When you buy a Mac (A wonderful consumer device and computer) and still own PCs that does not mean you are "switching". Is Apple one of Slashdot's sponsers. It is almost like saying that I own a toyota automobile and I just bought a chevy truck; I must be "switching" and should not like my Toyota anymore. I can't own both or like both that would be "evil".
Few Mac users don't own several computers. Just the ones that blather in your face about my brand of "blue jeans" is better than your brand. I own several computers and plan on purchasing more computers in the future. I have a Linux X86 based PC, A Windows XP based PC and a Mac. They all have different things I like and don't like about them.
FYI Apple is just as much a fucked up company as microsoft -- they will buy out the little guy, use the little guys work (rip it off), and sue over pantents and other such nonsense at a drop of a hat. With all that said I use both types of computers and like them.
From the article:
"The teddy bear sitting in the corner of the child's room might look normal, until his head starts following the kid around using a face recognition program, perhaps also allowing a parent talk to the child through a special phone, or monitor the child via a camera and wireless Internet connection."
How is this different from a baby monitor? I don't think they are even talking about someone leaving the house with this. People have used baby monitors for years (intercom) and this is nothing new. How would a BSOD even effect this? It does not say anything about walking and talking, just following the child like a security camera. Instead of sweeping around the room, always following the child with face recognition.
This enables you to have your monitor in the restroom when you need to go.
Also these are ideas of products and not actual products -- this is like going to a car show and seeing concept cars, often these are never made in production.
I don't think the end user should be the target for this sort of thing -- I would think a company such as Dell or HP would profit most from OpenBios because it would not have to pay Phoenix or Ami money for a bios?
The down side would be many companies would loose money (intel, Ami, Phoenix), the end user could see substantial gains and not have to worry about industry-levied "protective" technologies (such as non-certified OSes such as only being alowed to run windows for instance). I think the FSF needs to push the profit motive to Dell, HP, Gateway and company -- they would see the most substantial initial effect. I think it would be wrong to only do this for AMD as it would undermine the effort and OpenBios would never catch on.
>People are fans of Apple because they keep cranking out impressive innovations to the way humans and computers interact, and when at their best, sell really spiffy hardware that takes advantage of these innovations.
I don't agree: Apple and Microsoft have never been known for "innovations" contrary to what their marketing departments tell you. Innovation has become a marketing term for reusing someone else's idea and repackaging it with your brand name. Innovation no longer means inventing something. Apple has just been good as of late at puting together things (applications) with their hardware and OS that people want to use (iLife). These Applications don't do anything new, but Apple has done the smart thing and packaged the things that people need and want.
I love the Mac and it is a good computer and I use one quite a bit -- it is not new or original. I have not seen it do anything that was not done before in the last 30 years.
Jobs has done an outstanding job at marketing and packaging, this is evedent because the people that hated Apple in the late 90's during it's financial troubles are crowing about how good Apple is now. If Jobs had not come back to Apple, it would have become the Commodore of the late 90s and been extict.
-R
Fuck! Let's beat a dead horse! Before I begin, I own several Computers with several OSes and they ALL suck! (MAC OSX is not exception) I am sorry but why are computers still so damn complex? It seems we add more features but have failed at making anything better!
With a modern filesystem a user should not have to wade through directories to find the pictures of his/her kids. It should be more like a damn database. If I am bringing up word processing files I should only see word processing files. Does grampa care about/bin, and even though you show him where the Documents folder is he still tries to save it off the root or is he in/usr/local. Hiarchial data driven file systems should go the way of the dodo-bird. CPM can be more intuitive then some of the modern command line crap. I love Unix, but Joe-user should not have to be exposed to it for every thing -- including figuring out where to save a file!
User interfaces are all rehashes of old shit. Hell, Mac OSX looks like OS/2 2.0 interface on steriods. It has the same ungly dock (with lickable sugary looking shit added to it), but doubled the complexity for new user by adding the finder into the foray. Closing a window in Mac OSX sometimes saves the contents, sometimes not (sometimes there is a save button). The only saving grace is the bouncing buttons, too bad it eats up so much CPU power! Windows looks like A 1984 Mac or Amiga Clone (ripped from Xerox), with better graphics.. but a LOT slower. Premptive Blah, blah.. has done little for the real user. It still crashes! The geek has got more, but what does windows do that a 1985-86 commodore Amiga couldn't do? Not much in the OS realm.
