"There is no faith in atheism, just as there is no colour in white. It represents a vacuum."
That's just not true. Atheists believe that there is no God. Atheists generally believe that the Scientific Method is the only way to prove something. Many atheists ignore that Science can't prove anything, it can only suggest what seems true at the moment. I certainly haven't seen any scientific proof of the lack of existence of God. I haven't even heard of an experiment that could be performed to verify or deny the existence of a supreme being and that could be demonstrated effectively to a group of living beings.
What requires a lack of faith is agnosticism. Well, a form of agnosticism. Proper agnosticism is "We cannot know if there is a God." Tone that down a little, or ratchet it up, depending on your perspective, and you have "I do not know if there is a God or not." This is not atheism.
Incidentally, this is Offtopic and should be moderated as such. Then again, so should the parent post.
One example would be encryption - you could, for example, use gpg to encrypt the packets, or whatever the latest hot encryption scheme is. If you want to change it, that's a simple task, since it's just software. You don't have to buy and install new hardware just to change the way the phone works.
And, of course I know that it would be impractical to do with the current VoIP systems, since a lost packet would cause no end of difficulty. I'm talking in an ideal world.
It wouldn't be necessary to do VoIP to do this, though. Special 'data-phones' could be made that start a call, check to see if there's a compatible phone on the other end, and start a data connection if so. Though that wouldn't be very high quality over a 56k modem, chances are, though you could get by a lot better with a specialized protocol that doesn't have the overhead of TCP/IP, I suspect. But really, I'm just making all this up, now.
It is not possible to create a system that cannot be tampered with. Just because you think you're clever now, does that mean that in 5 to 20 years, nobody more clever with better technology will come along and be able to break whatever security measures you've thought up?
On the other hand, it is possible to make a system that is at least as tamper resistant as the current system. In fact, in an earlier posting on a similar topic, I suggested such a system. I haven't done a proper risks analysis, but standard Project Management process would call for one, whether in voting or making a video game.
This system does not allow for internet voting, but I don't really care about people who can't make it to the voting booth. If they have a good reason, they can find another way to vote, and if they're too lazy, they shouldn't vote anyways.
I'm sure this is a fun way to pass the time with telemarketers, but I would be concerned that it is fraud. After all, you're getting personal information about the caller under false pretenses. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so I could be completely wrong.
A quicker way is to simply repeat no. It's easy, takes neither quick thinking nor preparation, and their scripts really can't deal with it.
Telemarketer: Hello, I am with X and I was wondering Me: No, I'm not interested. Thank you. Telemarketer: May I ask wh... Me: No. Telemarketer: But we cou... Me: No. Telemarketer: Thank you, have a good day. Me: Thank you. Good bye.
Or you could do what a friend of mine does and ask them what they're wearing, and if they'd take it off for you, etc.
Hundreds of thousands of people read it, because he's Prince
Exactly. They read it because he's Prince. I'm pretty sure that if you check my message, you'll see I said the same thing. "After all," I wrote, "it's Prince!"
On the other hand, that's something of a pre-disposed audience. It's not like they millions of teeming Prince fans are going to say, "That Prince sucks! I'm not going to listen to him now! It's time for me to turn to the philosophy of Nena."
I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that, because of his writing style, his audience is smaller than it could be, but more devoted to his every word. After all, if you have to wade through all the numbers-instead-of-words, then you must be pretty devoted. If he says something interesting, that's a welcome coincidence. But I'm not going to do any research on it, so I don't really care if I'm right on that point or not.
Of course, my other points were the important ones. That first one, about grammar and all, that was just put on a) because it annoyed me; and b) because it made a good segue into the rest of the points.
Grammar matters. It doesn't matter how clearly you are thinking, if you don't even try to put effort into pretending like you aren't a pre-teen kid on an SMS pager, then people aren't going to read what you have to say. Oh, sure, some will, just because they think it's counter-cutural and cool. After all, it's Prince!
Which leads me to my next point: if all we had to do was tell future generations the proper way to think, parenting (and ruling, for that matter) would be a breeze. The problem is, people, especially young people, rebel. They don't want to follow the views of the previous generation. Sometimes it's because the previous generation was messed up, but mostly it's because they want to make their own way in the world. Oh, not everyone, but enough to make a difference.
