To paraphrase Kryten: "Now, I presume that, uh, when an iCowPod wants to recharge they do it much the same way mechanoids do. Indeed, I have located what I presume to be the recharging socket, but for some strange reason it doesn't appear to have the standard six-pin adaption. Now, do I have to use some kind of special adaptor? Because no matter what I do, the lead just keeps falling out".
I'm using an online iDisk through my.Mac account, which cost me something like $135CDN per year (with e-mail and some software included). It's currently at its default 100MB, although Apple allows you to purchase more space as needed.
100MB isn't enough to backup my 60GB hard drive, but then again why would I do something like that? Uploading 60GB of data, even at cable modem speeds, even with compression, is going to take forever.
Instead, I have a backup strategy that encompasses multiple levels, including online and offline backup.
For online backup, I'm storing some important documents and some application-specific data I'd really like back if it were lost (Firefox bookmarks, iCal data, my Address book, etc.). I'm also storing my Open Source projects sources and asssociated files (which are all on SourceForge's CVS servers -- but multiple backups certainly doesn't hurt!). I even have an encrypted image file for my Palm's backup card stored there, just in case. However, I don't store any applications themselves, anything I can readily download off the Internet anyhow, or anything required to boot up the machine in the first place (ie: any part of the OS itself).
For multimedia, applications, and other backups, I'm burning to DVD. A stack of DVD-R's can hold a lot of data, is easy to store, and if stored properly has a decent lifetime. I can backup the entire system to roughly 15 DVDs if I wanted to (so far I haven't).
For some really important data, I'm also keeping copies on my iPod and some of the other systems on my network. Redundancy doesn't hurt.
However, for really important data offsite backups are best. For this I tend to trust family first -- leaving a small box of DVDs with my brother or someone else close gives me peace of mind that if my home were to be destroyed somehow, non-critical application data would be readily available to me as well.
I love my online storage, but it's not the be-all and end-all of backups. Online Storage Providers have been known to have failures, and unless you have a T3 coming into your home, bandwidth is going to be an issue. So have some other strategies in place as well. Use the online storage for data you want to be able to access from anywhere on the Internet, and for critical documents and such you may need immediate access to in case of catastrophic failure.
If it is a personal domain with perhaps a couple of description pages and even a blog then, like me, you will get no more (from personal experience) than 10+ random (random in the way they are sent to webmaster/admin or anything that * catches other than regular) messages/week. No big deal
I'm in a similar situation. I have wildcard messages on one of my domains setup to send directly to me, and in the nearly two years I've had it registered I haven't had a single piece of dictionary e-mail sent my way.
However, I've ben lucky -- and I'm ready to disable wildcard processing the day my domain does get hit by such an attack. It has its limited uses until then, but I don't rely upon it.
The problem some people fall into is that when they setup wildcard acceptance, they don't bother to register the actual addresses they really intend to use. Here, I have every address in use properly configured -- the catch-all just forwards to one. And on the mail client side, I have a filter to remove anything that isn't to (or CC or BCC) one of those addresses.
But as I said -- currently I'm just lucky. One of these days that luck will run out, and on that day I'll be disabling the wildcard for good. The fact that it hasn't happened to you yet isn't an indication that it won't happen ever, and personally I'd much rather lose all the crap upstream rather than have to process it all locally (even if my e-mail clients built-in spam management is working beautifully, I'd rather not waste the bandwidth accepting crap I have no intention of ever reading).
I was in my car when the power went out last August -- was actually just pulling out of a car wash when it hit (thank goodness I didn't get there 30 seconds later...). I actually thought my antenna was broken off when I got out, as that's when the power went out and nearly all the radio stations went off the air.
Radio was my lifeline as well -- and I didn't even onw an iPod then. I owned -- a portable radio! What a concept!
If you really want to be ready, do what I did -- I have a rechargeable flashlight/radio combination, with in-wall, solar, and dynamo charging all built into one unit. Cost me less than $50 CDN. I've had it for several years, and while the solar charging and dynamo charging sucks for the flashlight portion, both are excellent when used for the radio portion. Heck, the thing even allows yo to install alkeline batteries for those times when the built-in rechargable battery goes kaput, and you don't feel like winding it up again.
