The genre became nearly extinct from (over) focusing on the hard core player's requirements. I enjoyed learning the ins-and-outs of Falcon 3 and 4 once, but if I had that much time and attention to spend now, then I might as well sign up for the air force instead.
The most successful parts of the gaming market have learned to target wider audiences (see Rock Band / Guitar Hero).
Diego
They're both in the early-adopter phase for different reasons.
Both devices have the same great 6" e-ink screen (with the same down-side of slow response and flash on refresh).
Both devices have restrictive DRM, but allow uploading of your own non-DRMd content.
The Kindle has wireless, a keyboard, and more advanced software. It also has the worst industrial design and usability imaginable.
The Sony has no wireless, must be tethered to a computer to sync books, only supports Windows officially, and has more limited software. It also has very nice (nearly Apple-like) industrial design and simplicity.
I bought the Sony since I'd rather have fewer better-designed features than a pile of half-baked ones. As others have noted, it doesn't do PDF very well because most PDFs are created for US letter sized pages & don't scale down the the smaller screens. it works great with items converted from plain text, rtf, html, lit, etc. There are also nice third-party applications (LibPRS500, for example) that have revere-engineered the file format and allow native sync and conversion on Linux, MacOS X.
Rain Design iLap
on
Lap Desks
·
· Score: 2, Informative
My wife and I have both used different sizes of the padded aluminum iLap (from Rain Design) with our PowerBooks / MacBooks / MacBook Pro's over the years. They can be a little expensive in the larger sizes, but are rugged and comfortable and do their jobs very nicely. No complains.
But why would NASA outsource the very skills they'll eventually need for future Moon, Mars, and beyond missions?
They'd win the immediate budget battle but loose the war.
I dunno, the market has been here for a few years for me. I've been using dual-cores on my home machines since I switched to Mac in 2002.
It definately *does* provide a performance boost, as even single-threaded apps leave a processor relatively free for the OS and/or other things. Much less bogging-down even on slower processors like my original 866mhz G4s.
The article largely faults Google, Mozilla, and other recent products, but IMHO, Microsoft are as much to blame as anyone.
A Microsoft "beta" is more of an early alpha or first-run-able release put out for marketing purposes. Certainly not a feature-complete release needing bug-fixes, as the beta tag normally suggests.
This is typically followed by a number of "release candidates," which Microsoft ships for months or even YEARS before the product is finalized and boxed. The industry traditionally considers a release-candidate a final product that could potentially be boxed and shipped if it successfully meets the testing and quality guidelines. Microsoft seem to call their betas "release candidates," where none but the last few builds might merit that title.
These releases are occasionally supplemented by "preview releases," "early experience" releases, and similar euphemistic builds.
What all this amounts to is that the public testing period is lengthened and the status of the product is artificially inflated in order to keep the product in the press. This has the neat (for Microsoft) side-effect of creating plenty of FUD around competing products.
Witness the endless steam of Longhorn early releases, stories, and leaks. Every one intended to keep corporate and other buyers from even *considering* adopting strategies involving Linux, MacOS X, or other alternate platforms.
Longhorn (or insert next great Microsoft product here) is *always* coming "just around the bend." Just wait a little longer. There's no need to switch to something else. Have a look at this cool new "Longhorn preview release." What? No, of course we haven't been promising a new database file system since at least the Cairo beta days......
Consumer Reports is worthwhile, but flawed
on
Truth in Advertising?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Consumer Reports is an interesting case.
I like their reviews in the sense that they *are* unbiased by ads and the rest as you have noted. Unfortunately, CR reviews so many product categories that they are not particularly well informed about many of the technologies involved.
Their car reviews, for example, weigh reliability so high that someone with a preference for performance might not get much out of their reviews. Their computer reviews are similarly shallow, coming from a middle-of-the-road user standpoint. Interesting and informative, yes, but perhaps not very meaningful for a prospective geek user.
It would be great, IMHO, if there were a magazine with the neutrality and consumer-focus of CR but with a more technical bent and a more limited scope of products covered. Say, for example, only cars, only electronics, etc.
Very good review, thanks.
I've downloaded the first two sample chapters and read them. I agree that the type-setting and layout are annoying .