You don't have to teach people the intrinsic value of creativity. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but creativity isn't going to go away just because they weren't taught. Creating something is hard. The easiest way to find that out is not for people to tell you, because what do they know? People are stupid. Of course they can't create. No, you learn because you try to make something, and what you make, in a word, sucks. So you try again. And again. And you keep it up until you get it right or you get sick of trying. Either way, you learn what it takes to make something.
People have self-interest. They're going to realize that the laws and traditions that were there in the first place were their to protect creations like the ones that they make, or that they can't make. So, many times, they will be in support of those laws and traditions.
Of course, things go in waves. There'll be a weakening of some social conventions, and later they'll come back, because the forces that created them in the first place still exist. I'm sure for a while we'll be pirating songs and pillaging corporations and raping artists, but, for a while, it'll settle down again. Unless there's some serious social upheaval, of course, but then you just have to adjust your frame of reference from years and decades to centuries or so.
I am a regular OS X user, but the only times I've needed wireless I've had Airport. Since my primary machine is my work machine, and my time is more valuable to the company than the difference in cost, it was a pretty easy decision to go with the Airport card.
All right, perhaps I'm just out of it, what with the long weekend at all, but would it kill people to perhaps submit what things are rather than simply the name of the program? I understand that Wireless Drivers are probably some sort of drivers for wireless products, but what kind of wireless products? Non-airport 802.11? Bluetooth? Some sort of GSM direct-access? Creating a software circuit that allows you to receive FM Radio transmissions?
Oh, maybe I could find out from the SourceForge link (and eventually I did, but it took some finding, since my first inclination was to go to FAQ rather than Home), but maybe a quick "Hey, WirelessDrivers, which is, according to the SourceForge home page
The WirelessDriver is an open source driver supporting Prism/Prism2 wireless cards such as the WaveLAN/ORiNOCO, Cabletron, SkyLINE and D-link PCMCIA cards for use with MacOS X and the Darwin operating system from Apple.
etc.
Or at least a direct link to what it is, rather than having to go to the site and then look around. Yeah, I know, I'm lazy, but it's a lot easier for the poster to make the information easily accessible than to have everyone who doesn't know what the thing does have to look around for it.
Incidentally, the "war-" prefix either comes from "wardialing" or is an acronym for "Wireless Access Reconaissance," depending on how politically-correct you feel like being.
If you're going to point out that it's based on Wardialing, you might also mention that Wardiling itself comes from the movie WarGames, where the a young Mr. Broderick finds an unsecured telephone line to a military computer by setting his computer to dial a sequence of numbers.
This is, as other posters mentioned, much too complicated. Why use a touch screen at all, when you could use, I dunno, a piece of metal that you stick into a slot. The metal closes a circuit, a light lights up, and your vote is made. Once you're done, you could hit a "Yes, this is my vote" or "Start over" buttons, just in case everything is not correct. A simple counter mechanism could be used, and, if you want, you could print a copy to match your vote. This way, in a recount situation, you have a backup of the same caliber as the existing voting method.
The nice thing about the above system is that, except for the printing, it could be prototyped by anyone with undergraduate EE skills. The circuits are dead simple, it adds speed to the counting process, it allows for double checking of results, and it doesn't require the voter to learn new skills.
With all those things going for it, there must be something wrong with the idea.
The five machines that Jaguar will be installed on under this license have allready brought money to Apple. I'm sure that they don't like people to pirate their OS, but they surely aren't going to lose sleep if somebody does it. They are, after all, a hardware company.
That's an interesting theory, but economically it only works if developing an Operating System is essentially free. After all, the machines could be years old, so their money is already banked. In order to pay for the OS development, people have to pay for the OS.
Granted, Apple has less risk than Microsoft because Apple sells something other than the Operating System. But it's analogous to saying that Microsoft shouldn't worry about people pirating Office because they've already had to pay for a copy of Windows. Different departments have different budgets and different sources of revenue.