(Going off topic here, but I also have a 450 Amp portable power pack and a DC/AC inverter. The first night the power went out, my apartment was the only one with the lights on. Once in a while I'd see faces peering my way -- having a 300W halogen floor lamp glowing up the entire blackened neighbourhood certainly got some people attention. I can only guess what they must have been thinking. Myself, I was thinking how much I would have liked to have had a gas powered generator on my balcony. Oh well -- something to add to my "want" list:) ).
One huge advantage.NET has over java is it's pretty P/Invoke mechanism. With this, i can execute code from an arbitrary dll. This is exceptionally useful especially for developing Win32 applications as I can call into user32.dll or gdi32.dll (for example) whenver i need to, and it only takes two lines of code:
Sorry, but I think you mis-spelled the word security nightmare.
is that apple is no longer shipping classic or even the classic cd's with osx.
I suppose it depends on how you get OS X. I got OS X CDs with my new Rev. C PowerBook G4 I bought from wwww.apple.ca less than two months ago, and the pre-installed OS X 10.3 came with Classic support installed. The DVDs that came with the system to re-install the OS likewise have Classic support available on them.
I've recently added a PowerBook to my network as well. And while I have many other Linux machines (even my PlayStation 2 runs Linux...), I personally can't see the point of running Linux on the PowerBook.
Just setup SSH, and install the X11 support from the OS X installation CDs. Then you can pretty much recompile any Linux app you want to run. Or do as I do -- get a cheap Intel box, install Linux on it, and access it remotely through the laptop.
OS X is the best desktop Unix right now. I'm not sure why you'd want to downgrade to Linux -- all you're going to achieve is less functionality then what you already have.
(And this is coming from a guy who has been using Linux a whole lot longer than OS X. I love Linux for its openess and the freedoms surrounding it. I run more Linux thn anything else. But if you already have a license to run OS X, it's a vastly better desktop Unix, simple as that).
If you really want DRM enabled songs, you can buy from puretracks.
No, I can't. PureTracks uses Windows Media DRM that won't play on my Apple PowerBook. Indeed, the PureTracks Website doesn't even let Macs in to browse their catalogue (unless you're spoofing your user-agent).
OTOH, Apple's DRM is pretty flexible, and will work on my PowerBook.
If you want just plain MP3s, you can download them from your favourite source because making personal copies of music -no matter the source- is legal in Canada.
That may be true in a practical sense right now, but that may not always be the case.
Besides which, free online sources for music tend to be somewhat unreliable. I've most recently been trying to download a song through Limewire which has a few hundred sources -- all of which I have downloaded thus far are completely corrupted.
And finding some more obscure songs can sometimes be difficult. If it isn't sufficiently popular for every teenage kid running a P2P client to have, you might not find what you're looking for.
iTMS appears to be quite a good service. Their DRM restrictions seem fairly reasonable to me for downloading a song once in a blue moon (as I tend to do).
Yes, Looking Glass is looking to be quite interesting. I'm personally of the opinion that Linux-based GUI developers will eventually create a killer GUI -- but they're nowhere close to doing so yet. None of the existing Linux GUIs has any decent consistency in respect to its access metaphors, and all of them try to be Windows look-alikes.
What I'm waiting for is another good document-centric GUI. An Object Oriented metaphor for desktop elements is the best way to go, with consistent access to instance methods regardless of locality is what the developers really need to strive for (coming from an OS/2 background, I've always hated how, for example, in many GUIs what you get when you bring up a popup menu for, say, a folder when you click on its icon is different then the contents of the popup menu you get when you click on the folders background when its open, for example).
Unfortunately, it appears that all too often most Linux GUIs have gone for eye candy over substance. Personally, I'm all for eye candy -- but while it's pleasing, that pleasure isn't enough to get me over instances where the underlying access mechanisms are inconsistent.
