...but I hardly find a tin-foil-hat conspiracy-theory rant worthy of posting as an article on Slashdot. Interesting to note this in comparison to articles in the recent past that I know were rejected.
...your comments are "redundant". (And I mean that in the nicest possible way).
The original post was to the effect that IBM's was a "failed proprietary" system. I make no claim one way or the other as to technical merit, just pointing out that one can hardly call the IBM PC (and its successors) a "failure" and Apple a "success" all because IBM had a "proprietary system" (with the inference that Apple's was not).
Again, not my recollection at all. They simply thought, well, there's this micrcomputer market, everyone tells us we should get in it, so let's go.
You can hardly say that it was a "big mistake." They made a pile of money and established the desktop computer standard that dominates today. They've made MORE piles of money because of its existence. They sold their desktop/laptop business at a pretty good prophet, and are still involved in it.
If you want to point to a "stupid" move, look at the utter failure of the PowerPC business. They teamed up with Apple and Motorola to try to play both sides of the fence, and ended up shoring up an ever-weakening Mac market.
As wonderful as we can say the Mac is, it's a far distant "also-ran" in the desktop computer market.
..That happened because of plain sloppyness on IBM's part...
That's not my recollection. Rather, I seem to recall that IBM allowed their PC division free rein to come up with their machine concept, and the PC group decided to go with an "open architecture" patterned after the S-100 bus. They did have a "proprietary BIOS," but that was reverse-engineered shortly after (and led to the "rise of the Phoenix" among other things). The "proprietary BIOS" shortly thereafter was quite "unproprietary."
Apple has done a lot of wonderful things besides the iPOD, but their twenty-year reign as an "also-ran" in the personal computer market is testament to the failure of the closed-architecture vs. open-architecture philosophy.
I could name quite a few, but I'll go with Larry Niven and Vernor Vinge. Both deal with the effects of advanced technology on human society, just as Lem did.
Their works ARE "of uniformly good quality," by the way.
...literary science fiction in the clear minority.
Okay, so Sturgeon's Revelation pertains. Recall that Sturgeon was responding to the statement that "90% of SF is crap."
He rightly stated that "90% of EVERYTHING is crap."
Pointing out that there's a lot of "crap" on bookshelves is redundant in the extreme. But you can also point to about 10% of the stuff, that is very good SF or Fantasy.
(Also redundant, but at least satisfying).
I suspect that if you look at the combined output of all student and faculty at any given school of journalism today, the 90% mark might be exceeded.
We just don't read much of that stuff any more. Even "Star Wars" was purposefully evocative of the old "Space Opera" era of the 1930s. Just fun, not to be taken seriously (ignore all those Star Wars character costumes at the myriad SW conventions...)
...His sci-fi wasn't about huge robots carrying large breasted women,...
Well, actually neither is most American SF. True, this was a staple of a great deal of American film SciFi (read "sciffy") of the 50s and early 60s, but then most B-movies were corny and cliche' no matter WHAT the genre.
For all the Euro-elitism, American SF has always been of uniform high quality, if only because there was so much of it.
FWIW, can you name ANOTHER well-regarded Polish SF writer?
Although he spent most of his productive years behind the Iron Curtain, Lem was quite influential and was known (and read) by many of the Golden Age and Next Wave/Dangerous Visions authors--particularly the latter.
He had very little respect for the Golden Age writers, calling their works "kitsch." Most of his attitude toward the gigantic American SF oeuvre was no doubt attributable to the fact that, writing in the Soviet bloc, he had to use great care in expressing his ideas lest he be subject to government censorship, and thus thought the "frivolous" nature of American writers was wasteful of time and print.
He was greatly admired by writers such as Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin and Harlan Ellison, however, and his works are widely available in good English translations today.
FWIW, I didn't mean to imply that rdiff-backup is suitable for only a single server. Rather, I meant to say that perhaps AMANDA is more applicable for multiple server/workstation environments.
...but had a tough time with the (at least at that time) limited hardware support. While I'm sure they've probably worked that out (at least to a better degree than before), my search for alternatives back then turned up rdiff-backup.