My ex-workmate is rather convinced that changes like this are caused by the NT7 asteroid which, he believes, will shift earth's magnetism that everything will basicly destroy.
Are modern G4 towers quieter and/or cooler than comparable x86 workstations?
I do believe so. I recall some seriously loud fans on my roommates computers, and my DP 800 isn't nearly that loud. But I haven't done a scientific comparison by any means.
Is it wiser to spend money on memory or megahertz?
Depends on what you need it for. You will need at least 512 MB RAM. If you want super-fast processing, then spend the spare money on MHz, since it's tough to upgrade the macs for processor later. It's not so tricky with RAM.
Is it best to buy everything directly from Apple, or just a minimum to be fleshed out with cheaper, after-market add-ons?
With RAM, not Apple for sure. Everything else in the computer itself, go with Apple. You can get plenty better prices with after-market RAM.
What's the best video option for dual-head on Jaguar?
I'll be getting the GeForce4 Ti with the new machines I'll be ordering. It has two monitor inputs, and will work with the Quartz Extreme acceleration.
Does OS X make SMP worth the investment?
Depends on how much your time is worth. 2 1 GHz Processors will be slower than 1 2 GHz processor, but it's still plenty fast in OS X. If you want speed, get the Dual Processors. They are certainly nice.
Is the SCSI performance gain great enough to be worth the investment over IDE?
If you're not running a server, and you're not some anti-IDE frea...I mean, pro-SCSI evangelist, then no, don't bother with SCSI. for day to day use, IDE is well worth the price. SCSI is more reliable, and it has advantages in being full-duplex apparently, but I haven't run into any bottlenecks using it for my needs, which is print publishing.
I thought the idea of an RPG is that you get to play different roles. I'm inferring from this preview that you only get to be a Jedi or Sith, with extra capabilities supplied by a a couple of AI henchmen.
Actually, not really. The idea behind a Roleplaying Game is that you get to play a role different from the one you play in real life.
On a more technical note, a Roleplaying Game is a game that has increasing skills based on how you play. In a D&D style game, it's usually Stats based on experience points, but the mechanism can vary wildly. In an adventure game, which is similar to an RPG, the skills don't usually increase, though you'll often receive items or special abilities to change the game mechanic somewhat. The main difference is it's not so much how you play in an adventure game, it's what you collect. There isn't as much variation.
Of course, this is just for computer or console based RPGs. Paper RPGs are certainly different, and usually heavier on the role-playing aspect, unless you're playing with all of your 13-year old friends who just want to make their characters the most powerful characters ever.
This reminds me of the first time I went to SIGGraph, the big convention for computer art geeks. It was really cool, since there were lots of high-end toys to play with. It was about 6 years ago, and VR was really big at the time. Everyone had some sort of poor headset display that would make you sick or give you a headache. Many people had special "3D input devices" like a mouse with a stick at the end that you drew NURBS in real time or somesuch.
Anyways, the other really big thing were the motion-captured, live 3D actors. They'd project an avatar of someone up onto a big screen, and have them try to talk to hold conversations with you and the like. It was actually kind of annoying.
As near as I can tell, he's saying that Apple is the only innovator in the entire computer industry, and that computers are only worth using if they from how they work currently. He's using your basic Shock Jock technique of yellow journalism to generate controversy (Oooh, I'll pick on Apple and people will yap for days about this one!). And, look, it's worked. I've subbed some words in the article to try to put things in perspective:
----- Isn't it about time the Personal Computer was simply discontinued--put down like an old dog? Why, exactly, does everyone maintain this type of machine instead of starting fresh or at least introducing something new with fresh legs. The computer has become the horse of electronics, except for the fact that it's prettier. Of course, if nobody ever moves forward, what happens to the television?
I'm not writing this column as a computer basher to get attention, although plenty of people will accuse me of doing that. I recently noticed a lull in the computer buzz, however, and I'm now beginning to see the personal computer as an old hound that can't hunt.
Let's look at the recent computer offerings. The industry made the PC available to the public after initially saying nobody would ever buy it. The PC is the desktop version of the mainframe, and similar to the original mini-computer, built with a display in a small package. The company also rolled out some beefy computers for tech-heads who like running massive Web sites with PC technology. The obvious next iteration of the computer will be the current l33t-looking PC with a bigger screen and probably new colors. After that, what is the industry going to do?