IMO, IBM's WorkPlace Shell was the pinnacle of desktop methphor design. You could create entire applications just by subclassing the core WPS classes. Imaging creating an e-mail application that was completely integrated into your GUI, where you subclassed a "Data File" type to store an e-mail message, and sub-classed a "Folder" type to become an "Out Box Folder" that could send any data put into it to its destination (by, for example, calling a send() method on anything dropped into it). Now imagine if we also subclassed "Data File" to a new "Usenet Message" type. Automatically, any instances of this type could also be dropped into the "Outbox" instance to send them. Then perhaps create a "Fax Document" type. And an "In Box" type also subclassed from "Folder". And make sure you implement a "print()" method in your data types so they'd be printed in their proper formatts when dropped onto a Printer object.
The WPS allowed this sort of development. Where the WPS fell down was in the actual implementation (even many IBM developed components fell back upon an application-centric model). This is where Linux desktop developers could do things right, and where Open Source could create a really killer GUI. Add to it the Open Source communities ability to create some excellent eye candy, and you'd have a killer desktop environment.
Oh well. Until then, at least I have Mac OS X and it's built-in X-windows support:).
It seems that Linux has been playing catch up for some years now in terms of user interface, and with the advent of OSX - it now has a whole new mountain to climb.
You're basing this off the false presumption that Linux IDE developers are even trying to mimic Apple's UIs in the first place.
This is incorrect. Take a look at the vast majority of Linux developers, and you'll find they're either from the Unix old-guard, or refugees from the Windows world. As such, all the major desktop environments for Linux are a bit of a mish-mash between "the Unix way" and "the Windows way".
Now these are some pretty smart people in general -- but that ddoesn't mean they know anything about HCI, or that if they do they think that Apple's UI is what they're striving for. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of KDE and Gnome developers have never even used OS X.
Personally, I've just moved from the Linux to the OS X world, and I'll readily agree that the OS X UI is vastly superiour to KDE and Gnome. OS X is a fantastic Unix system with very low maintenence, which is why OS X is now my laptop OS of choice (even though all my desktops are Linux and OS/2 based). But when it comes down to it, the Linux UI's aren't directly trying to copy Mac OS X, so it shouldn't be a suprise they the two are different.
(Which IMO is a shame. If Linux UI developers were to copy and improve upon anytthing, it really should have been OS/2's WorkPlace Shell and it's fully Object-Oriented desktop metaphor. Both KDE and Gnome have far too many Window-isms in them for my taste, and the Windows UI is poorly thought out, still containing some of the UI concepts from Windows 3.0).
so? but all the hardware was chosen by apple, which is the whole point
The whole point of what? The 15" PowerBook G4 uses an ATI video card. Besides the hardware, the only difference between the two systems is in the device drivers for the hardware.
The only real difference between the Apple and PC worlds in this regard is that the Apple world has less ultracheap (aka "crap") hardware available for it. Apple also takes much more care than the Dells and Gateways of the world in ensuring that the device drivers used on their systems are of a high quality (not many of the PC OEMs even bother to write their own drivers, or to properly certify that they work correctly).
which you kind of lose if you'll start assembling them together like x86 pc's from parts from dozens of vendors..
I won't flame you, but I will point out that my PowerBook G4 (12", Rev C) is made of parts from dozens of companies, including:
nVidia (video)
IBM (CPU)
DVD-RW drive (Matsushita)
Hard Drive (Toshiba)
Modem (Motorola)
I imagine there are parts from a number of other vendors in this system as well, but these are the ones I'm able to determine via software (I'm not about to pry open the aluminium case to find out where other parts were manufactured!)
OS X will never, never, never run on any hardware that Apple has not produced-- so surrender the fantasy of running OS X on some homebuilt x86 shitbox, or even a Dell.
Let's not also forget that there is a lot of evidence that PC OEM's don't like to bundle operating systems from a vendor that competes wih them in the hardware arena.
Just look at what happened when IBM attempted to gather OEMs to preload OS/2. The attempt was, for the most part, a huge failure, with only some of the smaller OEMs (and some bigger OEMs outside North America) preloading OS/2 in the mid 90's. One or two of the bigger OEMs did have some preloaded systems (Compaq comes to mind), but they were difficult to find (ie: were only available as a special order item).
