I disagree completely. I've been using a whitelist for a while now and it works flawlessly. Here's the deal. I set up the initial whitelist based on my address book--people that I regularly send email to. Then, the procmail filter I use runs every email I receive against the whitelist. If the sender is on the list, it goes to INBOX. Otherwise, the email is held in a pending-message folder and they get an automatically generated reply that says something to the effect of "Hi, I haven't received your email yet because your email address hasn't been verified. Please reply to this email to verify that you are a real person and not a spammer and you will be automatically added to my whitelist."
Person replies, they get added to the whitelist, and the original email gets delivered. Spambots don't reply. Easy as pie.
The one saving grace of the system I use is that all email, spam included, gets put into a BULK folder. I periodically sift through the BULK folder to make sure I haven't missed anything important (like a message from my bank or airline or something) and delete all the spam.
In fact, now that I've effectively killed spam on my email account, my email address has become MORE useful--I don't hesitate to publish it on my website or give it out to folks.
Here in Chitown, we are served by the magic of Peapod. Having groceries delivered directly to my apartment has literally changed my life in the city. Not having a car meant that I had to schlep my groceries by hand from the nearest store (about 3/4 mile--it's a lot when you've got arms full of bags) or use mass transit. It also meant that I could never buy more than about 5 days worth of food--simply because that's all I could carry.
To all the naysayers out there that say "Eh, you lazy fuck, I can't believe you have your groceries delivered" I have this to say: screw you. I cook almost every night and having to carry food by hand across the city or rely on a friend with a car is simply out of the question. A bi-monthly peapod delivery makes sure that I don't have to worry about running out of food.
Before I signed up, I held on to my receipts from the grocery stores around town to compare. The prices are no more expensive than any other store, and sometimes cheaper. As long as I order $100 or more, delivery is $5 (plus a tip to guy that hauls my food up 2 flights of stairs). All non-perishable goods are stored in their warehouses (which is how the keep overhead low, methinks) but all fresh foods are picked up from local markets and suppliers to area restaurants.
Peapod rocks. Having your groceries delivered to your house/apartment ROCKS. Shopping for groceries in my PJ's from my home ROCKS.
It just so happens, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, that Mr. Gates is very very rich. And you know what; even if 98% of what his company does is wrong; getting there was not as wrong as you think. And that man worked hard to get where he is; and deserves an ounce of your respect for that.
Please. That man was very, very lucky. When he dropped out of Harvard to start selling software, he had a million dollar trust fund in his back pocket to fall back on. When he started selling DOS (an application he stole, let's not forget) to IBM, it's because his mommy set up the meeting with then-CEO John Opel. Yeah, he's rich, but respect isn't something he deserves from me.
Re: I'd like to have anothe look, but...
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Apple doesn't care very much about European customers....(Let alone pricing outside the US, which is just horrible)
That's a brilliant assesment. In fact, Apple probably doesn't care about any of their non-US customers, which is why prices are so unbelievably high. Except in places like Japan, where the prices are nearly identical to those in the States.
Hit www.apple.co.jp and you'll see that a fully loaded iBook costs 231,100 yen. Convert that and you get US$1,897.
A fully loaded iBook from www.apple.com costs US$1,849.
Furthermore, you walk through Shinjuku or Omotesando, and you'll see more shiny Apples than you know what to do with. I've found brand new Macs in South America, too. Even had a repair job on a new powerbook and sat in on an Apple sponsored multimedia conference in Santiago, Chile.
So before you go spouting off about how Apple dicks over their European cutomers, you might want to reconsider. You might want to think about why it is you Europeans love paying all those taxes--all that free healthcare and higher education has got to get paid for somehow. Take a look at those 20% luxury taxes on things like electronics you guys are paying.
When I want socialized medicine, I'm moving to Europe. When you want cheap toys, you might consider a trip to the States.
More in-depth view at MacCentral
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MacCentral is running a much more in-depth article, complete with screenshots you can actually see. Also included are a hands-on review and some intelligent commentary missing from the very PC-centric C|Net.
I'm not an adobe apologist or anything. In fact, I'm often more likely to use Macromedia products (web developer...). However, Adobe has really stepped up to the plate on getting their stuff carbonized. InDesign, LiveMotion, GoLive, Illustrator ALL OS X ready. And Photoshop 7 is supposedly just around the corner. Macromedia really needs to get off their duff and carbonize Flash and Dreamweaver, or they'll find Adobe converts.