Not only has it always been versatile as far as the hardware it uses--for my SOHO server, an external USB Harddrive is the ticket, one that I can just snatch and carry with me if natural disaster threatens, e.g.--but the METHOD of backup is superior to anything I've personally ever encountered.
Backup AND restore are both a breeze.
I'm sure that AMANDA is more appropriate for many (read "more servers") usage, but I've found rdiff-backup to be perfect for someone like me, with only a single server to worry about (althought that single server contains all my family's business and personal files--so to us, it's not such a trivial thing).
Its uses and potential are not yet fully understood and defined.
Say rather: "Its uses and potential remain 'potential' rather than 'use.'" There really IS no "defined use" for a Media Center PC--er, like the one I'm using to post this right now.
I agree that the aim of Vista for the home is the continuation of Windows XP Media Center. But I also think that MS is either going to have to forget about the established Personal Computer framework, and go into the "set-top box" world (which of course it has done to a great extent with X-Box) or its going to have to get out of the biz altogether.
Buying a PC as a "media center" is really rather ridiculous. It's expensive and redundant compared to the myriad other "embedded systems" one can go with.
(And how long until someone builds a FOSS PC-based system that is so inexpensive that MS can't hope to compete? I have a year-and-a-half-old D-Link Media Server, which is at heart an embedded Linux system, and it works just fine for anything I need, using my home PC network to store media and streaming it on my television).
Have you ever noticed how many people are still running Windows 2000 Professional? There really are a slew of them
I suspect that, years after Vista is released, you will still find a BUNCH of machines running XP.
One thing I have noticed is the maturity -> longevity effect for computer hardware and software. Years ago, the rapid pace of hardware development and the commensurate evolution of end-user software meant that a three-year-old box was not just NOMINALLY obsolete, it was obsolete IN FACT. New hardware peripherals and (above all) new applications could effectively not be used on systems just a couple of years old.
Nowadays, however, even though an Intel or AMD processor-based system from four years ago might have rings run around it by current stuff, the old systems are still very serviceable and can run almost any software you car to install short of the latest games. And they can be upgraded enough (e.g. video card) where even the "gaming barrier" can be negotiated in large part.
I suspect that a brand new AMD64 X2 processor-based system of today will stil be VERY useable eight years from now despite the advent of Vista or any other software technology. They're just not really coming up with very many "new things" to do with a PC (look at MS Excel 2003, for example. Does it REALLY look or work that differently from a Windows-based Excel spreadsheet from ten years ago?)
And FWIW, you can ALWAYS take an obsolete box, install the latest Linux distro onto it, and breathe new life back into that puppy like you wouldn't believe.
People are keeping their automobiles longer now, and I'm sure that's coming to be the same for PC systems.
...but with the exception of cost they are no better than multiple-cpu systems.
I'm sorry, but wasn't that the point? That you can have the equivalent of a multi-CPU system for less cost?
What am I missing here?
...they spend their idle time waiting on (1) you to make up your mind,...
Well, that's probably true of your typical workstation, but my Linux SOHO server doesn't interact with me all that much. It's busy with a LOT of other things.
PREFACE: We COULD be looking at a hardward problem here, but...
This is the first time since I've been using Fedora Core (and I've used it since Core 1) that I failed to be able to upgrade my server from the DVD-ROM.
I don't know what the deal was with it. At first it would "hang" at various stages of the install. Then, my system didn't seem to recognize the DVD as "bootable."
Finally, I tried a Yum upgrade, but it's just too soon after release for that--I actually had an easier time getting the DVD-R image via Bittorrent than using Yum. As it was, all the mirrors timed out--too busy.
FINALLY, I was able to follow this guy's recipe for setting the DVD up as a Yum repository, and that worked like a charm. I was even able to rsync the "updates" from kernel.org.
One HUGE saving grace though: For some reason, when I upgraded to FC4 last year, I completely lost X on my server. I have been running everything from the command line--not really that big a deal, but I couldn't even use remote X to get a graphical desktop. Puzzling.