OEMs don't want to compete with their OS vendors in the hardware space. They've seen all too often the type of crap Microsoft pulls whenever they decide they don't like something an OEM has done -- why should they make even more deals with more (potential) devils in this fashion?
I'm prettty excited about the opening of the iSync APIs with Tiger -- I'll now be able to write a plug-in for the jSyncManager to integrate it with iSync.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
Let's not mince words -- Windows sucks. It sucks so bad it's able to completely crash on its own, without any external aid.
Knowing this, what makes you so sure you got a virus and/or worm? Just because Windows locks up, or something else goes wrong doesn't mean your system has been infected with malicious code (well, other than Windows itself;) ).
This sounds like the "newbie reason for anything going wrong". Anytime a newbie sees something go wrong on their computer, they automatically presume they have a virus. Have you done a scan to verify that you have an infection, or are you just assuming there must be an infection because you had an unexpected result?
When you get a headache after bumping your head, do you automatically assume you have an inoperable brain tumor?;)
I always get a kick when a guy has to identify himself as being some sort of big-time developer on the project he's pimping (or the project the article's about).
Well, IMO it's much worse when someone pimps a project, but doesn't have the curteousy to inform people of their association with the project in question. By identifying my association with the project, my bias towards it is up-front and honest. To do otherwise would be Barkto all over again.
I have an unrelated question for you. If you look at my website, you'll see in the left-hand a big tree navigation menu. That tree is generated from php and a mysql database, of course. Does the milonic menu on your jsyncmanager website work well with tree data from MySQL?
You'd have to talk to our webmaster about that. I don't do the project website (other than to generate the online JavaDoc), so haven't worked with the Milonic menu code myself. Check the bottom of our homepage for the webmasters e-mail address.
You may also want to try http://www.milonic.com/ for more information about their menus. My personal feeling is that some CGI that generates the JavaScript file containing the site-specific data in menu_array.js would probably do the trick, but I can't say I've ever tried it.
That's all very nice and I'm sure it's the ants pants, but that's not what he was asking for was it?
Perhaps not directly. But iff the answer doesn't satisfy them, let them complain about it.
Indirectly, it may solve their problem. I have no idea of knowing wether or not the user in question is a software developer -- they might be willing to write their own conduits to work with their favorite PIM, and the jSyncManager provides an extremely easy way to do just that.
The JSyncManager sited doesn't even link to any conduits (let alone any PIM ones.)
That is correct, it does not. The generic jConduits I mentioned are included in the Core Application Set download, and are listed in the Release Notes, which is available through the website.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
Also, if you edit data on the palm you might break the "links" that the PC software maintains.
This should only ever happen if you delete a record on the handheld and re-enter it, causing the new record to receive a different ID value. No properly-written synchronization module should cause any such breakage under normal conditions )ie: editing/modifying the data on the handheld) -- any that do are due purely to buggy code, and not the design of the PalmOS itself.
Some developers who have written PIMs that weren't designed wih handheld synchronization in mind might try to use one of the fields as the unique record identifier, but this is wrong, and will cause the problem you mention if you change the field being used as the identity field. The proper mechanism for this is to create a mapping between the record ID values and the internal application record identifier.
Please don't blame the PalmOS for things outside its control.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Adminsitrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
To replace your HotSync software, take a look at the jSyncManager. It's an Open Source, pure Java, and will run on all your different operating systems. It features an Object-Oriented "jConduit" plug-in system to allow different applications to use it for their synchronization services.
The two downsides currently with running the jSyncManager on the desktop are:
The jSyncManager relies upon external libraries to communicate with the hardware. For serial docks/cables it requires either the Java Communications API, or the Open Sourced jSerial API. For USB ports it requires jUSB. jUSB is currently only readily available on Linux, with a partial implementation available on Windows. TCP/IP sync support is available on all platforms.
