I'm going on hearsay but corn receives subsidies in the USA that question the viability of sugar cane.
And it's not just ethanol - I hear they don't even have real Coke, made from sucrose, over there!
Conspiracy #1 - Sugar cane
Before the revolution, sugar cane was cheaply imported from Cuba; no more. The idea of using Cuba's cane fields for ethanol production was explored in the Jimmy Smits drama, Cane.
So you see sugar cane and hemp aren't viable. Two wars, "on Drugs" and "Cold" are more important...:(
Should the Cuban revolution fall after the deaths of the Castro brothers, you might see real Coke and cheaper fuel! As for the other matter, blame Arnie!
I don't dispute that you don't dispute that it can be helpful to have two monitors.:) And the ability not to be chained to a desk is great. But when one is...
This swapping between 'spaces' may work just great but two heads are better than one.:) I was sceptical too until one workplace provided dual LCDs for every developer.
So for the parent poster it was a killer feature available in a PC but not a mac mini. My sympathies lie in why Mac users can't have their cake and eat it too. As I stated, they could at least make it an option on the advanced model.
It is a problem for Linux but attempts to avoid the problem have caused another issue in a major free software endeavour: duelling copyright holders.
The codebase? Java.
Back in the old days, Java was licensed with a scary EULA. This was fine for the end user because it was free as in beer. But it was trapped. OpenJDK is the cure. This is fine for end users and end developers. Now if a developer sees a bug (s)he'd like to fix, the license allows that.
Before Sun Microsystems released their code through OpenJDK, a rival GNU Classpath effort had been, and still is, producing a clean-room implementation. This prompted Sun to release their code under the same license in the hopes of cross-pollination.
The problem? Classpath and related projects have copyright assignment to FSF. OpenJDK requires copyright assignment to Sun. (Each, I think Sun does, may have copyright shared with the original author.)
So at the moment there's a something of a stand-off regarding this copyright. They're licensed under the same licensed but some code belongs to FSF and some belongs to Sun. So, effectively you either sell your soul to RMS or James Gosling!:) Ironic, given their bitter infamy over emacs!
Until lawyers of FSF and Sun can resolve this dispute, Classpath-derived code won't appear in OpenJDK and OpenJDK-derived code won't appear in Classpath. Third party repositories have been hosted for such hybrids. For the first scenario, IcedTea exists while for the second scenario BrandWeg has recently been announced. I quote the announcement for BrandWeg, which may be helpful in clarifying the issue:
This project is still very experimental, and is being conducted outside the repositories of either GNU Classpath or
OpenJDK to retain the stability of these code bases and also avoid any unnecessary legal issues at this point
(specifically the use of GPLv2 only code in OpenJDK which, if committed to the GNU Classpath codebase, would
cause problems should Classpath want to move to GPLv3).
One screen for developer tools, one screen for previewing in a browser.
You might argue one can alt-tab (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) but the reality is that people are more productive with dual monitors. I'm not sure what the cost benefits are of one gigantic LCD vs. two smaller ones. But as the poster mentions, the second option isn't available in the mac mini. Use case: You start off with one monitor and decide you'd like more screen real estate - just plug in a second monitor? No, you can't.
With a conventional desktop one can choose a dual headed graphics card or just add an extra PCI(X) card.
So I guess a macbook wins over a mac mini, since on laptops one can attach an external display[1]. However, that's a $US500 price difference. Cost of including dual output on the back of a mac mini? At least make it an option on the 'fully loaded' model!
Ultimately such design decisions, made by marketing, hurt workplace adoption. Another example, why no ethernet port on macbookair? A lightweight portable would be great for the school backpack or briefcase. However wired networks will be with us for sometime yet. Gigabit ethernet should outperform any CPU-bound USB2 adapter. Speaking of which, users will be forced to carry around a USB hub or otherwise access all their peripherals via bluetooth. I'm predicting, with the price difference over a conventional macbook, that the air will be a rare flop like the G4 Cube. But it's a 1.0 product, so they may learn and drop the macbook all together as the cost of producing these thin and light machines comes down.
[1] As another poster mentioned, Apple went out of its way to cripple the firmware of their iBook range to differentiate it from powerbooks. Apparently multi-head was a "pro feature". Until they realised that it was available on every other 'consumer' laptop and rather than attract buyers to the powerbook range they'd be losing sales to other vendors.
Yes it's unlikely from a commercial perspective while Windows, historically tied to x86(64), dominates.
But... Linux works. Supposing they can get the power consumption to reasonable levels, it could theoretically be a candidate CPU for a future OLPC, which already runs Linux, especially given the fallout with Intel. Given Toshiba are using the Cell as a co-processor in addition to a regular CPU, I figure they must have revolutionary battery technology around the corner!