Answers from an OSX user.
1. The default console is ksh. However, building and using bash is a realtively simple process. Check out StepWise for instructions. In fact, check stepwise for general "How do I..." OS X answers.
2. Most of the 'standard' tools are there. vi, top, apache, sendmail,php. you can build most UNIX apps with a simple recompile and few changes. Most of them have already been built for OSX. AS for the directory structure, yeah, it's pretty similar. User permissions,/root,/etc, it's all there. However...
3. Apps are kinda tricky in terms of where they install. Many Unix apps will install into something like/usr/bin but most Mac apps will install in the Applications directory, with user settings in the User/yourname directory. It's a compromise for those of us moving from OS9.
4. The toolkit is amazing. I've never seen anything like this simply given away. there are about 25 applications, megabytes upon megabytes of documentation, anything you could need to start developing applications. Want to build an interface for Aqua. It's there. Want to simply create a command line app. go for it! It's defintiely focused on the Cocoa developer. As I've not developed much with GTK/Qt, i can't make an apt comparison.
5. you comment about openness, etc. is pretty much right on. The low level and system level system is open, as the Darwin project. the UI level stuff is closed, including the PDF screen display, alpha blending, 3d widgets, etc. However, the hooks are very well documented and pretty easy to follow for developers. It's pretty easy to see how everything builds in layers.
What's nice about what apple has done is build on open technologies rather than try to enforce proprietery extensions, like Microsoft and their directX or ClearScreen. Apple's response has been, OK, we'll use OpenGL and PDF for our display. These are fully open, cross platform technologies that we're building on, not ramming down your throat. This is repeated time and again when looking at OS X and other Mac Apps. It's kind of nice to see how innovative you have to be when you don't own the world...
Rather than force Microsoft to develop bloated software for linux, which will probably only work with a single distribution anyway, why not force them to open their file formats? Projects like OpenOffice and AppleWorks could then really compete. MS wouldn't have quite the same stranglehold that they currently enjoy with opened file formats. This would include, of course, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and interchange capabilities with Outlook. I suppose you could add Access into that, but it's such worthless crap anyway, why bother?
And make them open every aspect of the file formats, not just make them compatible. My understanding is that the way things currently are, most non-MS Office Suites can still read MOST MS office files, but not ALL MS Office files, which keeps a lot of shops from converting. Especially those that rely on specialized macros and whatnot.
I imagine it has more to do with router.limewire.com. When you first fire up limewire, it looks to the central router to find other hosts--a fairly practical solution to the "who is my nearest neighbor" problem. Thousands (millions?) of limewire users pinging this server==lots of bandwidth. PLUS the download and website. Just a thought.
However, it seems to me that adding advertising is only going to increase their bandwidth (high cost) for very little return (is anyone still buying ads on the web?). I guess porn sites will find a niche, but that's about it. Seems like a dumb move to me.
Evolution requires a LOT of libraries that haven't been ported to OSX, via Fink or otherwise (to my knowledge). Things like Bonobo, etc. From what I understand, this is more than a trivial recompile to get these kinds of utilites over.
Here's what I want from Apple, a la iPod, in a stereo component (iDeck, I kinda like that for a name...)
Removable 60 GB firewire harddrive. Sync with my mac (or move your mp3's manually from peecee). Connect to my stereo. Play mp3's through my stereo, easily.
PVR functionality. Record television shows, Tivo, etc. Play DVD's, CD's, mp3 CD-R's, etc.
Snync recorded video to my mac (or drag and drop from the mounted firewire drive to my peecee...) Have a plugin for iMovie that allows me to record my television programs to DVD, via the SuperDrive. This would be very cool, and Apple could actually do it.
Make it expandable. Include an empty bay so that I can add another 100GB firewire drive if I want. Include networking, but not to transfer massive video files over a network (why? when you have firewire...). Allow mp3 streaming to PC clients on the network.
Release a mini-iDeck that will connect to the main Deck via airport and have music streamed to any room in range. Build on cheap G3 hardware, embedded Darwin, scaled down Aqua gui for tv out (antialiased text on a television...)
I'm also waiting for Sony to release something like this, perhaps with linux inside (they seem to be gearing up for war with Microsoft...)
Would you mind explaining a few the acronyms, for those of us out in the real world. I got lost at PPPL--what's a TRANSP, ics645 digitizer board (sound I'm assuming?), MRX? This kind of info might actually be interesting if I could understand any of it...
