First, OS X is Un*x. Load the "admin" package (whether it comes as part of the distribution or as a separate download is anyone's guess right now) and bingo, you have a shell.
Second, we're talking about commercial applications aren't we? OS X is potentially a massive new market for such.
at my old job, we had a ton of macs that were useless because they did not have the software on them that was needed...I could see putting Unix on it and then having use for them again and saving a little money.
Get the disclaimers & disclosures out of the way first: I work for a company getting into IP telephony.
I have an uneasy feeling about open IP telephony for individuals. It's really simple -- if you want enough bandwidth to support IP telephony, you're limited mostly to DSL or cable modems (wireless isn't widespread enough yet). DSL comes from the traditional telcos, and cable companies are also hot to provide telephony services these days.
A CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System, the headend equipment) can be configured to ignore a cable modem whose MAC address doesn't fall into a certain range (I'm not sure whether this is part of the standard MIBs or not) -- it's quite likely that a cable company will be able to throttle telephony packets that don't come from "approved" equipment. In the same way, I doubt that telcos are going to let everyone run their own IP telephone calls down a DSL line.
As others have pointed out, open IP telephony will likely be an option for commercial outfits who can lease a T1 or fiber connection. I could see a company with offices in several cities using IP telephony to connect their offices.
The good news, of course, is that IP telephony will eventually compete with traditional carrier-grade service, and that should mean cheaper phone calls for everyone.
"Dad, you have got to work at home one day so you can see Tenchi Muyou when it comes on at 6!!!" And similar sentiments. Sounds like a fun show; he's about died laughing a few times.
I haven't suggested that he tape an episode for me to watch later... I don't watch much TV these days.
A version-control system can go a long way toward preventing that kind of damage.
Check out the files you're working on today.
Contract a nasty virus... tell today's updates bye-bye.
Virus attempts to wipe server... it can't because you don't have write access to the archive.
So you end up losing a day's worth of work. Not good, but I've seen all my company's PCs shut down for a day -- twice -- to clean up Windows viruses. Meanwhile, the few Mac and Un*x users kept working.
Multi-user projects should use some kind of source/version control anyway, regardless of the virus du jour. Having two people working on the same files, unknown to each other, can be nearly as bad. (Been there, done that.)
... configurability isn't what the end user market truly desires. A 35 year old Jane Doe that uses her computer only to check her hotmail account doesn't CARE if she can have pretty colors, she wants to be able to open a browser, and read her mail. Nothing more.
If the Jane Doe types only surf the web -- and there was only one browser in the world -- you'd have a point. You could just boot straight into that browser and have done with it. Sounds like you're talking about an information appliance, not a general-purpose desktop computer.
In this world of machines running dedicated applications, it really doesn't matter what you have underneath -- Jane won't ever see it. The appliance could well be running Linux with X11 and a browser based on Mozilla (all cut down to the bare essentials); it doesn't matter since the configuration is locked down.
X is becoming strikingly similar to Windows. Lots of features that 90% of the people don't know about, huge size, and layer of code on top of layer of code on top of layer of code
I don't know about the becoming similar to Windows part -- you can still run a *nix with GUI on hardware that Windows won't touch anymore. Newer hardware? Toss it all in, the computer will still be waiting on the user instead of vice versa. I'm talking desktops here -- if you're installing a server, turn the GUI off (can you do that with NT?).
Like it or not, X11 is probably entrenched. It'll take something significantly better that works with X11 apps to replace it.
As much as I like OS X and its interface improvements, it doesn't address the original issue of wedging the necessities onto a single floppy. It's been a loooong time since you could boot MacOS from a floppy (7.1 IIRC), but that's a moot point these days since you can boot from the CD.
But back to Unix and X11 for the moment. Most of us like being able to configure the GUI and to turn it off when we want to, not to mention the networking features. Embedded Qt might fill 2/3 of the bill, at least it might if it were more open, but I'm not sure if it supports remote displays without X11.
I know this is a little late, but for anyone else crusing the back issues...
Check out this PostgreSQL book (PDF). I read through it, and found myself going "Ah-HA!" quite often. It has sensible examples of SQL queries, including many of the advanced features.
There aren't too many books that illuminate a subject for me as well as this one did. It's a free download, and (bonus) written using LyX.