So far, the book seems clearly intended for young audiences. Of course I don't know if the rest continues in the same vein since I've only read two chapters. The plot is intruiging, however, and I'm considering picking up a copy to find out how things develop.
Apparently the web server is made from recycled AOL discs as well....
A Distinctly One-Sided Piece
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's an interesting article, but it's ultimately a sales pitch for the researcher's efforts and commercialization. There's a distinct lack of balanced information, peer-review, or opposing opinion in the source article.
It's tough to have an intelligent discussion on the safety of the proposed designs when we're only seeing one side of this story.....
You *absolutely* want to user Server 2003 over 2000. If you *must* use 2000, make sure you use the very latest service pack and appropriate hot-fixes. As others have mentioned, 2003 is really a *minor* update to 2000, despite the name change.
I have deployed an extensive AD (60+ domain controllers and 80,000 users) on early (SP2-era) Windows 2000. AD had major bugs and scalability issues in versions before Windows 2000 SP4.
Whatever you do, make sure to do good research, home-work, and design *before* you start deploying the infrastructure, creating organization units, and policies. Good design will pay off as the infrastructure grows. Bad design will create increasingly complex problems as your infrastructure grows. It's no fun to re-design and re-deploy over a large and broken first attempt:-)
You didn't really specify what the machine would be used for. I'm assuming, given the environment, that it will be used mostly for Internet surfing & email.
Unless you or another admin is going to be available to maintain user accounts, I *would* use a generic account for the users and a well-protected admin account.
The Panther (10.3) finder *does* have a Simple Finder option. You can turn it on in the Accounts preferences pane after you create the user account. It gives you (some) options for limiting what the users are & aren't allowed to change as regards the desktop interface.
If you need more granular control of applications or rights, you can add/remove apps from the machine and you can change the access rights via the underying UNIX group and permissions system. That level of detail might be more than you need or that you can administer, however, if you're not somewhat familiar with the UNIX underpinnings.
In terms of recommended software: you definately want to supplement or replace IE with Safari and/or some of the Mozilla-derived browsers (Camino, Mozilla, Firefox). The various security glitches and pop-ups inherent in IE could make it a risk.
You may want to consider adding some remote control software in case you have to remotely assist somebody or fix the machine remotely. Timbuktu and Apple Remote Desktop are popular commercial options. You might find something like VNC preferable for this environment, however, as it's free and relatively lightweight. All of these remote control options assume a broadband connection. You may also consider enabling remote SSH access if you need a lighter (terminal-only) remote admin mechanism.
You *definately* want to turn the OSX built-in firewall on assuming that this machine will be directly connected to the Internet. The basic options are easy to setup via the sharing and related preference panes.
You might also consider an anti-virus application such as Virex or Symantec NAV. I don't consider these critical for my personal use since there is so little OSX virus activity, but it's probably better to be prudent on a shared machine.
Since this scenario uses a shared guest account on the machine, you'll probably want to avoid letting users use local mail applications such as Mail.App . Suggest that a web-mail interface might be simpler and require less maintenance on your part.
Good luck
Keep in mind that using a KVM may require you to make compromises you find unacceptable.
I bought and tried a few on my P4, G4, and G5- based setup. Ended up returning *all* of them.
The biggest issues I encountered, in no particular order:
1) degraded video quality. some cables / switches were better than others, but all of them caused some degredation past about 1024x768.
2) virtualization of mouse and keyboard devices. stops any special buttons or keys from working. on most KVMs, this means that your apple media keys might not work and some unusual mice (my kensington optical trackball) may not work at all. This alone was a deal-breaker for me since i use those extra buttons for expose and other functions
3) pc-centric nature of most kvm's. most of them assume you are connecting PCs. KVM hardware may not work or may have issues with non-PC OS' or hardware. The KVMs i tried usually worked ok, but a few presented virtual devices that were not recognized by my Macs or Linux.
I install the following first upon building / rebuilding a machine:
Any MacOS X updates & application patches
Any required hardware drivers not in the OS (Kensington mouse, scanners, printers, etc)
Palm desktop & synchronization software (I don't use the Palm provided stuff, but you've got to have it to use iSync on top of it)
PGP or GPG & my keyrings and Mail.app plug-ins
Flash / RealPlayer / any other generally useful browser plug-ins
Usenet news reader (Hogwasher for me)
Roxio Toast (more full-featured CD / DVD burning)
MS Office OSX (not my favorite, but more-or-less necessary since a non-X11 version of OpenOffice isn't really ready for prime-time on OSX IMHO)
Konfabulator and favorite widgets (gotta have some nice desktop widgets!)