I think we agree in spirit. I truly did mind students wasting my time by not paying attention. It's really just rude. I'd rather them not attend class than disrupt by IM-ing or checking email. And yes, that is a distraction, especially if multiplied by a factor greater than 1.
I'm not sure I agree that you're going to distinguish the timid from the talented with something like a firewall or screen capture program. The endless stream of script kiddies proliferating on the net proves that just because you can '0wn' something doesn't mean you're any good. And these kinds of systems aren't necessarily that difficult to break. Furthermore, what kind of CS skill are really required for this kind of work? it seems more like an administration task. Some of the brightest CS folks I know don't know a thing about administration, and vice versa. I'd personally rather my students focus on meaningful problem solving than how to score warez and mp3's while in class.
Question: why does it have to be either/or? The reality is, Unix system administration will be a benefit to you on BOTH systems. I've been a mac user for nearly 10 years and a Linux user for over 5. When I first loaded the OS X preview, I was amazed at how comfortable I was with the command line. Granted, there are some major differences between the two systems, but there are a lot more similarities.
OSX is going to give you support from major vendors--Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft--with the kind of desktop software that many people need. I'm a web developer, I love Macromedia products. Try not to flame me. However, I also build dynamic sites using PHP, MySQL and Java. The ability to perform both of these tasks from a single machine--my G3 laptop--is awesome.
The reality is, Linux is going to have a very hard time garnering this kind of desktop software support. Open Source alternatives, such as OpenOffice or any wysisyg html layout tool, are always a step behind, running just to stand still with the comercial competitors. I love linux--on my webserver. I can't design with it.
Kind of. Darwin is actually the core of the new Mac OS, including a kernel based on Mach and BSD4.4 compatible Unix layer. Darwin has been released as open source software. It was built to run on PowerPc systems, all the way up the G4. However, the Darwing team has ported it to the x86. If you have a system that meets their guidelines, you can actually run Darwin on an x86, though I'm not real sure why you'd want to. Some have speculated that with a simple recompile and rewrite of some drivers, Apple could port OS X to the x86. Hope this helps.
I have to seriously object to the knee-jerk reaction that the story's submitter seems to be suffering from. This isn't censorship in the classroom. It's not as if these schools are imposing some draconian system of keeping information out of the hands of their students--they just want them to pay attention in class.
The system in place is one that I've actually used as a teaching assistant at UNC. We have, as do many universities, a huge problem with students simply not paying attention in class. The classes I taught were multimedia development, so every student was sitting in front of a computer. You could gurantee that everytime the lights went down for instruction, the email terminals came up. I never actually had a professor use the screen capture, but the fact that it exists doesn't bother me at all.
The reality is, these kinds of measures are not censorous. Institutions of higher learning have been and will continue to be places where freedom on the Internet will be vitally important. When this freedom begins to be limited at schools, we're in serious trouble.
Thanks for posting that MacSlash post. It's always good to see a little cross-Slash post lovin'
Anyway, the gist of the MacSlash discussion is the Unix trademark is doled out if you meet the technical requirements AND pay a license fee to the trademark folks (the open group, me thinks). As far as I'm concerned, OS X is every bit as good a Unix as anything else I've used (solaris, linux, irix).
So is cable really the only viable alternative? AS a telocity DSL subscriber, I've been pretty happy with my service. But it seems to me that Cable provides a superior infrastructure to copper wiring. Until fiber runs to my home, is cable the way to go? Does anyone out there love/loath their cable service. I'm reluctant to support the aol/timwarner behemoth, but it looks like other isp's are getting into the game (earthlink will soon be providing service to all timewarner customers).
So what happens if Apple leads the way here, again? Let's assume that come Macworld in July, Apple unveils wireless keyboards and mice that are compliant with the (published) bluetooth standards? I can picture Steve Jobs, black turtleneck and all, "Now, every mac we ship after today will be bluetooth enabled, to take advantage of the coming devices."
Remember USB and FireWire? Microsoft is STILL catching up with those. Microsoft has had a chance to innovate several times but decided instead to follow along after the innovation happened. This is another time where maybe it's better that someone else innovate so that OPEN standards are created that Microsoft has to abide by. Otherwise, MS could implement their version, flex monopoly muscles, and make everyone else follow along.
IBM's second generation (but still completely useless) linux watch uses an OLED for all the reasons mentioned here: bright display, low batter consumption, etc. Check out the CNet article.