There aren't a whole lot of jConduit plug-ins available yet. The bundles ones provide generic functionality such as CSV and XML downloading of common PalmOS record types, the ability to upload PRC and PDB databases, the ability to export Zire 71 photos as JPG files, etc. However, if you're a Java-coder and want to write your own jConduit plug-in for your favorite PIM, documentation is available online, and support is readily available through the jSyncManager development community.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
Here's an idea -- set your system up as you normally would for acccessing the Internet, but simply setup your site such that posting and other interactive services are only accessable from within the local subnet.
That is, if you have a (for example)/. like website, limit posting only to those people with IPs in your local subnet (ie: 10.x.x.x). People in the outside world will be able to read the posts, but you need to be inside the wireless range in order to be able to post.
The big benifit of doing this is that frequent users will be able to keep up with discussions and such from home -- but if they want to contribute, they'll need to be within wireless range.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever try to plug a firewire cable into a cow?
To paraphrase Kryten: "Now, I presume that, uh, when an iCowPod wants to recharge they do it much the same way mechanoids do. Indeed, I have located what I presume to be the recharging socket, but for some strange reason it doesn't appear to have the standard six-pin adaption. Now, do I have to use some kind of special adaptor? Because no matter what I do, the lead just keeps falling out".
Yaz.
I'm using an online iDisk through my .Mac account, which cost me something like $135CDN per year (with e-mail and some software included). It's currently at its default 100MB, although Apple allows you to purchase more space as needed.
100MB isn't enough to backup my 60GB hard drive, but then again why would I do something like that? Uploading 60GB of data, even at cable modem speeds, even with compression, is going to take forever.
Instead, I have a backup strategy that encompasses multiple levels, including online and offline backup.
For online backup, I'm storing some important documents and some application-specific data I'd really like back if it were lost (Firefox bookmarks, iCal data, my Address book, etc.). I'm also storing my Open Source projects sources and asssociated files (which are all on SourceForge's CVS servers -- but multiple backups certainly doesn't hurt!). I even have an encrypted image file for my Palm's backup card stored there, just in case. However, I don't store any applications themselves, anything I can readily download off the Internet anyhow, or anything required to boot up the machine in the first place (ie: any part of the OS itself).
For multimedia, applications, and other backups, I'm burning to DVD. A stack of DVD-R's can hold a lot of data, is easy to store, and if stored properly has a decent lifetime. I can backup the entire system to roughly 15 DVDs if I wanted to (so far I haven't).
For some really important data, I'm also keeping copies on my iPod and some of the other systems on my network. Redundancy doesn't hurt.
However, for really important data offsite backups are best. For this I tend to trust family first -- leaving a small box of DVDs with my brother or someone else close gives me peace of mind that if my home were to be destroyed somehow, non-critical application data would be readily available to me as well.
I love my online storage, but it's not the be-all and end-all of backups. Online Storage Providers have been known to have failures, and unless you have a T3 coming into your home, bandwidth is going to be an issue. So have some other strategies in place as well. Use the online storage for data you want to be able to access from anywhere on the Internet, and for critical documents and such you may need immediate access to in case of catastrophic failure.
Brad BARCLAY
I'm in a similar situation. I have wildcard messages on one of my domains setup to send directly to me, and in the nearly two years I've had it registered I haven't had a single piece of dictionary e-mail sent my way.
However, I've ben lucky -- and I'm ready to disable wildcard processing the day my domain does get hit by such an attack. It has its limited uses until then, but I don't rely upon it.
The problem some people fall into is that when they setup wildcard acceptance, they don't bother to register the actual addresses they really intend to use. Here, I have every address in use properly configured -- the catch-all just forwards to one. And on the mail client side, I have a filter to remove anything that isn't to (or CC or BCC) one of those addresses.
But as I said -- currently I'm just lucky. One of these days that luck will run out, and on that day I'll be disabling the wildcard for good. The fact that it hasn't happened to you yet isn't an indication that it won't happen ever, and personally I'd much rather lose all the crap upstream rather than have to process it all locally (even if my e-mail clients built-in spam management is working beautifully, I'd rather not waste the bandwidth accepting crap I have no intention of ever reading).
Brad BARCLAY
What -- you can't afford a $5 FM radio?