Gimp, Photoshop, or any other necessary photo-editing software
That's it for 99% of my usual daily work (and my wife's as well).
You can get an OSX box running amazingly quickly and painlessly for two reasons IMHO (compared to my (continuing at work) years of Windows and Linux use):
1) Installs are usually very straight-foward drag-and-drop affairs. Libraries and any bits usually included in the.app folder. Very few conflicts or issues.
2) Lots of useful stuff is already built-in (iTunes, Safari, etc). Not much need to install replacements unless you don't like those or need something else.
A 10 year-old HP LaserJet 4M Plus is the oldest computer item I have in regular (daily) use. There's been no particular reason to replace it since the resolution (600 dpi) is mostly high enough for text work and the construction quality and durability is SO much higher than the current junk...
No no!
You're supposed to buy and install and manage an internal (corporate, academic, whatever) Windows Update server and manage your internal clients yourself....:-)
It can be tough. I usually read *plenty* of reviews and then try to find the smaller resellers so that I can see them in person. Sometimes helps to call the vendor and find out what resellers exist in your area for the higher-end brands / models. Those resellers will likely be more expensive, but they are more likely to have what you want.
Occassionally I've found decent monitors at a chain (Microcenter, CompUSA, etc). They usually don't have many or for long, but I've found a few good Hitachi 19" and 21" tubes and some good Samsung flat-panels that way. Gotta be careful sense a vendor may carry a cheap, crappy model from a vendor next to a higher-end unit of the same brand.
Good Luck!
Slashdot Mirror
The genre became nearly extinct from (over) focusing on the hard core player's requirements. I enjoyed learning the ins-and-outs of Falcon 3 and 4 once, but if I had that much time and attention to spend now, then I might as well sign up for the air force instead. The most successful parts of the gaming market have learned to target wider audiences (see Rock Band / Guitar Hero). Diego
They're both in the early-adopter phase for different reasons. Both devices have the same great 6" e-ink screen (with the same down-side of slow response and flash on refresh). Both devices have restrictive DRM, but allow uploading of your own non-DRMd content. The Kindle has wireless, a keyboard, and more advanced software. It also has the worst industrial design and usability imaginable. The Sony has no wireless, must be tethered to a computer to sync books, only supports Windows officially, and has more limited software. It also has very nice (nearly Apple-like) industrial design and simplicity. I bought the Sony since I'd rather have fewer better-designed features than a pile of half-baked ones. As others have noted, it doesn't do PDF very well because most PDFs are created for US letter sized pages & don't scale down the the smaller screens. it works great with items converted from plain text, rtf, html, lit, etc. There are also nice third-party applications (LibPRS500, for example) that have revere-engineered the file format and allow native sync and conversion on Linux, MacOS X.
My wife and I have both used different sizes of the padded aluminum iLap (from Rain Design) with our PowerBooks / MacBooks / MacBook Pro's over the years. They can be a little expensive in the larger sizes, but are rugged and comfortable and do their jobs very nicely. No complains.
Apple products don't usually suck.
Forget it. The article may as well suggest paying the movie industry a ransom directly. HDCP is a useless mandated solution in search of a problem.
But why would NASA outsource the very skills they'll eventually need for future Moon, Mars, and beyond missions? They'd win the immediate budget battle but loose the war.
I dunno, the market has been here for a few years for me. I've been using dual-cores on my home machines since I switched to Mac in 2002. It definately *does* provide a performance boost, as even single-threaded apps leave a processor relatively free for the OS and/or other things. Much less bogging-down even on slower processors like my original 866mhz G4s.
The article largely faults Google, Mozilla, and other recent products, but IMHO, Microsoft are as much to blame as anyone.
A Microsoft "beta" is more of an early alpha or first-run-able release put out for marketing purposes. Certainly not a feature-complete release needing bug-fixes, as the beta tag normally suggests.