For those of us that may have forgotten, check out the specs on the Indrema Console. Yes, this is being marketed as a game box. BUT, it also includes TiVO like features AND (wait for it) an mp3 server. And, it will be priced at US$299. Check it.
Why will this win? It's open. The OS is a collaboration with RedHat to build a multimedia Linux. The fact that the OS is open source alone puts it ahead. Not because people can open it up and hack it apart. I hardly see that as an advantage. But because development will be driven (hopefully) by something larger than a single company. Also, this system will truly be a multimedia device, capable of storing not just mp3 but such quirky things as digital video. Just think of the possibilities.
2 things I'd like to see from indrema: 1.Firewire support. Call it whatever you want so you don't have to pay Apple that US$1, but you gotta have it. 2. A non-game console. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I would be in the market for this thing. Hell, half the reason I stood in line at 3:00 in friggin morning for a ps2 was because it plays DVD's! Keep the non-gamers in mind. Scale down that "next-generation nVidia GPU" to something a bit cheaper and more reasonable. Upgrade the hard drive to 30GB.
Is Linux a better "mediaOS" (whatever the hell that means) than Be. NO! But it can be. It's open and it's getting there. Rapidly.
One nice offshoot that may come of all of this is that Be as a corporation utterly fails. There's just not enough room in the OS market for Be, IMHO. Maybe THEN they'll open source their OS and the linux crowd can have some REAL fun.
I agree that the RIAA is far too incoherent as an organization to even consider this and that these types of appliaces are where they should be looking. HOWEVER...
I'm glad they're as dumb as they are;) I'd really like to see the RIAA die a very rapid yet painful death. The hegemony of white old men with no sense of creativity is rapidly coming to a close and open standards and open arcitectures shall rule the day. AND artists will still live on. Very well, I predict. No, they won't drive Bentley's and pour champagne on their ho's. But those folks aren't artists. No, they won't be boy bands that do nothing more than coreograph shitty dance. But those kids aren't artists. True musical artists will live on and embrace open-ness and the sharing of their work and they will be very successful. And we won't have these teen sensations shoved down our throats by some balding asshole with a ponytail who's trying to predict the next big thing so he can feed his porn and cocaine habit. Whew--now I gotta study.
I love the idea of this. I pine for the day that I can buy a cd (hear that RIAA), bring it home, sitck it in my multimedia console, encode the thing to vorbis, and have the tracks available to any other mulitmedia device in my house.
However, I'd also like to see the system be very, very OPEN. First of all, dump MP3 encoding. Support MP3 playback for my 2 gigs of already encoded stuff, but stop encoding this locked down codec. Move to Vorbis for all encoding. It's just better. Also, make it accessible to anything with an IP address. I want to be able to access this multimedia thing with my computer while I'm working or from my slimmed down multimedia module in my kitchen while I'm cooking. It sounds like Be has considered this, which is a good sign.
I think Be has a good product in their OS and I'm sad that it never really took off. Their filesystem kicks ass. They've got great multiprocessor support as well. I was really sad to see them drop support for the PowerPC, a move that I never really understood. I'd like to see this work, in a bit more open way though. If Linux had some of the technical capabilities that Be has, it'd be the winner.
I don't really know the guy. I talked with him briefly in San Jose this summer. I understand that people think he's arrogant and pretentious. However, don't forget that he's contributed a lot to open source and I seriously doubt linux would be where it is today without him. It would get there eventually, but not today.
NOW, a lot of what ESR said doesn't really make much sense to me, especially in reference to Microsoft, etc. While that comment about them going out of business was one small aspect of the article, ti seems kinda off kilter. First of all, MS has moved far beyond just software. Their OEM partnerships are not what make it a multi-multi billion dollar company. Additionally, MS is one of the largest "service" providers in the tech business (I had to put service in quotes because I don't really see MS software as a service, more like a DIS-service...) I would make the humble prediction that MS is going to move even more to the service side of the industry, with their software as a single component of that. Who would your boss rather buy that email server from, the company that wrote it or some third party Microsoft certified technician? There's huge business in that, and they're already exploiting it.
Something that did kind of annoy me about that article was how the interviewer seemed to pander to ESR. As a journalism student, I've learned not to let the subject take control of the interview. I also know that this is incredibly difficult sometimes, especially dealing with smart people and people who think a lot of themselves, but the whole thing seemed kind of in praise of Raymond and not much else.