Sure, there are dozens of press releases about Linux or WinCE settop boxes or stereos, but precious few of them have ever made it past the vaporware stage (so far).
If you were a parent or lover of someone killed in the shootings, how would you feel about all of this? Is it our place, our responsiblity to continue to harp and pound on someone else's tragedy? Don't you think that maybe all we're doing it prolonging the suffering of those who just want to move on with their lives and heal?
The father of one of the victims is touring the country with Christian rock bands, telling kids about her life and her faith. He was in my area last Friday, in fact.
Ideally, both the book and this man's testimony will shed some light on what happened and how we (as a society) can prevent a repeat occurrence.
As far as "deifying the shooters" goes, I don't think that's either the intent or the result here. What they did was beyond wrong, no doubt. But it's instructive to look at the environment that bred this psychotic violence -- if we can destroy the breeding ground, we put the Big Hurt on the disease.
Uh, PG, what happened to the server you were going to get for Ed Yourdon's Y2K doom-wankers after they successfully contributed some thousands to a particular animal shelter??? Or is that a completely different service?
MkLinux is alive and well
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SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 1
Until the monokernel has NuBus support, the older x100 series PowerMacs run only on MkLinux (or MacOS of course).
The community pretty much took over development last year, have a web site set up, and a "formal" Release 1 will be coming out soon. Apple's old web site is either outdated or gone, but they continue to provide mailing lists for the community.
There's been some talk lately about porting Darwin's Mach Kernel to MkLinux, which would provide support for new hardware, and then catching up the Linux side of things to 2.4. That will come after Release 1.
I'm probably gonna get flamed for this, but what the hey...
As much as I use and enjoy Linux, I still don't think of it as "mainstream." When one or more major PC makers start offering it as an option on desktop machines (as opposed to special-order servers that you can't find on their web stores), and perhaps mentioning that option in their ads, the last hurdle will finally be cleared.
Then again, does calling Linux "mainstream" make it a more valid choice than it is already?
For ones bought at Circuit City, currently the only i-opener's retail outlet, he said that to initiate service, "you do have to call...."
I was wondering how they would be able to nail someone who walked into Circuit City, paid cash for an I-Opener, and commenced to hack.
They can't. Yessssssss!
From what I've heard, they haven't made any real changes to the box, either. In essence, all the noise they made about modifying the system to prevent hacks was window dressing to mollify the stockholders.
One of the many things I like about MacOS is how well the system deals with fonts. All the fonts go in one directory, and they're available to any application. On the other hand... X11 has its own screen fonts, TeX has a completely parallel font library, and then there's TrueType and PostScript. AbiWord uses GhostScript's fonts, but maintains its own directory. Fonts are scattered all over the filesystem, and frankly it's a mess.
Can high-level window managers like Gnome bring a little typographical sanity to Un*x? I realize that the problems are on a much lower level, but could a Gnome-aware application eventually be able to use fonts of any type without having to worry about this font being TeX and that font being TrueType?
I'll say it once, and I'll say it very slowly and clearly: Socialism failed.
And this has what to do with Project Gutenberg?
He wants to give away free "works of genius" to parasites.
Since you know how to use/. I have to assume you're not an utter moron, so you must be posturing for some obscure reason. Maybe you're a shill for the RIAA?
The whole idea behind copyright laws is to protect an artist's work for a limited time. Got that? For. A. Limited. Time. Read that about five or six times, until it sinks in. Pay special attention to that word, "limited."
Works are supposed to pass into the public domain after a while. Hart is simply putting such works on the Web for all to see. All legal, all moral, all well within the spirit of copyright law. Now tell me, where does socialism come into the picture?
Shakespeare didn't revolutionize the Judeo-Christian/Western European literary tradition by sitting around waiting for a handout. He earned his keep fair and square. He worked damned hard.
He worked damned hard at ripping off the hard work of his contemporaries, you mean. Maybe you want to provide a different example?
I didn't get the impression, from the article, that Hart is living off of welfare or anything. I'm sure he'd like to see some grant money come his way, but I doubt he'd change his lifestyle much -- he seems comfortable enough. So what the hey is your problem?
if you think it takes an expert to install and start using a functional Linux distro with a decent GUI you're sadly mistaken
Sure, installing Linux is fairly simple. The partitioning beforehand is a b*tch though, if you're not installing onto a fresh hard drive & you want to keep your other OS hanging around.