This is typically followed by a number of "release candidates," which Microsoft ships for months or even YEARS before the product is finalized and boxed. The industry traditionally considers a release-candidate a final product that could potentially be boxed and shipped if it successfully meets the testing and quality guidelines. Microsoft seem to call their betas "release candidates," where none but the last few builds might merit that title.
These releases are occasionally supplemented by "preview releases," "early experience" releases, and similar euphemistic builds.
What all this amounts to is that the public testing period is lengthened and the status of the product is artificially inflated in order to keep the product in the press. This has the neat (for Microsoft) side-effect of creating plenty of FUD around competing products.
Witness the endless steam of Longhorn early releases, stories, and leaks. Every one intended to keep corporate and other buyers from even *considering* adopting strategies involving Linux, MacOS X, or other alternate platforms.
Longhorn (or insert next great Microsoft product here) is *always* coming "just around the bend." Just wait a little longer. There's no need to switch to something else. Have a look at this cool new "Longhorn preview release." What? No, of course we haven't been promising a new database file system since at least the Cairo beta days......
Consumer Reports is an interesting case. I like their reviews in the sense that they *are* unbiased by ads and the rest as you have noted. Unfortunately, CR reviews so many product categories that they are not particularly well informed about many of the technologies involved. Their car reviews, for example, weigh reliability so high that someone with a preference for performance might not get much out of their reviews. Their computer reviews are similarly shallow, coming from a middle-of-the-road user standpoint. Interesting and informative, yes, but perhaps not very meaningful for a prospective geek user. It would be great, IMHO, if there were a magazine with the neutrality and consumer-focus of CR but with a more technical bent and a more limited scope of products covered. Say, for example, only cars, only electronics, etc.
Very good review, thanks. I've downloaded the first two sample chapters and read them. I agree that the type-setting and layout are annoying . So far, the book seems clearly intended for young audiences. Of course I don't know if the rest continues in the same vein since I've only read two chapters. The plot is intruiging, however, and I'm considering picking up a copy to find out how things develop.
Apparently the web server is made from recycled AOL discs as well....
It's an interesting article, but it's ultimately a sales pitch for the researcher's efforts and commercialization. There's a distinct lack of balanced information, peer-review, or opposing opinion in the source article.
It's tough to have an intelligent discussion on the safety of the proposed designs when we're only seeing one side of this story.....
You *absolutely* want to user Server 2003 over 2000. If you *must* use 2000, make sure you use the very latest service pack and appropriate hot-fixes. As others have mentioned, 2003 is really a *minor* update to 2000, despite the name change.
:-)
I have deployed an extensive AD (60+ domain controllers and 80,000 users) on early (SP2-era) Windows 2000. AD had major bugs and scalability issues in versions before Windows 2000 SP4.
Whatever you do, make sure to do good research, home-work, and design *before* you start deploying the infrastructure, creating organization units, and policies. Good design will pay off as the infrastructure grows. Bad design will create increasingly complex problems as your infrastructure grows. It's no fun to re-design and re-deploy over a large and broken first attempt
Good luck!
Because...
* Windows isn't as elegant and pleasant to use as other alternatives.
* Windows isn't as well integrated (hardware / software / OS) as alternatives.
* Windows (and some other OS') make me work on the OS before I can get to doing what I'm *actually* trying to accomplish.
* Windows makes me spend significantly more time on patching & security compared with alternatives.
I *do* use Windows2000 / XP / 2003 daily at work, and can say with certainty that it's more effort to manage by comparison.
