mee too! on a power book. pages just explode onto the screen. No borders on the window and a very svelt tool bar mean maximum screen real estate for windows. Also a nice snap-back tool for going back ward to a marked point at a deep web site. sort of like a temporary bookmark.
its released under GPL not the apple open source lic.
It seems to be missing some sort of activity indicator (like the flashing N in netscape or the flashing lizard or the flashing E. This is a bit annoying since you dont know if you should click again or not when a link is sluggish
privacy freeks may note one missing cookie setting. it has Always/Never/ and ONLY FROM SITES I NAVIGATE TOO (NO AD COOKIES). But it is missing an "always ask" setting. Not that I will miss it, but the paranoid may care.
This sounds too good not to be true. The little nuances, like a battery operated pen and the lucite stand make it sound like inside info.
But I seriously doubt Jobs is going to announce it tommorrow. If they were we'd have heard some hype like we did for the ipod and the imac.
This sounds like some disgruntled contractor that got to see a prototype thats 6 months for mproduction. It's telling that he says hes a power systems engineer and most of his comments concern things that eat power.
AMEN, Parent is speaking the real truth. (except Steve Younger was more interested in reaserch than in production of nukes).
the hidden agenda behind this resignation. Too many people want to put their knives into the University of california contract. Local NM people want the admininstration for their own locally corrupt agenda, the anti-nuke people want to just kill the lab by any means, the POGO people just want publicity so they mis-report the true facts, and the Bush Admin wants to turn los alamos from a research facility in to a production facility replacing UC with a compiant, republican party donating, contractor.
The inventory control system is out of date and a new bussiness information system is about to be implemented. But inventory losses are NOT out of control as suggested by the press reports. And the fact that people are getting nailed for credit card fraud ought to tell you that PEOPLE ARE GETTING NAILED, not getting away with it.
Yup, you got it right. it's partly a power-play to try to take the University of California Management contract and sell it to the highest (political) bidder. UC has a strong basic science interest at the lab which could vanish into micromanagement it were managed by people with other agendas.
basically the lab spends billions of dollars each year, its been in operation for over 50 years. And inventory is held on the books at purchase price, not at depreciated value. (a ten year old $8000 computer is held on the books at 8000$ not 0$ its true worth)
to have all of its inventory accounted for down to 141,000 dollars is frankly a miracle unlikely to be replaicated in any other institution of the same size (47 square miles).
Managing large numbers of servers
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
As someone who does manage several hundreds of servers I can say its pretty obvious that managing linux servers enmasse is easier than managing Windows machines en-masse. The idea of having hundreds of WinVNC terminals open is of course ludicrous.
what it really comes down to is a CLI and a good scripting language. Now windows machines claim to have a scripting language but to use it effectively you have to go through a GUI not a CLI thus network admin of unix machines is not for the faint of heart. This situation gets worse when you start trying to configure services (web servers, etc...) that also have GUI interfaces rather than text configureation scripts.
On the otherhand admin of linux across a net is pretty darn easy. When you start getting into having your main disks not be the local disks life gets even simpler in Linux.
On the otherhand, I suspect that the better a desktop machine becomes the more GUI administration is going to be important on linux. Consequently it may lose some advantages in fleets of desktops.
I agree with the post, I wish to see start times in month view (Yes I provided feedback to apple; lets hope other do to).
Another wish list feature is to be able to publish "anomynized" calendars that show when I'm in unavailable but not the name or meeting details. For example I'd like my published calendar to just show I was busy from 1-4:30 while my private calendar has the details like "1:00 Fire Wozniak", and "2:00 transgender support group".
The other "feature" I dislike is the tabbed info panel. You have to click on five tabs just to see what the meeting is, set the alarm, how often it repeats, and other details, and conact info, rather than just one big panel. Furthemore I cant just double click the entry to get the information I have to click the info button. I think someone just got too clever with the sexy look of the manager panel; too many mouse motions to browse your daily contacts. (click even time, click info button, click all 5 tabs, repeat for next event.)
I hate to admit it but MS entourage is currently a superior program. (of course I cant use its mail features for fear of dreadful MS security holes in its outlook mail engine)
It;s been my observation that there is alot of knee jerk reaction to water conservation. Surface Water is in fact a renewable resource. It's not like oil which we are using up or trees that we cut faster than they grow. This is not true of water pumped from the ground.
Thus water supply like money supply is sometimes hard to measure. For example, when a ski-area uses water rights to make snow are they really using water up? in fact they are doing everyone a favor by actually retaining the transient water flow for use in the spring and summer. Never the less currently they do need to purchase water rights in most states. Similarly, if I flush my toilet with river water, run it through a septic system or water treatment and then return it to the water have I caused any loss of water. (are all those low flow toilets addressing the right problem?). What if I shower too long, have I changed the amount of water for those down stream. Certainly the media would make you think so.
So surface water rights are realy about water distribution. The city of albuquerque basically has the entire rio grand river flowing out its taps and through its sewer and back into the rio grande. the river actually goes vitually dry as it passes near albuquereque. the governement is telling them they are killing the fish and the city cant figure out how to solve the problem since they cant create more water. But the solution is pretty obvious isn't it/ just pump the outflow back up to the inflow. (or maybe a wee bit below it. THis of course costs money, but solves the problem.
Rainfall distribution is obviously a primary source issue. It is the purest source of water available (ignoring acid rain). Tampering with this alters distribution. This fact and not the taking of water is the crucial issue.
In most of the US it is illegal to redirect water from one basin to another. You cant pump water across the continental divide. and this is generally true locally. The big exceptions are the arizona and california water projects.
Relax and grab your towel, this is not new. Life forms on other planets have routinely attempted weather control when they become advance enough. Generally this is about 100 to 200 earth years after the discovery of radio technology.
By the way, this is also why the Seti project has been completely unsuccessful at detection other life forms since they are all dead.
It is also why, the people of planet beta-3 have told me to tell you earthbeings, not to fret about your water. they're going to exterminate you and water their lawns with your planet.
have a nice day, so long and thanks for all the fish.
Water rights and international accords for allocating them are nothing new. Many river cross boundaries. Even bitter enemies (e.g. middle east) often can at least come to accomodations they can accept even if they protest them.
On the other hand few things can get more bitter since the supply is inelastic and its use critical. We (the US) certainly dont give mexico one more drop of water than we absolutely have to.
In the werstern US states more than the eastern US or in europe, Water rights are in fact more critical and more precious because the water distibution is paradoxically plentiful where it existis yet generally sparse. In fact its more sparse than the typical homestead land grant. hence in days of yore the guy that homsteaded around the water source effectively owned everything as far as he wanted to (or till the next watering hole) regardless of the actual property boundaries.
In the US west we have very recently reached the elastic limit of the supply. Many places (e.g. santa fe new mexico) are pumping at an unsustainable rate (which by the way causes depletion that is also irrevrsable even if you quit pumping it). And california, which has routinely taken unused water rights form other sates can no longer do so and thus is actually going to experience not just a water limit but an actual deficit when those rights are asserted by others.
So now we come to the final frontier: rain allocation. My guess its that the moment the amount of rain taken from the skys reaches a value that causes a depression of rainfall eleswhere that is detectable on the scale of the annual varialtion, perhaps like 1 or 2% of the available rain, then there's gonna be a show down.
Since weather is generally west to east, the eastern states will be robbed. This also means it will propably show up first intra-nationally rather than internationally since in the americas the countries are mostly divided north-south more than east west (or when they are east-west there is a mountain range making the rain issue partly moot). Even europe may experience some pain because some scientist belive the gulf-stream is about to be overrun by colder artic "underwater" rivers. This should depress their expected rainfall. Good thing they formed the EU or theired be some fights.
Interestingly specualtors are already buying up land in many northern US states on the assumption they may get some sort of water right allocation.
Hey this is a remarkable slashdot social experiment. Sort of like when the traffic lights at a major intersection go out, and people learn how to regulate themselves. Or like when there's a blakcout and people rediscover conversation rather than TV
With the OLD IKE bombardment the moderators are using all their mod-points to down grade the OLD IKE posts. This is leaving, at least for a short period, the regular posts highly un -modded. as a result the threaded listing is quite flat, with only a few replys. You actually can pay attention to more comments and titles. and no one is pointing out what to read.
APPLE STILL SELLS 15 INCH monitor imacs. THere is no way they have a 7 month inventory backlog on 15" panels, so the article cannot be correct about then being discontinued in june.
