Hot swappable SCSI is a very small subset of all SCSI devices and adds to their cost. Hot swappable Firewire is built into the spec and all firewire devices are hot swappable.
The reason that Firewire is not in more use is a simple, political one. Intel has decided that they don't want to give a boost to Apple so they are FUDding Firewire and refusing to make it standard on Intel motherboards. This is after Apple lowered its licensing pricing and made Intel part of the Firewire patent pool.
Intel wants us all to wait for USB 2.0 where they swear that it will be just as fast as Firewire 1.0 (by then, Firewire should be up to 800Mbps from the current 400Mbps).
Actually, my point is quite different and I think you missed it. The projects that get funding in tech aren't the projects that we would fund if we were handling our own money. You give up all control when you send in taxes. Even if you could go to a 'voting with dollars' tax model, you probably wouldn't get the ability to do more than set general priorities.
You personally might take the time to find out if Rotary Rocket Corp. or one of its competitors is worthy of investment. But the government doesn't do that kind of analysis. They make their decisions differently and in ways that are demonstratedly inefficient when it comes to food, clothing, shelter, transport, and a host of other priorities.
Space research is no different. You fund white elephants with tax dollars. When you are making your own choices, people tend to fund better initiatives and progress is faster.
You are overlooking some important things. The cost of space is highly dependent on advancement of technology which is rapid and the lowering of cost which is also very rapid.
The only places where this is not true is where government has monopolized the area, like space technology.
If you can earn a living in space there will be many who want to and the efforts of those many will drive costs down to the point where somebody can make money farming in zero G or wildcatting for mineral resources where the big corporations (who will also be there) haven't gotton to yet.
Take a look at the Internet. Do you think that/. would have been improved by being hatched in a corporation? Why do you think that corps are going to do any better at monopolizing the next frontier of space?
The trick is to make that "easy to learn Unix". That's where Mac is moving things. If you can have a Mac OS which grandma can work reasonably well right out of the box, that's great and keeps that shallow learning curve that makes mac wonderful.
But the kicker is that Mac OS X has a full Unix toolbox (minus X-windows to keep the user experience from fragmenting)and you can grep and shellscript to your hearts content on the same system without dual booting. So you have that high power, fine granularity of control that Linux offers. The learning curve for that set of functions is just as steep as any Unix but Mac doesn't make you climb that mountain if you don't need those fine skills.
If Mac OS X succeeds, it really will change the world, becoming the first computer to combine the two learning curve/useability models in one OS.
Actually, most times you get errors on Macs there are a few things to try that will fix most errors:
1. rule out user error, i.e. did they type something wrong or did they do something else boneheaded like having a modem unplugged, etc. 2. If you are getting type 1-11 errors increase the memory allocated to the program by opening the get info dialog box and upping the numbers 3. If that doesn't work, rebuild the desktop (command-option on startup) 4. Press shift to turn off extensions and see if it works then, if it does, add extensions back in using extension manager until the bad behavior reappears and then either rename the extensions to reorder their loads or load new versions of the relevant extensions that eliminate the conflict. If extensions are used by the program, use extension manager to just load those in and then add from there. 5. If that doesn't work, try zapping the PRAM (command-option-P-R on startup) 6. If their monitor is acting weird and they are using an AV monitor try (command-option-A-V)
Using the following 6 steps, I get a 95%+ success rate in trouble shooting (of course step 1 gives me my first 50%).
There is a company that is offering free iMacs now based on a 3 year subscription. The market model will continue to be offered on both mac and wintel consumer machines.
I see, trayless DVD, 2x AGP, Airport, better monitor, Firewire, all this reduced to the addition of a new color.
Since Intel is doing its best to kill Firewire, it will indeed be years before the drones in the clone world get the guts to buck Andy Grove and make Firewire standard on the motherboard.
How does it feel to be left behind (once again) at the multimedia revolution.
After being beaten about for years, Apple transitions much of its hardware over to PC specs in order to be more compatible and drive down user costs. Now the complaints come that Apple is doing what users have demanded of them. Frankly, I'm glad that Apple was sensible enough to adopt decent technical standards that don't compromise the user experience that Apple promises (think ISA and MFM that Apple stayed away from). If only Intel would show the same sense and adopt Firewire support on their motherboards. After all, they are in the patent pool but noooo! Intel is pushing USB 2.0 which might, after several years, achieve the throughput that Firewire has today. TML
The NYT and other liberal papers hung the 'Star Wars' moniker on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). They hated the idea of defending American lives against nuclear destruction and they still do, thus the snide comments, the hatchet job via implication, innuendo. It's quite a bravura performance that doesn't quite reach the level of defamation, but it doesn't miss by much.
