I'd say Windows is the evil prototype to Mac OS, but well Microsoft is often behind so that doesn't pan out. I suppose you could say it about Linux. In some ways Linux (and KITT) are far superior, but who doesn't like the color scheme change in Windows (and KARR who was black/red and went gray/green later on).
I just scared myself and said something nice about linux. The other BSD developers are going to bitch slap me now.
My solution to the pissed off wife vs gaming scenario was to get her addicted to Warcraft 3 and later WoW. It worked a little too well. Now she plays WoW for several hours on the weekend and often through dinner time during the week.
I have an account to talk to her, but that trick only works on the realm we have in common. She has so many characters now, I can't keep track anymore.
The real problem with WoW is that you have difficulty getting into groups unless you belong to guilds. For most guilds, you must play a reasonable amount of time or have high level to be considered. Blizzard needs to find a way to help players who don't play that often. I play a few hours a month now! Its not fun anymore as I can't run instances by myself and battlegrounds is interesting, but I'd rather play a FPS if I'm going to do that sort of thing.
WoW has its own culture. There are similarities to not following the lame tv shows currently on television. Most people only have watched one or two reality tv shows that they actually liked. In my case, the only one I watch is project runway and that is more to spend time with my wife than anything. I don't watch any current tv shows regularly. I only hear about a few of them on the radio in the morning and find it irritating they spend so much time talking about who lost on the bachelor or what happened on Lost last night. If you don't watch these shows, there is almost no point to moring shows on radio stations. Worse yet, if you don't like the 3 types of songs the music industry wants you to hear, the rest of the day is out for radio too. In WoW, if you don't have a high level character (my highest is a lvl 28 human mage), you don't understand many of the jokes, references to instances, and general gaming humor as of late.
I've been playing WoW since release day minus 2 months that I couldn't find a copy after using the free trial that came with my wife's copy. Its a nice game and I'm sure the expansion pack will help a lot. I just find less and less time for WoW. I'd rather develop open source software than play any game.
Well remember I'm using vista. XP might work better. I'll know in a few days when newegg ships my copy. You also have a high end card whereas I bought a lowend EVGA 7300 GS. I'm a bit jealous of your AMD setup. Intel had the cheapest dual core setup.
Yes, it was with the nvidia card. Take in mind that measurement was from Windows Vista. The framerate might be better in Windows XP. Microsoft has claimed vista is faster with directx though. I am waiting on newegg to send my copy of windows so I went with vista until it arrives.
VIA chipsets have had problems for years regardless of video card. My second home built pc was an AMD k6-2 300mhz with a FIC VIA based motherboard. Not only did I have agp issues (as most did who chose not to use intel), but my USB ports didn't work. In fact, the first computer I ever had with working USB was a Mac.
As for NVIDIA driver quality, I'd have to disagree. I think ATI is currently better off on the driver front. Look at vista. NVIDIA's drivers only work for 2d and business applications. I can't even run ET or WoW. Day of Defeat Source runs at 30fps with the stock driver and is unplayable with the latest beta driver. ATI users are reporting working games online. The ATI All in wonder series still has software issues, but the basic video card driver works fine. I think NVIDIA doesn't know what to do right now. Many ATI motherboard chipsets were taken off the roadmap as were new card releases. Its possible ATI will play the NVIDIA game and not sell any cards themselves anymore. Its possible ATI will be exclusive to AMD systems. Its hard to say.
My personal preference has always been for ATI video cards and intel chipsets. Intel has slow chipsets, but they are stable. For AMD systems, I always buy nforce chipsets.
I just built a new system last weekend with an Intel DP965LT motherboard, Pentium D 805 (yes its hot but i had a small budget), and an NVIDIA Geforce 7300 GS PCIe. My old system was a Dell Precision 650 dual 2.0ghz Xeon with an ATI AIW 9600xt. So far, my new system is much faster with disk io and cpu bound tasks. (expected with sata and faster processor) The video framerate is poor with the NVIDIA card. I expected to do about the same (60fps in ET and 30-45fps WoW). I did buy a budget card, but I find it interesting the latest generation can't even keep up with ATI's 9000 series. With ATI gaining AMD's fabrication facilities, this could be a final blow to NVIDIA. I bought the NVIDIA card because there are FreeBSD/MidnightBSD drivers.
On a side note, anyone looking at that intel motherboard should google it first. There are some serious bios issues intel is working on and its very picky about memory chips.