On the other hand it is true that apple stopped selling 15" monitors. It's conceivable they might discontinue 17" monitors in lieu of just using 3rd party monitors. if their profit margin was slim this would be a shrewd move to drive down the price of the macs, while still retaining their premium 22" monitor offering.
you might enjoy the (corny) movie. almost everything that happens in the movie, except the main plot itself, is based on real events at caltech.
the other flabbergasting thing in the movie is the science is correct in almost every detail. when val kilmers's character gets an inspiration for a new kind of laser its actually a really clever idea that could plausibly work. even the equations and potential energy functions he draws on the board are the ones uniquely correct for an excimer type laser
While it's probably true that robots will make fewer casual mistakes than humans, the human mistakes will be at least random, and probably infrequently of a fatal type. That is to say, on any given day there are probably tens of thousands of anti-biottic prescriptions filled. If some chain store uploaded rev 2.2.4 robo-phamacist with a bug that replaced erythromycin with warfarin we could have a massive computer sized problem. On the other hand the chance of a human doing somthing like that more than once in their career is probably very likely but only a singleton event at each occurence.
likewise while a phamicist might give out the wrong dosage perscription occasionally, if any bulk bottle were miss barcoded the computer would give out the wrong prescription every time. Moreover there's a chance the human pharmacist would actually write on the bottle the wrong dosage thereby giving the patient a chance to catch the error. the computer would just repeat the same error on the bar code onto the bottle.
Now obviously the drug manufacturer's themselves face the problem of getting the right pills in the right bottles all the time and I would guess rarely make mistakes. That is all automated and it works, because they have the resources to do it right. But taking the automation down to the local level is scarey to me. In addition to the possibilty of mistakes there is also the opportunity for maliscious or crimminal attempts. E.g. someone wants to steal some oxy codon, breaks in and accidentally re-orders the bottles. A human phamacist would at least detect the problem.
finally what happens at the major hospital when the power fails, or the computer crashes or the mechanism jams in an earthquake? will they have enough staff available to be called in to do it all by hand. Frankly I doubt it, as similar medical autmation disasters have happened when record keeping systems and test result automation have broken down.
I'm not trying to be a luddite here. But not only is the severity of the issue much larger than say a broken robot on a GM car line but the financial pressure to prematurely implement such a system is very high in the medical community.
Remember the val kilmer movie Real Genious? Well that's about caltech. filmed there too. Most of the stunts in the side plot including turning dorms in to ice rinks, and mass producing burger king contest entries actually happened. Now those are stunts. Rent it.
And of course there are the classic stunts at caltech taking over the rosebowl. like the time they hacked into the score board and changed the teams to MIT and Caltech. Another time they replaced all of the audience half-time flash card with there own so that when all the cards were flipped instead of showing a stadium sized picture of a washington husky it showed a stadium sized caltech beaver. Both of these staunts were recorded on national TV.
Other stunts there I've read about include restriping a parking lot over night so as to make the spot reserved for a certain professor 'vanish'. Or replastering/painting a building wall overnight to make the doorway for a certain professor's office 'vanish'. Another time this same professor entered an elevator, the doors closed and a few moment later a trapdoor on the ceiling opened and filled the entire elevator with foam packing peanuts, then delivered the packaged professor to his floor. SInce I've met that professor since I know they are true.
I beleive The Power4 runs IBM's analog of the "altivec" instruction set. The altivec acts as a vector processor with a pipelinable 128 bit bus. that is 4 float multiply+add per instruction or up to 16 short int multipy+add per cycle.
On the other hand why not just buy Mac Xserves? Are these not exportable? Apple benches these things at 15 GigaFlops (sustained) in a 1U case. which means two 40 U racks of these would be a terraflop. Built in interconnections would be dual gigabit PLUS three 400 Mbit Firewire connections. All for the low-low price of $4000 per head or $320000 for 80 units.
heck for that matter, just buy those $199 G4 mother boards and the G4 chips and voila, even cheaper.
There are all sorts of possible useful uses. For example, a signal strength/direction finder for wireless connection displayed on the back of the ibook could help you orient it. Imagine that spagetti of cables in the back of your rack; now imiagine if the computer could selectively light up the sheeth of its ethernet cable to show you where it went. Also the patent says it could be in input device too. perhaps, an ipod could display a keyboard on its back surface. Or maybe a iTablet computer lacking a real keyboard could form a rudimentary keyboard on its back side.
I have often wanted just a small built in light for my keyboard on my notebook computer so I could see the keyboard with the roomlights off and not be blinded by the screens light.
How about a trackpad button that could segment itself into a three button mouse depending on where you pressed it.
how about just a load sensor, or something that showed you the state of the computer (like VM swap, talking to the firewire disk) or maybe if it told you if some other user was remotely logged in.
What if the computer turned oranged striped if it detected (somehow) that it had been stolen, or an un authorized log in was attempted.
finally, is there anyone who does not think the visualls that go on with iTunes are not stunning? maybe they can do something equally impressive here.
my last comment is this. it is only a short trip down the road before skinable color changing polymers allow video screens to be painted on all most anything in any shape, even flexible ones. That's when this idea will really take off. So this is just a precursor.
Before I launch into a wildly enthusiastic discussion of DLP, I just want to point out one amusing problem with Plasma TVs. They wont work over 6200 feet of elevation, which is where much of the soutwest US lives. I live at 7000 feet. bummer.
I have a Plus 800x600 DLP projector I use as my movie projector. I got it as a refurb unit for $1000. I normally project a 10 foot wide screen.
I've tried a couple of these things out so let me give you some tips.
First, if you are buying one to watch DVD movies then first DO NOT BUY an XGA or and SXGA model, instead buy the cheaper 800x600 model. Why? because it will look much better. the reason is simple, 800x600 is nearly perfectly matched to the resolution of a dvd. if you get a higher resolution projector, the machine will be forced to interpolate pixels, and this not only looks icky, by when things move in the picture the edges tear with the interlaced interpolation (some expensive interpolators do a slightly better job but they all suck compared to not interpolating). The nice part is it costs lesss for lower resoultion
second, the second most important spec is the contrast ration. get anything below 500:1 and you are wasting your money. You wont really notice the differenence until you see it side by side with a better projector. But what happens is you cant see any texture in dark clothing, hair or bright skies. I have an 800+ and I like it very much. Note because the manufacturer's lie about this spec consider all machines within 20% of the same number to be the same contrast.
third, the next most important spec is noise. Unless you have a way of locking this thing away from you, it's really distracting. get a quite one. For reason's I'm not too certain about it appears the DLP projectors run quieter than the LCD ones. I suspect this is because the DLP chip does not absorb light and thus runs cooler inherently.
fourth, While color saturation of LCDs is marginally better than DLPs, the contrast ratio way out ranks this. One thing you can do to get the best possible color saturation on a DLP is to look for one with a pure three-color wheel rather than a 3-color-plus-white wheel. Sometimes to squeeze more lumens out of these the manufacturers add a white-phase to the primary colors. this reduces the color saturation.
fifth, nearly ALL (not quite all) DLP projectors are made by a single company then re-branded in different cases with different feature sets or color wheels. PLUS is the name of this manufacturer. So dont be too picky about which manufacturer you buy from.
Lumens. THe more the merrier as long as you aren't sacrificing any of the above considerations. I'd say 800 was the minimum number and 1600 is very nice. you can of course make the screen smaller, and only project at nighttime or in a darkened room. Some people use special screens. these can almost double the effective brightness over a white wall. But white walls are actually nicer to work with than screens. screens tend to curl at the edges, cant adjust well to different aspect ratios and can ripple in the breeze (which produces a nice mind bending effect by the way), plus if they aren't fixed mounted they are a hassle.
Source: computers with RGB out put are MASSIVELY better than a DVD player. Dont even think about s-video output. (really, sont even think about it). THe downside with computer projectors is 1) the dvd software/hardware is much less forgiving of scratched dvds and 2) sometimes its hard to get good 5.1 dolby sound out put.
The main downside to DLP projectors over a TV is the lifetime ot the bulb. typcial bulb lifetimes are 1000 or 2000 hours, though you can figure maybe only half of that time will be at full power illumination. bulbs cost 250 - 500 depending on the model. that's plenty of time if all you watch is dvd's but if you want to waste hours and hours on TV shows then that's not a lot. On the other hand the DLP was a lot less cost than the plasma screen, so maybe you should not worry so much.
the good news is that probably by the time your first bulb burns out philips will probably have come out with 10,000 hour bulbs for your model (a few are out now).
So for my money, skip the plasma screen and go with a white wall and a DLP.
Parent poster is speaking through his hat.
Nasa, and the national labs use tons of macs and also have high needs for biometric security. THis is a fact.
from the specifications page ETRAX 100LX has almost everything you need included
* 32 bit 100MIPS RISC CPU core * 10/100 MBit Ethernet controller * 4 asynchronous serial ports * 2 synchronous serial ports * 2 USB ports * 2 Parallel ports * 4 ATA (IDE) ports * 2 Narrow SCSI ports (or 1 Wide) * Support for SDRAM, Flash, EEPROM, SRAM,...
