And the old "atoms are like solar systems" model is still wrong and not really all that useful. How many fifth graders have the "experience" of a solar system to relate it too.
It would be more useful and MUCH more correct to describe the electrons as a spherical cloud around the nucleus... or even like moths around a light.
Newtons three laws of motion and Newtons Law of Gravitation are still valid and useful on the scale that most fifth graders have any experience with. They only get weird at velocities near c (speed of light) and for gravitational masses greater than or equal to the mass of our sun. For the vast majority of phenomena Newtons laws work just fine to as many decimal places as the average fifth graders calculator can handle.
Certainly not everything has to be (or can be) learned at once. But it is couterproductive to teach people (even fifth graders) something they will have to UN-learn later on. Why not do it right in the first place?
Urm... it is more than "just a perl script". There are perl modules that work with RPM which autoupdate makes use of. Autoupdate also works with ftp.redhat.com and any set of mirror sites you care to name... which allows autoupdate to grab the latest "official" versions of updates as soon as they become available. It will also check vendor, MD5sums, size, GPG, etc... on each package. Does Fink do that yet?
In case you didn't catch it in my earlier posts... I USE OS X and have to support it for a large number of systems. I also use Fink and apt-get and dselect and whatnot on these systems. On one system I recently did a "fink self-update" and it took over 4 hours to complete. It also required some interaction from me at various points. Also, as far as I know, Fink does NOT download and install "official" updates from Apple nor regular.dmg style software packages. Fink is fine (if clunky) for maintaining a Fink installation... but what about all the other software on the Mac OS X box?
Yes... it is true that "OS X is Unix" but it is not also true that you can use all the same tools as with Linux with the same facility. For updating Mac OS X with packages from Apple you must use the Apple tools... for updating a Fink installation on a Mac OS X system you must use the Fink tools. These two "toolsets" have no common denominator, intersection, or shared data. They are exclusive and separate.
The specific advantage I get with autoupdate is that I can maintain a large number of systems of different types and versions... the entire system... with one single toolset.
Fink and Mac OS X are NOT THERE YET. Perhaps some day they will be... but not yet.
While they haven't specified what "Shield Technology " is yet... it seems to be nothing more than what most companies and people are doing already... attempting to filter attacks at the firewall. IOW nothing really new.
As they say in the article you linked a major part of the problem is that people just do not upgrade fast enough. It is debatable whether they can ever patch their systems fast enough. Mainly because the vast majority of virus definitions are after the fact. There will always be some window of vulnerability. Right now, for Swen and MSBlast, that window is over two months wide... as I am still receiving and quarantining those worms at firewalls.
One solution that may be effective, but still not _completely_ effective, is digital signing of binaries. If a binary does not have a recognized signature the OS will simply refuse to run it. The limitation here is there are still a lot of systems connected to the internet that are not upgraded on a regular basis and probably never will be. These neglected systems will always be a problem as long as they still exist. Eventually their numbers will drop so low that problems associated with earlier unpatched versions of Windows just become too sparse to sustain any sort of widespread problem.
I suppose there could also be a mechanism by which a system will only trust data from digitally signed systems and binaries......but this is beginning to sound like what they are proposing anyhow.
Couldn't find a link to a UofT site that DOES describe it... do you have one handy?
Diskless would be a very new trick for the Mac... any more info on that?
Have you ever actaully used Netboot for more than a dozen machines? (for any machines?) When we tried it it sucked. Perhaps things have changed in the past year. If this were the case we could order our new Macs without HDDs. For TU that would save about US$100,000.
Well nice of you to post the link to a tool I already use. I also used Macintosh Manager in earlier versions of Mac OS X server. Remember when Mac OS X server came with a little 30 page booklet and that was it for documentation? Now they have a 700 page manual which seems to mostly tell you to go to other pages in the manual. Ours is well thumbed.
I am familiar with the tools that are available from Apple for managing their servers. Apple is just now getting up to speed with these tools that have been available on Linux for quite some time. They have only recently added some of the features that we have had in Linux and other Unices for years. For example: adding a large number of users and groups from plain flat text files. Used to have to click and click and click... for each damn user.
If you have any experience doing server administration for a large number of users and groups you would know that the key is planning. The actual setup and running of the servers is pretty minor (given the right tools) compared to the planning stage.