Remember that in 80's the PC arrived amidst a flurry of experimental activity, much of which was triggered by the Commodore Pet. IBM PC-Jr was designed with ideas lifted from the Eniac. The PC-AT was an improvement, but apparently there hasn't been a new idea since.
[...] [Getting lazy]
Having said that, why can't the industry take its genius to the next level and bring out a completely new machine that is not a Personal Computer? The answer is obvious if we look at recent history and compare it to the era when the PC was invented. Here's the problem. This supposedly creative business of high technology has invented nothing that compares with the IBM PC-AT in over 20 years. All the R&D money has been diverted, mismanaged, killed by zealous bean counters, or simply wasted. Most of the big R&D labs have been closed or cut back. All the R&D seems to be in semiconductor technologies, which is because that particular business is more of a psychopathic rat-race than anything else and you get eaten by the rats if you miss a step.
So perhaps I have answered my own question regarding putting down the old dog called PC. The industry has nothing it could possibly replace it with. There is no new idea out there short of a talking computer. And the technology for the talking computer is decades away.
In fact, the old dog will not be shot, but up with hormones, and patched with reconstructive surgery, instead. The PC will go in the only direction possible: big design. The next era will be like the car business in the 1950's. Lots of chrome, big fins, and a new model every year. Form over substance. ---
Quantum entanglement allows what Einstein termed a "spooky interaction" at a distance between two objects at the speed of light.
This seems great. I mean, what we have here seems to be taking a beam of light and transferring it to someplace else, and this is the clever part, at the speed of light. Woo woo!
Personally, I can't wait for them to do the same with matter. Perhaps they could take me apart and send me to McDonalds at 25 MPH. That would be fantastic!
This is very true. Single User Mode grants root privileges without requiring a password. Being able to reset the password with the OS X CD is also an issue, though one that can be worked around with the new Open Firmware password, I believe.
Personally, I think there should be a secure option in OS X, that allows you to disable the various methods of password resetting. Of course, the clever and knowledgeable user will be able to bypass any of those, since there's always a way around security if you have physical access to the computer itself.
Fortunately, my roommates are very rarely that knowledgeable about macs and unix. Also, I don't really have anything of import on my computer. I just never liked pretending to have security that could be defeated by booting into OS 9. It was the same in the pre-X days, where most of the security programs relied on people not having a standard boot floppy. It's just wasteful to have to be bothered typing in a password if the security is too easy to crack.
That's the thing; my system drive isn't UFS. I have 5 partitions: 1) OS9 - HFS+; 2) OSX - HFS+; 3) User - UFS; 4) Swap 1 - HFS+; 5) Swap 2 - HFS+.
This way, the user data is protected, and all the apps work properly. Swap 1 is a system swap, and Swap 2 is for applications like Photoshop that have their own swap files.
First, naturally, you have to partition your hard drive. This can be done with Apple's Disk Tool. After that, check out this tip at Mac OSX Hints. There's an alternate method linked to within that hint, so you'll have your option of which way to go. I've modifed the location of the User directories in NetInfo, rather than a symlink, because it's my home machine and I don't expect to add a lot of different users.
Anyone who has keys. Such as roommates. Not that they necessarily will, but why should I have to worry about it? Besides, at least half of it is an intellectual exercies.
I have UFS for my User partition, and all of the rest of my partitions are HFS+. The reason for this is that, if you boot in OS 9, all of your permissions are ignored, and anyone can waltz into your hard drive and play around. UFS isn't readable by OS 9, so no worries there.
I haven't really had any problems with my setup. Maybe there are some things I'll find the more I use it, but I've had this setup for months, and I haven't really noticed anything. But I certainly wouldn't format my system partition UFS. I tried that once, and it didn't work for non-server use at all. Mostly because, if something went wrong with the hard drive, I didn't have a boot disc that could do anything about it. That probably isn't a problem with things like the new HD tool from Micromat, but at the time it was a pain.