Well, after the upgrade to FC5 as described above, *voila*! X is back! I now have that beautiful now Gnome desktop that FC5 has been getting raves for. It's just nice to have.
Slashdot Mirror
...but I hardly find a tin-foil-hat conspiracy-theory rant worthy of posting as an article on Slashdot. Interesting to note this in comparison to articles in the recent past that I know were rejected.
...your comments are "redundant". (And I mean that in the nicest possible way).
The original post was to the effect that IBM's was a "failed proprietary" system. I make no claim one way or the other as to technical merit, just pointing out that one can hardly call the IBM PC (and its successors) a "failure" and Apple a "success" all because IBM had a "proprietary system" (with the inference that Apple's was not).
That's all :-)
Again, not my recollection at all. They simply thought, well, there's this micrcomputer market, everyone tells us we should get in it, so let's go.
You can hardly say that it was a "big mistake." They made a pile of money and established the desktop computer standard that dominates today. They've made MORE piles of money because of its existence. They sold their desktop/laptop business at a pretty good prophet, and are still involved in it.
If you want to point to a "stupid" move, look at the utter failure of the PowerPC business. They teamed up with Apple and Motorola to try to play both sides of the fence, and ended up shoring up an ever-weakening Mac market.
As wonderful as we can say the Mac is, it's a far distant "also-ran" in the desktop computer market.
That's not my recollection. Rather, I seem to recall that IBM allowed their PC division free rein to come up with their machine concept, and the PC group decided to go with an "open architecture" patterned after the S-100 bus. They did have a "proprietary BIOS," but that was reverse-engineered shortly after (and led to the "rise of the Phoenix" among other things). The "proprietary BIOS" shortly thereafter was quite "unproprietary."
Apple has done a lot of wonderful things besides the iPOD, but their twenty-year reign as an "also-ran" in the personal computer market is testament to the failure of the closed-architecture vs. open-architecture philosophy.
"IBM's proprietary model?" WTH is that? The BIOS?
"Fatal?"
(How many manufacturers of "Apple clones" are there again?
Ah, never mind.
...that gets added to your posts whenever you use the contraption.
Example I can think of would be XFree86 (the loser) and X.org (the winner).
Looks like the ride toward the singularity just picked up its pace.
I could name quite a few, but I'll go with Larry Niven and Vernor Vinge. Both deal with the effects of advanced technology on human society, just as Lem did.
Their works ARE "of uniformly good quality," by the way.
Okay, so Sturgeon's Revelation pertains. Recall that Sturgeon was responding to the statement that "90% of SF is crap."
He rightly stated that "90% of EVERYTHING is crap."
Pointing out that there's a lot of "crap" on bookshelves is redundant in the extreme. But you can also point to about 10% of the stuff, that is very good SF or Fantasy.
(Also redundant, but at least satisfying).
I suspect that if you look at the combined output of all student and faculty at any given school of journalism today, the 90% mark might be exceeded.
We just don't read much of that stuff any more. Even "Star Wars" was purposefully evocative of the old "Space Opera" era of the 1930s. Just fun, not to be taken seriously (ignore all those Star Wars character costumes at the myriad SW conventions...)
Well, actually neither is most American SF. True, this was a staple of a great deal of American film SciFi (read "sciffy") of the 50s and early 60s, but then most B-movies were corny and cliche' no matter WHAT the genre.
For all the Euro-elitism, American SF has always been of uniform high quality, if only because there was so much of it.
FWIW, can you name ANOTHER well-regarded Polish SF writer?
He had very little respect for the Golden Age writers, calling their works "kitsch." Most of his attitude toward the gigantic American SF oeuvre was no doubt attributable to the fact that, writing in the Soviet bloc, he had to use great care in expressing his ideas lest he be subject to government censorship, and thus thought the "frivolous" nature of American writers was wasteful of time and print.
He was greatly admired by writers such as Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin and Harlan Ellison, however, and his works are widely available in good English translations today.