Just add power and and ethernet connection. Quite an impressive package. Though in practice you would need to add more memory. But think about it, in the space of about 1/2 cubic inch you could cram memory, the chip, plus say a Microdisk. Expand that to the size of an IPOD and you could put in a lot of stuff, incuding the power supply
I'm not exactly how fast 100MIPS when comparing a RISC to say and Intel CISC that takes many clock cycles to complete on instruction. I'm assuming its probably slower than a 2 Ghz Pentium, but fast for an hand held.
<b>What Gets interesting is this: it dissipates 0.35 watts (typical)!!!!! </b>Let me say that again. It dissipates 0.3 Watts for 100MIPS. compare that to a typical Pentium Computer in the hundreds of watts range for a Gigahertz. This means you could have 600+ in a single 1U chasis dissipating the same amount of heat.
Time to really start thinking about parrallel software and computer deisgn. For easily paprlizable problems 600 of these ina 1U would destroy an entire rack of Pentiums while disspating so little power this could be just slipped under your desk, not in cooled computer room. Oh did one of the chips burn out--who cares, there's only 599 more.
Want to know why your band is not traded P2P. No its not because your music is bad. Your music is good. The problem is marketing
So why is your music not wanted? Because there is no need created for it by marketing, my airplay, my feature stories, by high profile touring. And why dont you have these things? because they cost money
that's right, slash dotters, it costs money to create valuable marketing. So maybe you don t like marketing or the music industry telling you what to listen to. Here is what you do.
First ask your self why do I want to download this piece of music, why do I feel the need for it, and why am upset that they want to charge me 17$ for the CD in the store? Its because you feel the need for it. You dont feel the need for this poor no-name band that wants you to steel their music. You feel the meed for that metallica Cd, an Metallica wants you to to pay not steal.
So the bottom line is this, there is lots of free music from bands that want you to take trade P2P. But you dont want it. THe music you do want cost money. Since you wan tit has value, and they are entitled to sell it you for as much as they like. You dont have to pay, but it is stealing to just take it.
So dont steal, just take the music bands want for free. If you haven't heard of them by marketing well that's tought, that's part of what you were paying for when you bought the CD.
But please dont say you are trying to crush and oppressive music industry. That's crap. if you really wanted to crush them then trade P2p with this unknow bands work. if you aren't then your just a hypocrite. No better than a looter in a riot. You cant get caught but it does not make it right. Stop listening to bands that use marketing and charge money and you will have made your point ethically.
No I'm not trying to be a troll. I just find it absurd that people dont think it costs money to produce music, and that file trading is not stealing someone elses copyright. While many slashdot readers do infact want you to share their open source software, many many others earn their living making software and would be hurt if people just shared it.
Sorry to repost this but it gets tiresome to see the same misinformation out there. read on.
Dear Unix user, welcome to mac. If you trust me you will just do all of the following without asking why, before you start whining about features you miss. The following is a no-fat-added list of essential customization for unix users converting to the mac world.
1. The Mouse. Go buy a 3 button USB mouse. Make sure you get an optical mouse with a wheel. Buy the most expensive one you can. Heriditary mac users prefer a 1 button mouse, but you wont.
2. The Terminal. Open/Applications/Utilities. Drag the terminal.app to the Dock
3. File system journaling Open the terminal.app and type sudo diskutil enableJournal/Users Just do it. This can be undone and you can change how you want it later.
4. The Compiler Regardless of what compiler you prefer, you need the native compiler and libs. Go to http://developer.lanl.gov and register for free. Enter the site and select the downloads option. Scroll through the list till you find "developer tools", download and install it.
5. Installing GNU ports part 1.
Goto http://sourceforge.com and find the latest stable release of "fink" for mac os X. download and install it. There will be some questions to answer, just choose the defaults except if offered, ask it to get updates from CVS.
6. Install X-windows part 1 If you have 5 hours to you can wait, type in the terminal fink install xfree86-rootless this is preferred as it gets the latest release of a fast changing package. If you are in a hurry you can install the binary. Type sudo dselect Quick intro to dselect: after some preliminaries you are offered the chance to choose packages from a list. Use the down-arrow key to move down and find xfree86-rootless. Press the + key to select it. You will be offered "conflict resolution": accept the defaults by pressing return. Then return again to exit the selection. DO NOT GET GREEDY and select other packages yet. Finish the installation.
7. Installing X-windows part 2: the window manager You may prefer fvwm2 or some other window manager but take my advice and try out oroborus first. Oroborus does things the mac way, and later you will be glad you did even if its not familiar at first. Oroborus deliberately eschews many popular features, letting the OS provide those services. For example, if you want virtual screens you DO NOT want them as part of the windows manager! You want them as part of Aqua so that they apply to both aqua and to x-windows. Likewise you want the Dock to manage minimizing windows not the window manager. Go to http://apple.com click the OSX tab, then the downloads tab and find oroborus. Note: the oroborus that comes with Fink/dselect is not quite the same thing.
8. Installing GNU ports part 2. Use dselect or fink to install a few packages. Fink has about 2000 packages available including your favorite parts of kde and gnome. To see what's avalaible type fink list | more just for practice try installing gv (ghost view) and xemacs. Remember, dselect will install binaries (fast), and fink will install source (slow), generally dselect is a good idea. Once a month type "fink update-all" or update packages in dselect.
9. Text editor Goto http://www.barebones.com and get a free copy of bbedit "lite". I recommend buying the full version, especially to geeks. Note that you can save files in unix/mac/PC formats which have different end of line characters. Despite the name, on a mac you should normally use unix format. Mac mode is mainly for historic reasons but gums up unix commands. Even if this (amazingly) does not turn out to be your preferred editor, you should install it anyhow so that it is there for guests.
10. Mounting network disks You can mount NFS disks by creating a file that looks just like the usual/etc/fstab file. It does not matter where you put it since the mac will ignore it. To mount the disks type "sudo niload fstab" followed by the file path name. However, don't do this right away till you have more experience. Instead do the following. In the finder window, select go>servers. In the text field type nfs://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/hostpath Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address or domain name of the host with the disk, and/hostpath is the exported fs. The disk will be mounted in/Volumes and be "aliased" to the desktop. To mount windows network disks we use smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/path Be nice and unmount your disks (throw them in the trash) before disconnecting from the net.
11. using X windows across the network. All the usual stuff (like xhosts and DISPLAY) works as expected. However you do need to activate oroborus (which will fire up X-windows) since its not on by default. However, before you do this let me suggest an alternative you may find better. Goto http://apple.com and on the osx downloads page locate VNCdimension (or VNCthing) and install this application. On the X windows client, run vncserver. And on the mac attatch to it using VNC dimension. On anything but the fastest network connection you will find this smoother and faster than using x-windows. Plus its more secure and even runs through firewalls. At present much of X-windows on the mac is not graphics accelerated, but VNC dimension which runs in aqua is.
12. Shortcuts worth knowing about On your unix machine to run netscape you type/usr/bin/Netscape & on a mac you type open/Applications/Netscape to open the file browser at the current working directory type open . (note the period) to open a web page type open http://macosxhints.com
13. Pitfalls There are few pitfalls in the file system you need to know about early on. First be careful with cp,mv,rsync, and tar. For 99.9% of the time they work as expected. But a lot of mac applications and mac documents store info in something called the "resource fork" of a file. Unix files only have a single data fork. Mac files have a data and a resource fork. The data fork is the same as what you would see on the unix system. The resource fork can contain almost anything, but usually contains unimportant meta-information about the file itself like what app created it, and so on. But sometimes it contains crucial information (e.g quicken). When you do a unix cp or mv or tar all you get are the data forks. The rule of thumb is this: if your file can be used by a unix program then dont worry about the resource fork. Most modern mac apps do not use the resource fork but older ones do.
Second, mac filenames are case-insensitive but case preserving. Thus ReadME and readme are the same file.
Third, unfortunately, for backwards compatibility there are two different kinds of soft links on a mac. One is the usual unix soft link and the other is the "alias" function of the OS. The OS is smart enough to recognize the unix links and treat them as file aliases in the GUI. But the reverse is not true. Generally you are better off using the unix soft links.
Fourth, macs have three layers of file permissions where unix has one. Macs have the usual unix permissions. Plus there is an ability to lock a file against changes or deletion, and finally there is the ability to lock a file against modification even by root. generally you wont ever need either of the latter two, but you may someday find a file you cant seem to delete! just in case, the normal file lock is accessed via "get info"
Fifth, fstab, exports, shadowpassword, passwd, and most unix configs don't work the way you expect. Use the admin tools to alter netinfo configuration data. (see root below)
14. Thinking mac-like. First off you never need to touch the other mouse buttons outside of x-windows. Second, try to adopt apple applications where they exist to replace you current favorites. For example, use the mail.app instead of pine or Eudora. Sure these have nice features, but long term apple apps will stay more tightly integrated: for example, mail.app links to addressbook which links to iCal. Third, Chill-out dude. Macs force you to do things a certain ways with warning dialog boxes or focus-on-click windows. These are not worse than other ways, and long term you will come to see the benefits from the cross-application uniformity of operations. Unmount disks, especially network disks, by tossing them in the trash. (you may want to add an eject button to the finder menu)
15. Viruses, Worms, holes, etc... Regularly use the software update feature. Bugs get patched quickly. Historically, the only security holes you must stay on top of are Microsoft Internet Explorer holes, Microsoft Entourage/outlook holes, and Microsoft macro viruses. Don't bother worrying about anything else till you worry about these. Many people use Chimera for this reason.
