Indeed. I can understand why people would want *less* than one iPhone, but wanting more than one is very odd. I guess someone might have a 2G and bought a 3G but can't flog the 2G off since no one wants it.
Indeed. Why the article has the Apple logo by it and is tagged 'Apple' just illustrates the ignorance of the audience, IMO. Flat rate plans can be had with many phones. It'd be a bit more of a challenge to find a phone that is *only* available with a flat rate though...having said that, can't you get them in France w/o flat rate?
Sure, but that doesn't explain the kind of fear exhibited by people here, IMO.
Is it really only just because they're such a serious competitor? Is this the first time that the US dominance in these areas has been seriously challenged?
Every country does that, and yet some manage to still consider other countries friendly.
Anyway, in the case of the usa, I severly doubt it would make any difference at all. The usa seems to be stuck in this anti-communism era, even though China has little to do with that any more. With the USSR gone, the usa has few left to demonise, so China is the obvious target.
Still, not everyone on/. is from the usa, and yet these adsurd articles keep getting posted.
I don't think sgi machines are that different actually. They might differ in scale depending on the model. In fact, sgi even made a graphics card for PCs. But that's not important.
To me, 'headless' means 'no graphics card'. Such a machine can only be operated using a serial port or over the network. If it has a graphics card, even if it isn't used, then it has a 'head'... IMO it's nothing to do with how it's used. However, I consider this to be a finer point.
I guess a lot would become clearer if the OP would actually state what he means by headless. I wonder if he did and I missed it somewhere (it's easy to get lost in the replies, I find).
"I was initially questioning the OP's motives in wanting a headless machine with a better GPU"
Right, that is clear. You said it was nonsensical or something, no? The meaning of that almost entirely depends on what you mean by 'headless'.
"I consider a machine headless if it is used without a monitor, etc."
Ah, so that's a new definition to me; and using that definition, it would be reasonable to question their desire for a GPU of any kind.
However, there could still be value in having a GPU even when you don't *ever* attach a monitor to it :
This product uses the graphics pipe purely to accelerate rendering. It reads the framebuffer back (or uses h/w feedback into a PCI card which is much quicker) into the host and sends it onto client machines elsewhere on the network. It can have many clients.
Of course, VizServer is/was an IRIX product, so could/should be considered defunct. However, you can see other such uses, or potential for them at least. Niche, for sure, and probably not what the OP was talking about, but perhaps interesting.
I wonder what the OP did mean....? Will we ever know (or care, particularly):)
I don't see a problem with wanting a computer to be supplied without KVM and yet with good GPU.
My reason would be that I already have a KVM that suits my needs just fine so I have no need of any KVM that might be supplied with a computer. It's certainly not nonsense.
"(which I meant to refer to the display but posted in a haze so I apologize to all for the lack of clarity)"
Hrm...reading this again, I see you mean an integrated monitor, ala Commodore Pet (and iMac/eMac too). That's not what I thought of as 'headless'.
Anyway....I don't see a problem with wanting an Apple computer with fast GPU but without monitor (integrated or not).
No, headless means (to me, at least) no graphics at all - all interaction is done using a terminal connected to the serial port or over the network.
I think he meant with just no KVM - that's how the mac mini comes after all (I have the original PPC version - it's pretty crap, noticably slower in many ways than my old TiBook, which is slower on paper).
I guess some people might consider that 'headless' but it's not to me (I've been in the computer graphics world for about 20 years now).
I don't think he meant 'headless' since that (traditionally) means 'without any GPU'...he really meant 'without a keyboard, video, and mouse (ie KVM)'.
I used DD-WRT on my 54G. I had to 'restart' it every now and again because it's web server would 'lock up'.
'restart' could be a real restart, or I could ssh in and kill httpd 'lock up' is httpd using 100% CPU and not responding to http clients
I think there's been an update since then, but I haven't had the change to update. I think I was running v23 or something...looking, it seems v24 is there, which I hope will fix this.