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That's just not true. Atheists believe that there is no God. Atheists generally believe that the Scientific Method is the only way to prove something. Many atheists ignore that Science can't prove anything, it can only suggest what seems true at the moment. I certainly haven't seen any scientific proof of the lack of existence of God. I haven't even heard of an experiment that could be performed to verify or deny the existence of a supreme being and that could be demonstrated effectively to a group of living beings.
What requires a lack of faith is agnosticism. Well, a form of agnosticism. Proper agnosticism is "We cannot know if there is a God." Tone that down a little, or ratchet it up, depending on your perspective, and you have "I do not know if there is a God or not." This is not atheism.
Incidentally, this is Offtopic and should be moderated as such. Then again, so should the parent post.
=Brian
Postfix - n. A suffix.
Besides, the symmetry works better, pre- to post-.
=Brian
And, of course I know that it would be impractical to do with the current VoIP systems, since a lost packet would cause no end of difficulty. I'm talking in an ideal world.
It wouldn't be necessary to do VoIP to do this, though. Special 'data-phones' could be made that start a call, check to see if there's a compatible phone on the other end, and start a data connection if so. Though that wouldn't be very high quality over a 56k modem, chances are, though you could get by a lot better with a specialized protocol that doesn't have the overhead of TCP/IP, I suspect. But really, I'm just making all this up, now.
=Brian
On the other hand, it is possible to make a system that is at least as tamper resistant as the current system. In fact, in an earlier posting on a similar topic, I suggested such a system. I haven't done a proper risks analysis, but standard Project Management process would call for one, whether in voting or making a video game.
This system does not allow for internet voting, but I don't really care about people who can't make it to the voting booth. If they have a good reason, they can find another way to vote, and if they're too lazy, they shouldn't vote anyways.
=Brian
A quicker way is to simply repeat no. It's easy, takes neither quick thinking nor preparation, and their scripts really can't deal with it.
Telemarketer: Hello, I am with X and I was wondering
Me: No, I'm not interested. Thank you.
Telemarketer: May I ask wh...
Me: No.
Telemarketer: But we cou...
Me: No.
Telemarketer: Thank you, have a good day.
Me: Thank you. Good bye.
Or you could do what a friend of mine does and ask them what they're wearing, and if they'd take it off for you, etc.
=Brian
Exactly. They read it because he's Prince. I'm pretty sure that if you check my message, you'll see I said the same thing. "After all," I wrote, "it's Prince!"
On the other hand, that's something of a pre-disposed audience. It's not like they millions of teeming Prince fans are going to say, "That Prince sucks! I'm not going to listen to him now! It's time for me to turn to the philosophy of Nena."
I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that, because of his writing style, his audience is smaller than it could be, but more devoted to his every word. After all, if you have to wade through all the numbers-instead-of-words, then you must be pretty devoted. If he says something interesting, that's a welcome coincidence. But I'm not going to do any research on it, so I don't really care if I'm right on that point or not.
Of course, my other points were the important ones. That first one, about grammar and all, that was just put on a) because it annoyed me; and b) because it made a good segue into the rest of the points.
=Brian
Of course, things go in waves. There'll be a weakening of some social conventions, and later they'll come back, because the forces that created them in the first place still exist. I'm sure for a while we'll be pirating songs and pillaging corporations and raping artists, but, for a while, it'll settle down again. Unless there's some serious social upheaval, of course, but then you just have to adjust your frame of reference from years and decades to centuries or so.
=Brian
Well, that and it came with the Powerbook. Heh.
=Brian
etc.Oh, maybe I could find out from the SourceForge link (and eventually I did, but it took some finding, since my first inclination was to go to FAQ rather than Home), but maybe a quick "Hey, WirelessDrivers, which is, according to the SourceForge home page
Or at least a direct link to what it is, rather than having to go to the site and then look around. Yeah, I know, I'm lazy, but it's a lot easier for the poster to make the information easily accessible than to have everyone who doesn't know what the thing does have to look around for it.
=Brian
If you're going to point out that it's based on Wardialing, you might also mention that Wardiling itself comes from the movie WarGames, where the a young Mr. Broderick finds an unsecured telephone line to a military computer by setting his computer to dial a sequence of numbers.