16. Root If you read just one book try "mac OS X for unix geeks", most other books aren't for you because they are trying to explain unix to mac-heads. Avoid using root when you can use an admin tool or sudo instead. Apple has not fully document root admin, so stick with tools. Except don't ever play with netinfo manager or niload until you have a lot of experience, as there is no faster way to make your mac unbootable.
17. Goodies There are virtual window managers at mac OSX downloads. Try out Watson at http://www.karelia.com/watson/ Microsoft office X is a great program even if it is made by Microsoft. Scientific plotting: You may like Igor from wavemetrics.com since it has both command line and menu driven interface. Fink comes with R, Octave and Gnu-plot. Mathematicians may prefer mathematica. If you have a powerbook, put the dock on the left and make it small. Turn off autostart on OS 9.0 Discover iTunes. Consider a mac.com account Read http://macosxhints.com
Dear Unix user, welcome to mac. If you trust me you will just do all of the following without asking why, before you start whining about features you miss. The following is a no-fat-added list of essential customization for unix users converting to the mac world.
1. The Mouse. Go buy a 3 button USB mouse. Make sure you get an optical mouse with a wheel. Buy the most expensive one you can. Heriditary mac users prefer a 1 button mouse, but you wont.
2. The Terminal. Open/Applications/Utilities. Drag the terminal.app to the Dock
3. File system journaling Open the terminal.app and type sudo diskutil enableJournal/Users Just do it. This can be undone and you can change how you want it later.
4. The Compiler Regardless of what compiler you prefer, you need the native compiler and libs. Go to http://developer.lanl.gov and register for free. Enter the site and select the downloads option. Scroll through the list till you find "developer tools", download and install it.
5. Installing GNU ports part 1.
Goto http://sourceforge.com and find the latest stable release of "fink" for mac os X. download and install it. There will be some questions to answer, just choose the defaults except if offered, ask it to get updates from CVS.
6. Install X-windows part 1 If you have 5 hours to you can wait, type in the terminal fink install xfree86-rootless this is preferred as it gets the latest release of a fast changing package. If you are in a hurry you can install the binary. Type sudo dselect Quick intro to dselect: after some preliminaries you are offered the chance to choose packages from a list. Use the down-arrow key to move down and find xfree86-rootless. Press the + key to select it. You will be offered "conflict resolution": accept the defaults by pressing return. Then return again to exit the selection. DO NOT GET GREEDY and select other packages yet. Finish the installation.
7. Installing X-windows part 2: the window manager You may prefer fvwm2 or some other window manager but take my advice and try out oroborus first. Oroborus does things the mac way, and later you will be glad you did even if its not familiar at first. Oroborus deliberately eschews many popular features, letting the OS provide those services. For example, if you want virtual screens you DO NOT want them as part of the windows manager! You want them as part of Aqua so that they apply to both aqua and to x-windows. Likewise you want the Dock to manage minimizing windows not the window manager. Go to http://apple.com click the OSX tab, then the downloads tab and find oroborus. Note: the oroborus that comes with Fink/dselect is not quite the same thing.
8. Installing GNU ports part 2. Use dselect or fink to install a few packages. Fink has about 2000 packages available including your favorite parts of kde and gnome. To see what's avalaible type fink list | more just for practice try installing gv (ghost view) and xemacs. Remember, dselect will install binaries (fast), and fink will install source (slow), generally dselect is a good idea. Once a month type "fink update-all" or update packages in dselect.
9. Text editor Goto http://www.barebones.com and get a free copy of bbedit "lite". I recommend buying the full version, especially to geeks. Note that you can save files in unix/mac/PC formats which have different end of line characters. Despite the name, on a mac you should normally use unix format. Mac mode is mainly for historic reasons but gums up unix commands. Even if this (amazingly) does not turn out to be your preferred editor, you should install it anyhow so that it is there for guests.
10. Mounting network disks You can mount NFS disks by creating a file that looks just like the usual/etc/fstab file. It does not matter where you put it since the mac will ignore it. To mount the disks type "sudo niload fstab" followed by the file path name. However, don't do this right away till you have more experience. Instead do the following. In the finder window, select go>servers. In the text field type nfs://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/hostpath Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address or domain name of the host with the disk, and/hostpath is the exported fs. The disk will be mounted in/Volumes and be "aliased" to the desktop. To mount windows network disks we use smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/path Be nice and unmount your disks (throw them in the trash) before disconnecting from the net.
11. using X windows across the network. All the usual stuff (like xhosts and DISPLAY) works as expected. However you do need to activate oroborus (which will fire up X-windows) since its not on by default. However, before you do this let me suggest an alternative you may find better. Goto http://apple.com and on the osx downloads page locate VNCdimension (or VNCthing) and install this application. On the X windows client, run vncserver. And on the mac attatch to it using VNC dimension. On anything but the fastest network connection you will find this smoother and faster than using x-windows. Plus its more secure and even runs through firewalls. At present much of X-windows on the mac is not graphics accelerated, but VNC dimension which runs in aqua is.
12. Shortcuts worth knowing about On your unix machine to run netscape you type/usr/bin/Netscape & on a mac you type open/Applications/Netscape to open the file browser at the current working directory type open . (note the period) to open a web page type open http://macosxhints.com
13. Pitfalls There are few pitfalls in the file system you need to know about early on. First be careful with cp,mv,rsync, and tar. For 99.9% of the time they work as expected. But a lot of mac applications and mac documents store info in something called the "resource fork" of a file. Unix files only have a single data fork. Mac files have a data and a resource fork. The data fork is the same as what you would see on the unix system. The resource fork can contain almost anything, but usually contains unimportant meta-information about the file itself like what app created it, and so on. But sometimes it contains crucial information (e.g quicken). When you do a unix cp or mv or tar all you get are the data forks. The rule of thumb is this: if your file can be used by a unix program then dont worry about the resource fork. Most modern mac apps do not use the resource fork but older ones do.
Second, mac filenames are case-insensitive but case preserving. Thus ReadME and readme are the same file.
Third, unfortunately, for backwards compatibility there are two different kinds of soft links on a mac. One is the usual unix soft link and the other is the "alias" function of the OS. The OS is smart enough to recognize the unix links and treat them as file aliases in the GUI. But the reverse is not true. Generally you are better off using the unix soft links.
Fourth, macs have three layers of file permissions where unix has one. Macs have the usual unix permissions. Plus there is an ability to lock a file against changes or deletion, and finally there is the ability to lock a file against modification even by root. generally you wont ever need either of the latter two, but you may someday find a file you cant seem to delete! just in case, the normal file lock is accessed via "get info"
Fifth, fstab, exports, shadowpassword, passwd, and most unix configs don't work the way you expect. Use the admin tools to alter netinfo configuration data. (see root below)
14. Thinking mac-like. First off you never need to touch the other mouse buttons outside of x-windows. Second, try to adopt apple applications where they exist to replace you current favorites. For example, use the mail.app instead of pine or Eudora. Sure these have nice features, but long term apple apps will stay more tightly integrated: for example, mail.app links to addressbook which links to iCal. Third, Chill-out dude. Macs force you to do things a certain ways with warning dialog boxes or focus-on-click windows. These are not worse than other ways, and long term you will come to see the benefits from the cross-application uniformity of operations. Unmount disks, especially network disks, by tossing them in the trash. (you may want to add an eject button to the finder menu)
15. Viruses, Worms, holes, etc... Regularly use the software update feature. Bugs get patched quickly. Historically, the only security holes you must stay on top of are Microsoft Internet Explorer holes, Microsoft Entourage/outlook holes, and Microsoft macro viruses. Don't bother worrying about anything else till you worry about these. Many people use Chimera for this reason.
16. Root If you read just one book try "mac OS X for unix geeks", most other books aren't for you because they are trying to explain unix to mac-heads. Avoid using root when you can use an admin tool or sudo instead. Apple has not fully document root admin, so stick with tools. Except don't ever play with netinfo manager or niload until you have a lot of experience, as there is no faster way to make your mac unbootable.