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I disagree completely. I've been using a whitelist for a while now and it works flawlessly. Here's the deal. I set up the initial whitelist based on my address book--people that I regularly send email to. Then, the procmail filter I use runs every email I receive against the whitelist. If the sender is on the list, it goes to INBOX. Otherwise, the email is held in a pending-message folder and they get an automatically generated reply that says something to the effect of "Hi, I haven't received your email yet because your email address hasn't been verified. Please reply to this email to verify that you are a real person and not a spammer and you will be automatically added to my whitelist."
Person replies, they get added to the whitelist, and the original email gets delivered. Spambots don't reply. Easy as pie.
The one saving grace of the system I use is that all email, spam included, gets put into a BULK folder. I periodically sift through the BULK folder to make sure I haven't missed anything important (like a message from my bank or airline or something) and delete all the spam.
I use a variation of this procmail script on my email system.
In fact, now that I've effectively killed spam on my email account, my email address has become MORE useful--I don't hesitate to publish it on my website or give it out to folks.
Here in Chitown, we are served by the magic of Peapod. Having groceries delivered directly to my apartment has literally changed my life in the city. Not having a car meant that I had to schlep my groceries by hand from the nearest store (about 3/4 mile--it's a lot when you've got arms full of bags) or use mass transit. It also meant that I could never buy more than about 5 days worth of food--simply because that's all I could carry.
To all the naysayers out there that say "Eh, you lazy fuck, I can't believe you have your groceries delivered" I have this to say: screw you. I cook almost every night and having to carry food by hand across the city or rely on a friend with a car is simply out of the question. A bi-monthly peapod delivery makes sure that I don't have to worry about running out of food.
Before I signed up, I held on to my receipts from the grocery stores around town to compare. The prices are no more expensive than any other store, and sometimes cheaper. As long as I order $100 or more, delivery is $5 (plus a tip to guy that hauls my food up 2 flights of stairs). All non-perishable goods are stored in their warehouses (which is how the keep overhead low, methinks) but all fresh foods are picked up from local markets and suppliers to area restaurants.
Peapod rocks. Having your groceries delivered to your house/apartment ROCKS. Shopping for groceries in my PJ's from my home ROCKS.
It just so happens, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, that Mr. Gates is very very rich. And you know what; even if 98% of what his company does is wrong; getting there was not as wrong as you think. And that man worked hard to get where he is; and deserves an ounce of your respect for that.
Please. That man was very, very lucky. When he dropped out of Harvard to start selling software, he had a million dollar trust fund in his back pocket to fall back on. When he started selling DOS (an application he stole, let's not forget) to IBM, it's because his mommy set up the meeting with then-CEO John Opel. Yeah, he's rich, but respect isn't something he deserves from me.
Read all about it.
Apple doesn't care very much about European customers....(Let alone pricing outside the US, which is just horrible)
That's a brilliant assesment. In fact, Apple probably doesn't care about any of their non-US customers, which is why prices are so unbelievably high. Except in places like Japan, where the prices are nearly identical to those in the States.
Hit www.apple.co.jp and you'll see that a fully loaded iBook costs 231,100 yen. Convert that and you get US$1,897.
A fully loaded iBook from www.apple.com costs US$1,849.
Furthermore, you walk through Shinjuku or Omotesando, and you'll see more shiny Apples than you know what to do with. I've found brand new Macs in South America, too. Even had a repair job on a new powerbook and sat in on an Apple sponsored multimedia conference in Santiago, Chile.
So before you go spouting off about how Apple dicks over their European cutomers, you might want to reconsider. You might want to think about why it is you Europeans love paying all those taxes--all that free healthcare and higher education has got to get paid for somehow. Take a look at those 20% luxury taxes on things like electronics you guys are paying.
When I want socialized medicine, I'm moving to Europe. When you want cheap toys, you might consider a trip to the States.
MacCentral is running a much more in-depth article, complete with screenshots you can actually see. Also included are a hands-on review and some intelligent commentary missing from the very PC-centric C|Net.
I'm not an adobe apologist or anything. In fact, I'm often more likely to use Macromedia products (web developer...). However, Adobe has really stepped up to the plate on getting their stuff carbonized. InDesign, LiveMotion, GoLive, Illustrator ALL OS X ready. And Photoshop 7 is supposedly just around the corner. Macromedia really needs to get off their duff and carbonize Flash and Dreamweaver, or they'll find Adobe converts.
Answers from an OSX user. /root, /etc, it's all there. However...