The facts are that millions of people would die from one single accidental launch of an ICBM. Furthermore, the command and control systems of both Russia and China are suspect. We also shouldn't forget that the North Korean regime has a long standing history of craziness, secrecy, paranoia, and dishonesty. These are the 'partners' that we have to dance our Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) tango of the absurd.
The New York Times' allies in the Democratic party have adopted a party line that we should delay any deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) as much as possible if they can't kill BMD in full.
The Republican party has adopted a party line that saving US lives and property via BMD is worth a lot of money and we should invest heavily and deploy as soon as possible. Even if the system doesn't work, the increased strategic uncertainty can enhance deterrance because none of our potential opponents has the money to crank up their arsenals to overwhelm a thin BMD system.
Personally, I don't want to watch my newborn son die of radiation poisoning because somebody in a silo in Siberia who hasn't been paid in a year flips out and decides to nuke Chicago and there was nothing the US could do because there were no defenses.
Given the insecurities of MS operating systems, aren't you concerned that you are going to end up with people playing with your lights, and the rest of your house that you have wired up to your computer?
Just a word of advice, don't computerize your door locks.
I think that the sheer incompetence of third world governance is going to remain long after third world scientists generally figure out how to make nuclear warheads and ICBMs. Would it be in the interest of the US to allow a regional nuclear exchange if we had the satellite intercept capability to knock out the missiles on both sides? Would it be moral to forego this defense knowing that millions will lose their lives if we are wrong?
Right now, if an accidental launch happened from the USSR, China, North Korea or anybody else who has developed nukes all we could do is to watch the radar screens and count the casualties. No thanks. I would prefer that we spend our defense dollars assembling a defense if possible and apparently the technology is either there already or easily modified to make it there (Aegis for example).
Nobody really knows how bad the command and control capabilities are of the North Koreans, the Chinese, or the Russians. If a silo goes off by accident or by a mad launcher scenario, is it really in this nation's interest to lose a city because Nixon and Brezhnev thought it was a good idea a quarter of a century ago under a completely different strategic situation?
Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) is something that we should be deploying now.
Actually, IBM isn't putting out those CHRP motherboards. They are giving away the designs so umpteem Asian clone makers can get in the business of making really fast Linux PPC machines.
I think that they are responding to a different threat. Apple is shipping Mac OS X that is based on the Mach kernel and BSD 4.4 and does not have any client access license limitations, i.e. unlimited users for free. Now if you have ever priced out a Windows NT solution you know that the server is peanuts, the CAL costs are serious dough.
This is scary stuff for Microsoft since Apple is likely to make serious inroads with the pitch of:
Solid, dependable technology, 1 user interface, Much less expensive than NT, Open source (darwin http://www.apple.com/darwin), Controlled development that doesn't allow for fragmentation.
From an IT perspective, it's attractive. It also gives Unix advocates one more variant that might get the suits of their NT everywhere jihad.
The point of a great nation is to create an open culture that doesn't soak up huge amounts of resources into the millstone around the people's necks called government.
We should be doing great things, but what we shouldn't be doing is retreading the methods of the pharohs and enslaving people for fancy projects.
Given the right legal framework, private investment in space would take off and we would have permanent colonies on the moon and in orbit inside of ten years. But the legal framework of the UN precludes private land ownership out in space.
Give us a homestead act where somebody who lands on an asteroid, moon, or planet, stakes out a defined small area and creates value for 3 of 5 years gets to own the land. It could be agriculture, mining, science research, or any of a number of other useful initiatives. But grant a title at the end of the process and you will find that people will jump for the chance to own a piece of the moon, mars, or just a big iron asteroid.
Any one agency, no matter how good (and NASA's not the best possible) isn't going to beat out the combined efforts of many organizations, all competing for the prize of the solar system land rush that a new homestead act would bring.
Put yourself in the position of that private company. Here you are, with a fiduciary responsibility to make money, not lose it down a rathole. What does space research mean to you? A legal framework where there is no private property, no guarantee of continued access if any number of governments get ticked off at you and push restrictions through the UN, in short, it's a legal disaster.
We don't have private enterprise up there because the bureaucrats beat them to it and tied up space with rules and regs that make it impossible to do the long term profitable things (profitable colonies, etc) that would really make a difference to a company's bottom line.