17. Goodies There are virtual window managers at mac OSX downloads. Try out Watson at http://www.karelia.com/watson/ Microsoft office X is a great program even if it is made by Microsoft. Scientific plotting: You may like Igor from wavemtrics.com since it has both command line and menu driven interface. Fink comes with R, Octave and Gnu-plot. Mathematicians may prefer mathematica. If you have a powerbook, put the dock on the left and make it small. Turn off autostart on OS 9.0 Discover iTunes. Consider a mac.com account Read http://macosxhints.com
Slashdot Mirror
mee too! on a power book. pages just explode onto the screen. No borders on the window and a very svelt tool bar mean maximum screen real estate for windows. Also a nice snap-back tool for going back ward to a marked point at a deep web site. sort of like a temporary bookmark.
its released under GPL not the apple open source lic.
It seems to be missing some sort of activity indicator (like the flashing N in netscape or the flashing lizard or the flashing E. This is a bit annoying since you dont know if you should click again or not when a link is sluggish
privacy freeks may note one missing cookie setting. it has
Always/Never/ and ONLY FROM SITES I NAVIGATE TOO (NO AD COOKIES). But it is missing an "always ask" setting. Not that I will miss it, but the paranoid may care.
This sounds too good not to be true. The little nuances, like a battery operated pen and the lucite stand make it sound like inside info.
But I seriously doubt Jobs is going to announce it tommorrow. If they were we'd have heard some hype like we did for the ipod and the imac.
This sounds like some disgruntled contractor that got to see a prototype thats 6 months for mproduction. It's telling that he says hes a power systems engineer and most of his comments concern things that eat power.
Um this story is still on the front page of slashdot in another article
AMEN, Parent is speaking the real truth. (except Steve Younger was more interested in reaserch than in production of nukes).
the hidden agenda behind this resignation. Too many people want to put their knives into the University of california contract. Local NM people want the admininstration for their own locally corrupt agenda, the anti-nuke people want to just kill the lab by any means, the POGO people just want publicity so they mis-report the true facts, and the Bush Admin wants to turn los alamos from a research facility in to a production facility replacing UC with a compiant, republican party donating, contractor.
The inventory control system is out of date and a new bussiness information system is about to be implemented. But inventory losses are NOT out of control as suggested by the press reports. And the fact that people are getting nailed for credit card fraud ought to tell you that PEOPLE ARE GETTING NAILED, not getting away with it.
basically the lab spends billions of dollars each year, its been in operation for over 50 years. And inventory is held on the books at purchase price, not at depreciated value. (a ten year old $8000 computer is held on the books at 8000$ not 0$ its true worth)
to have all of its inventory accounted for down to 141,000 dollars is frankly a miracle unlikely to be replaicated in any other institution of the same size (47 square miles).
what it really comes down to is a CLI and a good scripting language. Now windows machines claim to have a scripting language but to use it effectively you have to go through a GUI not a CLI thus network admin of unix machines is not for the faint of heart. This situation gets worse when you start trying to configure services (web servers, etc...) that also have GUI interfaces rather than text configureation scripts.
On the otherhand admin of linux across a net is pretty darn easy. When you start getting into having your main disks not be the local disks life gets even simpler in Linux.
On the otherhand, I suspect that the better a desktop machine becomes the more GUI administration is going to be important on linux. Consequently it may lose some advantages in fleets of desktops.
I agree with the post, I wish to see start times in month view (Yes I provided feedback to apple; lets hope other do to).
Another wish list feature is to be able to publish "anomynized" calendars that show when I'm in unavailable but not the name or meeting details. For example I'd like my published calendar to just show I was busy from 1-4:30 while my private calendar has the details like "1:00 Fire Wozniak", and "2:00 transgender support group".
The other "feature" I dislike is the tabbed info panel. You have to click on five tabs just to see what the meeting is, set the alarm, how often it repeats, and other details, and conact info, rather than just one big panel. Furthemore I cant just double click the entry to get the information I have to click the info button. I think someone just got too clever with the sexy look of the manager panel; too many mouse motions to browse your daily contacts. (click even time, click info button, click all 5 tabs, repeat for next event.)
I hate to admit it but MS entourage is currently a superior program. (of course I cant use its mail features for fear of dreadful MS security holes in its outlook mail engine)
I wish Apple would do this one right.
It;s been my observation that there is alot of knee jerk reaction to water conservation. Surface Water is in fact a renewable resource. It's not like oil which we are using up or trees that we cut faster than they grow. This is not true of water pumped from the ground. Thus water supply like money supply is sometimes hard to measure. For example, when a ski-area uses water rights to make snow are they really using water up? in fact they are doing everyone a favor by actually retaining the transient water flow for use in the spring and summer. Never the less currently they do need to purchase water rights in most states. Similarly, if I flush my toilet with river water, run it through a septic system or water treatment and then return it to the water have I caused any loss of water. (are all those low flow toilets addressing the right problem?). What if I shower too long, have I changed the amount of water for those down stream. Certainly the media would make you think so. So surface water rights are realy about water distribution. The city of albuquerque basically has the entire rio grand river flowing out its taps and through its sewer and back into the rio grande. the river actually goes vitually dry as it passes near albuquereque. the governement is telling them they are killing the fish and the city cant figure out how to solve the problem since they cant create more water. But the solution is pretty obvious isn't it/ just pump the outflow back up to the inflow. (or maybe a wee bit below it. THis of course costs money, but solves the problem. Rainfall distribution is obviously a primary source issue. It is the purest source of water available (ignoring acid rain). Tampering with this alters distribution. This fact and not the taking of water is the crucial issue. In most of the US it is illegal to redirect water from one basin to another. You cant pump water across the continental divide. and this is generally true locally. The big exceptions are the arizona and california water projects.
Relax and grab your towel, this is not new. Life forms on other planets have routinely attempted weather control when they become advance enough. Generally this is about 100 to 200 earth years after the discovery of radio technology.
By the way, this is also why the Seti project has been completely unsuccessful at detection other life forms since they are all dead.
It is also why, the people of planet beta-3 have told me to tell you earthbeings, not to fret about your water. they're going to exterminate you and water their lawns with your planet.
have a nice day, so long and thanks for all the fish.
--ford perfect.
Water rights and international accords for allocating them are nothing new. Many river cross boundaries. Even bitter enemies (e.g. middle east) often can at least come to accomodations they can accept even if they protest them.
On the other hand few things can get more bitter since the supply is inelastic and its use critical. We (the US) certainly dont give mexico one more drop of water than we absolutely have to.
In the werstern US states more than the eastern US or in europe, Water rights are in fact more critical and more precious because the water distibution is paradoxically plentiful where it existis yet generally sparse. In fact its more sparse than the typical homestead land grant. hence in days of yore the guy that homsteaded around the water source effectively owned everything as far as he wanted to (or till the next watering hole) regardless of the actual property boundaries.
In the US west we have very recently reached the elastic limit of the supply. Many places (e.g. santa fe new mexico) are pumping at an unsustainable rate (which by the way causes depletion that is also irrevrsable even if you quit pumping it). And california, which has routinely taken unused water rights form other sates can no longer do so and thus is actually going to experience not just a water limit but an actual deficit when those rights are asserted by others.
So now we come to the final frontier: rain allocation. My guess its that the moment the amount of rain taken from the skys reaches a value that causes a depression of rainfall eleswhere that is detectable on the scale of the annual varialtion, perhaps like 1 or 2% of the available rain, then there's gonna be a show down.
Since weather is generally west to east, the eastern states will be robbed. This also means it will propably show up first intra-nationally rather than internationally since in the americas the countries are mostly divided north-south more than east west (or when they are east-west there is a mountain range making the rain issue partly moot). Even europe may experience some pain because some scientist belive the gulf-stream is about to be overrun by colder artic "underwater" rivers. This should depress their expected rainfall. Good thing they formed the EU or theired be some fights.
Interestingly specualtors are already buying up land in many northern US states on the assumption they may get some sort of water right allocation.
Hey this is a remarkable slashdot social experiment. Sort of like when the traffic lights at a major intersection go out, and people learn how to regulate themselves. Or like when there's a blakcout and people rediscover conversation rather than TV
With the OLD IKE bombardment the moderators are using all their mod-points to down grade the OLD IKE posts. This is leaving, at least for a short period, the regular posts highly un -modded. as a result the threaded listing is quite flat, with only a few replys. You actually can pay attention to more comments and titles. and no one is pointing out what to read.
kind of interesting
APPLE STILL SELLS 15 INCH monitor imacs. THere is no way they have a 7 month inventory backlog on 15" panels, so the article cannot be correct about then being discontinued in june. On the other hand it is true that apple stopped selling 15" monitors. It's conceivable they might discontinue 17" monitors in lieu of just using 3rd party monitors. if their profit margin was slim this would be a shrewd move to drive down the price of the macs, while still retaining their premium 22" monitor offering.
the other flabbergasting thing in the movie is the science is correct in almost every detail. when val kilmers's character gets an inspiration for a new kind of laser its actually a really clever idea that could plausibly work. even the equations and potential energy functions he draws on the board are the ones uniquely correct for an excimer type laser
likewise while a phamicist might give out the wrong dosage perscription occasionally, if any bulk bottle were miss barcoded the computer would give out the wrong prescription every time. Moreover there's a chance the human pharmacist would actually write on the bottle the wrong dosage thereby giving the patient a chance to catch the error. the computer would just repeat the same error on the bar code onto the bottle.