/usr/bin but most Mac apps will install in the Applications directory, with user settings in the User/yourname directory. It's a compromise for those of us moving from OS9.
1. The default console is ksh. However, building and using bash is a realtively simple process. Check out StepWise for instructions. In fact, check stepwise for general "How do I..." OS X answers.
2. Most of the 'standard' tools are there. vi, top, apache, sendmail,php. you can build most UNIX apps with a simple recompile and few changes. Most of them have already been built for OSX. AS for the directory structure, yeah, it's pretty similar. User permissions,
3. Apps are kinda tricky in terms of where they install. Many Unix apps will install into something like
4. The toolkit is amazing. I've never seen anything like this simply given away. there are about 25 applications, megabytes upon megabytes of documentation, anything you could need to start developing applications. Want to build an interface for Aqua. It's there. Want to simply create a command line app. go for it! It's defintiely focused on the Cocoa developer. As I've not developed much with GTK/Qt, i can't make an apt comparison.
5. you comment about openness, etc. is pretty much right on. The low level and system level system is open, as the Darwin project. the UI level stuff is closed, including the PDF screen display, alpha blending, 3d widgets, etc. However, the hooks are very well documented and pretty easy to follow for developers. It's pretty easy to see how everything builds in layers.
What's nice about what apple has done is build on open technologies rather than try to enforce proprietery extensions, like Microsoft and their directX or ClearScreen. Apple's response has been, OK, we'll use OpenGL and PDF for our display. These are fully open, cross platform technologies that we're building on, not ramming down your throat. This is repeated time and again when looking at OS X and other Mac Apps. It's kind of nice to see how innovative you have to be when you don't own the world...
That's my bit. Enjoy.
Rather than force Microsoft to develop bloated software for linux, which will probably only work with a single distribution anyway, why not force them to open their file formats? Projects like OpenOffice and AppleWorks could then really compete. MS wouldn't have quite the same stranglehold that they currently enjoy with opened file formats. This would include, of course, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and interchange capabilities with Outlook. I suppose you could add Access into that, but it's such worthless crap anyway, why bother?
And make them open every aspect of the file formats, not just make them compatible. My understanding is that the way things currently are, most non-MS Office Suites can still read MOST MS office files, but not ALL MS Office files, which keeps a lot of shops from converting. Especially those that rely on specialized macros and whatnot.
I imagine it has more to do with router.limewire.com. When you first fire up limewire, it looks to the central router to find other hosts--a fairly practical solution to the "who is my nearest neighbor" problem. Thousands (millions?) of limewire users pinging this server==lots of bandwidth. PLUS the download and website. Just a thought.
However, it seems to me that adding advertising is only going to increase their bandwidth (high cost) for very little return (is anyone still buying ads on the web?). I guess porn sites will find a niche, but that's about it. Seems like a dumb move to me.
Evolution requires a LOT of libraries that haven't been ported to OSX, via Fink or otherwise (to my knowledge). Things like Bonobo, etc. From what I understand, this is more than a trivial recompile to get these kinds of utilites over.
Here's what I want from Apple, a la iPod, in a stereo component (iDeck, I kinda like that for a name...)
Removable 60 GB firewire harddrive. Sync with my mac (or move your mp3's manually from peecee). Connect to my stereo. Play mp3's through my stereo, easily.
PVR functionality. Record television shows, Tivo, etc. Play DVD's, CD's, mp3 CD-R's, etc.
Snync recorded video to my mac (or drag and drop from the mounted firewire drive to my peecee...) Have a plugin for iMovie that allows me to record my television programs to DVD, via the SuperDrive. This would be very cool, and Apple could actually do it.
Make it expandable. Include an empty bay so that I can add another 100GB firewire drive if I want. Include networking, but not to transfer massive video files over a network (why? when you have firewire...). Allow mp3 streaming to PC clients on the network.
Release a mini-iDeck that will connect to the main Deck via airport and have music streamed to any room in range. Build on cheap G3 hardware, embedded Darwin, scaled down Aqua gui for tv out (antialiased text on a television...)
I'm also waiting for Sony to release something like this, perhaps with linux inside (they seem to be gearing up for war with Microsoft...)
Would you mind explaining a few the acronyms, for those of us out in the real world. I got lost at PPPL--what's a TRANSP, ics645 digitizer board (sound I'm assuming?), MRX? This kind of info might actually be interesting if I could understand any of it...
