sound over Cat5, Fiber, or IP, your choice.
So far, this is pretty ho-hum, boring. The neat trick is the software that comes with it. Take an 8 blade chassis, setup 7 users on it, each with their own PC. Blade 8 is now your hot spare. Uh oh, Joe just had a failure? Fire up the management app from your desk, swap him to blade 8. Without getting up, Joe now has a new system, and you can deal with the failed blade on your time, either remotely via your end node, or in the server room.
No, it's not a huge advancement, but for places that maintain large fleets of desktops that run near identical OS/software installs, it makes system management and maint a bit easier by reducing time lost to running around shuffling hardware.
Where are my mod points when I need them? Not only are people injured, but some are still stuck in the tubes underground. When everyone is accounted for, THEN you putzes can start your pseudo-intellectual 'banter' over politics.
"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"
Because those vehicles aren't meant to be armored. They are designed to be light and fast so when crap hits the fan, you hit the gas and get the fsck out of there. Throw all that armor on a Humvee and you reduce it to a sitting duck that can't get out of it's own way with a tow truck assisting it. You want armor, get in an armored vehicle, like a Bradley or M1A1 Abrams.
You're assuming said easy installer is developed using illegal techniques. If it's clean reverse engineering, and the developer doesn't promote piracy (IE they put in big bold print 'REQUIRES AN OS X LICENSE FOR EACH MACHINE INSTALLED ON') etc, I don't think they'd have a leg to stand on. Hell, handle it like XPostFacto, maintain a public src archive, charge for the boxed version. Makes it that much harder for Apple to say there is copyrighten material hiding in there.
There are two groups of people to consider, teh hardc0r3, like most on slashdot profess to be, and the rest of the world. For teh hardc0r3, they'll deal with swapping hardware, working around crap drivers, etc just to say they did. for the rest of the world, when you look at what hardware they run, there really isn't that much diversity.
And yes, I do like old hardware. You don't see me clamoring to get OS X on my 386 do you? With what Apple already supports, ATi and Nvidia, you cover such a huge swath of the available market that lack of support for other cards shouldn't be an issue.
For the rest of the hardware, burners, etc, there are either hacks to get OS X to consider them supported (add the device id to the ok list, it's not that the burners are lacking a driver, just that Apple decided they were only going to support a small set out of the box to help persuade people to buy Apple branded gear.) NICs are probably the easiest of the hw out there to port drivers for, printers? OS X uses CUPS, firewire, dunno as thats really all that prevalent out there outside of existing mac users.
OS X will hit commodity boxen either by external hacker assistance, or Apple's blessing. It's not a matter of if, it's when. To believe otherwise is foolhardy and laughable.
How many commodity video cards are there out there any more? ATi or Nvidia support, and you've nailed most of the market. As a bonus, thats what Apple's already supporting. Intel intergrated graphics covers a good chunk of whats left. The rest run in 2d unaccelerated mode like older cards did under OS X.
There has always been a big difference between what MS puts on the box as requirements, and what the software will actually install and run on. With OS X, if it's not listed, break out xpostfacto 'cause thats your only hope.
Xpostfacto should be causing Apple distress. OS X has purposely shipped with support disabled for older systems as a means of encouraging upgrades. Why sell an OS when you can bag a system sale at the same time?
Microsoft doesn't worry about this because MS doesn't produce systems. If they did, you can bet they'd do all they could to prevent the new OS release from running on the past generation of systems.
Even if Apple throws some closed source hw detection code in there, I still bet it falls in short order to the geeks out there. x86 is too common, people are too good at hacking it, Apple cannot stop OS X x86 from landing on commodity boxes.
More importantly, what makes you think Apple CAN lock down OS X this way? They haven't been able to block xpostfacto and maconlinux from running OS X on unsupported hardware, why would an x86 port be any different?
At max volume, yelling into a mic produces no noticeable input. There is no option to switch from line level to mic level.
Plug said mic into a mic input on a PC, viola works beautifully. What's wrong with either two ports, mic and line, ala PCs, or get cute and use an AGC with software override for purists so it just 'works' with whatever you plug in? A 3000$ box that needs addon hardware to do what just about every PC, including cheapy Dells do out of the box. Brilliant!
Yeah, similar issue with the dual G5s. There is a line in, but it doesn't have an amp to let it handle mic input directly... I have to buy something extra to plug a mic into a $3k box. Gah!
OS X will get trojan'd just as easily as Windows when someone bothers to write it. It's freaking annoying how many apps require root to install. The installer happily pops up a dialog asking for the admin pw to proceed. 99% of users, mac or otherwise will happily jam in the pw to install the latest widget or toy, opening their box up to trojan hell.
Agreed, first thing to go on my DP 2.5ghz G5, the keyboard. What a mushy, badly angled, pile. Fortunatly, I had a base MS USB keyboard handy, that and my Nyko airflow mouse, and I'm set.
The AT&T EO GO Tablet in 1991 was a fully pen operated device, including handwriting recognition. Size is larger than current PDAs, but that was done on purpose as the idea was to replace notepads.
