According to this document, the Microhard MHX-910 has a range 20 miles (line-of-sight) or more. I'm guessing (and hoping) this is omnidirectional. That could prove to be very useful in many applications where the omnidirectional range of 802.11b doesn't cut it!
Also, did anybody notice that the company's name, "Microhard", is the opposite of "Microsoft"?:^)
AFAIK, the translator used by Sherlok on OS X is the same that empowers Babelfish, if it isn't babelfish itself.
Although they are both "powered" by Systran, there are a few translation options available in Sherlock that aren't available on Babelfish. Notable exceptions are that Dutch and Greek are supported in Sherlock, as are both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
Can anyone suggest an online Chinese English translation engine that produces other than gibberish?
I know that Sherlock in Mac OS X provides Chinese (simplified and traditional) to English translation support. I don't know how well it works though, as I don't read, write, or speak Chinese.
As a test that I could try, I typed in "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy yellow dog" and asked Sherlock to convert the phrase to Simplified Chinese. Then, I converted it back to English, which resulted in the phrase, "The fast brown fox has jumped the lazy decadent dog." Not quite jibberish, but I wouldn't use it for writing anti-war treaties with foreign countries either...:^)
IBM had a pretty crazy rate of failure and was telling people to turn off smart mode.
Where and when was this said? I have been keeping track of the recent Deathstar fiasco and have never heard IBM mention anything to this effect. Is this a real workaround?
You're an idiot. It's called SECURE shell for a reason. Sniff all the packets you want; they're encrypted, genius...
Read my other posts... If you are a sysadmin, obtaining a user's SSH private key would be as easy as getting onto the user's computer (perhaps with a Linux boot disk) and then FTPing their private key to your own machine. At that point, you could brute force their password and have access to all future encrypted streams.
In windows you can just hit the windows key-D and all of your applications will be minimized.
So in Windows you can either get caught with naughty bits on your screen, or just appear as if you were thoroughly contemplating the desktop background...
Nope, it's a school SSH server... I suppose I could set one up at home on port 23 though, SSH into that, and then SSH into the one at school... Might be slow, but hey it would be secure!
On second thought, wouldn't it be possible (as a sysadmin) to just obtain the user's private key right off their computer? Wouldn't this allow decryption of enough of the SSH authentication stream to allow the data stream to be decrypted as well?
I was actually thinking of standard telnet sessions (mostly because our firewall here at work doesn't allow SSH data in or out, so I am forced to use telnet). It's times like this that one wishes there was a "retract comment" button on Slashdot.:^)
...if one person buys a copy protected CD, does the above, and puts it on p2p, the pee-in-the-pool effect kicks in, and the copyprotection-free version will be around forever.
I've rarely needed to blow on Atari 2600 cartidges to make them work... I still own a functional Atari 2600, and even today don't need to mess around with the cartidges to make them work. Now NES cartidges, on the other hand, are a different story altogether.
For the last year I've been using a Powerbook 550 MHz with 768 MB of RAM and the latest incarnation of OS X (currently 10.2.1). Prior to that I have used Linux on my primary desktop OS for six years.
Truthfully, the Mac OS X GUI feels slightly slower than what would be expected under Linux or OS 9. A great (and somewhat undermentioned) example is the response time it takes to show a menu once it has been clicked on. Under OS 9, the response time was very close to nothing -- you click on "File", and immediately see what is under it. Quickly dragging back and forth across "Edit", "Window" and other menus presents a blur of menu options that pop up and disappear just as quickly as you moved over them. In OS X however, the result is somewhat less awe-inspiring; menus do show up, but there is a slightly uncomfortable lag between when the menu is selected and when it actually shows up.
Sending the system to sleep is slower in newer versions of OS X than in older versions. Under 10.1, the system slept immediately when I clicked on "Sleep". Under 10.2, there is a consistent ten second lag before it actually sleeps. I never used to put Linux machines to sleep (that sounds funny), so it is hard to compare the difference.
One reason why things are slower than other operating systems is that there is a higher overhead in displaying screen objects. Each window not only has a drop shadow attached, it can be made translucent to any arbitrary amount. I routinely run my terminals at 70-80% translucency to see through to ones underneath for quick number fetching, etc.. This, just like running transparent Eterms on Linux, incurs higher overhead.