Now obviously the drug manufacturer's themselves face the problem of getting the right pills in the right bottles all the time and I would guess rarely make mistakes. That is all automated and it works, because they have the resources to do it right. But taking the automation down to the local level is scarey to me. In addition to the possibilty of mistakes there is also the opportunity for maliscious or crimminal attempts. E.g. someone wants to steal some oxy codon, breaks in and accidentally re-orders the bottles. A human phamacist would at least detect the problem.
finally what happens at the major hospital when the power fails, or the computer crashes or the mechanism jams in an earthquake? will they have enough staff available to be called in to do it all by hand. Frankly I doubt it, as similar medical autmation disasters have happened when record keeping systems and test result automation have broken down.
I'm not trying to be a luddite here. But not only is the severity of the issue much larger than say a broken robot on a GM car line but the financial pressure to prematurely implement such a system is very high in the medical community.
here And a detailed explanation of how it was done here
here's a write-up of the mcdonalds contest scam here
other caltech stunts including the rosebowl score board prank, and the great barberpole theft. here
Remember the val kilmer movie Real Genious? Well that's about caltech. filmed there too. Most of the stunts in the side plot including turning dorms in to ice rinks, and mass producing burger king contest entries actually happened. Now those are stunts. Rent it.
And of course there are the classic stunts at caltech taking over the rosebowl. like the time they hacked into the score board and changed the teams to MIT and Caltech. Another time they replaced all of the audience half-time flash card with there own so that when all the cards were flipped instead of showing a stadium sized picture of a washington husky it showed a stadium sized caltech beaver. Both of these staunts were recorded on national TV.
Other stunts there I've read about include restriping a parking lot over night so as to make the spot reserved for a certain professor 'vanish'. Or replastering/painting a building wall overnight to make the doorway for a certain professor's office 'vanish'. Another time this same professor entered an elevator, the doors closed and a few moment later a trapdoor on the ceiling opened and filled the entire elevator with foam packing peanuts, then delivered the packaged professor to his floor. SInce I've met that professor since I know they are true.
I beleive The Power4 runs IBM's analog of the "altivec" instruction set. The altivec acts as a vector processor with a pipelinable 128 bit bus. that is 4 float multiply+add per instruction or up to 16 short int multipy+add per cycle.
On the other hand why not just buy Mac Xserves? Are these not exportable? Apple benches these things at 15 GigaFlops (sustained) in a 1U case. which means two 40 U racks of these would be a terraflop. Built in interconnections would be dual gigabit PLUS three 400 Mbit Firewire connections. All for the low-low price of $4000 per head or $320000 for 80 units.
heck for that matter, just buy those $199 G4 mother boards and the G4 chips and voila, even cheaper.
What am I missing here?
There are all sorts of possible useful uses. For example, a signal strength/direction finder for wireless connection displayed on the back of the ibook could help you orient it. Imagine that spagetti of cables in the back of your rack; now imiagine if the computer could selectively light up the sheeth of its ethernet cable to show you where it went. Also the patent says it could be in input device too. perhaps, an ipod could display a keyboard on its back surface. Or maybe a iTablet computer lacking a real keyboard could form a rudimentary keyboard on its back side.
I have often wanted just a small built in light for my keyboard on my notebook computer so I could see the keyboard with the roomlights off and not be blinded by the screens light.
How about a trackpad button that could segment itself into a three button mouse depending on where you pressed it.
how about just a load sensor, or something that showed you the state of the computer (like VM swap, talking to the firewire disk) or maybe if it told you if some other user was remotely logged in.
What if the computer turned oranged striped if it detected (somehow) that it had been stolen, or an un authorized log in was attempted.
finally, is there anyone who does not think the visualls that go on with iTunes are not stunning? maybe they can do something equally impressive here.
my last comment is this. it is only a short trip down the road before skinable color changing polymers allow video screens to be painted on all most anything in any shape, even flexible ones. That's when this idea will really take off. So this is just a precursor.
Before I launch into a wildly enthusiastic discussion of DLP, I just want to point out one amusing problem with Plasma TVs. They wont work over 6200 feet of elevation, which is where much of the soutwest US lives. I live at 7000 feet. bummer.
I have a Plus 800x600 DLP projector I use as my movie projector. I got it as a refurb unit for $1000. I normally project a 10 foot wide screen.
I've tried a couple of these things out so let me give you some tips.
First, if you are buying one to watch DVD movies then first DO NOT BUY an XGA or and SXGA model, instead buy the cheaper 800x600 model. Why? because it will look much better. the reason is simple, 800x600 is nearly perfectly matched to the resolution of a dvd. if you get a higher resolution projector, the machine will be forced to interpolate pixels, and this not only looks icky, by when things move in the picture the edges tear with the interlaced interpolation (some expensive interpolators do a slightly better job but they all suck compared to not interpolating). The nice part is it costs lesss for lower resoultion
second, the second most important spec is the contrast ration. get anything below 500:1 and you are wasting your money. You wont really notice the differenence until you see it side by side with a better projector. But what happens is you cant see any texture in dark clothing, hair or bright skies. I have an 800+ and I like it very much. Note because the manufacturer's lie about this spec consider all machines within 20% of the same number to be the same contrast.
third, the next most important spec is noise. Unless you have a way of locking this thing away from you, it's really distracting. get a quite one. For reason's I'm not too certain about it appears the DLP projectors run quieter than the LCD ones. I suspect this is because the DLP chip does not absorb light and thus runs cooler inherently.
fourth, While color saturation of LCDs is marginally better than DLPs, the contrast ratio way out ranks this. One thing you can do to get the best possible color saturation on a DLP is to look for one with a pure three-color wheel rather than a 3-color-plus-white wheel. Sometimes to squeeze more lumens out of these the manufacturers add a white-phase to the primary colors. this reduces the color saturation.
fifth, nearly ALL (not quite all) DLP projectors are made by a single company then re-branded in different cases with different feature sets or color wheels. PLUS is the name of this manufacturer. So dont be too picky about which manufacturer you buy from.
Lumens. THe more the merrier as long as you aren't sacrificing any of the above considerations. I'd say 800 was the minimum number and 1600 is very nice. you can of course make the screen smaller, and only project at nighttime or in a darkened room. Some people use special screens. these can almost double the effective brightness over a white wall. But white walls are actually nicer to work with than screens. screens tend to curl at the edges, cant adjust well to different aspect ratios and can ripple in the breeze (which produces a nice mind bending effect by the way), plus if they aren't fixed mounted they are a hassle.
Source: computers with RGB out put are MASSIVELY better than a DVD player. Dont even think about s-video output. (really, sont even think about it). THe downside with computer projectors is 1) the dvd software/hardware is much less forgiving of scratched dvds and 2) sometimes its hard to get good 5.1 dolby sound out put.
The main downside to DLP projectors over a TV is the lifetime ot the bulb. typcial bulb lifetimes are 1000 or 2000 hours, though you can figure maybe only half of that time will be at full power illumination. bulbs cost 250 - 500 depending on the model. that's plenty of time if all you watch is dvd's but if you want to waste hours and hours on TV shows then that's not a lot. On the other hand the DLP was a lot less cost than the plasma screen, so maybe you should not worry so much.
the good news is that probably by the time your first bulb burns out philips will probably have come out with 10,000 hour bulbs for your model (a few are out now).
So for my money, skip the plasma screen and go with a white wall and a DLP.
Parent poster is speaking through his hat. Nasa, and the national labs use tons of macs and also have high needs for biometric security. THis is a fact.
from the specifications page
...
ETRAX 100LX has almost everything you need included
* 32 bit 100MIPS RISC CPU core
* 10/100 MBit Ethernet controller
* 4 asynchronous serial ports
* 2 synchronous serial ports
* 2 USB ports
* 2 Parallel ports
* 4 ATA (IDE) ports
* 2 Narrow SCSI ports (or 1 Wide)
* Support for SDRAM, Flash, EEPROM, SRAM,
Just add power and and ethernet connection.
Quite an impressive package. Though in practice you would need to add more memory. But think about it, in the space of about 1/2 cubic inch you could cram memory, the chip, plus say a Microdisk. Expand that to the size of an IPOD and you could put in a lot of stuff, incuding the power supply
I'm not exactly how fast 100MIPS when comparing a RISC to say and Intel CISC that takes many clock cycles to complete on instruction. I'm assuming its probably slower than a 2 Ghz Pentium, but fast for an hand held.
