Vista in the server room. I just don't have the guts, time or money to attempt that. The OS is no where near mature enough for that.
Seeing that you're talking about using non-server OSes in the server room. I really don't want to see your server room (which one can only conclude from your post, that it is running on Windows XP).
I am not interested in buying a game before it's out. I want to hear the first impression of my friends first before getting it.
I bought orange box and had it fully downloaded the week before the release. At the tick of the second hand past midnight, the game instantly unlocked and I played ep2 all night.
That's great, but it still shows Valve didn't resolve the problem.
Sure, but that was released over 3 years ago, and Steam has come quite a way since then..
I had problems getting Orange Box, Call of Duty 4: Modern warfare on release. So no, I don't agree.
I'll also note that Steam has regular downtime when it comes to the friends system still.
And no, I didn't do the preorder thing, where it downloads the game in advanced (but unplayable until it's released) before it's even officially released.
"I work in a largish company, heavily into IT, and in a complex and quickly changing market. Employees are predominantly in the 30 or younger age-bracket, and as you might expect we rely on a lot of internal e-mail. Despite that, lately I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated by a complete lack of e-mail etiquette in the company. A typical thread might look like a hundred-message-long chain of one-line replies, with full quoting and hundreds of recipients in the 'To:' field. It feels like it is happening more and more often. I don't seem to be seeing much success in explaining to my co-workers what the problem is here. How do you deal with this at your place of business, and does your company care? Does the company take any policing or educating measures?"
If all it took was 'better compression' then we would all be still using floppies or CDROMs.
You can fit hundreds of mp3s/oggs on a CD instead of just something like 16 tracks, but we still sell CDs which use their classical music format. DVD discs can fit a lot more movie content and higher resolutions with newer codecs like WMV3, h264 etc. But we still sell DVDs which use their classical movie format.
We don't do it in general, but it is entirely possible and I see it often when it comes to games.
Game developers aren't compression specialists
I beg to differ. If you've ever developed complex games for game systems like the Nintendo DS, you have some sort of understanding on keeping something within such tight memory constraints, to compress information on limited mediums etc.
researchers and are limited to available compression techniques just like everyone else and, of course, information theory limits.
It does have it's limits obviously. From what I have seen, the available compression techniques are rarely used in many areas where they could be used.
So Rockstar is faced with having to limit their streaming of the cities detail to the transfer rate of the 360's DVD and not harddrives. Which means they will most likely have to limit vehicle speeds or aircraft travel and ramp down the amount of graphics and world data to a level the 360's DVD drive can handle.
Couldn't they just use better compression formats? It's not like the xbox 360 lacks in processing power.
in the UK it was never really that popular compared to ICQ at the beginning and then very quickly MSN took over the top slot.
I find Yahoo is really popular in the UK (I have got more UK contacts on Yahoo than MSN). I think the reasoning behind this is that BT is installing it with their ISP setup CDs and requiring you create yahoo accounts to get your BT e-mail etc.
There are lots more of these on Slashdot, but they're difficult to find because the majority of posts have been modded down to -1 for obvious reasons. This guy used to troll heavily anyone that criticized the slightest thing about Apple.
I have a MacBook Pro for almost two year now. Freezing? A LOT less than Windows. And Vista? Oh NO you didn't.
I've had a MBP longer than you have. I never had freezing on Windows XP SP2 (except at one point when stick of RAM went bad in a computer from 2001 - but I won't count hardware issues as OS issues). Nor did I on Linux. I have had plenty of lock ups on various versions of OS X.
Dude - should have bought the three year protection plan.
I am one of the Apple users who did buy long term protection plans and things from Apple. It didn't help in the slightest with their terrible poor support. Losing machines for a few weeks, sending them back unfixed, formatting the thing and reinstalling the OS and sending it back, still not fixing the hardware issues.
She wanted what she was used to, so a generic PC with Vista it was. 1 gig of RAM. The system is CHOKINGLY slow.
I'd say you didn't make the right PC purchase.
Got Leopard now - everything just works.
Really? Is Java just working? Because it didn't for me.
What about time machine? Does it actually make 'just works' backups? Because the backups can't even boot up, can't back up encrypted files, can't even back up airport disk drives.
Never mind the fact the firewall in OS X 10.5 has shown to not "just work" as it did in past versions of the OS.
Hell, try even using wireless networks that don't broadcast their SSID and watch how consistent and how OS X "just works" every time (hint: it forgets and doesn't inconsistently).
Interesting that you could have sold a dead MacBook Pro though.
I want a home server that can integrate all the iApp. My wife and I still complain about photos that I have, and that She has, and that the Kids have, etc.
If I were you, I would have a network storage server setup like:
With that said, I don't like Apple's computer lineup. We have a good selection on notebooks now: cheap, ultra portable, and powerful.
Uhm, the cheapest Mac laptop I can buy costs £699.00, while I can get a decent laptop at the local computer store (comes with Vista) for £399.00 (1GB RAM, 2ghz 64bit processor - two cores, decent directx 10 graphic card, integrated a/b/g wireless).
The laptop options I can get at that price is usually subnotebooks with those specs or widescreen laptops with those specs. That's practically half the price of Apple's cheapest laptop. I really don't agree with 'cheap'.
Now, do they work decently? I know a good amount of people who own such laptops and don't appear to be having problems yet (I might add that I was asked to install Windows XP for them on a few of these laptops though).
I definitely recommend the AppleCare extended warranty.
Great, you're suggesting spending even more money on Apple because of the fault issues.
my experience with Apple's service has been excellent.
My own experience has been terrible. Losing computers for months, returning them claiming there was no issue, reinstalling the OS but not actually fixing the hardware issues. I've had it all.
Mac OS X is normally VERY responsive when an app has crashed.