HP also had their PDA sized MS-DOS based systems in 1991. While keyboard instead of pen operated, it was a full function PC, including add on software support in a PDA footprint.
Yup, pocketPC is a clone of the Newton 'cause there were no other PDA's before then... Palm didn't exist, simplier fixed function units didn't exist prior to palm, hell, you wanna get old school, remember pocket speed dialers?
Guess you're new to teh PC scene. This mini craze is nothing new, its a return to old school platform design. I remember way back when, there wasn't a box, you just plugged stuff right into your keyboard. We had tiny boxen from the XT era right up through modern times. You just didn't notice till Apple decided to do a marketing blitz on it.
Has MS been selling XP SP1 up till christmas, or had they infact stopped selling it but retailers continued selling old stock? If the latter, dunno what to do about that. I still say, you buy an OS, you pull down the latest updates. I thought XP tried to durring install anyways? Never had a machine with a live connection while installing, I'll have to try that.
MS will provide SP2 on CD, all you have to do is ask. Got net access, fire up that firewall and download it. Its not like you have to go and buy XP + SP2 if you're running XP + SP1, it's a free update. How long has SP2 been out now?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but as the article and the company's site point out, you could be maintaing a hot spare with a snap of the drive's contents automatically via their management app.
VMs work great as long as each user doesn't use many resources, but fall on their face when 20 users need the full resources of a dedicated machine at the same time. Example, where I work we have about 20 identical workstations, with near identical software payloads. Staffers use roaming profiles to store data/prefs on a backed up domain controller. So far, this sounds like the perfect application for a VM/Thin Client solution, until you look at what each client runs. Just the phone app itself hogs upwards of 256mb of ram, and a fair amount of CPU time. Add in the other apps they need to switch in and out of frequently, we're tossing a gig of ram in each box and spec'ing mid range P4s for each system.
When a system dies, the staffer is told to find an empty cube, relogin, and resume working. We then wander over, swap hardware, tote the busted system back to ops and repair/refurb it. The win with this setup, the tech never moves, doesn't have to shuffle personal belongings around, and we never have to wander away from our workstations here in ops. Without seeing the costs, I don't know if it's worth it or not, but it's an interesting application.
Oh, I forgot to note:
By Cat5 I do NOT mean ethernet, It's just using Cat5 as raw cabling. So this setup requires point to point Cat5 runs from the desktop to the blade rack, no switches / etc allowed. You want to do it on ethernet, use the IP node.
For those too lazy to RTFA...
These are not thin terms. It's a bunch of full function blade servers, on a managed KVM backplane. You then have remote 'end nodes' that supply DVI/USB/sound over Cat5, Fiber, or IP, your choice.
So far, this is pretty ho-hum, boring. The neat trick is the software that comes with it. Take an 8 blade chassis, setup 7 users on it, each with their own PC. Blade 8 is now your hot spare. Uh oh, Joe just had a failure? Fire up the management app from your desk, swap him to blade 8. Without getting up, Joe now has a new system, and you can deal with the failed blade on your time, either remotely via your end node, or in the server room.
No, it's not a huge advancement, but for places that maintain large fleets of desktops that run near identical OS/software installs, it makes system management and maint a bit easier by reducing time lost to running around shuffling hardware.
Hit up ION at http://itanium.ioncomputer.com/
A comperable 2U box comes out at just under over 5k,
1.5ghz I2
36GB SCSI HD
2GB RAM
DVD ROM/CDRW
Dual Gigabit
Where are my mod points when I need them? Not only are people injured, but some are still stuck in the tubes underground. When everyone is accounted for, THEN you putzes can start your pseudo-intellectual 'banter' over politics.
"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"
Because those vehicles aren't meant to be armored. They are designed to be light and fast so when crap hits the fan, you hit the gas and get the fsck out of there. Throw all that armor on a Humvee and you reduce it to a sitting duck that can't get out of it's own way with a tow truck assisting it. You want armor, get in an armored vehicle, like a Bradley or M1A1 Abrams.
You're assuming said easy installer is developed using illegal techniques. If it's clean reverse engineering, and the developer doesn't promote piracy (IE they put in big bold print 'REQUIRES AN OS X LICENSE FOR EACH MACHINE INSTALLED ON') etc, I don't think they'd have a leg to stand on. Hell, handle it like XPostFacto, maintain a public src archive, charge for the boxed version. Makes it that much harder for Apple to say there is copyrighten material hiding in there.
There are two groups of people to consider, teh hardc0r3, like most on slashdot profess to be, and the rest of the world. For teh hardc0r3, they'll deal with swapping hardware, working around crap drivers, etc just to say they did. for the rest of the world, when you look at what hardware they run, there really isn't that much diversity.
And yes, I do like old hardware. You don't see me clamoring to get OS X on my 386 do you? With what Apple already supports, ATi and Nvidia, you cover such a huge swath of the available market that lack of support for other cards shouldn't be an issue.