You didn't really specify what the machine would be used for. I'm assuming, given the environment, that it will be used mostly for Internet surfing & email. Unless you or another admin is going to be available to maintain user accounts, I *would* use a generic account for the users and a well-protected admin account. The Panther (10.3) finder *does* have a Simple Finder option. You can turn it on in the Accounts preferences pane after you create the user account. It gives you (some) options for limiting what the users are & aren't allowed to change as regards the desktop interface. If you need more granular control of applications or rights, you can add/remove apps from the machine and you can change the access rights via the underying UNIX group and permissions system. That level of detail might be more than you need or that you can administer, however, if you're not somewhat familiar with the UNIX underpinnings. In terms of recommended software: you definately want to supplement or replace IE with Safari and/or some of the Mozilla-derived browsers (Camino, Mozilla, Firefox). The various security glitches and pop-ups inherent in IE could make it a risk. You may want to consider adding some remote control software in case you have to remotely assist somebody or fix the machine remotely. Timbuktu and Apple Remote Desktop are popular commercial options. You might find something like VNC preferable for this environment, however, as it's free and relatively lightweight. All of these remote control options assume a broadband connection. You may also consider enabling remote SSH access if you need a lighter (terminal-only) remote admin mechanism. You *definately* want to turn the OSX built-in firewall on assuming that this machine will be directly connected to the Internet. The basic options are easy to setup via the sharing and related preference panes. You might also consider an anti-virus application such as Virex or Symantec NAV. I don't consider these critical for my personal use since there is so little OSX virus activity, but it's probably better to be prudent on a shared machine. Since this scenario uses a shared guest account on the machine, you'll probably want to avoid letting users use local mail applications such as Mail.App . Suggest that a web-mail interface might be simpler and require less maintenance on your part. Good luck
Keep in mind that using a KVM may require you to make compromises you find unacceptable.
I bought and tried a few on my P4, G4, and G5- based setup. Ended up returning *all* of them.
The biggest issues I encountered, in no particular order:
1) degraded video quality. some cables / switches were better than others, but all of them caused some degredation past about 1024x768.
2) virtualization of mouse and keyboard devices. stops any special buttons or keys from working. on most KVMs, this means that your apple media keys might not work and some unusual mice (my kensington optical trackball) may not work at all. This alone was a deal-breaker for me since i use those extra buttons for expose and other functions
3) pc-centric nature of most kvm's. most of them assume you are connecting PCs. KVM hardware may not work or may have issues with non-PC OS' or hardware. The KVMs i tried usually worked ok, but a few presented virtual devices that were not recognized by my Macs or Linux.
Good luck!
Diego
I install the following first upon building / rebuilding a machine:
.app folder. Very few conflicts or issues.
Any MacOS X updates & application patches
Any required hardware drivers not in the OS (Kensington mouse, scanners, printers, etc)
Palm desktop & synchronization software (I don't use the Palm provided stuff, but you've got to have it to use iSync on top of it)
PGP or GPG & my keyrings and Mail.app plug-ins
Flash / RealPlayer / any other generally useful browser plug-ins
Usenet news reader (Hogwasher for me)
Roxio Toast (more full-featured CD / DVD burning)
MS Office OSX (not my favorite, but more-or-less necessary since a non-X11 version of OpenOffice isn't really ready for prime-time on OSX IMHO)
Konfabulator and favorite widgets (gotta have some nice desktop widgets!)
Gimp, Photoshop, or any other necessary photo-editing software
That's it for 99% of my usual daily work (and my wife's as well).
You can get an OSX box running amazingly quickly and painlessly for two reasons IMHO (compared to my (continuing at work) years of Windows and Linux use):
1) Installs are usually very straight-foward drag-and-drop affairs. Libraries and any bits usually included in the
2) Lots of useful stuff is already built-in (iTunes, Safari, etc). Not much need to install replacements unless you don't like those or need something else.
A 10 year-old HP LaserJet 4M Plus is the oldest computer item I have in regular (daily) use. There's been no particular reason to replace it since the resolution (600 dpi) is mostly high enough for text work and the construction quality and durability is SO much higher than the current junk...
To each their own, but I for one don't especially want this. I *like* my flat-panel where I can seeit (and not behind it). :-)
No no! You're supposed to buy and install and manage an internal (corporate, academic, whatever) Windows Update server and manage your internal clients yourself.... :-)
It can be tough. I usually read *plenty* of reviews and then try to find the smaller resellers so that I can see them in person. Sometimes helps to call the vendor and find out what resellers exist in your area for the higher-end brands / models. Those resellers will likely be more expensive, but they are more likely to have what you want. Occassionally I've found decent monitors at a chain (Microcenter, CompUSA, etc). They usually don't have many or for long, but I've found a few good Hitachi 19" and 21" tubes and some good Samsung flat-panels that way. Gotta be careful sense a vendor may carry a cheap, crappy model from a vendor next to a higher-end unit of the same brand. Good Luck!