I was under the impression AMD and NVIDIA collaborated on the first nforce chipset.
Yes, I'm in the middle of a hardware upgrade. The curernt "server" was a lowend amd sempron homebrew. I'm replacing it with a dual xeon. Site should be back up in a few hours at the latest.
The computer industry needs a windows lauch. A new windows releases forces people to upgrade their software. They also tend to buy new PCs. Semiconductor stocks are doing rather poorly right now. If intel or amd start moving units, it will definetely have an impact on the stock market. While I'm a fan of open source software, I also realize that Microsoft and Apple do stimulate the economy.
I've attempted to test several betas of vista and have been unable to install any of them on any of my PCs for lack of hardware support. I'm already specing out new hardware for a potential vista upgrade and something to test AMD64 versions of MidnightBSD. In my opinion anyone in the open source community should look at vista very closely. Its not only our competition, but also the basis of what end users think operating systems are like. We know Microsoft didn't get this one right. Its just a matter of how wrong it really is.
Scheduling isn't a one size fits all process. What works at 4 cores doesn't work at 40 and so on. As for other operating systems, FreeBSD has been working quite actively on getting Niagras working well with their sparc64 port. I've been saying it didn't make sense until this announcement. I figured we'd have no more than 8 cores in 5 years. We'll see what really happens.
The BSD projects, Apple and Microsoft have five years. Microsoft announced awhile back they want to work on supercomputing versions of windows. Perhaps they will have something by then. Apple and Intel are bed partners now. I'm sure intel will help them.
What this announcement really means is that computer programmers must learn how to break up problems more effectively to take advantage of threading. Computer science programs need to start teaching this shit. A quick you can do it, go get a master's degree to learn more isn't going to cut it anymore. There's no going back now.
The vast majority of users do not need Windows. Gamers may need Windows. Programmers might need Windows for work. End users do not need Windows. Most of them listen to music, surf, check e-mail and IM. Those tasks can be done on any modern operating system. Users just don't know that. Word processing is the biggest hurdle. People are trained to use MS Office apps.
I have a unique situation at home. I develop an open source operating system. I am a computer science student. My wife is a professional programmer. I have 10 computers and two of them are servers.
Computer/OS breakdown:
1. Server: MidnightBSD (amd sempron) 2. Server: MidnightBSD (intel xeon) 3. PC desktop: MidnightBSD (OS development)/Windows XP Pro (gaming/.net app development) 4. iBook G4: my laptop used for everyday tasks, course work. 5. Sun Ultra 10 3d creator: MidnightBSD sparc64 building/testing 6. Sun SparcStation 2: Solaris 2.6 (sits in the closet most of the time) 7. NeXT nextstation (mono): coolness factor NEXTSTEP 3.2 ___ wife's systems PowerMac G4: OS 10.4 iBook G4: OS 10.4 iBook G3: OpenBSD
As you can see, almost half of my systems run my own operating system. Every system has a UNIX like operating system on it. Only one machine has windows on it. My wife never uses windows at home.
I have not been able to rid myself of Windows entirely, but its certainly possible to minimize exposure to it. I'm hoping to switch over to my BSD as I progress with it further. I've considered purchasing an intel mac so that I can game in OSX and use BSD for everything else. My favorite game will run in BSD and most of the others will run in Mac OS.
Consider that even someone who works on an OS project still uses other operating systems. Part of the reason is simply that I love operating systems and the rest is compatibility with software I wish to use.
Thank you. My first thought was how terrible this could be. A second source is quite helpful provided they don't just copy the other's content. There is some potential here.
Like sendmail is the only mail server to ever have a security problem. iMail and Netscape/iPlanet/Sun One/Java Enterprise mail server comes to mind. Even the holy grail of mail servers (to some) has had issues in the past.
I really get sick of this sendmail bashing. There are problems with sendmail and they are trying to rewrite sendmail to solve them. There is no such thing as perfectly secure software. Even OpenBSD has had a remote security hole in 8 years:)
I might be weird, but I can't get into attractive women on old shows or movies. I always start thinking about how old they'd be now and it just turns me off. My mother was born in 1959 so any woman on that show would be older than my mother! Now that is just weird.
Yes, but I want a system I can test AMD64/EMT64 compatible software. A G5 doesn't cut it there. Besides, Apple never got around to using the G5 to its full potential. When Apple announced the Intel switch, my first thought was that they could go 64bit from the beginning and take advantage of the platform. Instead, they used the core chips and caused an additional transition to happen to customers.