The thing is, once you get Linux installed, you can easily spend weeks tweaking things up. Telling newcomers to "compile a kernel" doesn't give them that warm fuzzy feeling, even with helpful tools like "make xconfig."
One of the (many) things I think is really cool about MacOS is that there's an image of the basic installation -- boot from the CD, wipe the hard drive, double-click on the image, wait a few minutes and you're done.
But I'll echo the sentiments of many others; it's easiest to just buy a computer with Linux pre-installed.
Having finished the final tweaks to a LinuxPPC install, my beige G3 kicks major butt....
Sure, the "Cops" and "FPS" episodes didn't stand up to too much thinking... but what TV does? If you're not watching X-Files for an hour of escapist fun, you're missing the whole point of the show -- and all of TV, for that matter.
Sure, there were holes all over the plot -- for example, why didn't anyone just stand on the balcony over the big room (where Scully walked out) and watch what was going on IRL? But if you want realism on TV, watch... uh... well, just turn it off and go outside for a while.
Hey, it looks like Duchovny and Anderson have been having a good time with these latter-day episodes. David seems to have had a hard time keeping a straight face at times -- I'd like to see the outtakes. And the state of Scully's "do" at the end of the episode -- ROFL!
It's hard to pin down what makes/made the Amiga unique -- what makes it stand out against a grey background of (mostly) uninspired machines. I would guess that it was a synergy between the video chipset, an efficient OS, a decent (if somewhat clunky in 1.x) UI... and the culture that grew up around it.
While I dislike the Wintel platform, I once thought that the Amiga perhaps may have been better off building on the PC platform -- add a graphics card (with the Amiga chips) and a separate OS (co-resident with Windoze). This would have eliminated the "no M$ Office" argument while keeping costs down. Maybe that's what they're looking at now -- x86 box + Linux + Amiga graphics + multimedia extensions.
I still have an A500 & A2500 around here somewhere....
-- Dirt Road
Re:The Internet the first in-organic life?
on
Web: 19 Clicks Wide
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· Score: 1
David Brin, in Heaven's Reach, listed at least six "orders of life" recognized by the galactic civilization. One of them was called "machine," although "robotic" may have been a better name.
So in that vein, we may have already created our own encounter with a different life-form. But not the first -- the memetic order is, in the book, a separate order of life that survives in the normal universe as a mental parasite. That is, it's an idea (meme) that can spread and is hard to get rid of.
Great book, but you really need to read the first two -- Brightness Reef and Infinity's Shore to understand the third.
Who invented the computer? Who knows? If you include mechanical devices, you could go back even before Babbage. It's like the automobile; the concept dates back to the late 1600s (a clockwork-powered machine from Nuremburg).
Eckert and Mauchly were the tandem Henry Ford of the computer industry -- whether or not they were the first people to build a computer, they were the first to create a commercially-available computer. (Although this being Slashdot, someone will likely soon post contradictory info....:)
Slashdot Mirror
Second, we're talking about commercial applications aren't we? OS X is potentially a massive new market for such.
at my old job, we had a ton of macs that were useless because they did not have the software on them that was needed...I could see putting Unix on it and then having use for them again and saving a little money.
Then you ought to check out:
-- Dirt Road
I have an uneasy feeling about open IP telephony for individuals. It's really simple -- if you want enough bandwidth to support IP telephony, you're limited mostly to DSL or cable modems (wireless isn't widespread enough yet). DSL comes from the traditional telcos, and cable companies are also hot to provide telephony services these days.
A CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System, the headend equipment) can be configured to ignore a cable modem whose MAC address doesn't fall into a certain range (I'm not sure whether this is part of the standard MIBs or not) -- it's quite likely that a cable company will be able to throttle telephony packets that don't come from "approved" equipment. In the same way, I doubt that telcos are going to let everyone run their own IP telephone calls down a DSL line.
As others have pointed out, open IP telephony will likely be an option for commercial outfits who can lease a T1 or fiber connection. I could see a company with offices in several cities using IP telephony to connect their offices.