I think we agree in spirit. I truly did mind students wasting my time by not paying attention. It's really just rude. I'd rather them not attend class than disrupt by IM-ing or checking email. And yes, that is a distraction, especially if multiplied by a factor greater than 1.
I'm not sure I agree that you're going to distinguish the timid from the talented with something like a firewall or screen capture program. The endless stream of script kiddies proliferating on the net proves that just because you can '0wn' something doesn't mean you're any good. And these kinds of systems aren't necessarily that difficult to break. Furthermore, what kind of CS skill are really required for this kind of work? it seems more like an administration task. Some of the brightest CS folks I know don't know a thing about administration, and vice versa. I'd personally rather my students focus on meaningful problem solving than how to score warez and mp3's while in class.
Question: why does it have to be either/or? The reality is, Unix system administration will be a benefit to you on BOTH systems. I've been a mac user for nearly 10 years and a Linux user for over 5. When I first loaded the OS X preview, I was amazed at how comfortable I was with the command line. Granted, there are some major differences between the two systems, but there are a lot more similarities.
OSX is going to give you support from major vendors--Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft--with the kind of desktop software that many people need. I'm a web developer, I love Macromedia products. Try not to flame me. However, I also build dynamic sites using PHP, MySQL and Java. The ability to perform both of these tasks from a single machine--my G3 laptop--is awesome.
The reality is, Linux is going to have a very hard time garnering this kind of desktop software support. Open Source alternatives, such as OpenOffice or any wysisyg html layout tool, are always a step behind, running just to stand still with the comercial competitors. I love linux--on my webserver. I can't design with it.
Kind of. Darwin is actually the core of the new Mac OS, including a kernel based on Mach and BSD4.4 compatible Unix layer. Darwin has been released as open source software. It was built to run on PowerPc systems, all the way up the G4. However, the Darwing team has ported it to the x86. If you have a system that meets their guidelines, you can actually run Darwin on an x86, though I'm not real sure why you'd want to. Some have speculated that with a simple recompile and rewrite of some drivers, Apple could port OS X to the x86. Hope this helps.
Get more info here:
http://www.apple.com/darwin/
I have to seriously object to the knee-jerk reaction that the story's submitter seems to be suffering from. This isn't censorship in the classroom. It's not as if these schools are imposing some draconian system of keeping information out of the hands of their students--they just want them to pay attention in class.
The system in place is one that I've actually used as a teaching assistant at UNC. We have, as do many universities, a huge problem with students simply not paying attention in class. The classes I taught were multimedia development, so every student was sitting in front of a computer. You could gurantee that everytime the lights went down for instruction, the email terminals came up. I never actually had a professor use the screen capture, but the fact that it exists doesn't bother me at all.
The reality is, these kinds of measures are not censorous. Institutions of higher learning have been and will continue to be places where freedom on the Internet will be vitally important. When this freedom begins to be limited at schools, we're in serious trouble.
How do I get government money to go study rocks in the Bahamas?
Thanks for posting that MacSlash post. It's always good to see a little cross-Slash post lovin'
Anyway, the gist of the MacSlash discussion is the Unix trademark is doled out if you meet the technical requirements AND pay a license fee to the trademark folks (the open group, me thinks). As far as I'm concerned, OS X is every bit as good a Unix as anything else I've used (solaris, linux, irix).
Brought to you by a current OS X user.
So is cable really the only viable alternative? AS a telocity DSL subscriber, I've been pretty happy with my service. But it seems to me that Cable provides a superior infrastructure to copper wiring. Until fiber runs to my home, is cable the way to go? Does anyone out there love/loath their cable service. I'm reluctant to support the aol/timwarner behemoth, but it looks like other isp's are getting into the game (earthlink will soon be providing service to all timewarner customers).
So what happens if Apple leads the way here, again? Let's assume that come Macworld in July, Apple unveils wireless keyboards and mice that are compliant with the (published) bluetooth standards? I can picture Steve Jobs, black turtleneck and all, "Now, every mac we ship after today will be bluetooth enabled, to take advantage of the coming devices."
Remember USB and FireWire? Microsoft is STILL catching up with those. Microsoft has had a chance to innovate several times but decided instead to follow along after the innovation happened. This is another time where maybe it's better that someone else innovate so that OPEN standards are created that Microsoft has to abide by. Otherwise, MS could implement their version, flex monopoly muscles, and make everyone else follow along.
IBM's second generation (but still completely useless) linux watch uses an OLED for all the reasons mentioned here: bright display, low batter consumption, etc. Check out the CNet article.
