Not only that, you should see the multiple strands of fiber coming into Apple. Drooooooooool!
They have plenty of bandwidth, even without Akamai. The use Akamai for geographical reasons to improve download speeds for people that aren't in California.
I have an 8500/180 that's still going strong, purchased in late 1996. It's been upgraded to a 500MHz G3 proc, but still runs MacOS 8.6. It's recently been demoted from being my main machine, as I've acquired a hand me down iBook which I'm enjoying, but I don't plan on getting rid of the 8500 any time soon.
My MIDI interface and sequencer software all runs great on the 8500 and won't on newer systems. I'm just a hobbyist with that stuff, so I feel no need to spend more money I don't have going current with hardware and software for that stuff. At least not now.
I have other hardware even older, but I've more or less retired that stuff. They've been powered down since I rarely use them. A dual proc Pentium Pro 180 running NT Server, a DEC AlphaServer 1000, a Quadra 800, Mac IISi, PowerBook 540c and a Pentium 200 all collect dust now.
Extreme Programming or Rapid Application Development is just an excuse to bypass solid process in order to ship faster. Does it do the job better? No.
General problems with the approach:
Design on the fly. You get less features, more hastily implemented. Code is less maintainable.
Without a plan up front, you have QA scrambling to keep up. Testing is full of gaps in coverage. Product is more buggy as a result.
The only real benefit is shipping faster. You make everyone work harder and get an inferior product as a result. I suppose Marketing will be happy with that as long as the customers will pay for it.
Personally, I prefer doing the job WELL, not just doing the job, but I seem to be in the minority in the development industry these days. I know a lot of engineers would prefer to do the job well, but go along for whatever reason.
Having been involved in development for about 10 years, I've seen product quality decline over the years. Products in general have become more complex, but defects have increased substantially. I'd like to see a lower level of defects maintained and value to customer in stability, reliability and functionality/features increased.
Case 120 Pwr 120 CPUs 600 Ram 200 HD 150 DVD 200 Video 400 OS 200 Mobo 200 Kybd/mouse 100
This puts the total at: $2290.00
This assumes you buy XP Pro as an OS. You can go Linux and save, but then, you can't do as much with Linux.
It takes me an average of 3 hours to build the PCs I build, plus and hour for an OS install. This involves careful mounting of the mobo and referencing the manual for any jumper settings, etc. I've built quite a few PCs in the past, although I'm sure someone that builds them every day and do it faster.
Add $200 for build/install labor, bringing the total to $2490. That's $509.00 less than the Apple System, although you'd need to spring for another hundred to add 512megs more RAM.
I call that pretty comparable.
Not only that, it's one stop shopping. If you build a PC, you invariably shop the net for the best price, meaning any problems involve lengthy ship times and multiple vendors, some of whom are more cooperative than others. One stop shopping brings peace of mind in that aspect many people prefer.
Macs aren't just for people that don't know squat about computers. While I'm certain I know less than many here, I'd lay odds have more knowledge and experience with computers than over 50% of the people that read slashdot. And yet a seasoned computer veteran like me likes Macs. Go figure.
I run all operating systems. I'm not foolish enough to believe that one tool is the best for every job. And Macs certainly aren't the best for everything. But they are for many things and the new G5 is excpetionally powerful, not to mention, reasonably priced in a bang for the buck manner, despite the typcally uninformed posts saying they can build a less complete, lower performing system for less.
Cheap case, no support...nothing pre-installed... not a valid comparison. Build it yourself versus well designed, supported and warranted by a major company is comparing Apples and Oranges... Invalid comparison
Configure a Dell similarly and you'll see it IS competitively priced.
20 years ago, $20,000 was pretty standard for a car. You could get one for less, sure, but 20k was your average car. Housing? depends on where you live. Where I live, you haven't been able to buy a shack for 50 grand for the last 100 years. Hamburgers? A Carl's Jr. Famous Super (2 patty) was 2 bucks. And Cassette tapes were 7.99 to 9.99.
Sculley's years at Apple were Apple's some of it's most successful during Apple's entire history. Profits, marketshare, etc were at their highest during Sculley's reign.