I was in my car when the power went out last August -- was actually just pulling out of a car wash when it hit (thank goodness I didn't get there 30 seconds later...). I actually thought my antenna was broken off when I got out, as that's when the power went out and nearly all the radio stations went off the air.
Radio was my lifeline as well -- and I didn't even onw an iPod then. I owned -- a portable radio! What a concept!
If you really want to be ready, do what I did -- I have a rechargeable flashlight/radio combination, with in-wall, solar, and dynamo charging all built into one unit. Cost me less than $50 CDN. I've had it for several years, and while the solar charging and dynamo charging sucks for the flashlight portion, both are excellent when used for the radio portion. Heck, the thing even allows yo to install alkeline batteries for those times when the built-in rechargable battery goes kaput, and you don't feel like winding it up again.
(Going off topic here, but I also have a 450 Amp portable power pack and a DC/AC inverter. The first night the power went out, my apartment was the only one with the lights on. Once in a while I'd see faces peering my way -- having a 300W halogen floor lamp glowing up the entire blackened neighbourhood certainly got some people attention. I can only guess what they must have been thinking. Myself, I was thinking how much I would have liked to have had a gas powered generator on my balcony. Oh well -- something to add to my "want" list :) ).
Brad BARCLAY
Sorry, but I think you mis-spelled the word security nightmare.
Yaz.
I suppose it depends on how you get OS X. I got OS X CDs with my new Rev. C PowerBook G4 I bought from wwww.apple.ca less than two months ago, and the pre-installed OS X 10.3 came with Classic support installed. The DVDs that came with the system to re-install the OS likewise have Classic support available on them.
Yaz.
I've recently added a PowerBook to my network as well. And while I have many other Linux machines (even my PlayStation 2 runs Linux...), I personally can't see the point of running Linux on the PowerBook.
Just setup SSH, and install the X11 support from the OS X installation CDs. Then you can pretty much recompile any Linux app you want to run. Or do as I do -- get a cheap Intel box, install Linux on it, and access it remotely through the laptop.
OS X is the best desktop Unix right now. I'm not sure why you'd want to downgrade to Linux -- all you're going to achieve is less functionality then what you already have.
(And this is coming from a guy who has been using Linux a whole lot longer than OS X. I love Linux for its openess and the freedoms surrounding it. I run more Linux thn anything else. But if you already have a license to run OS X, it's a vastly better desktop Unix, simple as that).
Yaz.
Nope :).
The PowerBooks only have USB and Firewire ports, along with modem, ethernet, monitor-out, and audio ports. No "legacy" ports what-so-ever.
Yaz.
For those not familiar with PowerBooks, they don't have PS/2 ports, and they don't have IR ports on them.
Thus responses recommending IR or PS/2 based solutions (as many people here have) are probably less than useful to the person asking for help.
Yaz.
Why yes. Yes it does.
No, I can't. PureTracks uses Windows Media DRM that won't play on my Apple PowerBook. Indeed, the PureTracks Website doesn't even let Macs in to browse their catalogue (unless you're spoofing your user-agent).
OTOH, Apple's DRM is pretty flexible, and will work on my PowerBook.
That may be true in a practical sense right now, but that may not always be the case.
Besides which, free online sources for music tend to be somewhat unreliable. I've most recently been trying to download a song through Limewire which has a few hundred sources -- all of which I have downloaded thus far are completely corrupted.
And finding some more obscure songs can sometimes be difficult. If it isn't sufficiently popular for every teenage kid running a P2P client to have, you might not find what you're looking for.
iTMS appears to be quite a good service. Their DRM restrictions seem fairly reasonable to me for downloading a song once in a blue moon (as I tend to do).
Yaz.
You forgot one:
(I know that's the one I really want to know the answer to...)
Yaz.
If you pay for the advertising, it's hardly "free" anymore, now is it? :).
Yaz.
Yes, Looking Glass is looking to be quite interesting. I'm personally of the opinion that Linux-based GUI developers will eventually create a killer GUI -- but they're nowhere close to doing so yet. None of the existing Linux GUIs has any decent consistency in respect to its access metaphors, and all of them try to be Windows look-alikes.