I've been hoping computer science programs will start addressing this issue. The masses have SMP and no one can use it effectively. I've never seen a great book on SMP. Some have coverage of basics, but not the type that lend to actual class work.
In case you haven't noticed, iMacs are consumer systems. They also have a small form factor and have had heat issues in the past. A laptop chip is exactly what is needed. If you want power, buy a Mac Pro. Apple doesn't fill the in between market like dell tries to do. You either buy a workstation or a light, friendly desktop.
I'm seriously considering a new iMac now that they are 64bit. That was my holdup to the mac intel switch. I need something I can test emt64 based stuff on. And no, i don't just plan to run OSX on it.
I'm sick of the expensive power bills associated with running a bunch of systems. At any given time I have 2-6 computers running here. It adds up.
An iMac is no gamer rig, its just a desktop for your mom to surf on. I tend to use Macs for everyday tasks like watching video, iTunes, email, surfing and basic programming tasks. Its similar to people who complain about MacBooks not performing well. They are lowend. They are not gamer rigs. Now if you buy a Macbook Pro and it overheats playing WoW you have a reason to bitch.
I wish people would stop anticipating apple announcements so much. Its always a letdown if you wish for the moon. I do believe apple needs to do something innovative with the iPod and iTunes. Its time. If they blow this one, I suspect a larger move to other players. I might even consider it.
Asus is one vendor who manufactures apple's products. I doubt asus sells an identical unit with the EFI "bios" and all. However, if Asus helped with the ACPI code, it would explain the entire problem. They have a bad habit of only implementing just enough for the target OS. In the case of pc motherboards, that means other operating systems do not work well on them without hacks. Windows runs fine. Linux tends to work as its intentionally designed to rely on windows acpi information and there are many contributors to fix it. *BSD on the other hand has problem's on Asus motherboards. I've always found it strange that their $100+ motherboards don't work properly with FreeBSD and yet a $50 MSI board works perfectly.
I don't really care how well Windows runs on one of these. I'd rather hear about Linux and BSD support on them.
Comcast is very clear that you are not guaranteed any speed. I've seen similar wording with charter and SBC when I had DSL. Comcast also has busness packages which are designed for full use. I pay $160 a month to have the ability to host servers and do almost anything with my connection. I get 6 ips including the router and 8Mb/1Mb speeds. (in reality i don't get full upstream and about 6Mb/s down)
Even hosting websites, email, an ET server, and dns I still don't max out my connection even half the time.
iMacs and iBooks shipped with AppleWorks for a long time and people still bought office. Granted, AppleWorks isn't very good by today's standards.
A typical home user trying to use linux would pay money. They will buy a distro at the local store which often charges for their update service and technical support as part of the price. Most of them are not tech savvy enough to pick another distro with free packages or compile software.
I don't mind buying OS upgrades from apple because I tend to like at least one new OS feature in every release. For instance, Spotlight is useful enough to justify the $69 I spent on Tiger. As a student, I get discounts on OS upgrades. My mother in law is quite happy on 10.3. She is one of the Mac users who thinks she can't have any attack happen to her. Viruses aren't the only problem and there are a few for linux and Mac OS.
Don't get me wrong, I love open source software. I just feel like there are a few gaps in the application space. Half my machines run an open source OS. I started a BSD project to make a free desktop environment. I am trying to do somethinig about this. I just don't feel like I can recommend linux or BSD to my parents yet. I hope to be able to do that someday. My mother could easily switch to a Mac and possibly with wine switch to linux, but my father is another story.
I wanted to create a desktop system which does not seem to fit in the goals of the other projects. OpenBSD focuses on security. Security is important, but too much can cause usability issues. Portability can be very difficult with a full desktop enviornment. NetBSD is therefore out. DragonFly is innovative and they seem to want a lean, mean system. A desktop doesn't fit the bill there. Finally, FreeBSD seems to be consumed with tuning for very large hardware. Its a great server platform, but home users won't have more than say 4 cores any time soon. SMP is important for the future, but not 32 way machines. We don't use niagras at home. I do have a sparc64 port going, but its mostly for my own sun machine. I don't expect that to be popular or long maintained.