Why would you ever want to sabotage tech research with more government money? The government does most things less efficiently and with a lot more politics than private industry. If the money stays in the hands of the people who earn it, it's going to get spent on what they want, not on the priorities of hundreds of congressmen who have a profile heavily weighted towards lawyers and away from engineering/science/technology.
I can do more good for the cause of science and moon colonies by sending $1000 to a company to build a better rocket motor than sending $10,000 to the government in taxes.
I'll trade the inefficient services that can be done cheaper privately, I'll trade the studies on ketchup flow, I'll trade the pork barrel, I'll trade the goodies that attract the bribers.
Taxes may still have to be there to pay for police, courts, army, state department, but frankly the churches have done a better job at charity and private corporations have a better record doing most of the rest.
You could have a lot lower taxation *and* keep the internet tax free on that kind of arrangement.
It is articles like this that have made me start to seriously consider home schooling. This sort of school is likely to become more common, not less, amongst our government funded institutions since the few old timers who are holding up the better old standards are retiring or getting burnt out.
Yes, Prometheus, you did miss something, the often criminally bad education that students get in these institutions. The only thing worse than being conditioned to be a prole, is to be conditioned to be a dumb, miseducated if not uneducated prole.
All the advantages of SCSI are available in Firewire but without all the pain and hassle of SCSI.
Have you tried to hot-swap SCSI devices lately? Or maybe string together 30 devices? Would you care to compare maximum bus length between firewire/SCSI? How about those SCSI camcorders...
The list goes on and on. SCSI is going to go away in favor of faster firewire. Go Apple!
It's a sad, sad, thing that you have to lie to not be hassled. Any OS that supports TCP/IP and related internet standards should be an equal citizen on any network.
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Hot swappable SCSI is a very small subset of all SCSI devices and adds to their cost. Hot swappable Firewire is built into the spec and all firewire devices are hot swappable.
The reason that Firewire is not in more use is a simple, political one. Intel has decided that they don't want to give a boost to Apple so they are FUDding Firewire and refusing to make it standard on Intel motherboards. This is after Apple lowered its licensing pricing and made Intel part of the Firewire patent pool.
Intel wants us all to wait for USB 2.0 where they swear that it will be just as fast as Firewire 1.0 (by then, Firewire should be up to 800Mbps from the current 400Mbps).
TML
Actually, my point is quite different and I think you missed it. The projects that get funding in tech aren't the projects that we would fund if we were handling our own money. You give up all control when you send in taxes. Even if you could go to a 'voting with dollars' tax model, you probably wouldn't get the ability to do more than set general priorities.
You personally might take the time to find out if Rotary Rocket Corp. or one of its competitors is worthy of investment. But the government doesn't do that kind of analysis. They make their decisions differently and in ways that are demonstratedly inefficient when it comes to food, clothing, shelter, transport, and a host of other priorities.
Space research is no different. You fund white elephants with tax dollars. When you are making your own choices, people tend to fund better initiatives and progress is faster.
TML
You are overlooking some important things. The cost of space is highly dependent on advancement of technology which is rapid and the lowering of cost which is also very rapid.
/. would have been improved by being hatched in a corporation? Why do you think that corps are going to do any better at monopolizing the next frontier of space?
The only places where this is not true is where government has monopolized the area, like space technology.
If you can earn a living in space there will be many who want to and the efforts of those many will drive costs down to the point where somebody can make money farming in zero G or wildcatting for mineral resources where the big corporations (who will also be there) haven't gotton to yet.
Take a look at the Internet. Do you think that
TML
The trick is to make that "easy to learn Unix". That's where Mac is moving things. If you can have a Mac OS which grandma can work reasonably well right out of the box, that's great and keeps that shallow learning curve that makes mac wonderful.
But the kicker is that Mac OS X has a full Unix toolbox (minus X-windows to keep the user experience from fragmenting)and you can grep and shellscript to your hearts content on the same system without dual booting. So you have that high power, fine granularity of control that Linux offers. The learning curve for that set of functions is just as steep as any Unix but Mac doesn't make you climb that mountain if you don't need those fine skills.
If Mac OS X succeeds, it really will change the world, becoming the first computer to combine the two learning curve/useability models in one OS.
TML
Actually, most times you get errors on Macs there are a few things to try that will fix most errors:
1. rule out user error, i.e. did they type something wrong or did they do something else boneheaded like having a modem unplugged, etc.