What I'm waiting for is another good document-centric GUI. An Object Oriented metaphor for desktop elements is the best way to go, with consistent access to instance methods regardless of locality is what the developers really need to strive for (coming from an OS/2 background, I've always hated how, for example, in many GUIs what you get when you bring up a popup menu for, say, a folder when you click on its icon is different then the contents of the popup menu you get when you click on the folders background when its open, for example).
Unfortunately, it appears that all too often most Linux GUIs have gone for eye candy over substance. Personally, I'm all for eye candy -- but while it's pleasing, that pleasure isn't enough to get me over instances where the underlying access mechanisms are inconsistent.
IMO, IBM's WorkPlace Shell was the pinnacle of desktop methphor design. You could create entire applications just by subclassing the core WPS classes. Imaging creating an e-mail application that was completely integrated into your GUI, where you subclassed a "Data File" type to store an e-mail message, and sub-classed a "Folder" type to become an "Out Box Folder" that could send any data put into it to its destination (by, for example, calling a send() method on anything dropped into it). Now imagine if we also subclassed "Data File" to a new "Usenet Message" type. Automatically, any instances of this type could also be dropped into the "Outbox" instance to send them. Then perhaps create a "Fax Document" type. And an "In Box" type also subclassed from "Folder". And make sure you implement a "print()" method in your data types so they'd be printed in their proper formatts when dropped onto a Printer object.
The WPS allowed this sort of development. Where the WPS fell down was in the actual implementation (even many IBM developed components fell back upon an application-centric model). This is where Linux desktop developers could do things right, and where Open Source could create a really killer GUI. Add to it the Open Source communities ability to create some excellent eye candy, and you'd have a killer desktop environment.
Oh well. Until then, at least I have Mac OS X and it's built-in X-windows support :).
Brad BARCLAY
You're basing this off the false presumption that Linux IDE developers are even trying to mimic Apple's UIs in the first place.
This is incorrect. Take a look at the vast majority of Linux developers, and you'll find they're either from the Unix old-guard, or refugees from the Windows world. As such, all the major desktop environments for Linux are a bit of a mish-mash between "the Unix way" and "the Windows way".
Now these are some pretty smart people in general -- but that ddoesn't mean they know anything about HCI, or that if they do they think that Apple's UI is what they're striving for. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of KDE and Gnome developers have never even used OS X.
Personally, I've just moved from the Linux to the OS X world, and I'll readily agree that the OS X UI is vastly superiour to KDE and Gnome. OS X is a fantastic Unix system with very low maintenence, which is why OS X is now my laptop OS of choice (even though all my desktops are Linux and OS/2 based). But when it comes down to it, the Linux UI's aren't directly trying to copy Mac OS X, so it shouldn't be a suprise they the two are different.
(Which IMO is a shame. If Linux UI developers were to copy and improve upon anytthing, it really should have been OS/2's WorkPlace Shell and it's fully Object-Oriented desktop metaphor. Both KDE and Gnome have far too many Window-isms in them for my taste, and the Windows UI is poorly thought out, still containing some of the UI concepts from Windows 3.0).
Yaz.
The whole point of what? The 15" PowerBook G4 uses an ATI video card. Besides the hardware, the only difference between the two systems is in the device drivers for the hardware.
The only real difference between the Apple and PC worlds in this regard is that the Apple world has less ultracheap (aka "crap") hardware available for it. Apple also takes much more care than the Dells and Gateways of the world in ensuring that the device drivers used on their systems are of a high quality (not many of the PC OEMs even bother to write their own drivers, or to properly certify that they work correctly).
Yaz.
I won't flame you, but I will point out that my PowerBook G4 (12", Rev C) is made of parts from dozens of companies, including:
I imagine there are parts from a number of other vendors in this system as well, but these are the ones I'm able to determine via software (I'm not about to pry open the aluminium case to find out where other parts were manufactured!)
Yaz.
Let's not also forget that there is a lot of evidence that PC OEM's don't like to bundle operating systems from a vendor that competes wih them in the hardware arena.