<b>What Gets interesting is this: it dissipates 0.35 watts (typical)!!!!! </b>Let me say that again. It dissipates 0.3 Watts for 100MIPS. compare that to a typical Pentium Computer in the hundreds of watts range for a Gigahertz. This means you could have 600+ in a single 1U chasis dissipating the same amount of heat.
Time to really start thinking about parrallel software and computer deisgn. For easily paprlizable problems 600 of these ina 1U would destroy an entire rack of Pentiums while disspating so little power this could be just slipped under your desk, not in cooled computer room. Oh did one of the chips burn out--who cares, there's only 599 more.
So why is your music not wanted? Because there is no need created for it by marketing, my airplay, my feature stories, by high profile touring. And why dont you have these things? because they cost money
that's right, slash dotters, it costs money to create valuable marketing. So maybe you don t like marketing or the music industry telling you what to listen to. Here is what you do.
First ask your self why do I want to download this piece of music, why do I feel the need for it, and why am upset that they want to charge me 17$ for the CD in the store? Its because you feel the need for it. You dont feel the need for this poor no-name band that wants you to steel their music. You feel the meed for that metallica Cd, an Metallica wants you to to pay not steal.
So the bottom line is this, there is lots of free music from bands that want you to take trade P2P. But you dont want it. THe music you do want cost money. Since you wan tit has value, and they are entitled to sell it you for as much as they like. You dont have to pay, but it is stealing to just take it.
So dont steal, just take the music bands want for free. If you haven't heard of them by marketing well that's tought, that's part of what you were paying for when you bought the CD.
But please dont say you are trying to crush and oppressive music industry. That's crap. if you really wanted to crush them then trade P2p with this unknow bands work. if you aren't then your just a hypocrite. No better than a looter in a riot. You cant get caught but it does not make it right. Stop listening to bands that use marketing and charge money and you will have made your point ethically.
Yes steal software. free the hard work of others.
No I'm not trying to be a troll. I just find it absurd that people dont think it costs money to produce music, and that file trading is not stealing someone elses copyright. While many slashdot readers do infact want you to share their open source software, many many others earn their living making software and would be hurt if people just shared it.
Sorry to repost this but it gets tiresome to see the same misinformation out there. read on.
/Applications/Utilities. Drag the terminal.app to the Dock
/Users
/etc/fstab file. It does not matter where you put it since the mac will ignore it. To mount the disks type "sudo niload fstab" followed by the file path name. However, don't do this right away till you have more experience. Instead do the following. /hostpath is the exported fs. The disk will be mounted in /Volumes and be "aliased" to the desktop.
/usr/bin/Netscape & /Applications/Netscape
Dear Unix user, welcome to mac. If you trust me you will just do all of the following without asking why, before you start whining about features you miss. The following is a no-fat-added list of essential customization for unix users converting to the mac world.
1. The Mouse.
Go buy a 3 button USB mouse. Make sure you get an optical mouse with a wheel. Buy the most expensive one you can. Heriditary mac users prefer a 1 button mouse, but you wont.
2. The Terminal.
Open
3. File system journaling
Open the terminal.app and type
sudo diskutil enableJournal
Just do it. This can be undone and you can change how you want it later.
4. The Compiler
Regardless of what compiler you prefer, you need the native compiler and libs. Go to
http://developer.lanl.gov and register for free. Enter the site and select the downloads option. Scroll through the list till you find "developer tools", download and install it.
5. Installing GNU ports part 1.
Goto http://sourceforge.com and find the latest stable release of "fink" for mac os X. download and install it. There will be some questions to answer, just choose the defaults except if offered, ask it to get updates from CVS.
6. Install X-windows part 1
If you have 5 hours to you can wait, type in the terminal
fink install xfree86-rootless
this is preferred as it gets the latest release of a fast changing package.
If you are in a hurry you can install the binary.
Type
sudo dselect
Quick intro to dselect: after some preliminaries you are offered the chance to choose packages from a list. Use the down-arrow key to move down and find xfree86-rootless.
Press the + key to select it. You will be offered "conflict resolution": accept the defaults by pressing return. Then return again to exit the selection. DO NOT GET GREEDY and select other packages yet. Finish the installation.
7. Installing X-windows part 2: the window manager
You may prefer fvwm2 or some other window manager but take my advice and try out oroborus first. Oroborus does things the mac way, and later you will be glad you did even if its not familiar at first. Oroborus deliberately eschews many popular features, letting the OS provide those services. For example, if you want virtual screens you DO NOT want them as part of the windows manager! You want them as part of Aqua so that they apply to both aqua and to x-windows. Likewise you want the Dock to manage minimizing windows not the window manager.
Go to http://apple.com click the OSX tab, then the downloads tab and find oroborus.
Note: the oroborus that comes with Fink/dselect is not quite the same thing.
8. Installing GNU ports part 2.
Use dselect or fink to install a few packages. Fink has about 2000 packages available including your favorite parts of kde and gnome. To see what's avalaible type
fink list | more
just for practice try installing gv (ghost view) and xemacs.
Remember, dselect will install binaries (fast), and fink will install source (slow), generally dselect is a good idea. Once a month type "fink update-all" or update packages in dselect.
9. Text editor
Goto http://www.barebones.com and get a free copy of bbedit "lite". I recommend buying the full version, especially to geeks. Note that you can save files in unix/mac/PC formats which have different end of line characters. Despite the name, on a mac you should normally use unix format. Mac mode is mainly for historic reasons but gums up unix commands. Even if this (amazingly) does not turn out to be your preferred editor, you should install it anyhow so that it is there for guests.
10. Mounting network disks
You can mount NFS disks by creating a file that looks just like the usual
In the finder window, select go>servers. In the text field type
nfs://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/hostpath
Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address or domain name of the host with the disk, and
To mount windows network disks we use
smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/path
Be nice and unmount your disks (throw them in the trash) before disconnecting from the net.
11. using X windows across the network.
All the usual stuff (like xhosts and DISPLAY) works as expected. However you do need to activate oroborus (which will fire up X-windows) since its not on by default. However, before you do this let me suggest an alternative you may find better. Goto http://apple.com and on the osx downloads page locate VNCdimension (or VNCthing) and install this application. On the X windows client, run vncserver. And on the mac attatch to it using VNC dimension. On anything but the fastest network connection you will find this smoother and faster than using x-windows. Plus its more secure and even runs through firewalls. At present much of X-windows on the mac is not graphics accelerated, but VNC dimension which runs in aqua is.
12. Shortcuts worth knowing about
On your unix machine to run netscape you type
on a mac you type
open
to open the file browser at the current working directory type
open . (note the period)
to open a web page type
open http://macosxhints.com
13. Pitfalls
There are few pitfalls in the file system you need to know about early on.
First be careful with cp,mv,rsync, and tar. For 99.9% of the time they work as expected. But a lot of mac applications and mac documents store info in something called the "resource fork" of a file. Unix files only have a single data fork. Mac files have a data and a resource fork. The data fork is the same as what you would see on the unix system. The resource fork can contain almost anything, but usually contains unimportant meta-information about the file itself like what app created it, and so on. But sometimes it contains crucial information (e.g quicken).
When you do a unix cp or mv or tar all you get are the data forks. The rule of thumb is this: if your file can be used by a unix program then dont worry about the resource fork. Most modern mac apps do not use the resource fork but older ones do.
Second, mac filenames are case-insensitive but case preserving. Thus ReadME and readme are the same file.
Third, unfortunately, for backwards compatibility there are two different kinds of soft links on a mac. One is the usual unix soft link and the other is the "alias" function of the OS. The OS is smart enough to recognize the unix links and treat them as file aliases in the GUI. But the reverse is not true. Generally you are better off using the unix soft links.
Fourth, macs have three layers of file permissions where unix has one. Macs have the usual unix permissions. Plus there is an ability to lock a file against changes or deletion, and finally there is the ability to lock a file against modification even by root. generally you wont ever need either of the latter two, but you may someday find a file you cant seem to delete! just in case, the normal file lock is accessed via "get info"
Fifth, fstab, exports, shadowpassword, passwd, and most unix configs don't work the way you expect. Use the admin tools to alter netinfo configuration data. (see root below)
14. Thinking mac-like.
First off you never need to touch the other mouse buttons outside of x-windows. Second, try to adopt apple applications where they exist to replace you current favorites. For example, use the mail.app instead of pine or Eudora. Sure these have nice features, but long term apple apps will stay more tightly integrated: for example, mail.app links to addressbook which links to iCal. Third, Chill-out dude. Macs force you to do things a certain ways with warning dialog boxes or focus-on-click windows. These are not worse than other ways, and long term you will come to see the benefits from the cross-application uniformity of operations. Unmount disks, especially network disks, by tossing them in the trash. (you may want to add an eject button to the finder menu)
15. Viruses, Worms, holes, etc...
Regularly use the software update feature. Bugs get patched quickly. Historically, the only security holes you must stay on top of are Microsoft Internet Explorer holes, Microsoft Entourage/outlook holes, and Microsoft macro viruses. Don't bother worrying about anything else till you worry about these. Many people use Chimera for this reason.