Since I started, FreeBSD did announce they would attempt better integration with Gnome and a new desktop agenda. I don't know if it will go anywhere or not. I hope it does. PC-BSD and DesktopBSD are just distros. I didn't want to continue the linux tradition of countless distros. A fork allows me to experiment with things I might not be able to do in FreeBSD. It also allows my project to fail or suceed on its own. I also had hoped that a new project might allow me to attract new developers. If you follow some of the FreeBSD mailing lists, you'll see users are regularly suggesting new features and often include patches. I just don't see many of those patches getting commited. Some of them are good patches. I don't want the Netcraft jokes to be true. In order for BSD to have a future, it needs to evolve.
I also noticed a pattern with joining BSD projects. DragonFly and OpenBSD both started with a falling out. I like FreeBSD, and until very recently I saw a great deal of code ownership as mentioned in the e-mail/article. One of my key project goals is to be more open about patches from users. I know a lot of people who submitted a patch to FreeBSD and were treated poorly. I don't want that to happen in my project.
You must not know a lot of Mac users. Almost every Mac user I know has office 2004. The exception is my mother in law who uses the previous version. Not all Macs ship with a full license to a word processor and most Macs include a trial version of office and iWork.
I never said I would buy Windows for Office. I actually do all my word processing on a Mac. Its split between Pages and Word, but I don't know a lot of people using Pages. I do have windows installed for gaming and software development. I am not a typical user and I doubt Vista will be good for gaming at release. My comments were directed at business users who I feel control the market. Sure, some won't buy vista right away because they just got XP and Office 2003. Others sitting on Office 2000 may buy the new software. Most businesses buy Office every few versions since it doesn't change much.
To answer your question, the reason I care about what version of Office I run is for security. It seems like every release has some glaring security hole they won't patch that can be exploited through a browser, etc. In the case of Macs, its usually a compatibility thing with the latest OS. Apple's quick upgrade cycle breaks things sometimes. Yes, Mac users must upgrade to get security patches. At most you get support for one OS behind for some time. 10.3.9 still gets some patches, but 10.2.x does not. Its the same reason you might upgrade a linux box to a new kernel release or the latest firefox version. (bug fixes, support for modern hardware and security)
Quite a few think windows is the key. I personally think its Office. Sure OpenOffice and a ton of other apps exist. They don't get business people interested. If someone could actually take over the office suite market, they could control the desktop business uses. Microsoft got Windows into the offices of the world with office. Why does Microsoft still make Office for the Mac? Could it be because OSX is actually a good product and if it had a rival Office suite it might take marketshare from Windows?
Apple's done well in the home market and recovered some of their education customers as of late. They still suck in the business sector. Until that changes, Microsoft will keep Windows at the number one slot. If you think about the common objections to Linux, they are often business related. (desktops not servers)
Why buy vista? Perhaps so you can run office 2007? No other app has been announced for it that we must have yet. Just think about that.
As I'm in the process of starting a BSD myself, I can say OpenBSD has some interesting components. Its easy to integrate their ideas into other projects. FreeBSD is working on performance and fixing some of their early 5.x design decisions. I think things will get better, but not without breaking some apps again. They plan to change the default threading library AGAIN with 7.x.
DragonFly is very interesting. I almost wish I had jumped on that bandwagon.
As for the comments above that FreeBSD is general purpose, I have to disagree. FreeBSD is a server OS. They are actively working on getting niagra style sun boxes working. Anyone who's taken an operating systems course in college knows that scheduling for a 2 cpu system is quite different than a 32 way. I just don't think we'll ever see 2-4 way cpu performance with FreeBSD. The scheduler needs repair or replacement. In fact, there should be different code for a ton of cpus vs a few.
From my perspective, NetBSD and FreeBSD have some serious problems to overcome. I don't see a lot of names on the FreeBSD mailing lists like I used to. There are many new commiters taking over sections of the kernel. Its almost like a mass exodus from the project is happening. Maybe the developers are just tired. I think DragonFly and OpenBSD are the innovators right now. I urge people to contribute to OpenBSD. They need the money and they are doing the real work on wireless, and many other technologies.
I've been struggling with the idea of a "core" in my project. I think this article might have talked me out of it./* begin shameless plug */ If there are developers with NetBSD and FreeBSD who are unhappy, take a look at the other 3 BSD projects. All of us can use the help. I'm looking for people to work on all parts of the system right now. http://www.midnightbsd.org/
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I'd say Windows is the evil prototype to Mac OS, but well Microsoft is often behind so that doesn't pan out. I suppose you could say it about Linux. In some ways Linux (and KITT) are far superior, but who doesn't like the color scheme change in Windows (and KARR who was black/red and went gray/green later on).