I don't want to sound like a troll... But I honestly find OS X (10.4 series and earlier.. I have barely played with 10.5), I notice the applications don't multi task and are as responsive as compared to Windows XP SP2, variation of Linux on the same hardware - I don't consider OS X 'normally very responsive'. Even after a crash.
Apparently your experience differs from that of most people. I'm not sure why.
I have had very similar issues to the person above actually. Why on Earth do I still consider buying Apple stuff though is beyond me.
No, Macs are not impervious to viruses, but right now, Macs don't get viruses.
Never assume you are safe, that is the first fault in security and such ideals will lead to larger security problems.
Wait a second, your MBP is still covered under warranty, but you'd rather sell it and switch to a PC than let Apple fix it for free?
Hey, I had a MBP, I had it sold.
It kept doing high pitch whistling noises (no updates or programs that were supposed to address this issue, never fixed it), the wireless card didn't work on 10.4.9 (worked in 10.4.5, so I had to keep OS X at that version, if I didn't, I'd be sacrificing wireless capability - this issue is common enough to be on the Apple forums). Sent to Apple many times, they reinstalled the OS, didn't fix the wireless, they sent it back a few times claiming there was no problem, when it quite obviously did. Never did fix the high pitch whistling.
Is it really Apple and their products, or Mac news sites and their fans, that you're trying to get away from? The two are hardly synonymous.
Personally, I find such behavior from said companies, disgusting. Don't you?
Why not just have the developer read the.Net MSDN docs for the.Net API. It's not like anything they are doing is extremely complicated.
Because the MSDN documents are not accurate. Many times I found the API documentation do not contain the true behavior of certain APIs. This is one of the reasons why Wine requires testing API functionality on Windows first instead of just basing it all on the MSDN documentation.
I do. I have ended up annoying some 'Windows-only' users by requiring them to install the Windows version of Mono to use some stuff I have written (I got a few complaints on how I should support Microsoft.net runtime instead).
If the software you are developing is for Windows platforms, you can look at the code, even if that software has "the same or substantially the same features or functionality" as the.NET Framework.
Mono is for Windows platforms and others. Seems like a gray area to me.
Well, all I can tell you, is that Apple uses off-the-shelf drives, just like many other manufacturers too. What they call "Superdrive" can in fact be different drives, from Panasonic to Matshita.
(Hopefully my memory hasn't failed me within the lat 24 hours already after digging into this) It's a specific series of Matshita drives, which to my knowledge were sold in some older PPC Macs, the Mac Mini and older models of the MacbookPro
So if there are slot loading drives that do work, then either Apple has never used those, or it's just pure luck.
I do believe the other drives Apple uses work fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Canada Amazon yet again offers many different methods to get music... Be it via CDs or electronic downloads.I doubt it. If I can order a DVD series from the States while living in Poland, I doubt there is anything stopping you from doing similar.
I'll also note that Steam has regular downtime when it comes to the friends system still.
And no, I didn't do the preorder thing, where it downloads the game in advanced (but unplayable until it's released) before it's even officially released.
- Who uses Netmeeting anyway?
- What's wrong with Skype (which replicates the majority of functionality except desktop sharing)?
What's wrong with the easy to use VNC desktop sharing applications?Never heard of them.[insert free ipod/myminicity link here]
We don't do it in general, but it is entirely possible and I see it often when it comes to games.I beg to differ. If you've ever developed complex games for game systems like the Nintendo DS, you have some sort of understanding on keeping something within such tight memory constraints, to compress information on limited mediums etc.It does have it's limits obviously. From what I have seen, the available compression techniques are rarely used in many areas where they could be used.
- Sample #1
- Sample #2
- Sample #3
There are lots more of these on Slashdot, but they're difficult to find because the majority of posts have been modded down to -1 for obvious reasons. This guy used to troll heavily anyone that criticized the slightest thing about Apple.I am one of the Apple users who did buy long term protection plans and things from Apple. It didn't help in the slightest with their terrible poor support. Losing machines for a few weeks, sending them back unfixed, formatting the thing and reinstalling the OS and sending it back, still not fixing the hardware issues.I'd say you didn't make the right PC purchase.Really? Is Java just working? Because it didn't for me.
What about time machine? Does it actually make 'just works' backups? Because the backups can't even boot up, can't back up encrypted files, can't even back up airport disk drives.
Never mind the fact the firewall in OS X 10.5 has shown to not "just work" as it did in past versions of the OS.
Hell, try even using wireless networks that don't broadcast their SSID and watch how consistent and how OS X "just works" every time (hint: it forgets and doesn't inconsistently).You can also sell a P-P-P-Powerbook!
Airport Extreme router: $179
LaCie 1TB BigDisk Extreme: $369.95
(If you want to put the price down to $299, obviously smaller drives would do that - but I wouldn't recommend it)
As for application integration with file shares, I can't really help you there.
The laptop options I can get at that price is usually subnotebooks with those specs or widescreen laptops with those specs. That's practically half the price of Apple's cheapest laptop. I really don't agree with 'cheap'.
Now, do they work decently? I know a good amount of people who own such laptops and don't appear to be having problems yet (I might add that I was asked to install Windows XP for them on a few of these laptops though).
It kept doing high pitch whistling noises (no updates or programs that were supposed to address this issue, never fixed it), the wireless card didn't work on 10.4.9 (worked in 10.4.5, so I had to keep OS X at that version, if I didn't, I'd be sacrificing wireless capability - this issue is common enough to be on the Apple forums). Sent to Apple many times, they reinstalled the OS, didn't fix the wireless, they sent it back a few times claiming there was no problem, when it quite obviously did. Never did fix the high pitch whistling.Personally, I find such behavior from said companies, disgusting. Don't you?