I like Mac OS X, I use Mac OS X... in my opinion based on my experience it is not yet up to the same scalability and flexibility as Linux for servers and clients. It looks nice and has some nice apps and is getting there with the tools.
Incidentally... before someone pastes me ANOTHER link to something I already know about... or says something about a nice GUI interface for admin by someone with little training. I don't WANT someone to admin our servers with little training. I don't mind training them but I am not going to toss them in a room full of Xserves and tell them to set up a domain and whatnot. If you want GUI remote admin of Linux/Unix AND/OR Mac OS X there are already tools for that. See: http://www.webmin.com.
I use it. It is nice and all but it does not compare with the tools I have in Linux (and other Unices) so far.
For me to update 1 or 10,000 machines all I need to do is drop an RPM in a folder.... done. *If the clients are turned on they will automatically update. *If they are off (and I don't mean "sleeping") they will automatically be turned on and update and then shutdown. *If they are laptops they will update as soon as they connect to the LAN. *I can install system upgrades (not just applications) without disturbing the users. *I can install custom applications and custom applications to all machines or just to certain subsets. *All of this is logged so I know which machines have what and when they got it. *All the nasty RPM dependencies are automatically resolved per machine.
Can remotedesktop do the above?
When Mac OS X gets tools like http://freshmeat.net/projects/autoupdate/ I just might consider expanding its role where I work.
Pretty tough to install something that doesn't come as an RPM, dpkg, tarball, or whatever. But since you brought it up it is extremely to maintain thousands of machines based on those package management systems. Is it is easy with Mac OS X? I mean it is all very well that you can simply click on this and drag and drop to that... but do you want to have to visit ever single machine? Is there a remote package management system for Mac OS X that does not require visiting each machine or rdesking to each machine?
Incidentally, MS-Office and Photoshop run just fine on Linux using Codeweavers Crossover Office (http://www.codeweavers.com).
If you must have an iApp you must have a Mac. But how does one upgrade, say, iTunes on 1100+ Macs spread out over a large campus in less than 5 minutes? (I can (and do) upgrade applications in Linux this way).
OK I RTFAd and unless there has been a change in the fundamental laws of physics and the properties of electrical and magnetic fields then this whole thing is just BS. You can NOT get a varying magnetic field without also getting a varying electrical field. That is the way the physical universe works. If you can not vary the magnetic field... how are you going to send a signal from the transmitter to the receiver?
Gnome2 still has focus-follows-mouse. On my Red Hat 9 system (Bluecurve): Hat --> Preferences --> Window Preferences then check "Select windows when mouse moves over them". IIRC it was checked by default on my system.
Strange that they didn't bother to test serial ATA on the Mac vs serial ATA on the PC. Seems kinda bogus for them to use two different busses. Look up Serail vs Parallel ATA on a PC and you will see that kind of performance boost.
Last time I checked Apple is also running a somewhat "cooked" version of Bonnie for these tests.
I saw a similar setup to this back in the mid 80's and, as I recall, they were going to use it for air traffic control. Possibly be useful in the combat control center of an aircraft carrier also.
What do you expect?... it runs on MacOS. http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u =off&mod e_w=on&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tidbits.com%2F&submit =Examine
I have never figured out UI designers put icons on the desktop AND have panels/docks/whatever for launching apps. It seems redundant and confusing and they just get hidden or add to the clutter.
All versions of Mac OS and Windows do this AND they have menus. I have never liked it.
On my current desktop I have the terminals and applications I am running and a panel. If i need something that isn't running or a folder or whatever I don't have to go digging around under my currently running stuff. It is always in the same place in my panel.
Glass does NOT flow until heated above a certain point. Glass is an amorphous solid at ordinary room temperature... at that temperature it has ALL the properties of a solid and NONE of the properties of a liquid.
In MacOS9 throw your mouse in to the top left corner and click... nothing. Now I would have expected the Apple Menu to open but there are a few pixels to the left of the Apple Menu thingy that do nothing. So not even Apple can get it right. Or am I missing something? (other than the Apple Menu)
In any case... when I am using xterms I certainly do NOT want a poorly aimed click to close a window because it can cause me all sorts of grief. I also don't want a popup asking me if I really want to close it.
All-in-one PCs with LCDs have been around for a while. NEC and Sharp have had em on and off for years. Never got on the cover of Time magazine tho' The NEC one I saw a few years back went a few better than than the new iMac IMO. Other than the cords going out the back (Ethernet, Power) there was no extra clutter on the desktop.... wireless keyboard and mouse. With a wireless ethernet PC card one could get down to a single cable.