The good news, of course, is that IP telephony will eventually compete with traditional carrier-grade service, and that should mean cheaper phone calls for everyone.
-- Dirt Road
"Dad, you have got to work at home one day so you can see Tenchi Muyou when it comes on at 6!!!" And similar sentiments. Sounds like a fun show; he's about died laughing a few times.
I haven't suggested that he tape an episode for me to watch later... I don't watch much TV these days.
-- Dirt Road
We're using a web-based commercial system at work.
-- Dirt Road
So you end up losing a day's worth of work. Not good, but I've seen all my company's PCs shut down for a day -- twice -- to clean up Windows viruses. Meanwhile, the few Mac and Un*x users kept working.
Multi-user projects should use some kind of source/version control anyway, regardless of the virus du jour. Having two people working on the same files, unknown to each other, can be nearly as bad. (Been there, done that.)
-- Dirt Road
If the Jane Doe types only surf the web -- and there was only one browser in the world -- you'd have a point. You could just boot straight into that browser and have done with it. Sounds like you're talking about an information appliance, not a general-purpose desktop computer.
In this world of machines running dedicated applications, it really doesn't matter what you have underneath -- Jane won't ever see it. The appliance could well be running Linux with X11 and a browser based on Mozilla (all cut down to the bare essentials); it doesn't matter since the configuration is locked down.
X is becoming strikingly similar to Windows. Lots of features that 90% of the people don't know about, huge size, and layer of code on top of layer of code on top of layer of code
I don't know about the becoming similar to Windows part -- you can still run a *nix with GUI on hardware that Windows won't touch anymore. Newer hardware? Toss it all in, the computer will still be waiting on the user instead of vice versa. I'm talking desktops here -- if you're installing a server, turn the GUI off (can you do that with NT?).
Like it or not, X11 is probably entrenched. It'll take something significantly better that works with X11 apps to replace it.
-- Dirt Road
But back to Unix and X11 for the moment. Most of us like being able to configure the GUI and to turn it off when we want to, not to mention the networking features. Embedded Qt might fill 2/3 of the bill, at least it might if it were more open, but I'm not sure if it supports remote displays without X11.
Running an Aqua theme on KDE,
-- Dirt Road
Check out this PostgreSQL book (PDF). I read through it, and found myself going "Ah-HA!" quite often. It has sensible examples of SQL queries, including many of the advanced features.
There aren't too many books that illuminate a subject for me as well as this one did. It's a free download, and (bonus) written using LyX.
-- Dirt Road
Does the name TiVO ring a bell?
A can of black spray paint will take care of that.
The father of one of the victims is touring the country with Christian rock bands, telling kids about her life and her faith. He was in my area last Friday, in fact.
Ideally, both the book and this man's testimony will shed some light on what happened and how we (as a society) can prevent a repeat occurrence.
As far as "deifying the shooters" goes, I don't think that's either the intent or the result here. What they did was beyond wrong, no doubt. But it's instructive to look at the environment that bred this psychotic violence -- if we can destroy the breeding ground, we put the Big Hurt on the disease.
Uh, PG, what happened to the server you were going to get for Ed Yourdon's Y2K doom-wankers after they successfully contributed some thousands to a particular animal shelter??? Or is that a completely different service?
The community pretty much took over development last year, have a web site set up, and a "formal" Release 1 will be coming out soon. Apple's old web site is either outdated or gone, but they continue to provide mailing lists for the community.
There's been some talk lately about porting Darwin's Mach Kernel to MkLinux, which would provide support for new hardware, and then catching up the Linux side of things to 2.4. That will come after Release 1.
As much as I use and enjoy Linux, I still don't think of it as "mainstream." When one or more major PC makers start offering it as an option on desktop machines (as opposed to special-order servers that you can't find on their web stores), and perhaps mentioning that option in their ads, the last hurdle will finally be cleared.
Then again, does calling Linux "mainstream" make it a more valid choice than it is already?
I was wondering how they would be able to nail someone who walked into Circuit City, paid cash for an I-Opener, and commenced to hack.
They can't.
Yessssssss!
From what I've heard, they haven't made any real changes to the box, either. In essence, all the noise they made about modifying the system to prevent hacks was window dressing to mollify the stockholders.