Maybe it's because the caller can't tell that they're calling an (expensive) cell phone or a (cheap) land phone, and so they can't charge the caller more, so instead they charge the receiver.
In the UK, for example, all cell phones have specific std codes, so the caller can tell and choose not to.
I think there's some logic/sense in theUS system, somewhere...perhaps
> If you don't want to pay for text messages, don't send any,
I don't think people are saying they want to send them for free, just that they don't want to pay so much for them.
If people just cancel their SMS service, then the SPs will only deduce that they don't want the service at all. There should be some way to send the message that they're charging too much...which is usually done by moving to an SP that charges less...but it doesn't seem like there's that option.
Why do you put up with this? There must be an 'up-side', right? Tell me...
Having said that...I can remember one time I wished the UK system was similar. That was when I had my first cell phone - some Motorola brick thing - back in the mid '90s or sometime (too long ago to recall). No one would call because it was so expensive for them (and I was much richer than they)...so I wanted it so that the call would cost the caller either nothing, or just the cost of a regular call (or something close), and I would pay more. I didn't have that option though.
Of course, in the UK, the mobile phones have separate std codes, so you can tell if you're calling one (well, it used to be that way, but it's been a while since I was there). This makes it more reasonable to charge the caller for the entire call.
I guess the reaoson the US system is the way it is might be similar to above....
Slashdot Mirror
> Why would anyone need more than one iPhone?
Indeed. I can understand why people would want *less* than one iPhone, but wanting more than one is very odd. I guess someone might have a 2G and bought a 3G but can't flog the 2G off since no one wants it.
Indeed. Why the article has the Apple logo by it and is tagged 'Apple' just illustrates the ignorance of the audience, IMO. Flat rate plans can be had with many phones. It'd be a bit more of a challenge to find a phone that is *only* available with a flat rate though...having said that, can't you get them in France w/o flat rate?
mod this up....it's completely ludicrous that a flat rate plan reduced predictability.
Sure, but that doesn't explain the kind of fear exhibited by people here, IMO.
Is it really only just because they're such a serious competitor? Is this the first time that the US dominance in these areas has been seriously challenged?
...and I can read both here in Finland.
What's your point? ...a relevant one, I mean. Blocking web sites doesn't justify this kind of fear, IMO.
I strongly suspect they do have that many....but they're a lot bigger than the UK, which I assumed you're referring to.
Every country does that, and yet some manage to still consider other countries friendly.
Anyway, in the case of the usa, I severly doubt it would make any difference at all. The usa seems to be stuck in this anti-communism era, even though China has little to do with that any more. With the USSR gone, the usa has few left to demonise, so China is the obvious target.
Still, not everyone on /. is from the usa, and yet these adsurd articles keep getting posted.
More xenophobic rubbish from the /. crowd.
What will it take for you guys to realise that China is not your enemy?
I don't think sgi machines are that different actually. They might differ in scale depending on the model. In fact, sgi even made a graphics card for PCs. But that's not important.
To me, 'headless' means 'no graphics card'. Such a machine can only be operated using a serial port or over the network. If it has a graphics card, even if it isn't used, then it has a 'head' ... IMO it's nothing to do with how it's used. However, I consider this to be a finer point.
It seems we kind of agree, actually :)
I guess a lot would become clearer if the OP would actually state what he means by headless. I wonder if he did and I missed it somewhere (it's easy to get lost in the replies, I find).
"I was initially questioning the OP's motives in wanting a headless machine with a better GPU"
Right, that is clear. You said it was nonsensical or something, no? The meaning of that almost entirely depends on what you mean by 'headless'.
"I consider a machine headless if it is used without a monitor, etc."
Ah, so that's a new definition to me; and using that definition, it would be reasonable to question their desire for a GPU of any kind.
However, there could still be value in having a GPU even when you don't *ever* attach a monitor to it :
http://www.sgi.com/products/software/vizserver/
This product uses the graphics pipe purely to accelerate rendering. It reads the framebuffer back (or uses h/w feedback into a PCI card which is much quicker) into the host and sends it onto client machines elsewhere on the network. It can have many clients.