The new iMac is all very elegant and all... but suffers the same problems as the old iMacs... once you start hooking up devices to this sleek "digital hub" pretty soon you have a snarling mass of cables all over your desk and a few power strips encrusted with wall-warts. For this reason I prefer a system that goes under the desk with all cables going through a "cable valve" at the back of the desk.
As much as OS-X has a very lickable interface and some spiffy commercial apps ported to it already... the performance just plain sucks. It is slow, sloow, slooow... even with 512MB of RAM... even with all the updates. Windows and Linux will plain beat the pants off of it on Intel/AMD hardware.
I know Apple has something called Altivec, but have you ever used OS-X? Dunno what Altivec has to do with useablility but compared to a Windows/Linux box in a side by side comparison and you will see what I mean.
Linux-PPC is much faster and smoother than OS-X on Apple hardware.
Could also be that OS-X on Intel is faster and smoother than OS-X on Mac. I can't check this because I can't run the full OS-X on Intel. See: for a comparison of Linux vs OS-X.
I mean it is all very nice and all that they have Linux running a PDA but what use is it to me if it can only sync to a Windows desktop.
All the Linux based PDAs seem to have the same problem... Windows desktop only. I can understand that it requires a Windows desktop for economic reasons. I already have a PalmVx that has several Linux desktop environments to choose from and they work fine.
-DU-...etc...
Slashdot Mirror
Does Mac OS X Server have a well tested, near bulletproof backup solution for all those terrabytes of disks yet?
From what I have heard Retrospect doesn't quite cut it yet. What kinds of tape drives/robots are supported?
IMO If Apple doesn't have a backup solution, then they don't have a server solution. All they have is a way to lose more data.
-DU-...etc...
Urm... shouldn't references to "first powered flight" be modded down just like "first post"s? Seems to me that they amount to the same thing.
-DU-...etc...
Oh gimme a break!
The ONLY difference to you and yours is that you have to type three more letters to get what you used to get for nothing:
www.redhat.com - three letters + six letters = fedora.redhat.com
Nuff said.
-DU-...etc...
And the old "atoms are like solar systems" model is still wrong and not really all that useful. How many fifth graders have the "experience" of a solar system to relate it too.
It would be more useful and MUCH more correct to describe the electrons as a spherical cloud around the nucleus... or even like moths around a light.
Newtons three laws of motion and Newtons Law of Gravitation are still valid and useful on the scale that most fifth graders have any experience with. They only get weird at velocities near c (speed of light) and for gravitational masses greater than or equal to the mass of our sun. For the vast majority of phenomena Newtons laws work just fine to as many decimal places as the average fifth graders calculator can handle.
Certainly not everything has to be (or can be) learned at once. But it is couterproductive to teach people (even fifth graders) something they will have to UN-learn later on. Why not do it right in the first place?
-DU-...etc...
Urm... it is more than "just a perl script". There are perl modules that work with RPM which autoupdate makes use of. Autoupdate also works with ftp.redhat.com and any set of mirror sites you care to name... which allows autoupdate to grab the latest "official" versions of updates as soon as they become available. It will also check vendor, MD5sums, size, GPG, etc... on each package. Does Fink do that yet?
.dmg style software packages. Fink is fine (if clunky) for maintaining a Fink installation... but what about all the other software on the Mac OS X box?
In case you didn't catch it in my earlier posts... I USE OS X and have to support it for a large number of systems. I also use Fink and apt-get and dselect and whatnot on these systems. On one system I recently did a "fink self-update" and it took over 4 hours to complete. It also required some interaction from me at various points. Also, as far as I know, Fink does NOT download and install "official" updates from Apple nor regular
Yes... it is true that "OS X is Unix" but it is not also true that you can use all the same tools as with Linux with the same facility. For updating Mac OS X with packages from Apple you must use the Apple tools... for updating a Fink installation on a Mac OS X system you must use the Fink tools. These two "toolsets" have no common denominator, intersection, or shared data. They are exclusive and separate.
The specific advantage I get with autoupdate is that I can maintain a large number of systems of different types and versions... the entire system... with one single toolset.
Fink and Mac OS X are NOT THERE YET. Perhaps some day they will be... but not yet.
-DU-...etc...