While Jobs has arguably done a good job since his return, profits are minimal, market share is weak and product quality, while still innovative, is lower that during the Sculley era.
While I can appreciate you displeasure with the RIAA, MPAA, etc, your approach is fundamentally flawed. Not to mention your language...
If all you pay is at the concert, you are contributing to skyrocketing ticket costs for concerts. Composing, recording and producing an album takes time, talent and money. Artists and technicians involved in that process deserve to be paid for their work just as you are paid for yours.
I do believe the system contains massive amounts of unnecessary overheat. The meat isn't very lean, so to speak. Record executives rake in huge salaries, while most artists, which pay those execs, are lucky to make gas money. This needs to change. It will be a long, slow and painful process, but I think we are in the beginning stages of that now. Just remember, the execs won't give up their fat salaries without a fight.
I remember when concert tickets for a major act were $20 at a major venue. Going to a concert was affordable then. And I went to a fair number of concerts. Today, the major acts are pulling in $75 for those same seats. Sure, you can go to some shows for $35, but those are generally acts from the 80s or emerging bands. Even so, it's nearly double what it was less than 20 years ago.
If concerts were affordable, I'd go far more often. Paying your fair share at every step of the process (not just for concerts, but for the CDs, too) will help.
Piracy only makes the problems worse and it's a lame excuse to break the law.
"Rather than being run through product management as something that has to appear on retail shelves on a certain date, Fedora Core will be released based on schedules"
So instead of basing it off dates, they'll base it off dates! Ah, well in THAT case...
- run disk tools... have it repair everything. Do this from the Boot CD. Insert Boot CD... hold down C key while machine boots until you see Welcome To Macintosh. Once it boots, locate Disk Tools in the Utilities folder and run repair on all available partitions.
- run a current version of Norton Disk Doctor if you have it and have it auto fix all errors.
- Pony up for some RAM. 64 megs has been puny for a long time, especially for graphics. I recommend a min of 128megs for Mac OS (classic) based systems. Preferably more if you do graphics.
- Check your Virtual Memory control panel. Set it to no more than double the installed RAM.
- if you have Norton, use the defragger. I'm sure the drive's never been defragged.
- reboot the machine
Should work great after that. My old 8500 still works fine. I can copy several gigs on it in the 17 minutes or so.
SCO (need you ask?) Verisign (screwed by em long before this) SBC (for not blocking Verisign) Microsoft (ya just gotta) RIAA (You don't sue your customers. Solve the problem!) Sun (for the abomination called Java) Gray Davis (because he DOES suck) Cruz Bustamante (Don't give him a CHANCE to suck)
there's a slightly out of date version of gAIM available through fink.
'fink install gaim' should do it for ya.
However, it's not that current a version.
I heard on TechTV that in a couple months an OS X native version of gAIM is slated for initial release. I'm eagerly looking forward to that.
I haven't tried compiling gAIM on OS X. If I feel the need to run gAIM, I do remote X from my linux box.
But for now, I use Proteus on OS X. It has some issues that most IM apps don't (you can't delete users, they come back when the user logs on again.... no file support) but it works for most of my needs until native gAIM comes.
Java has received alot of attention over the last 7 or 8 years or so. It's a great idea in theory, but it falls way short in practice. It does remain viable for a few select uses, though: small widgets, servlets and web app servers. Pretty much other than that, using Java will mean excessive memory usage and slow performance.
Garbage collection in Java is not guranteed. It's what I call Union. It'll clean up when it god damn well feels like it. In the meantime, the system slows to a crawl.
Graphics in Java are abysmally slow. Even basic UIs lack the speed and responsiveness of GUIs written in C, C++ or similar languages.
Java was supposed to be: Write once, run anywhere, but what it is in reality is: Write once, debug everywhere... over and over and over. Or perhaps more appropriately it is" Write once, run screaming.
I've worked in a variety of Java development projects in the past and not once has it ever risen to the task to show itself as a worthy choice and/or a mature language. Instead it has invariably wasted companies time and money. Primarily because they failed to realize that Java is a small task tool, not suitable for major applications or those requiring performance.
I know a lot of engineers like Java because it makes life easier for them by doing things for them, but those things it does it does very poorly.