Then there's Apple. With universal binaries, and technologies such as Rosetta, OS X is processor agnostic. If the figures from the article are to be believed, there's an outside chance. The potential performance gains may be compelling for Apple's key 'professional user' category, i.e. multimedia creation.
Wake me up when Apple deploys Java 6 and not in some poxy developer preview that breaks between OS releases.
In the meantime, Landon Fuller is doing an admirable, if duplicated, job of single-handledly porting Java 6 to OS X based on the efforts for BSD.
Java 6 was released more than 12 months ago for other platforms. "fake" and real Steve may dismiss Java as irrelevant but the truth is Apple have dropped the ball.
I develop Swing applications and it's frustrating that we can't use new features of Java 6 because we have to support OS X's legacy Java 5 implementation.
The majority market share is still Windows. While Apple lags with Java it's hurting Linux AND OS X. Much as Java-haters on this site would like it to disappear, Swing is still an option for cross OS deployments in the enterprise, offering a rich client alternative to web-browser environments. At times the option of supporting an application for Win32, Linux and OS X with native toolkits is not viable. More likely it's mandate Windows-only or use Java.
Allegedly, it's quite a problem for the people of Österreich. The aeroport in Wien, for instance, sells t-shirts with the slogan "Austria - No Kangaroos".
For my laptop I forked out about $20 for Toshiba to send me a Vista CD in the mail. Just in case I'm forced to use Windows at my next job and they go Vista.
I'm content with Kubuntu and NEVER boot into the XP that was pre-installed.
Okular sounds good from the point of 'one viewer to rule them all'.
KPDF can't rotate, which is annoying if you get PDFs 'printed' the wrong way. Tilt you head 90 degrees instead of the page!:(
What I miss about Adobe's reader from Evince and KPDF is the 'view visible width' option. Both have 'fit width' but don't seem to be able to strip out margins.
That said, I just tried out acroread for Linux; it's nothing like the Windows version I remember back in the day - I prefer evince!
Developers could write software natively for OSX using Objective C, Cocoa, and (otherwise) Apple's native toolkit, and be able to still target Microsoft's audience, rather than writing only for the lone larger-audience proprietary platform and leaving Apple's userbase unable to run their software. Back to the future! NeXT did exactly that in a previous life, after their hardware business dried up, as OPENSTEP.
Any software Apple produces for Windows will probably be using this win-cocoa layer, particularly as carbon and any legacy carbon support they might have had in Windows is defunct. For everyone else there's GNUstep
As one poster suggested, it's most likely all idle speculation in that they've added support for EFI purposes.
Further rumours of running Windows apps natively in OS X, are nothing new. A decade ago, the idea was touted as Red Box.
Many posters have argued that for Apple to actively support other platforms natively such as Win32,.NET, KDE, GTK and Java are counter-productive in terms of promoting their own native Cocoa and iApps. However providing OS level hooks to run.Net/Windows applications through mono/wine would allow 3rd party volunteers to complete the efforts. [Off-topic]Similarly, Apple mightn't be an active participant in the virtualization area such as porting Xen but providing implicit support in XNU wouldn't hurt either[/Off-topic].
I have another wild theory: It might actually exist and be a, currently, hidden Apple internal subsystem for running cross-platform applications in XCode. Since the NeXT days, there's been a Cocoa subsystem for Windows which facilitates Apple building iSuite apps for Vista. The missing piece? Click Run in XCode and an embedded Wine-subsystem will launch enough of Windows to show you, with high fidelity, how the application will behave under Vista/XP.
That scenario would save Apple a lot of time in terms of testing their Windows applications. If they wanted to re-launch Cocoa as a cross-platform deployment platform makes more sense, to me at least, than the proposal that Apple will endorse running natively the Windows version of Photoshop et alia.
Large corporations have a big support infrastructure comprised of training staff, help desk, technicians etc to assist everyday workers so that the business runs like clockwork.
One such corporation I worked at bypassed Win2K entirely, going straight from NT to XP.
That said, it was still a major transition for them. First you have to train the trainers and technicians, then the wider support staff, run a few pilot deployments etc.
It costs businesses million$, so that's why they'll stick to XP "while it ain't broken".
Linux, or others, might cost just as much to migrate to but at the same you obsolete any skills your support staff had with Windows. Which might mean they depart to other support roles in businesses still running Windows. Which in turn means more training due to staff turnover.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes but unlike corn you can't eat moon rocks. Oh, wait
Don't forget the IIGS.
Oops that should have read "But it's less than 20mm thick!"
