There are a surprising amount of SunOS 4.1.4 servers still running on the Internet. I have an account on one such system and its kernel is from around 1994. I don't recall it having been exploited the past few years I've had the account. Good administrators, perhaps?
It could be like the SGI Visual Workstation series. These were x86-based machines which ran Windows NT/2000, but were not compatible with standard PC's. Most notably they lacked a standard PC BIOS, using the same firmware from the MIPS SGI machines instead. If Apple is indeed going x86, I'd guess it'd be like this, since judging by their past record they don't want OS X to run on any old PC, even with the right cards and such. Let's not forget that the processor alone doesn't determine the system - there are several types of machines using MIPS and PowerPC processors that can't run each other's OS's without modification.
Absolutely. I had a professor last semester who used some websites as part of her lecture. The computer administrators and some of the sites themselves recommended Firefox, but she was pretty confused in class - "It's not working. They want 'Moh-zy-lah' or something." Which led me to not only think that Mozilla is probably not the best name (Firefox is fine, though) and that although we may know here the foundation's history, most people outside of geek circles have no idea that this was once part of Netscape Corporation (which is vaguely in their minds) or where it has gone since becoming independent.
I agree that it's heading down that path, perhaps at a quicker rate soon. But I fail to see how exactly that's a "THANK GOD" thing. I live in the US and haven't ever encountered a friend who uses MSN, ICQ or Yahoo, with the exception of some European exchange friends I had in high school. AIM is still by far the easiest IM protocol to implement (I've done it, OSCAR is quite simple and has been documented pretty thoroughly by third parties) - though I've admittedly never looked at Jabber. Sure, I could be ideologically sound with an open sourced IM protocol, but it's nice to have non-nerd people to talk to. It works just fine for me.
I'm still in college, and I have a decent-paying job I'm rather pleased with at a major government facility. I got this from posting on the local LUG's job list. The trick is to intern WHILE you're at school, not after. Try to get something over the summer or even just a few hours a week (what I do), and you'll be surprised at what you can do. Some internships may even be paid, which is always a plus, but don't necessarily count on it (remember, this is during college, not after). The problem is there are gazillions of CS majors, and even if quite a few of them know what's going on from a technical standpoint, the stuff you do for fun is probably rather different from what you'll do as a professional.
And also, on that note, CS may not be the way to go. Not being a CS major hasn't hindered my programming at all, since all of what I need to know I learn from books, manuals or friendly older, more experienced folk. I find CS to be incredibly boring, so I chose to do math instead. Funny thing is it has cleared up my head a whole lot so far, algorithm-wise and such. Most importantly, many people welcome my non-CS major. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but people seem more pleased when I tell them I'm a math guy who works with computers than a generic CS monkey.
I've been working on a simple AOL Instant Messenger client called BSFlite for the past year. It's similar to micq, that is line-based without curses or anything fancy. I like it because once your fingers get used to it, it's a gazillion times faster than using a mouse. You can get it here. It's a lot more efficient with system resources, so if your machine is too slow for all those fancy naim effects (sliding windows and such), this may be right up your alley. Works well with screen and the like.
I have the same laptop, except I upgraded mine to 192mb. Well worth the $20 for 128mb (I got it from kahlon.com). I ran Debian for a while, but ended up building my own distribution to tailor things to my liking. This isn't necessary for good performance; Debian ran very well. You'll have to skip out on GNOME, KDE and such things. I use evilwm, which may be too minimalistic for most people, but I imagine flxubox and other such WM's would run fine. Firefox is very acceptable, even with XFT, GTK2 and sub-pixel anti-aliasing. It's a very usable machine - in fact, I use this more than my P4 desktop.
In short, it's not the distribution, but rather how you configure X. Skip out on GNOME (and things like GDM, which run in the background and may launch additional support daemons), use plain old xterm or rxvt instead of konsole/gnome-terminal, skip pixmap themes, and run light WM's. Also remember to disable unnecessary daemons, which is why I recommend Debian, which doesn't install many daemons by default.
Furthermore, PearPC is 1) very early in development and 2) not commercially developed. It's not exactly a good comparison even ignoring the inherent CISC/RISC issues.
I've found that the vast majority of sites using new, alternative domain names are pure garbage. Most are sketchy e-commerce stores with terrible domain names and even worse web design; in other words, I'd never, ever buy from them. Some.info sites worked out well (z80.info, for example), but.biz and the like is bad FrontPage heaven. Some of the national TLD's have found good non-commercial use, like the many personal.nu sites out there, but again, the level of trust goes down with a commercial site under these domains. Has anyone observed anything similar?
And why are we waiting for everything to come down one pipe?
I personally like everything coming in separately. Example: my power goes out. I still have my phone, because it comes on a different physical cable down the street. If my satellite TV goes out, I still have my Internet access, because it comes on a different cable.
Personally, if everything came down one pipe and something goes down, I'd get not only bored, but also quite mad. Think about it. It's a little bit better to have variety.
This, of course, extends to political reasons. Would you like one company to provide your food, gas for your car, heating oil and run your children's school as well? Not really.
That's what you'd think. Your ears aren't very far apart, either. Still, you get different sounds into each ear. With some clever binaural tricks (putting mic capsules in your ears, for example), one could make some great recordings.
You can get good-sounding omni mic capsules for about $20.
Furthermore, you wouldn't use 192kbps, that is ridiculous. For a concert, 24bits, maybe, but certainly no higher than 44.1.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a surprising amount of SunOS 4.1.4 servers still running on the Internet. I have an account on one such system and its kernel is from around 1994. I don't recall it having been exploited the past few years I've had the account. Good administrators, perhaps?