16. Root
If you read just one book try "mac OS X for unix geeks", most other books aren't for you because they are trying to explain unix to mac-heads. Avoid using root when you can use an admin tool or sudo instead. Apple has not fully document root admin, so stick with tools. Except don't ever play with netinfo manager or niload until you have a lot of experience, as there is no faster way to make your mac unbootable.
17. Goodies
There are virtual window managers at mac OSX downloads.
Try out Watson at http://www.karelia.com/watson/
Microsoft office X is a great program even if it is made by Microsoft.
Scientific plotting: You may like Igor from wavemetrics.com since it has both command line and menu driven interface. Fink comes with R, Octave and Gnu-plot. Mathematicians may prefer mathematica.
If you have a powerbook, put the dock on the left and make it small.
Turn off autostart on OS 9.0
Discover iTunes.
Consider a mac.com account
Read http://macosxhints.com
Dear Unix user, welcome to mac. If you trust me you will just do all of the following without asking why, before you start whining about features you miss. The following is a no-fat-added list of essential customization for unix users converting to the mac world.
/Applications/Utilities. Drag the terminal.app to the Dock
/Users
/etc/fstab file. It does not matter where you put it since the mac will ignore it. To mount the disks type "sudo niload fstab" followed by the file path name. However, don't do this right away till you have more experience. Instead do the following. /hostpath is the exported fs. The disk will be mounted in /Volumes and be "aliased" to the desktop.
/usr/bin/Netscape & /Applications/Netscape
1. The Mouse.
Go buy a 3 button USB mouse. Make sure you get an optical mouse with a wheel. Buy the most expensive one you can. Heriditary mac users prefer a 1 button mouse, but you wont.
2. The Terminal.
Open
3. File system journaling
Open the terminal.app and type
sudo diskutil enableJournal
Just do it. This can be undone and you can change how you want it later.
4. The Compiler
Regardless of what compiler you prefer, you need the native compiler and libs. Go to
http://developer.lanl.gov and register for free. Enter the site and select the downloads option. Scroll through the list till you find "developer tools", download and install it.
5. Installing GNU ports part 1.
Goto http://sourceforge.com and find the latest stable release of "fink" for mac os X. download and install it. There will be some questions to answer, just choose the defaults except if offered, ask it to get updates from CVS.
6. Install X-windows part 1
If you have 5 hours to you can wait, type in the terminal
fink install xfree86-rootless
this is preferred as it gets the latest release of a fast changing package.
If you are in a hurry you can install the binary.
Type
sudo dselect
Quick intro to dselect: after some preliminaries you are offered the chance to choose packages from a list. Use the down-arrow key to move down and find xfree86-rootless.
Press the + key to select it. You will be offered "conflict resolution": accept the defaults by pressing return. Then return again to exit the selection. DO NOT GET GREEDY and select other packages yet. Finish the installation.
7. Installing X-windows part 2: the window manager
You may prefer fvwm2 or some other window manager but take my advice and try out oroborus first. Oroborus does things the mac way, and later you will be glad you did even if its not familiar at first. Oroborus deliberately eschews many popular features, letting the OS provide those services. For example, if you want virtual screens you DO NOT want them as part of the windows manager! You want them as part of Aqua so that they apply to both aqua and to x-windows. Likewise you want the Dock to manage minimizing windows not the window manager.
Go to http://apple.com click the OSX tab, then the downloads tab and find oroborus.
Note: the oroborus that comes with Fink/dselect is not quite the same thing.
8. Installing GNU ports part 2.
Use dselect or fink to install a few packages. Fink has about 2000 packages available including your favorite parts of kde and gnome. To see what's avalaible type
fink list | more
just for practice try installing gv (ghost view) and xemacs.
Remember, dselect will install binaries (fast), and fink will install source (slow), generally dselect is a good idea. Once a month type "fink update-all" or update packages in dselect.
9. Text editor
Goto http://www.barebones.com and get a free copy of bbedit "lite". I recommend buying the full version, especially to geeks. Note that you can save files in unix/mac/PC formats which have different end of line characters. Despite the name, on a mac you should normally use unix format. Mac mode is mainly for historic reasons but gums up unix commands. Even if this (amazingly) does not turn out to be your preferred editor, you should install it anyhow so that it is there for guests.
10. Mounting network disks
You can mount NFS disks by creating a file that looks just like the usual
In the finder window, select go>servers. In the text field type
nfs://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/hostpath
Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address or domain name of the host with the disk, and
To mount windows network disks we use
smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/path
Be nice and unmount your disks (throw them in the trash) before disconnecting from the net.
11. using X windows across the network.
All the usual stuff (like xhosts and DISPLAY) works as expected. However you do need to activate oroborus (which will fire up X-windows) since its not on by default. However, before you do this let me suggest an alternative you may find better. Goto http://apple.com and on the osx downloads page locate VNCdimension (or VNCthing) and install this application. On the X windows client, run vncserver. And on the mac attatch to it using VNC dimension. On anything but the fastest network connection you will find this smoother and faster than using x-windows. Plus its more secure and even runs through firewalls. At present much of X-windows on the mac is not graphics accelerated, but VNC dimension which runs in aqua is.
12. Shortcuts worth knowing about
On your unix machine to run netscape you type
on a mac you type
open
to open the file browser at the current working directory type
open . (note the period)
to open a web page type
open http://macosxhints.com
13. Pitfalls
There are few pitfalls in the file system you need to know about early on.
First be careful with cp,mv,rsync, and tar. For 99.9% of the time they work as expected. But a lot of mac applications and mac documents store info in something called the "resource fork" of a file. Unix files only have a single data fork. Mac files have a data and a resource fork. The data fork is the same as what you would see on the unix system. The resource fork can contain almost anything, but usually contains unimportant meta-information about the file itself like what app created it, and so on. But sometimes it contains crucial information (e.g quicken).
When you do a unix cp or mv or tar all you get are the data forks. The rule of thumb is this: if your file can be used by a unix program then dont worry about the resource fork. Most modern mac apps do not use the resource fork but older ones do.
Second, mac filenames are case-insensitive but case preserving. Thus ReadME and readme are the same file.
Third, unfortunately, for backwards compatibility there are two different kinds of soft links on a mac. One is the usual unix soft link and the other is the "alias" function of the OS. The OS is smart enough to recognize the unix links and treat them as file aliases in the GUI. But the reverse is not true. Generally you are better off using the unix soft links.
Fourth, macs have three layers of file permissions where unix has one. Macs have the usual unix permissions. Plus there is an ability to lock a file against changes or deletion, and finally there is the ability to lock a file against modification even by root. generally you wont ever need either of the latter two, but you may someday find a file you cant seem to delete! just in case, the normal file lock is accessed via "get info"
Fifth, fstab, exports, shadowpassword, passwd, and most unix configs don't work the way you expect. Use the admin tools to alter netinfo configuration data. (see root below)
14. Thinking mac-like.
First off you never need to touch the other mouse buttons outside of x-windows. Second, try to adopt apple applications where they exist to replace you current favorites. For example, use the mail.app instead of pine or Eudora. Sure these have nice features, but long term apple apps will stay more tightly integrated: for example, mail.app links to addressbook which links to iCal. Third, Chill-out dude. Macs force you to do things a certain ways with warning dialog boxes or focus-on-click windows. These are not worse than other ways, and long term you will come to see the benefits from the cross-application uniformity of operations. Unmount disks, especially network disks, by tossing them in the trash. (you may want to add an eject button to the finder menu)
15. Viruses, Worms, holes, etc...
Regularly use the software update feature. Bugs get patched quickly. Historically, the only security holes you must stay on top of are Microsoft Internet Explorer holes, Microsoft Entourage/outlook holes, and Microsoft macro viruses. Don't bother worrying about anything else till you worry about these. Many people use Chimera for this reason.
16. Root
If you read just one book try "mac OS X for unix geeks", most other books aren't for you because they are trying to explain unix to mac-heads. Avoid using root when you can use an admin tool or sudo instead. Apple has not fully document root admin, so stick with tools. Except don't ever play with netinfo manager or niload until you have a lot of experience, as there is no faster way to make your mac unbootable.
17. Goodies
There are virtual window managers at mac OSX downloads.
Try out Watson at http://www.karelia.com/watson/
Microsoft office X is a great program even if it is made by Microsoft.
Scientific plotting: You may like Igor from wavemtrics.com since it has both command line and menu driven interface. Fink comes with R, Octave and Gnu-plot. Mathematicians may prefer mathematica.
If you have a powerbook, put the dock on the left and make it small.
Turn off autostart on OS 9.0
Discover iTunes.
Consider a mac.com account
Read http://macosxhints.com