I just scared myself and said something nice about linux. The other BSD developers are going to bitch slap me now.
My solution to the pissed off wife vs gaming scenario was to get her addicted to Warcraft 3 and later WoW. It worked a little too well. Now she plays WoW for several hours on the weekend and often through dinner time during the week.
I have an account to talk to her, but that trick only works on the realm we have in common. She has so many characters now, I can't keep track anymore.
The real problem with WoW is that you have difficulty getting into groups unless you belong to guilds. For most guilds, you must play a reasonable amount of time or have high level to be considered. Blizzard needs to find a way to help players who don't play that often. I play a few hours a month now! Its not fun anymore as I can't run instances by myself and battlegrounds is interesting, but I'd rather play a FPS if I'm going to do that sort of thing.
WoW has its own culture. There are similarities to not following the lame tv shows currently on television. Most people only have watched one or two reality tv shows that they actually liked. In my case, the only one I watch is project runway and that is more to spend time with my wife than anything. I don't watch any current tv shows regularly. I only hear about a few of them on the radio in the morning and find it irritating they spend so much time talking about who lost on the bachelor or what happened on Lost last night. If you don't watch these shows, there is almost no point to moring shows on radio stations. Worse yet, if you don't like the 3 types of songs the music industry wants you to hear, the rest of the day is out for radio too. In WoW, if you don't have a high level character (my highest is a lvl 28 human mage), you don't understand many of the jokes, references to instances, and general gaming humor as of late.
I've been playing WoW since release day minus 2 months that I couldn't find a copy after using the free trial that came with my wife's copy. Its a nice game and I'm sure the expansion pack will help a lot. I just find less and less time for WoW. I'd rather develop open source software than play any game.
Well remember I'm using vista. XP might work better. I'll know in a few days when newegg ships my copy. You also have a high end card whereas I bought a lowend EVGA 7300 GS. I'm a bit jealous of your AMD setup. Intel had the cheapest dual core setup.
Yes, it was with the nvidia card. Take in mind that measurement was from Windows Vista. The framerate might be better in Windows XP. Microsoft has claimed vista is faster with directx though. I am waiting on newegg to send my copy of windows so I went with vista until it arrives.
VIA chipsets have had problems for years regardless of video card. My second home built pc was an AMD k6-2 300mhz with a FIC VIA based motherboard. Not only did I have agp issues (as most did who chose not to use intel), but my USB ports didn't work. In fact, the first computer I ever had with working USB was a Mac.
As for NVIDIA driver quality, I'd have to disagree. I think ATI is currently better off on the driver front. Look at vista. NVIDIA's drivers only work for 2d and business applications. I can't even run ET or WoW. Day of Defeat Source runs at 30fps with the stock driver and is unplayable with the latest beta driver. ATI users are reporting working games online. The ATI All in wonder series still has software issues, but the basic video card driver works fine. I think NVIDIA doesn't know what to do right now. Many ATI motherboard chipsets were taken off the roadmap as were new card releases. Its possible ATI will play the NVIDIA game and not sell any cards themselves anymore. Its possible ATI will be exclusive to AMD systems. Its hard to say.
My personal preference has always been for ATI video cards and intel chipsets. Intel has slow chipsets, but they are stable. For AMD systems, I always buy nforce chipsets.
I just built a new system last weekend with an Intel DP965LT motherboard, Pentium D 805 (yes its hot but i had a small budget), and an NVIDIA Geforce 7300 GS PCIe. My old system was a Dell Precision 650 dual 2.0ghz Xeon with an ATI AIW 9600xt. So far, my new system is much faster with disk io and cpu bound tasks. (expected with sata and faster processor) The video framerate is poor with the NVIDIA card. I expected to do about the same (60fps in ET and 30-45fps WoW). I did buy a budget card, but I find it interesting the latest generation can't even keep up with ATI's 9000 series. With ATI gaining AMD's fabrication facilities, this could be a final blow to NVIDIA. I bought the NVIDIA card because there are FreeBSD/MidnightBSD drivers.
On a side note, anyone looking at that intel motherboard should google it first. There are some serious bios issues intel is working on and its very picky about memory chips.
I was under the impression AMD and NVIDIA collaborated on the first nforce chipset.
Yes, I'm in the middle of a hardware upgrade. The curernt "server" was a lowend amd sempron homebrew. I'm replacing it with a dual xeon. Site should be back up in a few hours at the latest.