2. If you are getting type 1-11 errors increase the memory allocated to the program by opening the get info dialog box and upping the numbers
3. If that doesn't work, rebuild the desktop (command-option on startup)
4. Press shift to turn off extensions and see if it works then, if it does, add extensions back in using extension manager until the bad behavior reappears and then either rename the extensions to reorder their loads or load new versions of the relevant extensions that eliminate the conflict. If extensions are used by the program, use extension manager to just load those in and then add from there.
5. If that doesn't work, try zapping the PRAM (command-option-P-R on startup)
6. If their monitor is acting weird and they are using an AV monitor try (command-option-A-V)
Using the following 6 steps, I get a 95%+ success rate in trouble shooting (of course step 1 gives me my first 50%).
TML
You can also run Darwin on the little beasties. http://www.apple.com/darwin
Yup, open source mac software, who woulda thunk it.
TML
There is a company that is offering free iMacs now based on a 3 year subscription. The market model will continue to be offered on both mac and wintel consumer machines.
TML
I see, trayless DVD, 2x AGP, Airport, better monitor, Firewire, all this reduced to the addition of a new color.
Since Intel is doing its best to kill Firewire, it will indeed be years before the drones in the clone world get the guts to buck Andy Grove and make Firewire standard on the motherboard.
How does it feel to be left behind (once again) at the multimedia revolution.
TML
After being beaten about for years, Apple transitions much of its hardware over to PC specs in order to be more compatible and drive down user costs. Now the complaints come that Apple is doing what users have demanded of them. Frankly, I'm glad that Apple was sensible enough to adopt decent technical standards that don't compromise the user experience that Apple promises (think ISA and MFM that Apple stayed away from). If only Intel would show the same sense and adopt Firewire support on their motherboards. After all, they are in the patent pool but noooo! Intel is pushing USB 2.0 which might, after several years, achieve the throughput that Firewire has today. TML
The NYT and other liberal papers hung the 'Star Wars' moniker on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). They hated the idea of defending American lives against nuclear destruction and they still do, thus the snide comments, the hatchet job via implication, innuendo. It's quite a bravura performance that doesn't quite reach the level of defamation, but it doesn't miss by much.
The facts are that millions of people would die from one single accidental launch of an ICBM. Furthermore, the command and control systems of both Russia and China are suspect. We also shouldn't forget that the North Korean regime has a long standing history of craziness, secrecy, paranoia, and dishonesty. These are the 'partners' that we have to dance our Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) tango of the absurd.
The New York Times' allies in the Democratic party have adopted a party line that we should delay any deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) as much as possible if they can't kill BMD in full.
The Republican party has adopted a party line that saving US lives and property via BMD is worth a lot of money and we should invest heavily and deploy as soon as possible. Even if the system doesn't work, the increased strategic uncertainty can enhance deterrance because none of our potential opponents has the money to crank up their arsenals to overwhelm a thin BMD system.
Personally, I don't want to watch my newborn son die of radiation poisoning because somebody in a silo in Siberia who hasn't been paid in a year flips out and decides to nuke Chicago and there was nothing the US could do because there were no defenses.
TML
Given the insecurities of MS operating systems, aren't you concerned that you are going to end up with people playing with your lights, and the rest of your house that you have wired up to your computer?
Just a word of advice, don't computerize your door locks.
TML
I think that the sheer incompetence of third world governance is going to remain long after third world scientists generally figure out how to make nuclear warheads and ICBMs. Would it be in the interest of the US to allow a regional nuclear exchange if we had the satellite intercept capability to knock out the missiles on both sides? Would it be moral to forego this defense knowing that millions will lose their lives if we are wrong?
Right now, if an accidental launch happened from the USSR, China, North Korea or anybody else who has developed nukes all we could do is to watch the radar screens and count the casualties. No thanks. I would prefer that we spend our defense dollars assembling a defense if possible and apparently the technology is either there already or easily modified to make it there (Aegis for example).
Nobody really knows how bad the command and control capabilities are of the North Koreans, the Chinese, or the Russians. If a silo goes off by accident or by a mad launcher scenario, is it really in this nation's interest to lose a city because Nixon and Brezhnev thought it was a good idea a quarter of a century ago under a completely different strategic situation?
Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) is something that we should be deploying now.
TML
Actually, IBM isn't putting out those CHRP motherboards. They are giving away the designs so umpteem Asian clone makers can get in the business of making really fast Linux PPC machines.