Another problem with system responsiveness seems to be related to the age of the user account. If you have been using the same user account for a long time (and have lots of application settings, cache files, temporary files, data files under your home directory, etc.), the overall system performance seems a lot slower than a new user. Switching to "root" for instance, reveals an incredibly fast interface, as if nothing were installed on the system. I am sure there are "Spring Cleaning" types of applications out there, but I haven't looked into them yet.
What I would suggest if you are interested in purchasing an Apple, but are concerned with the system responsiveness, is to visit an Apple store or a local CompUSA or Fry's and try out the system you are interested in purchasing. Load up a million terminal screens, play MP3s in the background, do whatever you intend on doing with it when it's yours. This obviously won't reveal long-term responsiveness trends, but it will give an idea as to what sort of performance you would see.
I can attest from personal experience that the usability and durability of a system is more important than just the speed. My Powerbook may not run perl scripts as fast as my Linux box, but it has a certain charm that makes it all OK. It's kind of like what Doc Brown said in Back to the Future when building a time machine: "If you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" The Delorean may not be a Formula 1 race car, but it still gets the job done very nicely.
Is it possible to disable the optical drive if you know you won't be using it?
Or does OSX cut off any and all power to it when it isnt being used?
Indeed, OS X automatically powers it down quickly after use. All of the hardware components on the system, and the kernel that drives them, are designed with power management in mind. That's why you can get a good four hours per charge on a Powerbook (Apple claims five, but in real-world use it is more like four).
For those who are interested, NASA's "Space Communities: A Design Study" (1975) can be found online here. There are many more similar articles at the L5 News website.
Office X is written in Carbon, which is a compatability layer to allow Mac OS applications to work seamlessly with Mac OS X with minimal code tweaking. Sadly, Carbon applications cannot easily be ported to other platforms. According to this article, Microsoft's MacBU unit chose Carbon because it allowed them to port their code to Mac OS X in a year.
Even if Carbon allowed for easy cross-platform compatibility, it would be at the source code level and not the binary level. The best hope we would have to run Office X on Linux would be to couple Mac-on-Linux with a fast PPC system emulator for x86. Unfortunately the latter does not exist (to my knowledge).
...to get the job done. When a friend and I co-wrote the "Linux Installation Project" a long time ago, we explained practically every step necessary to installing RedHat 5.0 or Slackware 3.4. We figured that explaining anything less than every step would mean that somebody would get lost in the process somewhere.
Thanks for the clarification. I looked around Bestbuy's website for information on their new laptop, but didn't find it listed. I resorted to PC Magazine and C|Net articles, which obviously weren't entirely informative.
Slashdot Mirror
According to this document, the Microhard MHX-910 has a range 20 miles (line-of-sight) or more. I'm guessing (and hoping) this is omnidirectional. That could prove to be very useful in many applications where the omnidirectional range of 802.11b doesn't cut it!
:^)
Also, did anybody notice that the company's name, "Microhard", is the opposite of "Microsoft"?
As a test that I could try, I typed in "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy yellow dog" and asked Sherlock to convert the phrase to Simplified Chinese. Then, I converted it back to English, which resulted in the phrase, "The fast brown fox has jumped the lazy decadent dog." Not quite jibberish, but I wouldn't use it for writing anti-war treaties with foreign countries either...
Nope, it's a school SSH server... I suppose I could set one up at home on port 23 though, SSH into that, and then SSH into the one at school... Might be slow, but hey it would be secure!
On second thought, wouldn't it be possible (as a sysadmin) to just obtain the user's private key right off their computer? Wouldn't this allow decryption of enough of the SSH authentication stream to allow the data stream to be decrypted as well?
The problem is that I am the client, and the SSH server I am wanting to connect to is only on port 22.
I was actually thinking of standard telnet sessions (mostly because our firewall here at work doesn't allow SSH data in or out, so I am forced to use telnet). It's times like this that one wishes there was a "retract comment" button on Slashdot. :^)
I've rarely needed to blow on Atari 2600 cartidges to make them work... I still own a functional Atari 2600, and even today don't need to mess around with the cartidges to make them work. Now NES cartidges, on the other hand, are a different story altogether.