Just look at what happened when IBM attempted to gather OEMs to preload OS/2. The attempt was, for the most part, a huge failure, with only some of the smaller OEMs (and some bigger OEMs outside North America) preloading OS/2 in the mid 90's. One or two of the bigger OEMs did have some preloaded systems (Compaq comes to mind), but they were difficult to find (ie: were only available as a special order item).
OEMs don't want to compete with their OS vendors in the hardware space. They've seen all too often the type of crap Microsoft pulls whenever they decide they don't like something an OEM has done -- why should they make even more deals with more (potential) devils in this fashion?
Yaz.
FYI, The X11 server included in OS X 10.3 is based off XFree86.
Yaz.
I'm prettty excited about the opening of the iSync APIs with Tiger -- I'll now be able to write a plug-in for the jSyncManager to integrate it with iSync.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
Let's not mince words -- Windows sucks. It sucks so bad it's able to completely crash on its own, without any external aid.
Knowing this, what makes you so sure you got a virus and/or worm? Just because Windows locks up, or something else goes wrong doesn't mean your system has been infected with malicious code (well, other than Windows itself ;) ).
This sounds like the "newbie reason for anything going wrong". Anytime a newbie sees something go wrong on their computer, they automatically presume they have a virus. Have you done a scan to verify that you have an infection, or are you just assuming there must be an infection because you had an unexpected result?
When you get a headache after bumping your head, do you automatically assume you have an inoperable brain tumor? ;)
Yaz.
Well, IMO it's much worse when someone pimps a project, but doesn't have the curteousy to inform people of their association with the project in question. By identifying my association with the project, my bias towards it is up-front and honest. To do otherwise would be Barkto all over again.
You'd have to talk to our webmaster about that. I don't do the project website (other than to generate the online JavaDoc), so haven't worked with the Milonic menu code myself. Check the bottom of our homepage for the webmasters e-mail address.
You may also want to try http://www.milonic.com/ for more information about their menus. My personal feeling is that some CGI that generates the JavaScript file containing the site-specific data in menu_array.js would probably do the trick, but I can't say I've ever tried it.
Brad BARCLAY
(Not affiliated with Milonic Menus)
Perhaps not directly. But iff the answer doesn't satisfy them, let them complain about it.
Indirectly, it may solve their problem. I have no idea of knowing wether or not the user in question is a software developer -- they might be willing to write their own conduits to work with their favorite PIM, and the jSyncManager provides an extremely easy way to do just that.
That is correct, it does not. The generic jConduits I mentioned are included in the Core Application Set download, and are listed in the Release Notes, which is available through the website.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
This should only ever happen if you delete a record on the handheld and re-enter it, causing the new record to receive a different ID value. No properly-written synchronization module should cause any such breakage under normal conditions )ie: editing/modifying the data on the handheld) -- any that do are due purely to buggy code, and not the design of the PalmOS itself.
Some developers who have written PIMs that weren't designed wih handheld synchronization in mind might try to use one of the fields as the unique record identifier, but this is wrong, and will cause the problem you mention if you change the field being used as the identity field. The proper mechanism for this is to create a mapping between the record ID values and the internal application record identifier.
Please don't blame the PalmOS for things outside its control.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Adminsitrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
To replace your HotSync software, take a look at the jSyncManager. It's an Open Source, pure Java, and will run on all your different operating systems. It features an Object-Oriented "jConduit" plug-in system to allow different applications to use it for their synchronization services.
The two downsides currently with running the jSyncManager on the desktop are:
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
Here's an idea -- set your system up as you normally would for acccessing the Internet, but simply setup your site such that posting and other interactive services are only accessable from within the local subnet.
That is, if you have a (for example) /. like website, limit posting only to those people with IPs in your local subnet (ie: 10.x.x.x). People in the outside world will be able to read the posts, but you need to be inside the wireless range in order to be able to post.
The big benifit of doing this is that frequent users will be able to keep up with discussions and such from home -- but if they want to contribute, they'll need to be within wireless range.
Yaz.