:)
Oh Well, "Up to 10 times thinner!"
Simple, you can look but not touch!
Put a locked display case in the centre of the room. People will flock from far away just to catch a glimpse of it!
"But it has no firewire port!"
"But it has no gigabit ethernet!"
"But it has no DVD writer!"
"It costs $US700 more than a MacBook!"
"But it's less than 200mm thick!"
And it's not just ethanol - I hear they don't even have real Coke, made from sucrose, over there!
Conspiracy #1 - Sugar cane Before the revolution, sugar cane was cheaply imported from Cuba; no more. The idea of using Cuba's cane fields for ethanol production was explored in the Jimmy Smits drama, Cane.
Conspiracy #2 - Hemp According to a Kiwi biofuel company, hemp far exceeds the yields of corn.
So you see sugar cane and hemp aren't viable. Two wars, "on Drugs" and "Cold" are more important... :(
Should the Cuban revolution fall after the deaths of the Castro brothers, you might see real Coke and cheaper fuel! As for the other matter, blame Arnie!
I don't dispute that you don't dispute that it can be helpful to have two monitors. :) And the ability not to be chained to a desk is great. But when one is...
:) I was sceptical too until one workplace provided dual LCDs for every developer.
This swapping between 'spaces' may work just great but two heads are better than one.
So for the parent poster it was a killer feature available in a PC but not a mac mini. My sympathies lie in why Mac users can't have their cake and eat it too. As I stated, they could at least make it an option on the advanced model.
The codebase? Java.
Back in the old days, Java was licensed with a scary EULA. This was fine for the end user because it was free as in beer. But it was trapped. OpenJDK is the cure. This is fine for end users and end developers. Now if a developer sees a bug (s)he'd like to fix, the license allows that.
Before Sun Microsystems released their code through OpenJDK, a rival GNU Classpath effort had been, and still is, producing a clean-room implementation. This prompted Sun to release their code under the same license in the hopes of cross-pollination.
The problem? Classpath and related projects have copyright assignment to FSF. OpenJDK requires copyright assignment to Sun. (Each, I think Sun does, may have copyright shared with the original author.)
So at the moment there's a something of a stand-off regarding this copyright. They're licensed under the same licensed but some code belongs to FSF and some belongs to Sun. So, effectively you either sell your soul to RMS or James Gosling! :) Ironic, given their bitter infamy over emacs!
Until lawyers of FSF and Sun can resolve this dispute, Classpath-derived code won't appear in OpenJDK and OpenJDK-derived code won't appear in Classpath. Third party repositories have been hosted for such hybrids. For the first scenario, IcedTea exists while for the second scenario BrandWeg has recently been announced. I quote the announcement for BrandWeg, which may be helpful in clarifying the issue:
This project is still very experimental, and is being conducted outside the repositories of either GNU Classpath or OpenJDK to retain the stability of these code bases and also avoid any unnecessary legal issues at this point (specifically the use of GPLv2 only code in OpenJDK which, if committed to the GNU Classpath codebase, would cause problems should Classpath want to move to GPLv3).One screen for developer tools, one screen for previewing in a browser.
You might argue one can alt-tab (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) but the reality is that people are more productive with dual monitors. I'm not sure what the cost benefits are of one gigantic LCD vs. two smaller ones. But as the poster mentions, the second option isn't available in the mac mini. Use case: You start off with one monitor and decide you'd like more screen real estate - just plug in a second monitor? No, you can't.
With a conventional desktop one can choose a dual headed graphics card or just add an extra PCI(X) card.
So I guess a macbook wins over a mac mini, since on laptops one can attach an external display[1]. However, that's a $US500 price difference. Cost of including dual output on the back of a mac mini? At least make it an option on the 'fully loaded' model!
Ultimately such design decisions, made by marketing, hurt workplace adoption. Another example, why no ethernet port on macbookair? A lightweight portable would be great for the school backpack or briefcase. However wired networks will be with us for sometime yet. Gigabit ethernet should outperform any CPU-bound USB2 adapter. Speaking of which, users will be forced to carry around a USB hub or otherwise access all their peripherals via bluetooth. I'm predicting, with the price difference over a conventional macbook, that the air will be a rare flop like the G4 Cube. But it's a 1.0 product, so they may learn and drop the macbook all together as the cost of producing these thin and light machines comes down.
[1] As another poster mentioned, Apple went out of its way to cripple the firmware of their iBook range to differentiate it from powerbooks. Apparently multi-head was a "pro feature". Until they realised that it was available on every other 'consumer' laptop and rather than attract buyers to the powerbook range they'd be losing sales to other vendors.