The computer industry needs a windows lauch. A new windows releases forces people to upgrade their software. They also tend to buy new PCs. Semiconductor stocks are doing rather poorly right now. If intel or amd start moving units, it will definetely have an impact on the stock market. While I'm a fan of open source software, I also realize that Microsoft and Apple do stimulate the economy.
I've attempted to test several betas of vista and have been unable to install any of them on any of my PCs for lack of hardware support. I'm already specing out new hardware for a potential vista upgrade and something to test AMD64 versions of MidnightBSD. In my opinion anyone in the open source community should look at vista very closely. Its not only our competition, but also the basis of what end users think operating systems are like. We know Microsoft didn't get this one right. Its just a matter of how wrong it really is.
Scheduling isn't a one size fits all process. What works at 4 cores doesn't work at 40 and so on. As for other operating systems, FreeBSD has been working quite actively on getting Niagras working well with their sparc64 port. I've been saying it didn't make sense until this announcement. I figured we'd have no more than 8 cores in 5 years. We'll see what really happens.
The BSD projects, Apple and Microsoft have five years. Microsoft announced awhile back they want to work on supercomputing versions of windows. Perhaps they will have something by then. Apple and Intel are bed partners now. I'm sure intel will help them.
What this announcement really means is that computer programmers must learn how to break up problems more effectively to take advantage of threading. Computer science programs need to start teaching this shit. A quick you can do it, go get a master's degree to learn more isn't going to cut it anymore. There's no going back now.
The vast majority of users do not need Windows. Gamers may need Windows. Programmers might need Windows for work. End users do not need Windows. Most of them listen to music, surf, check e-mail and IM. Those tasks can be done on any modern operating system. Users just don't know that. Word processing is the biggest hurdle. People are trained to use MS Office apps.
/Windows XP Pro (gaming/.net app development)
I have a unique situation at home. I develop an open source operating system. I am a computer science student. My wife is a professional programmer. I have 10 computers and two of them are servers.
Computer/OS breakdown:
1. Server: MidnightBSD (amd sempron)
2. Server: MidnightBSD (intel xeon)
3. PC desktop: MidnightBSD (OS development)
4. iBook G4: my laptop used for everyday tasks, course work.
5. Sun Ultra 10 3d creator: MidnightBSD sparc64 building/testing
6. Sun SparcStation 2: Solaris 2.6 (sits in the closet most of the time)
7. NeXT nextstation (mono): coolness factor NEXTSTEP 3.2
___ wife's systems
PowerMac G4: OS 10.4
iBook G4: OS 10.4
iBook G3: OpenBSD
As you can see, almost half of my systems run my own operating system. Every system has a UNIX like operating system on it. Only one machine has windows on it. My wife never uses windows at home.
I have not been able to rid myself of Windows entirely, but its certainly possible to minimize exposure to it. I'm hoping to switch over to my BSD as I progress with it further. I've considered purchasing an intel mac so that I can game in OSX and use BSD for everything else. My favorite game will run in BSD and most of the others will run in Mac OS.
Consider that even someone who works on an OS project still uses other operating systems. Part of the reason is simply that I love operating systems and the rest is compatibility with software I wish to use.
I thought they were used to control the matter anti-matter reaction. ok this is the answer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium
Thank you. My first thought was how terrible this could be. A second source is quite helpful provided they don't just copy the other's content. There is some potential here.
Actually I have it installed on my Mac. There are a few features Preview does not support.
Like sendmail is the only mail server to ever have a security problem. iMail and Netscape/iPlanet/Sun One/Java Enterprise mail server comes to mind. Even the holy grail of mail servers (to some) has had issues in the past.
o stfix-2.3.3.HISTORY and search for Security.
:)
See http://postfix.it-austria.net/releases/official/p
I really get sick of this sendmail bashing. There are problems with sendmail and they are trying to rewrite sendmail to solve them. There is no such thing as perfectly secure software. Even OpenBSD has had a remote security hole in 8 years
I might be weird, but I can't get into attractive women on old shows or movies. I always start thinking about how old they'd be now and it just turns me off. My mother was born in 1959 so any woman on that show would be older than my mother! Now that is just weird.
Yes, but I want a system I can test AMD64/EMT64 compatible software. A G5 doesn't cut it there. Besides, Apple never got around to using the G5 to its full potential. When Apple announced the Intel switch, my first thought was that they could go 64bit from the beginning and take advantage of the platform. Instead, they used the core chips and caused an additional transition to happen to customers.