I'm sure I'll be marked as flamebait or troll by some Java loving mod, but what I've stated are facts and experiences from real life Java development. The results are in and frankly... Java sucks! Stick with C and C++ for most development, there's a reason they are the standard: they work.
If I had a blind drunk, I'd have a better driver than ATI.
ATI has historically made good hardware that was crippled by buggy, poorly written, limited drivers.
They still have yet to convince me to buy an ATI product. They seem to be having a good run at the moment, but given their many years of incompetence, I'm sure this will pass as quickly as it came to be.
The origin of sosumi (at least the name) came about from a complaint by Microsoft that the sound sounded too much like a sound they used in Windows.
Apple renamed the sound (but left the sound the same) to sosumi in response.
This occured long before the Carl Sagan scandal. What a putz! I'd be honored to have someone CODENAME a project after me (not a marketable name, a CODENAME).
Oh god that mouse SUCKED! You had no sensory perception of which way it was facing. Playing an FPS game with that mouse was guaranteed to get your ass fragged.
While it was rugged as hell, in ergonomics and usability it scored a solid F.
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In reference to the comments about CPU usage while moving the volume slider and similar activities:
Launch Windows on any system WITHOUT iTunes installed.
Open Performance Monitor to show the CPU usage graph.
Click and hold the mouse.
Voila. 100% CPU usage.
Not only that, you should see the multiple strands of fiber coming into Apple. Drooooooooool!
They have plenty of bandwidth, even without Akamai. The use Akamai for geographical reasons to improve download speeds for people that aren't in California.
When can they wire one of those up to my house?
That oughtta get some great pings to game servers, even while I'm downloading stuff on another computer.
I have an 8500/180 that's still going strong, purchased in late 1996. It's been upgraded to a 500MHz G3 proc, but still runs MacOS 8.6. It's recently been demoted from being my main machine, as I've acquired a hand me down iBook which I'm enjoying, but I don't plan on getting rid of the 8500 any time soon.
My MIDI interface and sequencer software all runs great on the 8500 and won't on newer systems. I'm just a hobbyist with that stuff, so I feel no need to spend more money I don't have going current with hardware and software for that stuff. At least not now.
I have other hardware even older, but I've more or less retired that stuff. They've been powered down since I rarely use them. A dual proc Pentium Pro 180 running NT Server, a DEC AlphaServer 1000, a Quadra 800, Mac IISi, PowerBook 540c and a Pentium 200 all collect dust now.
Extreme Programming or Rapid Application Development is just an excuse to bypass solid process in order to ship faster. Does it do the job better? No.
General problems with the approach:
Design on the fly. You get less features, more hastily implemented. Code is less maintainable.
Without a plan up front, you have QA scrambling to keep up. Testing is full of gaps in coverage. Product is more buggy as a result.
The only real benefit is shipping faster. You make everyone work harder and get an inferior product as a result. I suppose Marketing will be happy with that as long as the customers will pay for it.
Personally, I prefer doing the job WELL, not just doing the job, but I seem to be in the minority in the development industry these days. I know a lot of engineers would prefer to do the job well, but go along for whatever reason.
Having been involved in development for about 10 years, I've seen product quality decline over the years. Products in general have become more complex, but defects have increased substantially. I'd like to see a lower level of defects maintained and value to customer in stability, reliability and functionality/features increased.
Call me a dreamer.
A top of the line mobo runs about 150-200 and this was a dual proc, so I estimated about 200.
512k of lifetime warranty, reputable brand RAM runs about 100.
A reasonable size HD that is SATA (same as the Mac's) isn't under 100.
The Radeon 9800 is about $400, the card in the Mac.
Sure, you can drop the price by going with fly by night RAM companies, smaller, slower drives and an inferior video card, etc, but I say again...
For comparably equipped systems, it's price competitive to go with a Mac.
Ok, let's dispell the smoke and mirrors:
Case 120
Pwr 120
CPUs 600
Ram 200
HD 150
DVD 200
Video 400
OS 200
Mobo 200
Kybd/mouse 100
This puts the total at: $2290.00
This assumes you buy XP Pro as an OS. You can go Linux and save, but then, you can't do as much with Linux.