While they haven't specified what "Shield Technology " is yet... it seems to be nothing more than what most companies and people are doing already... attempting to filter attacks at the firewall. IOW nothing really new.
...but this is beginning to sound like what they are proposing anyhow.
As they say in the article you linked a major part of the problem is that people just do not upgrade fast enough. It is debatable whether they can ever patch their systems fast enough. Mainly because the vast majority of virus definitions are after the fact. There will always be some window of vulnerability. Right now, for Swen and MSBlast, that window is over two months wide... as I am still receiving and quarantining those worms at firewalls.
One solution that may be effective, but still not _completely_ effective, is digital signing of binaries. If a binary does not have a recognized signature the OS will simply refuse to run it. The limitation here is there are still a lot of systems connected to the internet that are not upgraded on a regular basis and probably never will be. These neglected systems will always be a problem as long as they still exist. Eventually their numbers will drop so low that problems associated with earlier unpatched versions of Windows just become too sparse to sustain any sort of widespread problem.
I suppose there could also be a mechanism by which a system will only trust data from digitally signed systems and binaries...
Ah well, just a few rambling thoughts.
-DU-...etc...
Couldn't find a link to a UofT site that DOES describe it... do you have one handy?
Diskless would be a very new trick for the Mac... any more info on that?
Have you ever actaully used Netboot for more than a dozen machines? (for any machines?) When we tried it it sucked. Perhaps things have changed in the past year. If this were the case we could order our new Macs without HDDs. For TU that would save about US$100,000.
-DU-...etc...
Well nice of you to post the link to a tool I already use. I also used Macintosh Manager in earlier versions of Mac OS X server. Remember when Mac OS X server came with a little 30 page booklet and that was it for documentation? Now they have a 700 page manual which seems to mostly tell you to go to other pages in the manual. Ours is well thumbed.
I am familiar with the tools that are available from Apple for managing their servers. Apple is just now getting up to speed with these tools that have been available on Linux for quite some time.
They have only recently added some of the features that we have had in Linux and other Unices for years. For example: adding a large number of users and groups from plain flat text files. Used to have to click and click and click... for each damn user.
If you have any experience doing server administration for a large number of users and groups you would know that the key is planning. The actual setup and running of the servers is pretty minor (given the right tools) compared to the planning stage.
I like Mac OS X, I use Mac OS X... in my opinion based on my experience it is not yet up to the same scalability and flexibility as Linux for servers and clients. It looks nice and has some nice apps and is getting there with the tools.
Incidentally... before someone pastes me ANOTHER link to something I already know about... or says something about a nice GUI interface for admin by someone with little training. I don't WANT someone to admin our servers with little training. I don't mind training them but I am not going to toss them in a room full of Xserves and tell them to set up a domain and whatnot. If you want GUI remote admin of Linux/Unix AND/OR Mac OS X there are already tools for that. See: http://www.webmin.com.
-DU-...etc...
Umm... rdesktop == remotedesktop
I use it. It is nice and all but it does not compare with the tools I have in Linux (and other Unices) so far.
For me to update 1 or 10,000 machines all I need to do is drop an RPM in a folder.... done.
*If the clients are turned on they will automatically update.
*If they are off (and I don't mean "sleeping") they will automatically be turned on and update and then shutdown.
*If they are laptops they will update as soon as they connect to the LAN.
*I can install system upgrades (not just applications) without disturbing the users.
*I can install custom applications and custom applications to all machines or just to certain subsets.
*All of this is logged so I know which machines have what and when they got it.
*All the nasty RPM dependencies are automatically resolved per machine.
Can remotedesktop do the above?
When Mac OS X gets tools like http://freshmeat.net/projects/autoupdate/
I just might consider expanding its role where I work.
-DU-...etc...
Pretty tough to install something that doesn't come as an RPM, dpkg, tarball, or whatever. But since you brought it up it is extremely to maintain thousands of machines based on those package management systems. Is it is easy with Mac OS X? I mean it is all very well that you can simply click on this and drag and drop to that... but do you want to have to visit ever single machine? Is there a remote package management system for Mac OS X that does not require visiting each machine or rdesking to each machine?
Incidentally, MS-Office and Photoshop run just fine on Linux using Codeweavers Crossover Office (http://www.codeweavers.com).
If you must have an iApp you must have a Mac. But how does one upgrade, say, iTunes on 1100+ Macs spread out over a large campus in less than 5 minutes? (I can (and do) upgrade applications in Linux this way).