For the rest of the hardware, burners, etc, there are either hacks to get OS X to consider them supported (add the device id to the ok list, it's not that the burners are lacking a driver, just that Apple decided they were only going to support a small set out of the box to help persuade people to buy Apple branded gear.) NICs are probably the easiest of the hw out there to port drivers for, printers? OS X uses CUPS, firewire, dunno as thats really all that prevalent out there outside of existing mac users.
OS X will hit commodity boxen either by external hacker assistance, or Apple's blessing. It's not a matter of if, it's when. To believe otherwise is foolhardy and laughable.
How many commodity video cards are there out there any more? ATi or Nvidia support, and you've nailed most of the market. As a bonus, thats what Apple's already supporting. Intel intergrated graphics covers a good chunk of whats left. The rest run in 2d unaccelerated mode like older cards did under OS X.
There has always been a big difference between what MS puts on the box as requirements, and what the software will actually install and run on. With OS X, if it's not listed, break out xpostfacto 'cause thats your only hope.
Xpostfacto should be causing Apple distress. OS X has purposely shipped with support disabled for older systems as a means of encouraging upgrades. Why sell an OS when you can bag a system sale at the same time?
Microsoft doesn't worry about this because MS doesn't produce systems. If they did, you can bet they'd do all they could to prevent the new OS release from running on the past generation of systems.
Even if Apple throws some closed source hw detection code in there, I still bet it falls in short order to the geeks out there. x86 is too common, people are too good at hacking it, Apple cannot stop OS X x86 from landing on commodity boxes.
More importantly, what makes you think Apple CAN lock down OS X this way? They haven't been able to block xpostfacto and maconlinux from running OS X on unsupported hardware, why would an x86 port be any different?
Yup, it's labeled:
Line In / Audio Line In
At max volume, yelling into a mic produces no noticeable input. There is no option to switch from line level to mic level.
Plug said mic into a mic input on a PC, viola works beautifully. What's wrong with either two ports, mic and line, ala PCs, or get cute and use an AGC with software override for purists so it just 'works' with whatever you plug in? A 3000$ box that needs addon hardware to do what just about every PC, including cheapy Dells do out of the box. Brilliant!
Yeah, similar issue with the dual G5s. There is a line in, but it doesn't have an amp to let it handle mic input directly... I have to buy something extra to plug a mic into a $3k box. Gah!
Ahem, please visit http://www.x386.net/
There is a machine there that would like to question your estimate of x86 hardware longevity.
OS X will get trojan'd just as easily as Windows when someone bothers to write it. It's freaking annoying how many apps require root to install. The installer happily pops up a dialog asking for the admin pw to proceed. 99% of users, mac or otherwise will happily jam in the pw to install the latest widget or toy, opening their box up to trojan hell.
Does prior art trump a design patent like it would an idea patent?
2 ,00.html
2002 - Ok, design doesn't match, but it's a nice effort:
http://www.wired.com/news/images/0,2334,56086-530
2004 - Hrmmm... make it slightly thinner, and viola, it's the same damn thing.
http://www.macmod.com/content/view/166/2/
RADIUS is proprietary?!
Ummm...
Did I miss a punch line somewheres?
Agreed, first thing to go on my DP 2.5ghz G5, the keyboard. What a mushy, badly angled, pile. Fortunatly, I had a base MS USB keyboard handy, that and my Nyko airflow mouse, and I'm set.
Yup, you're right, a lil digging shows the Palm didn't predate the Newton, but it did launch at the same time.
r es /display/0-2-PDAs.htm
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictu
The AT&T EO GO Tablet in 1991 was a fully pen operated device, including handwriting recognition. Size is larger than current PDAs, but that was done on purpose as the idea was to replace notepads.
HP also had their PDA sized MS-DOS based systems in 1991. While keyboard instead of pen operated, it was a full function PC, including add on software support in a PDA footprint.
1993 has both a Palm entry and Newton, so
Yup, pocketPC is a clone of the Newton 'cause there were no other PDA's before then... Palm didn't exist, simplier fixed function units didn't exist prior to palm, hell, you wanna get old school, remember pocket speed dialers?
Guess you're new to teh PC scene. This mini craze is nothing new, its a return to old school platform design. I remember way back when, there wasn't a box, you just plugged stuff right into your keyboard. We had tiny boxen from the XT era right up through modern times. You just didn't notice till Apple decided to do a marketing blitz on it.
Has MS been selling XP SP1 up till christmas, or had they infact stopped selling it but retailers continued selling old stock? If the latter, dunno what to do about that. I still say, you buy an OS, you pull down the latest updates. I thought XP tried to durring install anyways? Never had a machine with a live connection while installing, I'll have to try that.
MS will provide SP2 on CD, all you have to do is ask. Got net access, fire up that firewall and download it. Its not like you have to go and buy XP + SP2 if you're running XP + SP1, it's a free update. How long has SP2 been out now?
Nah, he wants a OS that runs linux binaries, FreeBSD does, and in some instances FASTER than on a native Linux kernel.
Get the rock solid base of FreeBSD 4.x, and the whole crazy range of linux binaries, how could not like that option?
True, got me there. : )