LyX?
Judging by the demo, some version of Vista.
But... Linux works. Supposing they can get the power consumption to reasonable levels, it could theoretically be a candidate CPU for a future OLPC, which already runs Linux, especially given the fallout with Intel. Given Toshiba are using the Cell as a co-processor in addition to a regular CPU, I figure they must have revolutionary battery technology around the corner!
Then there's Apple. With universal binaries, and technologies such as Rosetta, OS X is processor agnostic. If the figures from the article are to be believed, there's an outside chance. The potential performance gains may be compelling for Apple's key 'professional user' category, i.e. multimedia creation.
In the meantime, Landon Fuller is doing an admirable, if duplicated, job of single-handledly porting Java 6 to OS X based on the efforts for BSD.
Java 6 was released more than 12 months ago for other platforms. "fake" and real Steve may dismiss Java as irrelevant but the truth is Apple have dropped the ball.
I develop Swing applications and it's frustrating that we can't use new features of Java 6 because we have to support OS X's legacy Java 5 implementation.
The majority market share is still Windows. While Apple lags with Java it's hurting Linux AND OS X. Much as Java-haters on this site would like it to disappear, Swing is still an option for cross OS deployments in the enterprise, offering a rich client alternative to web-browser environments. At times the option of supporting an application for Win32, Linux and OS X with native toolkits is not viable. More likely it's mandate Windows-only or use Java.
IKVM.NET
Allegedly, it's quite a problem for the people of Österreich. The aeroport in Wien, for instance, sells t-shirts with the slogan "Austria - No Kangaroos".
Trademarked, at least. You have to ask? :)
For my laptop I forked out about $20 for Toshiba to send me a Vista CD in the mail. Just in case I'm forced to use Windows at my next job and they go Vista.
I'm content with Kubuntu and NEVER boot into the XP that was pre-installed.
Okular sounds good from the point of 'one viewer to rule them all'.
:(
KPDF can't rotate, which is annoying if you get PDFs 'printed' the wrong way. Tilt you head 90 degrees instead of the page!
What I miss about Adobe's reader from Evince and KPDF is the 'view visible width' option. Both have 'fit width' but don't seem to be able to strip out margins.
That said, I just tried out acroread for Linux; it's nothing like the Windows version I remember back in the day - I prefer evince!
Which begs the question, why show the menu item?
It would make more sense to strip that code out of the browser, or at least from the menu definitions.
Any software Apple produces for Windows will probably be using this win-cocoa layer, particularly as carbon and any legacy carbon support they might have had in Windows is defunct. For everyone else there's GNUstep
Further rumours of running Windows apps natively in OS X, are nothing new. A decade ago, the idea was touted as Red Box.
Many posters have argued that for Apple to actively support other platforms natively such as Win32, .NET, KDE, GTK and Java are counter-productive in terms of promoting their own native Cocoa and iApps. However providing OS level hooks to run .Net/Windows applications through mono/wine would allow 3rd party volunteers to complete the efforts. [Off-topic]Similarly, Apple mightn't be an active participant in the virtualization area such as porting Xen but providing implicit support in XNU wouldn't hurt either[/Off-topic].
I have another wild theory: It might actually exist and be a, currently, hidden Apple internal subsystem for running cross-platform applications in XCode. Since the NeXT days, there's been a Cocoa subsystem for Windows which facilitates Apple building iSuite apps for Vista. The missing piece? Click Run in XCode and an embedded Wine-subsystem will launch enough of Windows to show you, with high fidelity, how the application will behave under Vista/XP.
That scenario would save Apple a lot of time in terms of testing their Windows applications. If they wanted to re-launch Cocoa as a cross-platform deployment platform makes more sense, to me at least, than the proposal that Apple will endorse running natively the Windows version of Photoshop et alia.
Yep, hence the country 'Argentina'.
2000 had USB support. NT4 didn't.
Training and support.
Large corporations have a big support infrastructure comprised of training staff, help desk, technicians etc to assist everyday workers so that the business runs like clockwork.
One such corporation I worked at bypassed Win2K entirely, going straight from NT to XP.
That said, it was still a major transition for them. First you have to train the trainers and technicians, then the wider support staff, run a few pilot deployments etc.
It costs businesses million$, so that's why they'll stick to XP "while it ain't broken".
Linux, or others, might cost just as much to migrate to but at the same you obsolete any skills your support staff had with Windows. Which might mean they depart to other support roles in businesses still running Windows. Which in turn means more training due to staff turnover.
You would hear, except the reality distortion field disrupts sound waves!
Seems you didn't get the joke; sometimes the moderation is funnier than the posting.