Of course, VizServer is/was an IRIX product, so could/should be considered defunct. However, you can see other such uses, or potential for them at least. Niche, for sure, and probably not what the OP was talking about, but perhaps interesting.
I wonder what the OP did mean....? Will we ever know (or care, particularly) :)
I'm a little confused by what you say.
I don't see a problem with wanting a computer to be supplied without KVM and yet with good GPU.
My reason would be that I already have a KVM that suits my needs just fine so I have no need of any KVM that might be supplied with a computer. It's certainly not nonsense.
"(which I meant to refer to the display but posted in a haze so I apologize to all for the lack of clarity)"
Hrm...reading this again, I see you mean an integrated monitor, ala Commodore Pet (and iMac/eMac too). That's not what I thought of as 'headless'.
Anyway....I don't see a problem with wanting an Apple computer with fast GPU but without monitor (integrated or not).
No, headless means (to me, at least) no graphics at all - all interaction is done using a terminal connected to the serial port or over the network.
I think he meant with just no KVM - that's how the mac mini comes after all (I have the original PPC version - it's pretty crap, noticably slower in many ways than my old TiBook, which is slower on paper).
I guess some people might consider that 'headless' but it's not to me (I've been in the computer graphics world for about 20 years now).
I don't think he meant 'headless' since that (traditionally) means 'without any GPU'...he really meant 'without a keyboard, video, and mouse (ie KVM)'.
With people using VPN gateways in the US, it is next to impossible to tell exactly where *all* people are located.
I used DD-WRT on my 54G. I had to 'restart' it every now and again because it's web server would 'lock up'.
'restart' could be a real restart, or I could ssh in and kill httpd
'lock up' is httpd using 100% CPU and not responding to http clients
I think there's been an update since then, but I haven't had the change to update. I think I was running v23 or something...looking, it seems v24 is there, which I hope will fix this.
"Over here"?
Maybe it's because the caller can't tell that they're calling an (expensive) cell phone or a (cheap) land phone, and so they can't charge the caller more, so instead they charge the receiver.
In the UK, for example, all cell phones have specific std codes, so the caller can tell and choose not to.
I think there's some logic/sense in theUS system, somewhere...perhaps
> If you don't want to pay for text messages, don't send any,
I don't think people are saying they want to send them for free, just that they don't want to pay so much for them.
If people just cancel their SMS service, then the SPs will only deduce that they don't want the service at all. There should be some way to send the message that they're charging too much...which is usually done by moving to an SP that charges less...but it doesn't seem like there's that option.
> On the plus side, the price of cell phones are either free or heavily subsidized by the carriers here.
Same everywhere else I've been....if you choose that option, which many people do not.
WOW. That's incredible.
Why do you put up with this? There must be an 'up-side', right? Tell me...
Having said that...I can remember one time I wished the UK system was similar. That was when I had my first cell phone - some Motorola brick thing - back in the mid '90s or sometime (too long ago to recall). No one would call because it was so expensive for them (and I was much richer than they)...so I wanted it so that the call would cost the caller either nothing, or just the cost of a regular call (or something close), and I would pay more. I didn't have that option though.
Of course, in the UK, the mobile phones have separate std codes, so you can tell if you're calling one (well, it used to be that way, but it's been a while since I was there). This makes it more reasonable to charge the caller for the entire call.
I guess the reaoson the US system is the way it is might be similar to above....
Seems like everyone in the US should have a 'day of no text'...as a sign of protest.
You must be new here.
You're supposed to ignore what he wrote and assume he was arguing with you, then shout at him for doing so.
I wonder how many MMS messages you can send?
you get charged to *receive* sms messages????
wow.
they'll be charging to receive phone calls next.
Are you an authority on what sounds cool? I thought 'cool' was a function of popular opinion...perhaps I was wrong.