For those of us that may have forgotten, check out the specs on the Indrema Console. Yes, this is being marketed as a game box. BUT, it also includes TiVO like features AND (wait for it) an mp3 server. And, it will be priced at US$299. Check it.
Why will this win? It's open. The OS is a collaboration with RedHat to build a multimedia Linux. The fact that the OS is open source alone puts it ahead. Not because people can open it up and hack it apart. I hardly see that as an advantage. But because development will be driven (hopefully) by something larger than a single company. Also, this system will truly be a multimedia device, capable of storing not just mp3 but such quirky things as digital video. Just think of the possibilities.
2 things I'd like to see from indrema: 1.Firewire support. Call it whatever you want so you don't have to pay Apple that US$1, but you gotta have it. 2. A non-game console. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I would be in the market for this thing. Hell, half the reason I stood in line at 3:00 in friggin morning for a ps2 was because it plays DVD's! Keep the non-gamers in mind. Scale down that "next-generation nVidia GPU" to something a bit cheaper and more reasonable. Upgrade the hard drive to 30GB.
Is Linux a better "mediaOS" (whatever the hell that means) than Be. NO! But it can be. It's open and it's getting there. Rapidly.
One nice offshoot that may come of all of this is that Be as a corporation utterly fails. There's just not enough room in the OS market for Be, IMHO. Maybe THEN they'll open source their OS and the linux crowd can have some REAL fun.
I agree that the RIAA is far too incoherent as an organization to even consider this and that these types of appliaces are where they should be looking. HOWEVER...
;) I'd really like to see the RIAA die a very rapid yet painful death. The hegemony of white old men with no sense of creativity is rapidly coming to a close and open standards and open arcitectures shall rule the day. AND artists will still live on. Very well, I predict. No, they won't drive Bentley's and pour champagne on their ho's. But those folks aren't artists. No, they won't be boy bands that do nothing more than coreograph shitty dance. But those kids aren't artists. True musical artists will live on and embrace open-ness and the sharing of their work and they will be very successful. And we won't have these teen sensations shoved down our throats by some balding asshole with a ponytail who's trying to predict the next big thing so he can feed his porn and cocaine habit. Whew--now I gotta study.
I'm glad they're as dumb as they are
I love the idea of this. I pine for the day that I can buy a cd (hear that RIAA), bring it home, sitck it in my multimedia console, encode the thing to vorbis, and have the tracks available to any other mulitmedia device in my house.
However, I'd also like to see the system be very, very OPEN. First of all, dump MP3 encoding. Support MP3 playback for my 2 gigs of already encoded stuff, but stop encoding this locked down codec. Move to Vorbis for all encoding. It's just better. Also, make it accessible to anything with an IP address. I want to be able to access this multimedia thing with my computer while I'm working or from my slimmed down multimedia module in my kitchen while I'm cooking. It sounds like Be has considered this, which is a good sign.
I think Be has a good product in their OS and I'm sad that it never really took off. Their filesystem kicks ass. They've got great multiprocessor support as well. I was really sad to see them drop support for the PowerPC, a move that I never really understood. I'd like to see this work, in a bit more open way though. If Linux had some of the technical capabilities that Be has, it'd be the winner.
I don't really know the guy. I talked with him briefly in San Jose this summer. I understand that people think he's arrogant and pretentious. However, don't forget that he's contributed a lot to open source and I seriously doubt linux would be where it is today without him. It would get there eventually, but not today.
NOW, a lot of what ESR said doesn't really make much sense to me, especially in reference to Microsoft, etc. While that comment about them going out of business was one small aspect of the article, ti seems kinda off kilter. First of all, MS has moved far beyond just software. Their OEM partnerships are not what make it a multi-multi billion dollar company. Additionally, MS is one of the largest "service" providers in the tech business (I had to put service in quotes because I don't really see MS software as a service, more like a DIS-service...) I would make the humble prediction that MS is going to move even more to the service side of the industry, with their software as a single component of that. Who would your boss rather buy that email server from, the company that wrote it or some third party Microsoft certified technician? There's huge business in that, and they're already exploiting it.
Something that did kind of annoy me about that article was how the interviewer seemed to pander to ESR. As a journalism student, I've learned not to let the subject take control of the interview. I also know that this is incredibly difficult sometimes, especially dealing with smart people and people who think a lot of themselves, but the whole thing seemed kind of in praise of Raymond and not much else.