=Brian
The nice thing about the above system is that, except for the printing, it could be prototyped by anyone with undergraduate EE skills. The circuits are dead simple, it adds speed to the counting process, it allows for double checking of results, and it doesn't require the voter to learn new skills.
With all those things going for it, there must be something wrong with the idea.
=Brian
Granted, Apple has less risk than Microsoft because Apple sells something other than the Operating System. But it's analogous to saying that Microsoft shouldn't worry about people pirating Office because they've already had to pay for a copy of Windows. Different departments have different budgets and different sources of revenue.
=Brian
=Brian
I do believe so. I recall some seriously loud fans on my roommates computers, and my DP 800 isn't nearly that loud. But I haven't done a scientific comparison by any means.
Is it wiser to spend money on memory or megahertz?
Depends on what you need it for. You will need at least 512 MB RAM. If you want super-fast processing, then spend the spare money on MHz, since it's tough to upgrade the macs for processor later. It's not so tricky with RAM.
Is it best to buy everything directly from Apple, or just a minimum to be fleshed out with cheaper, after-market add-ons?
With RAM, not Apple for sure. Everything else in the computer itself, go with Apple. You can get plenty better prices with after-market RAM.
What's the best video option for dual-head on Jaguar?
I'll be getting the GeForce4 Ti with the new machines I'll be ordering. It has two monitor inputs, and will work with the Quartz Extreme acceleration.
Does OS X make SMP worth the investment?
Depends on how much your time is worth. 2 1 GHz Processors will be slower than 1 2 GHz processor, but it's still plenty fast in OS X. If you want speed, get the Dual Processors. They are certainly nice.
Is the SCSI performance gain great enough to be worth the investment over IDE?
If you're not running a server, and you're not some anti-IDE frea...I mean, pro-SCSI evangelist, then no, don't bother with SCSI. for day to day use, IDE is well worth the price. SCSI is more reliable, and it has advantages in being full-duplex apparently, but I haven't run into any bottlenecks using it for my needs, which is print publishing.
Hope this helps
=Brian
On a more technical note, a Roleplaying Game is a game that has increasing skills based on how you play. In a D&D style game, it's usually Stats based on experience points, but the mechanism can vary wildly. In an adventure game, which is similar to an RPG, the skills don't usually increase, though you'll often receive items or special abilities to change the game mechanic somewhat. The main difference is it's not so much how you play in an adventure game, it's what you collect. There isn't as much variation.
Of course, this is just for computer or console based RPGs. Paper RPGs are certainly different, and usually heavier on the role-playing aspect, unless you're playing with all of your 13-year old friends who just want to make their characters the most powerful characters ever.
=Brian
This reminds me of the first time I went to SIGGraph, the big convention for computer art geeks. It was really cool, since there were lots of high-end toys to play with. It was about 6 years ago, and VR was really big at the time. Everyone had some sort of poor headset display that would make you sick or give you a headache. Many people had special "3D input devices" like a mouse with a stick at the end that you drew NURBS in real time or somesuch.
Anyways, the other really big thing were the motion-captured, live 3D actors. They'd project an avatar of someone up onto a big screen, and have them try to talk to hold conversations with you and the like. It was actually kind of annoying.
=Brian
As near as I can tell, he's saying that Apple is the only innovator in the entire computer industry, and that computers are only worth using if they from how they work currently. He's using your basic Shock Jock technique of yellow journalism to generate controversy (Oooh, I'll pick on Apple and people will yap for days about this one!). And, look, it's worked. I've subbed some words in the article to try to put things in perspective:
-----
Isn't it about time the Personal Computer was simply discontinued--put down like an old dog? Why, exactly, does everyone maintain this type of machine instead of starting fresh or at least introducing something new with fresh legs. The computer has become the horse of electronics, except for the fact that it's prettier. Of course, if nobody ever moves forward, what happens to the television?
I'm not writing this column as a computer basher to get attention, although plenty of people will accuse me of doing that. I recently noticed a lull in the computer buzz, however, and I'm now beginning to see the personal computer as an old hound that can't hunt.