It could be like the SGI Visual Workstation series. These were x86-based machines which ran Windows NT/2000, but were not compatible with standard PC's. Most notably they lacked a standard PC BIOS, using the same firmware from the MIPS SGI machines instead. If Apple is indeed going x86, I'd guess it'd be like this, since judging by their past record they don't want OS X to run on any old PC, even with the right cards and such. Let's not forget that the processor alone doesn't determine the system - there are several types of machines using MIPS and PowerPC processors that can't run each other's OS's without modification.
Wikipedia entry on SGI VW
Absolutely. I had a professor last semester who used some websites as part of her lecture. The computer administrators and some of the sites themselves recommended Firefox, but she was pretty confused in class - "It's not working. They want 'Moh-zy-lah' or something." Which led me to not only think that Mozilla is probably not the best name (Firefox is fine, though) and that although we may know here the foundation's history, most people outside of geek circles have no idea that this was once part of Netscape Corporation (which is vaguely in their minds) or where it has gone since becoming independent.
Pardon me, I misinterpreted your comment as saying something it doesn't. So my post is pretty much worthless.
I agree that it's heading down that path, perhaps at a quicker rate soon. But I fail to see how exactly that's a "THANK GOD" thing. I live in the US and haven't ever encountered a friend who uses MSN, ICQ or Yahoo, with the exception of some European exchange friends I had in high school. AIM is still by far the easiest IM protocol to implement (I've done it, OSCAR is quite simple and has been documented pretty thoroughly by third parties) - though I've admittedly never looked at Jabber. Sure, I could be ideologically sound with an open sourced IM protocol, but it's nice to have non-nerd people to talk to. It works just fine for me.
I'm still in college, and I have a decent-paying job I'm rather pleased with at a major government facility. I got this from posting on the local LUG's job list. The trick is to intern WHILE you're at school, not after. Try to get something over the summer or even just a few hours a week (what I do), and you'll be surprised at what you can do. Some internships may even be paid, which is always a plus, but don't necessarily count on it (remember, this is during college, not after). The problem is there are gazillions of CS majors, and even if quite a few of them know what's going on from a technical standpoint, the stuff you do for fun is probably rather different from what you'll do as a professional.
And also, on that note, CS may not be the way to go. Not being a CS major hasn't hindered my programming at all, since all of what I need to know I learn from books, manuals or friendly older, more experienced folk. I find CS to be incredibly boring, so I chose to do math instead. Funny thing is it has cleared up my head a whole lot so far, algorithm-wise and such. Most importantly, many people welcome my non-CS major. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but people seem more pleased when I tell them I'm a math guy who works with computers than a generic CS monkey.
Just my $0.02.
I've been working on a simple AOL Instant Messenger client called BSFlite for the past year. It's similar to micq, that is line-based without curses or anything fancy. I like it because once your fingers get used to it, it's a gazillion times faster than using a mouse. You can get it here. It's a lot more efficient with system resources, so if your machine is too slow for all those fancy naim effects (sliding windows and such), this may be right up your alley. Works well with screen and the like.
I have the same laptop, except I upgraded mine to 192mb. Well worth the $20 for 128mb (I got it from kahlon.com). I ran Debian for a while, but ended up building my own distribution to tailor things to my liking. This isn't necessary for good performance; Debian ran very well. You'll have to skip out on GNOME, KDE and such things. I use evilwm, which may be too minimalistic for most people, but I imagine flxubox and other such WM's would run fine. Firefox is very acceptable, even with XFT, GTK2 and sub-pixel anti-aliasing. It's a very usable machine - in fact, I use this more than my P4 desktop.
In short, it's not the distribution, but rather how you configure X. Skip out on GNOME (and things like GDM, which run in the background and may launch additional support daemons), use plain old xterm or rxvt instead of konsole/gnome-terminal, skip pixmap themes, and run light WM's. Also remember to disable unnecessary daemons, which is why I recommend Debian, which doesn't install many daemons by default.
Furthermore, PearPC is 1) very early in development and 2) not commercially developed. It's not exactly a good comparison even ignoring the inherent CISC/RISC issues.
I've found that the vast majority of sites using new, alternative domain names are pure garbage. Most are sketchy e-commerce stores with terrible domain names and even worse web design; in other words, I'd never, ever buy from them. Some .info sites worked out well (z80.info, for example), but .biz and the like is bad FrontPage heaven. Some of the national TLD's have found good non-commercial use, like the many personal .nu sites out there, but again, the level of trust goes down with a commercial site under these domains. Has anyone observed anything similar?
And why are we waiting for everything to come down one pipe?
I personally like everything coming in separately. Example: my power goes out. I still have my phone, because it comes on a different physical cable down the street. If my satellite TV goes out, I still have my Internet access, because it comes on a different cable.
Personally, if everything came down one pipe and something goes down, I'd get not only bored, but also quite mad. Think about it. It's a little bit better to have variety.
This, of course, extends to political reasons. Would you like one company to provide your food, gas for your car, heating oil and run your children's school as well? Not really.
I'll stick to my variety, thank you very much.
That's what you'd think. Your ears aren't very far apart, either. Still, you get different sounds into each ear. With some clever binaural tricks (putting mic capsules in your ears, for example), one could make some great recordings. You can get good-sounding omni mic capsules for about $20. Furthermore, you wouldn't use 192kbps, that is ridiculous. For a concert, 24bits, maybe, but certainly no higher than 44.1.