For the last year I've been using a Powerbook 550 MHz with 768 MB of RAM and the latest incarnation of OS X (currently 10.2.1). Prior to that I have used Linux on my primary desktop OS for six years.
Truthfully, the Mac OS X GUI feels slightly slower than what would be expected under Linux or OS 9. A great (and somewhat undermentioned) example is the response time it takes to show a menu once it has been clicked on. Under OS 9, the response time was very close to nothing -- you click on "File", and immediately see what is under it. Quickly dragging back and forth across "Edit", "Window" and other menus presents a blur of menu options that pop up and disappear just as quickly as you moved over them. In OS X however, the result is somewhat less awe-inspiring; menus do show up, but there is a slightly uncomfortable lag between when the menu is selected and when it actually shows up.
Sending the system to sleep is slower in newer versions of OS X than in older versions. Under 10.1, the system slept immediately when I clicked on "Sleep". Under 10.2, there is a consistent ten second lag before it actually sleeps. I never used to put Linux machines to sleep (that sounds funny), so it is hard to compare the difference.
One reason why things are slower than other operating systems is that there is a higher overhead in displaying screen objects. Each window not only has a drop shadow attached, it can be made translucent to any arbitrary amount. I routinely run my terminals at 70-80% translucency to see through to ones underneath for quick number fetching, etc.. This, just like running transparent Eterms on Linux, incurs higher overhead.
Another problem with system responsiveness seems to be related to the age of the user account. If you have been using the same user account for a long time (and have lots of application settings, cache files, temporary files, data files under your home directory, etc.), the overall system performance seems a lot slower than a new user. Switching to "root" for instance, reveals an incredibly fast interface, as if nothing were installed on the system. I am sure there are "Spring Cleaning" types of applications out there, but I haven't looked into them yet.
What I would suggest if you are interested in purchasing an Apple, but are concerned with the system responsiveness, is to visit an Apple store or a local CompUSA or Fry's and try out the system you are interested in purchasing. Load up a million terminal screens, play MP3s in the background, do whatever you intend on doing with it when it's yours. This obviously won't reveal long-term responsiveness trends, but it will give an idea as to what sort of performance you would see.
I can attest from personal experience that the usability and durability of a system is more important than just the speed. My Powerbook may not run perl scripts as fast as my Linux box, but it has a certain charm that makes it all OK. It's kind of like what Doc Brown said in Back to the Future when building a time machine: "If you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" The Delorean may not be a Formula 1 race car, but it still gets the job done very nicely.
So, will cheat codes now give us extra lives and extra calling time?
For those who are interested, NASA's "Space Communities: A Design Study" (1975) can be found online here. There are many more similar articles at the L5 News website.
Office X is written in Carbon, which is a compatability layer to allow Mac OS applications to work seamlessly with Mac OS X with minimal code tweaking. Sadly, Carbon applications cannot easily be ported to other platforms. According to this article, Microsoft's MacBU unit chose Carbon because it allowed them to port their code to Mac OS X in a year.
Even if Carbon allowed for easy cross-platform compatibility, it would be at the source code level and not the binary level. The best hope we would have to run Office X on Linux would be to couple Mac-on-Linux with a fast PPC system emulator for x86. Unfortunately the latter does not exist (to my knowledge).
What cable internet provider was this?
...to get the job done. When a friend and I co-wrote the "Linux Installation Project" a long time ago, we explained practically every step necessary to installing RedHat 5.0 or Slackware 3.4. We figured that explaining anything less than every step would mean that somebody would get lost in the process somewhere.
Thanks for the clarification. I looked around Bestbuy's website for information on their new laptop, but didn't find it listed. I resorted to PC Magazine and C|Net articles, which obviously weren't entirely informative.
I wrote "802.11b ready" because the Powerbook G4 ships without an Airport card for $2499. You would need to pay an extra $100 to get the Airport card.
As for all of the other points, I heartily agree. That's why I bought one.