It takes me an average of 3 hours to build the PCs I build, plus and hour for an OS install. This involves careful mounting of the mobo and referencing the manual for any jumper settings, etc. I've built quite a few PCs in the past, although I'm sure someone that builds them every day and do it faster.
Add $200 for build/install labor, bringing the total to $2490. That's $509.00 less than the Apple System, although you'd need to spring for another hundred to add 512megs more RAM.
I call that pretty comparable.
Not only that, it's one stop shopping. If you build a PC, you invariably shop the net for the best price, meaning any problems involve lengthy ship times and multiple vendors, some of whom are more cooperative than others. One stop shopping brings peace of mind in that aspect many people prefer.
Macs aren't just for people that don't know squat about computers. While I'm certain I know less than many here, I'd lay odds have more knowledge and experience with computers than over 50% of the people that read slashdot. And yet a seasoned computer veteran like me likes Macs. Go figure.
I run all operating systems. I'm not foolish enough to believe that one tool is the best for every job. And Macs certainly aren't the best for everything. But they are for many things and the new G5 is excpetionally powerful, not to mention, reasonably priced in a bang for the buck manner, despite the typcally uninformed posts saying they can build a less complete, lower performing system for less.
DUH! I can also buy an iBook for less.
Cheap case, no support...nothing pre-installed... not a valid comparison. Build it yourself versus well designed, supported and warranted by a major company is comparing Apples and Oranges... Invalid comparison
Configure a Dell similarly and you'll see it IS competitively priced.
It's no more expensive than a similarly configured high end PC.
Those prices are more like from 40-50 years ago.
20 years ago, $20,000 was pretty standard for a car. You could get one for less, sure, but 20k was your average car. Housing? depends on where you live. Where I live, you haven't been able to buy a shack for 50 grand for the last 100 years. Hamburgers? A Carl's Jr. Famous Super (2 patty) was 2 bucks. And Cassette tapes were 7.99 to 9.99.
Sculley's years at Apple were Apple's some of it's most successful during Apple's entire history. Profits, marketshare, etc were at their highest during Sculley's reign.
While Jobs has arguably done a good job since his return, profits are minimal, market share is weak and product quality, while still innovative, is lower that during the Sculley era.
While I can appreciate you displeasure with the RIAA, MPAA, etc, your approach is fundamentally flawed. Not to mention your language...
If all you pay is at the concert, you are contributing to skyrocketing ticket costs for concerts. Composing, recording and producing an album takes time, talent and money. Artists and technicians involved in that process deserve to be paid for their work just as you are paid for yours.
I do believe the system contains massive amounts of unnecessary overheat. The meat isn't very lean, so to speak. Record executives rake in huge salaries, while most artists, which pay those execs, are lucky to make gas money. This needs to change. It will be a long, slow and painful process, but I think we are in the beginning stages of that now. Just remember, the execs won't give up their fat salaries without a fight.
I remember when concert tickets for a major act were $20 at a major venue. Going to a concert was affordable then. And I went to a fair number of concerts. Today, the major acts are pulling in $75 for those same seats. Sure, you can go to some shows for $35, but those are generally acts from the 80s or emerging bands. Even so, it's nearly double what it was less than 20 years ago.
If concerts were affordable, I'd go far more often. Paying your fair share at every step of the process (not just for concerts, but for the CDs, too) will help.
Piracy only makes the problems worse and it's a lame excuse to break the law.
First there was the 8086, then the 286, then 386 and 486. They changed then, instead of going with 586, they named it the Pentium, a word based on 5.
So, isn't Pentium 5 part of the Department of Redundancy Dept.?
The fun you could have with contracts? Leave the signature intact and reword the contract to provide... shall we say... more favorable clauses?
Or maybe if Coke hacked a Pepsi 12 pack to say Pepsi sucks? (but we all know Pepsi sucks anyways)
Or maybe an over-zealous support of Arnold hacked into Huffington posted and put a Fu Manchu mustache on her? (or does she already have one?)
"Rather than being run through product management as something that has to appear on retail shelves on a certain date, Fedora Core will be released based on schedules"
So instead of basing it off dates, they'll base it off dates! Ah, well in THAT case...