I've been hoping computer science programs will start addressing this issue. The masses have SMP and no one can use it effectively. I've never seen a great book on SMP. Some have coverage of basics, but not the type that lend to actual class work.
In case you haven't noticed, iMacs are consumer systems. They also have a small form factor and have had heat issues in the past. A laptop chip is exactly what is needed. If you want power, buy a Mac Pro. Apple doesn't fill the in between market like dell tries to do. You either buy a workstation or a light, friendly desktop.
I'm seriously considering a new iMac now that they are 64bit. That was my holdup to the mac intel switch. I need something I can test emt64 based stuff on. And no, i don't just plan to run OSX on it.
I'm sick of the expensive power bills associated with running a bunch of systems. At any given time I have 2-6 computers running here. It adds up.
An iMac is no gamer rig, its just a desktop for your mom to surf on. I tend to use Macs for everyday tasks like watching video, iTunes, email, surfing and basic programming tasks. Its similar to people who complain about MacBooks not performing well. They are lowend. They are not gamer rigs. Now if you buy a Macbook Pro and it overheats playing WoW you have a reason to bitch.
I wish people would stop anticipating apple announcements so much. Its always a letdown if you wish for the moon. I do believe apple needs to do something innovative with the iPod and iTunes. Its time. If they blow this one, I suspect a larger move to other players. I might even consider it.
Asus is one vendor who manufactures apple's products. I doubt asus sells an identical unit with the EFI "bios" and all. However, if Asus helped with the ACPI code, it would explain the entire problem. They have a bad habit of only implementing just enough for the target OS. In the case of pc motherboards, that means other operating systems do not work well on them without hacks. Windows runs fine. Linux tends to work as its intentionally designed to rely on windows acpi information and there are many contributors to fix it. *BSD on the other hand has problem's on Asus motherboards. I've always found it strange that their $100+ motherboards don't work properly with FreeBSD and yet a $50 MSI board works perfectly.
I don't really care how well Windows runs on one of these. I'd rather hear about Linux and BSD support on them.
Comcast is very clear that you are not guaranteed any speed. I've seen similar wording with charter and SBC when I had DSL. Comcast also has busness packages which are designed for full use. I pay $160 a month to have the ability to host servers and do almost anything with my connection. I get 6 ips including the router and 8Mb/1Mb speeds. (in reality i don't get full upstream and about 6Mb/s down)
Even hosting websites, email, an ET server, and dns I still don't max out my connection even half the time.
iMacs and iBooks shipped with AppleWorks for a long time and people still bought office. Granted, AppleWorks isn't very good by today's standards.
A typical home user trying to use linux would pay money. They will buy a distro at the local store which often charges for their update service and technical support as part of the price. Most of them are not tech savvy enough to pick another distro with free packages or compile software.
I don't mind buying OS upgrades from apple because I tend to like at least one new OS feature in every release. For instance, Spotlight is useful enough to justify the $69 I spent on Tiger. As a student, I get discounts on OS upgrades. My mother in law is quite happy on 10.3. She is one of the Mac users who thinks she can't have any attack happen to her. Viruses aren't the only problem and there are a few for linux and Mac OS.
Don't get me wrong, I love open source software. I just feel like there are a few gaps in the application space. Half my machines run an open source OS. I started a BSD project to make a free desktop environment. I am trying to do somethinig about this. I just don't feel like I can recommend linux or BSD to my parents yet. I hope to be able to do that someday. My mother could easily switch to a Mac and possibly with wine switch to linux, but my father is another story.
I wanted to create a desktop system which does not seem to fit in the goals of the other projects. OpenBSD focuses on security. Security is important, but too much can cause usability issues. Portability can be very difficult with a full desktop enviornment. NetBSD is therefore out. DragonFly is innovative and they seem to want a lean, mean system. A desktop doesn't fit the bill there. Finally, FreeBSD seems to be consumed with tuning for very large hardware. Its a great server platform, but home users won't have more than say 4 cores any time soon. SMP is important for the future, but not 32 way machines. We don't use niagras at home. I do have a sparc64 port going, but its mostly for my own sun machine. I don't expect that to be popular or long maintained.