Let's look at the recent computer offerings. The industry made the PC available to the public after initially saying nobody would ever buy it. The PC is the desktop version of the mainframe, and similar to the original mini-computer, built with a display in a small package. The company also rolled out some beefy computers for tech-heads who like running massive Web sites with PC technology. The obvious next iteration of the computer will be the current l33t-looking PC with a bigger screen and probably new colors. After that, what is the industry going to do?
Remember that in 80's the PC arrived amidst a flurry of experimental activity, much of which was triggered by the Commodore Pet. IBM PC-Jr was designed with ideas lifted from the Eniac. The PC-AT was an improvement, but apparently there hasn't been a new idea since.
[...] [Getting lazy]
Having said that, why can't the industry take its genius to the next level and bring out a completely new machine that is not a Personal Computer? The answer is obvious if we look at recent history and compare it to the era when the PC was invented. Here's the problem. This supposedly creative business of high technology has invented nothing that compares with the IBM PC-AT in over 20 years. All the R&D money has been diverted, mismanaged, killed by zealous bean counters, or simply wasted. Most of the big R&D labs have been closed or cut back. All the R&D seems to be in semiconductor technologies, which is because that particular business is more of a psychopathic rat-race than anything else and you get eaten by the rats if you miss a step.
So perhaps I have answered my own question regarding putting down the old dog called PC. The industry has nothing it could possibly replace it with. There is no new idea out there short of a talking computer. And the technology for the talking computer is decades away.
In fact, the old dog will not be shot, but up with hormones, and patched with reconstructive surgery, instead. The PC will go in the only direction possible: big design. The next era will be like the car business in the 1950's. Lots of chrome, big fins, and a new model every year. Form over substance.
---
=Brian
I dunno, I'm told it feels an awful lot like being drunk.
=Brian
This seems great. I mean, what we have here seems to be taking a beam of light and transferring it to someplace else, and this is the clever part, at the speed of light. Woo woo!
Personally, I can't wait for them to do the same with matter. Perhaps they could take me apart and send me to McDonalds at 25 MPH. That would be fantastic!
=Brian
This is very true. Single User Mode grants root privileges without requiring a password. Being able to reset the password with the OS X CD is also an issue, though one that can be worked around with the new Open Firmware password, I believe.
Personally, I think there should be a secure option in OS X, that allows you to disable the various methods of password resetting. Of course, the clever and knowledgeable user will be able to bypass any of those, since there's always a way around security if you have physical access to the computer itself.
Fortunately, my roommates are very rarely that knowledgeable about macs and unix. Also, I don't really have anything of import on my computer. I just never liked pretending to have security that could be defeated by booting into OS 9. It was the same in the pre-X days, where most of the security programs relied on people not having a standard boot floppy. It's just wasteful to have to be bothered typing in a password if the security is too easy to crack.
=Brian
That's the thing; my system drive isn't UFS. I have 5 partitions: 1) OS9 - HFS+; 2) OSX - HFS+; 3) User - UFS; 4) Swap 1 - HFS+; 5) Swap 2 - HFS+.
This way, the user data is protected, and all the apps work properly. Swap 1 is a system swap, and Swap 2 is for applications like Photoshop that have their own swap files.
=Brian
=Brian
Anyone who has keys. Such as roommates. Not that they necessarily will, but why should I have to worry about it? Besides, at least half of it is an intellectual exercies.
=Brian
I have UFS for my User partition, and all of the rest of my partitions are HFS+. The reason for this is that, if you boot in OS 9, all of your permissions are ignored, and anyone can waltz into your hard drive and play around. UFS isn't readable by OS 9, so no worries there.
I haven't really had any problems with my setup. Maybe there are some things I'll find the more I use it, but I've had this setup for months, and I haven't really noticed anything. But I certainly wouldn't format my system partition UFS. I tried that once, and it didn't work for non-server use at all. Mostly because, if something went wrong with the hard drive, I didn't have a boot disc that could do anything about it. That probably isn't a problem with things like the new HD tool from Micromat, but at the time it was a pain.
=Brian
=Brian