I'd recommend some basic computer maintenance.
- run disk tools... have it repair everything. Do this from the Boot CD. Insert Boot CD... hold down C key while machine boots until you see Welcome To Macintosh. Once it boots, locate Disk Tools in the Utilities folder and run repair on all available partitions.
- run a current version of Norton Disk Doctor if you have it and have it auto fix all errors.
- Pony up for some RAM. 64 megs has been puny for a long time, especially for graphics. I recommend a min of 128megs for Mac OS (classic) based systems. Preferably more if you do graphics.
- Check your Virtual Memory control panel. Set it to no more than double the installed RAM.
- if you have Norton, use the defragger. I'm sure the drive's never been defragged.
- reboot the machine
Should work great after that. My old 8500 still works fine. I can copy several gigs on it in the 17 minutes or so.
Tehcnically no, they aren't.
But considering the size of their team, the way they manage large sums of money with questionable accounting, etc, they operate like a business.
Companies to boycott:
SCO (need you ask?)
Verisign (screwed by em long before this)
SBC (for not blocking Verisign)
Microsoft (ya just gotta)
RIAA (You don't sue your customers. Solve the problem!)
Sun (for the abomination called Java)
Gray Davis (because he DOES suck)
Cruz Bustamante (Don't give him a CHANCE to suck)
Note to self:
Get more RAM for Notes to self
there's a slightly out of date version of gAIM available through fink.
'fink install gaim' should do it for ya.
However, it's not that current a version.
I heard on TechTV that in a couple months an OS X native version of gAIM is slated for initial release. I'm eagerly looking forward to that.
I haven't tried compiling gAIM on OS X. If I feel the need to run gAIM, I do remote X from my linux box.
But for now, I use Proteus on OS X. It has some issues that most IM apps don't (you can't delete users, they come back when the user logs on again.... no file support) but it works for most of my needs until native gAIM comes.
Java has received alot of attention over the last 7 or 8 years or so. It's a great idea in theory, but it falls way short in practice. It does remain viable for a few select uses, though: small widgets, servlets and web app servers. Pretty much other than that, using Java will mean excessive memory usage and slow performance.
Garbage collection in Java is not guranteed. It's what I call Union. It'll clean up when it god damn well feels like it. In the meantime, the system slows to a crawl.
Graphics in Java are abysmally slow. Even basic UIs lack the speed and responsiveness of GUIs written in C, C++ or similar languages.
Java was supposed to be: Write once, run anywhere, but what it is in reality is: Write once, debug everywhere... over and over and over. Or perhaps more appropriately it is" Write once, run screaming.
I've worked in a variety of Java development projects in the past and not once has it ever risen to the task to show itself as a worthy choice and/or a mature language. Instead it has invariably wasted companies time and money. Primarily because they failed to realize that Java is a small task tool, not suitable for major applications or those requiring performance.
I know a lot of engineers like Java because it makes life easier for them by doing things for them, but those things it does it does very poorly.
I'm sure I'll be marked as flamebait or troll by some Java loving mod, but what I've stated are facts and experiences from real life Java development. The results are in and frankly... Java sucks! Stick with C and C++ for most development, there's a reason they are the standard: they work.
If I had a blind drunk, I'd have a better driver than ATI.
ATI has historically made good hardware that was crippled by buggy, poorly written, limited drivers.
They still have yet to convince me to buy an ATI product. They seem to be having a good run at the moment, but given their many years of incompetence, I'm sure this will pass as quickly as it came to be.
The origin of sosumi (at least the name) came about from a complaint by Microsoft that the sound sounded too much like a sound they used in Windows.
Apple renamed the sound (but left the sound the same) to sosumi in response.
This occured long before the Carl Sagan scandal. What a putz! I'd be honored to have someone CODENAME a project after me (not a marketable name, a CODENAME).
I believe he meant a 3M mousepad. It's a very nice pad made by 3M.
Oh god that mouse SUCKED! You had no sensory perception of which way it was facing. Playing an FPS game with that mouse was guaranteed to get your ass fragged.
While it was rugged as hell, in ergonomics and usability it scored a solid F.
Thank you for your suppport.