-DU-...etc...
OK I RTFAd and unless there has been a change in the fundamental laws of physics and the properties of electrical and magnetic fields then this whole thing is just BS.
You can NOT get a varying magnetic field without also getting a varying electrical field. That is the way the physical universe works. If you can not vary the magnetic field... how are you going to send a signal from the transmitter to the receiver?
-DU-...etc...
and got Gnu all over me.
-DU-...etc...
Name one where the config file has changed several times recently (or at all).
-DU-...etc...
Gnome2 still has focus-follows-mouse. On my Red Hat 9 system (Bluecurve): Hat --> Preferences --> Window Preferences then check "Select windows when mouse moves over them". IIRC it was checked by default on my system.
-DU-...etc...
Strange that they didn't bother to test serial ATA on the Mac vs serial ATA on the PC. Seems kinda bogus for them to use two different busses. Look up Serail vs Parallel ATA on a PC and you will see that kind of performance boost.
Last time I checked Apple is also running a somewhat "cooked" version of Bonnie for these tests.
-DU-...etc...
I saw a similar setup to this back in the mid 80's and, as I recall, they were going to use it for air traffic control. Possibly be useful in the combat control center of an aircraft carrier also.
Very cool idea but not really new.
-DU-...etc...
Yep... you are right. Cheap shot. It did go down awfully fast tho'
What do you expect?... it runs on MacOS.u =off&mod e_w=on&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tidbits.com%2F&submit =Examine
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_
In the Mac world that is what is known as a "hack". So people like Janie Porche are considered hackers.
I have never figured out UI designers put icons on the desktop AND have panels/docks/whatever for launching apps. It seems redundant and confusing and they just get hidden or add to the clutter.
All versions of Mac OS and Windows do this AND they have menus. I have never liked it.
On my current desktop I have the terminals and applications I am running and a panel. If i need something that isn't running or a folder or whatever I don't have to go digging around under my currently running stuff. It is always in the same place in my panel.
-DU-...etc...
Glass does NOT flow until heated above a certain point. Glass is an amorphous solid at ordinary room temperature... at that temperature it has ALL the properties of a solid and NONE of the properties of a liquid.
Interesting...
In MacOS9 throw your mouse in to the top left corner and click... nothing. Now I would have expected the Apple Menu to open but there are a few pixels to the left of the Apple Menu thingy that do nothing. So not even Apple can get it right. Or am I missing something? (other than the Apple Menu)
In any case... when I am using xterms I certainly do NOT want a poorly aimed click to close a window because it can cause me all sorts of grief. I also don't want a popup asking me if I really want to close it.
-DU-...etc...
All-in-one PCs with LCDs have been around for a while. NEC and Sharp have had em on and off for years. Never got on the cover of Time magazine tho' The NEC one I saw a few years back went a few better than than the new iMac IMO. Other than the cords going out the back (Ethernet, Power) there was no extra clutter on the desktop.... wireless keyboard and mouse. With a wireless ethernet PC card one could get down to a single cable.
The new iMac is all very elegant and all... but suffers the same problems as the old iMacs... once you start hooking up devices to this sleek "digital hub" pretty soon you have a snarling mass of cables all over your desk and a few power strips encrusted with wall-warts. For this reason I prefer a system that goes under the desk with all cables going through a "cable valve" at the back of the desk.
-DU-...etc...
As much as OS-X has a very lickable interface and some spiffy commercial apps ported to it already... the performance just plain sucks. It is slow, sloow, slooow... even with 512MB of RAM... even with all the updates. Windows and Linux will plain beat the pants off of it on Intel/AMD hardware.
I know Apple has something called Altivec, but have you ever used OS-X? Dunno what Altivec has to do with useablility but compared to a Windows/Linux box in a side by side comparison and you will see what I mean.
Linux-PPC is much faster and smoother than OS-X on Apple hardware.
Could also be that OS-X on Intel is faster and smoother than OS-X on Mac. I can't check this because I can't run the full OS-X on Intel. See: for a comparison of Linux vs OS-X.
I mean it is all very nice and all that they have Linux running a PDA but what use is it to me if it can only sync to a Windows desktop.
All the Linux based PDAs seem to have the same problem... Windows desktop only. I can understand that it requires a Windows desktop for economic reasons. I already have a PalmVx that has several Linux desktop environments to choose from and they work fine.
-DU-...etc...