Since I started, FreeBSD did announce they would attempt better integration with Gnome and a new desktop agenda. I don't know if it will go anywhere or not. I hope it does. PC-BSD and DesktopBSD are just distros. I didn't want to continue the linux tradition of countless distros. A fork allows me to experiment with things I might not be able to do in FreeBSD. It also allows my project to fail or suceed on its own. I also had hoped that a new project might allow me to attract new developers. If you follow some of the FreeBSD mailing lists, you'll see users are regularly suggesting new features and often include patches. I just don't see many of those patches getting commited. Some of them are good patches. I don't want the Netcraft jokes to be true. In order for BSD to have a future, it needs to evolve.
I also noticed a pattern with joining BSD projects. DragonFly and OpenBSD both started with a falling out. I like FreeBSD, and until very recently I saw a great deal of code ownership as mentioned in the e-mail/article. One of my key project goals is to be more open about patches from users. I know a lot of people who submitted a patch to FreeBSD and were treated poorly. I don't want that to happen in my project.
You must not know a lot of Mac users. Almost every Mac user I know has office 2004. The exception is my mother in law who uses the previous version. Not all Macs ship with a full license to a word processor and most Macs include a trial version of office and iWork.
I never said I would buy Windows for Office. I actually do all my word processing on a Mac. Its split between Pages and Word, but I don't know a lot of people using Pages. I do have windows installed for gaming and software development. I am not a typical user and I doubt Vista will be good for gaming at release. My comments were directed at business users who I feel control the market. Sure, some won't buy vista right away because they just got XP and Office 2003. Others sitting on Office 2000 may buy the new software. Most businesses buy Office every few versions since it doesn't change much.
To answer your question, the reason I care about what version of Office I run is for security. It seems like every release has some glaring security hole they won't patch that can be exploited through a browser, etc. In the case of Macs, its usually a compatibility thing with the latest OS. Apple's quick upgrade cycle breaks things sometimes. Yes, Mac users must upgrade to get security patches. At most you get support for one OS behind for some time. 10.3.9 still gets some patches, but 10.2.x does not. Its the same reason you might upgrade a linux box to a new kernel release or the latest firefox version. (bug fixes, support for modern hardware and security)
Quite a few think windows is the key. I personally think its Office. Sure OpenOffice and a ton of other apps exist. They don't get business people interested. If someone could actually take over the office suite market, they could control the desktop business uses. Microsoft got Windows into the offices of the world with office. Why does Microsoft still make Office for the Mac? Could it be because OSX is actually a good product and if it had a rival Office suite it might take marketshare from Windows?
Apple's done well in the home market and recovered some of their education customers as of late. They still suck in the business sector. Until that changes, Microsoft will keep Windows at the number one slot. If you think about the common objections to Linux, they are often business related. (desktops not servers)
Why buy vista? Perhaps so you can run office 2007? No other app has been announced for it that we must have yet. Just think about that.
On the upside, Windows users can't make fun of Mac users for the noise they make booting. I think Microsoft just wanted to feel important.
:)
All those stories about Microsoft and Apple duplicating everything are true. Microsoft even has the stuff people make fun of apple for
As I'm in the process of starting a BSD myself, I can say OpenBSD has some interesting components. Its easy to integrate their ideas into other projects. FreeBSD is working on performance and fixing some of their early 5.x design decisions. I think things will get better, but not without breaking some apps again. They plan to change the default threading library AGAIN with 7.x.
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DragonFly is very interesting. I almost wish I had jumped on that bandwagon.
As for the comments above that FreeBSD is general purpose, I have to disagree. FreeBSD is a server OS. They are actively working on getting niagra style sun boxes working. Anyone who's taken an operating systems course in college knows that scheduling for a 2 cpu system is quite different than a 32 way. I just don't think we'll ever see 2-4 way cpu performance with FreeBSD. The scheduler needs repair or replacement. In fact, there should be different code for a ton of cpus vs a few.
From my perspective, NetBSD and FreeBSD have some serious problems to overcome. I don't see a lot of names on the FreeBSD mailing lists like I used to. There are many new commiters taking over sections of the kernel. Its almost like a mass exodus from the project is happening. Maybe the developers are just tired. I think DragonFly and OpenBSD are the innovators right now. I urge people to contribute to OpenBSD. They need the money and they are doing the real work on wireless, and many other technologies.
I've been struggling with the idea of a "core" in my project. I think this article might have talked me out of it.
If there are developers with NetBSD and FreeBSD who are unhappy, take a look at the other 3 BSD projects. All of us can use the help. I'm looking for people to work on all parts of the system right now. http://www.midnightbsd.org/