Can high-level window managers like Gnome bring a little typographical sanity to Un*x? I realize that the problems are on a much lower level, but could a Gnome-aware application eventually be able to use fonts of any type without having to worry about this font being TeX and that font being TrueType?
And this has what to do with Project Gutenberg?
He wants to give away free "works of genius" to parasites.
Since you know how to use /. I have to assume you're not an utter moron, so you must be posturing for some obscure reason. Maybe you're a shill for the RIAA?
The whole idea behind copyright laws is to protect an artist's work for a limited time. Got that? For. A. Limited. Time. Read that about five or six times, until it sinks in. Pay special attention to that word, "limited."
Works are supposed to pass into the public domain after a while. Hart is simply putting such works on the Web for all to see. All legal, all moral, all well within the spirit of copyright law. Now tell me, where does socialism come into the picture?
Shakespeare didn't revolutionize the Judeo-Christian/Western European literary tradition by sitting around waiting for a handout. He earned his keep fair and square. He worked damned hard.
He worked damned hard at ripping off the hard work of his contemporaries, you mean. Maybe you want to provide a different example?
I didn't get the impression, from the article, that Hart is living off of welfare or anything. I'm sure he'd like to see some grant money come his way, but I doubt he'd change his lifestyle much -- he seems comfortable enough. So what the hey is your problem?
Sure, installing Linux is fairly simple. The partitioning beforehand is a b*tch though, if you're not installing onto a fresh hard drive & you want to keep your other OS hanging around.
The thing is, once you get Linux installed, you can easily spend weeks tweaking things up. Telling newcomers to "compile a kernel" doesn't give them that warm fuzzy feeling, even with helpful tools like "make xconfig."
One of the (many) things I think is really cool about MacOS is that there's an image of the basic installation -- boot from the CD, wipe the hard drive, double-click on the image, wait a few minutes and you're done.
But I'll echo the sentiments of many others; it's easiest to just buy a computer with Linux pre-installed.
Having finished the final tweaks to a LinuxPPC install, my beige G3 kicks major butt....
Sure, there were holes all over the plot -- for example, why didn't anyone just stand on the balcony over the big room (where Scully walked out) and watch what was going on IRL? But if you want realism on TV, watch... uh... well, just turn it off and go outside for a while.
Hey, it looks like Duchovny and Anderson have been having a good time with these latter-day episodes. David seems to have had a hard time keeping a straight face at times -- I'd like to see the outtakes. And the state of Scully's "do" at the end of the episode -- ROFL!
How's that? The PPC is in the kernel tree, there are several commercial and non-commercial distributors. What's missing?
It's even more of a shame that the only released distributions for PowerPC are RedHat derivatives
I thought Debian's port was in full release now. SuSE is on the way. And don't forget NetBSD....
I agree with the vi bit though.
-- Dirt Road
It's hard to pin down what makes/made the Amiga unique -- what makes it stand out against a grey background of (mostly) uninspired machines. I would guess that it was a synergy between the video chipset, an efficient OS, a decent (if somewhat clunky in 1.x) UI... and the culture that grew up around it.
While I dislike the Wintel platform, I once thought that the Amiga perhaps may have been better off building on the PC platform -- add a graphics card (with the Amiga chips) and a separate OS (co-resident with Windoze). This would have eliminated the "no M$ Office" argument while keeping costs down. Maybe that's what they're looking at now -- x86 box + Linux + Amiga graphics + multimedia extensions.
I still have an A500 & A2500 around here somewhere....
-- Dirt Road
So in that vein, we may have already created our own encounter with a different life-form. But not the first -- the memetic order is, in the book, a separate order of life that survives in the normal universe as a mental parasite. That is, it's an idea (meme) that can spread and is hard to get rid of.
Great book, but you really need to read the first two -- Brightness Reef and Infinity's Shore to understand the third.
-- Dirt Road
Eckert and Mauchly were the tandem Henry Ford of the computer industry -- whether or not they were the first people to build a computer, they were the first to create a commercially-available computer. (Although this being Slashdot, someone will likely soon post contradictory info.... :)
-- Dirt Road
Seriously, Microsoft "treats their developers like gold" only until it's time to slit their throats or swallow them whole.
-- Dirt Road