FWIW, I didn't mean to imply that rdiff-backup is suitable for only a single server. Rather, I meant to say that perhaps AMANDA is more applicable for multiple server/workstation environments.
Not only has it always been versatile as far as the hardware it uses--for my SOHO server, an external USB Harddrive is the ticket, one that I can just snatch and carry with me if natural disaster threatens, e.g.--but the METHOD of backup is superior to anything I've personally ever encountered.
Backup AND restore are both a breeze.
I'm sure that AMANDA is more appropriate for many (read "more servers") usage, but I've found rdiff-backup to be perfect for someone like me, with only a single server to worry about (althought that single server contains all my family's business and personal files--so to us, it's not such a trivial thing).
Is it possible that SteamCast is a surrogate for a larger organization or consortium?
Say rather: "Its uses and potential remain 'potential' rather than 'use.'" There really IS no "defined use" for a Media Center PC--er, like the one I'm using to post this right now.
Yet ten years later, the U.S. astronauts walked on the moon.
Often great things arise from the ashes of early failure.
Buying a PC as a "media center" is really rather ridiculous. It's expensive and redundant compared to the myriad other "embedded systems" one can go with.
(And how long until someone builds a FOSS PC-based system that is so inexpensive that MS can't hope to compete? I have a year-and-a-half-old D-Link Media Server, which is at heart an embedded Linux system, and it works just fine for anything I need, using my home PC network to store media and streaming it on my television).
I suspect that, years after Vista is released, you will still find a BUNCH of machines running XP.
One thing I have noticed is the maturity -> longevity effect for computer hardware and software. Years ago, the rapid pace of hardware development and the commensurate evolution of end-user software meant that a three-year-old box was not just NOMINALLY obsolete, it was obsolete IN FACT. New hardware peripherals and (above all) new applications could effectively not be used on systems just a couple of years old.
Nowadays, however, even though an Intel or AMD processor-based system from four years ago might have rings run around it by current stuff, the old systems are still very serviceable and can run almost any software you car to install short of the latest games. And they can be upgraded enough (e.g. video card) where even the "gaming barrier" can be negotiated in large part.
I suspect that a brand new AMD64 X2 processor-based system of today will stil be VERY useable eight years from now despite the advent of Vista or any other software technology. They're just not really coming up with very many "new things" to do with a PC (look at MS Excel 2003, for example. Does it REALLY look or work that differently from a Windows-based Excel spreadsheet from ten years ago?)
And FWIW, you can ALWAYS take an obsolete box, install the latest Linux distro onto it, and breathe new life back into that puppy like you wouldn't believe.
People are keeping their automobiles longer now, and I'm sure that's coming to be the same for PC systems.
I'm sorry, but wasn't that the point? That you can have the equivalent of a multi-CPU system for less cost?
What am I missing here?
Well, that's probably true of your typical workstation, but my Linux SOHO server doesn't interact with me all that much. It's busy with a LOT of other things.
Did Fred Saberhagen ever get an ounce of credit for the essential germ of that show?
This is the first time since I've been using Fedora Core (and I've used it since Core 1) that I failed to be able to upgrade my server from the DVD-ROM.
I don't know what the deal was with it. At first it would "hang" at various stages of the install. Then, my system didn't seem to recognize the DVD as "bootable."
Finally, I tried a Yum upgrade, but it's just too soon after release for that--I actually had an easier time getting the DVD-R image via Bittorrent than using Yum. As it was, all the mirrors timed out--too busy.
FINALLY, I was able to follow this guy's recipe for setting the DVD up as a Yum repository, and that worked like a charm. I was even able to rsync the "updates" from kernel.org.
One HUGE saving grace though: For some reason, when I upgraded to FC4 last year, I completely lost X on my server. I have been running everything from the command line--not really that big a deal, but I couldn't even use remote X to get a graphical desktop. Puzzling.
Well, after the upgrade to FC5 as described above, *voila*! X is back! I now have that beautiful now Gnome desktop that FC5 has been getting raves for. It's just nice to have.
Anyway, that's the report from here.