Who ever heard of open source hardware before?
TML
What, the POSIX subsystem doesn't work correctly? Perish the thought! My MCSE books never mentioned any difficulties, ergo there are none.
Bopping through the brainwashed madness
TML
I think that they are responding to a different threat. Apple is shipping Mac OS X that is based on the Mach kernel and BSD 4.4 and does not have any client access license limitations, i.e. unlimited users for free. Now if you have ever priced out a Windows NT solution you know that the server is peanuts, the CAL costs are serious dough.
This is scary stuff for Microsoft since Apple is likely to make serious inroads with the pitch of:
Solid, dependable technology,
1 user interface,
Much less expensive than NT,
Open source (darwin http://www.apple.com/darwin),
Controlled development that doesn't allow for fragmentation.
From an IT perspective, it's attractive. It also gives Unix advocates one more variant that might get the suits of their NT everywhere jihad.
TML
The point of a great nation is to create an open culture that doesn't soak up huge amounts of resources into the millstone around the people's necks called government.
We should be doing great things, but what we shouldn't be doing is retreading the methods of the pharohs and enslaving people for fancy projects.
Given the right legal framework, private investment in space would take off and we would have permanent colonies on the moon and in orbit inside of ten years. But the legal framework of the UN precludes private land ownership out in space.
Give us a homestead act where somebody who lands on an asteroid, moon, or planet, stakes out a defined small area and creates value for 3 of 5 years gets to own the land. It could be agriculture, mining, science research, or any of a number of other useful initiatives. But grant a title at the end of the process and you will find that people will jump for the chance to own a piece of the moon, mars, or just a big iron asteroid.
Any one agency, no matter how good (and NASA's not the best possible) isn't going to beat out the combined efforts of many organizations, all competing for the prize of the solar system land rush that a new homestead act would bring.
TML
Put yourself in the position of that private company. Here you are, with a fiduciary responsibility to make money, not lose it down a rathole. What does space research mean to you? A legal framework where there is no private property, no guarantee of continued access if any number of governments get ticked off at you and push restrictions through the UN, in short, it's a legal disaster.
We don't have private enterprise up there because the bureaucrats beat them to it and tied up space with rules and regs that make it impossible to do the long term profitable things (profitable colonies, etc) that would really make a difference to a company's bottom line.
TML
Perhaps Transmeta will come to the rescue with instantly reconfigurable chips that optimize to the legal frequency of the country in question.
Heck, perhaps Transmeta will just replace the UN and we can all sleep safer at night.
TML
Why would you ever want to sabotage tech research with more government money? The government does most things less efficiently and with a lot more politics than private industry. If the money stays in the hands of the people who earn it, it's going to get spent on what they want, not on the priorities of hundreds of congressmen who have a profile heavily weighted towards lawyers and away from engineering/science/technology.
I can do more good for the cause of science and moon colonies by sending $1000 to a company to build a better rocket motor than sending $10,000 to the government in taxes.
TML
I'll trade the inefficient services that can be done cheaper privately, I'll trade the studies on ketchup flow, I'll trade the pork barrel, I'll trade the goodies that attract the bribers.
Taxes may still have to be there to pay for police, courts, army, state department, but frankly the churches have done a better job at charity and private corporations have a better record doing most of the rest.
You could have a lot lower taxation *and* keep the internet tax free on that kind of arrangement.
TML
It is articles like this that have made me start to seriously consider home schooling. This sort of school is likely to become more common, not less, amongst our government funded institutions since the few old timers who are holding up the better old standards are retiring or getting burnt out.
Yes, Prometheus, you did miss something, the often criminally bad education that students get in these institutions. The only thing worse than being conditioned to be a prole, is to be conditioned to be a dumb, miseducated if not uneducated prole.
TML
All the advantages of SCSI are available in Firewire but without all the pain and hassle of SCSI.
Have you tried to hot-swap SCSI devices lately? Or maybe string together 30 devices? Would you care to compare maximum bus length between firewire/SCSI? How about those SCSI camcorders...
The list goes on and on. SCSI is going to go away in favor of faster firewire. Go Apple!
TML
I've been using Macs since 1987. I've never had to set an IRQ. I had better things to do with my life.
TML
It's a sad, sad, thing that you have to lie to not be hassled. Any OS that supports TCP/IP and related internet standards should be an equal citizen on any network.
TML
Perhaps an Apple G4 cluster running Black lab Linux?
Why not?
TML