Yeah, OSX does not crash usually (but we do get something I have heard other people refere as the grey-screen-of-death which is a kernel panic), but it sure can freeze while waiting on something like network. The candy stripe twirly thing can get really anoying when you are wainting for you AFP share to update! It freezes forever and you cant even force quit. You can't do anything else requires a restart This freezing problem is better in 10.3, but still exists when you do certain things on the network and it sorta hangs (remote printing is a good example) Windows XP rarley ever sees a blue screen, but freezing happens the same way as Mac OSX. You plug in a USB device and the twirly thing hangs the system. Or the computer is "sleeping" and when you wake it up it gets frozen on the twirly thing when it tries to refresh your fileshares.
Mac OSX is new, and I am not talking about NexTStep on X86 or 68000k from years back. (less than 5 years -- 2 years of substantial growth 10.2 - 10.3 (2003 - 2005)... AppleScript could easily be hacked because it would not take much to get a user to run an applescript application to fuck up their computer. All you would need to do is fuck with metadata. You have to type in your password for everything anyways, and the average joe would not know the difference. Hell, you can run almost anything as root in AppleScript!
A lot of websites do not work properly with the default installed "Apple Recommended" browsers. I always have to download firefox because Safari and Internet Explorer 5.2 fuck up a lot of web pages.
Bottom line is I work, play and use OSX every day and I think it SUCKS! I love the underlying unix part of it, but it is nothing new. Why can't someone in this decade come up with a new way of doing things that is not cluttered with crap! "think different" is really a marketing slogan for more of the same?
Apple has done two things right IMHO and it is not the Macintosh OS. It is iLife and the IPOD. Without those packages the mac would just be another computer.. instead it is becoming a consumer appliance.
Microsoft Windows kicks Ass in the Office arena. I am sorry but it has more productivity and Office packages than anything else. Excel and Word are good solid products, and I still think that is the reason people buy windows.
I use inline skates and go all over town (we live in a city of about 40k people): it has not been uncommon to be almost hit by drivers talking on cell phones (and it is someone talking on a cellphone 99% of the time). This has caused several close calls. One lady even brushed my leg with her automobile until I tapped the glass with my finger and I pointed at her. She was so scared she dropped her phone. She was making a right turn and was more interested in her phone conversation then me being there! At least when there is a conversation in the car with a person being there -- the other person is a second pair of eyes warning of pedestrians.
How long before we see OSX on pocket PC type computers? A newton on steroids? For me that would be cool. I would love to have a multimedia computer that would fit in the palm of your hand and that you could hook USB and Firewire devices to. Pocket guitar and video editing studio;)
I love Windows and Linux, but OSX seems to be geared to Multimedia, so why has it not happened yet?
"It would seem that I understand my freedoms and democracy better than you."
Yes... You are right the process worked and failed at the same time. Maybe the "popular" idea was wrong. We were all wrong. It was wrong in Germany in World War II. People loved the Nazis and they were the "popular" movement, they made people feel safe from "those other people" that made them loose the first World War.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773.
I could not remeber the exact quote so I got it from here: http://www.flownet.com/gat/freedom.html
Our represenitives did not screw up, they gave us what the "popular vote" people wanted; they wanted "Safty" over freedom. Patriot act was an act of Democracy, even though I do not like, nor agree with it -- however, people like the "idea" of a someone keeping them safe. People always talk about "We need a law..." and then we bitch about " We have this law..." With every law to keep us safe, we loose a freedom. Yet people choose safty and this was Democracy. You can not close every border and search every citizen and then claim to be free. Freedom and Democracy are not the same thing.
I love the United States of America, but damn it we have been wrong. Every citizen is responsible for acting in an irresponsible manner. Why did we sell Iraq weapons in the first place? We created a monster, no matter how you look at it. Our corporations sold weapons, our people made money, and our goverment basked in the "new" destablized middle east and then we bought lots of cheap oil. End of story! Not just Bush is responsible, or the house of reps, or the senate, the Democrats or Republicans. We the people are resposible. I love my country, but we screwed up!
-R
No... it's about Sun Solaris using Linux people's hard work to build on its OS and then a few years down the line fight the GPL and close source it again. I know Sun is waiting and "thinks" that people (Microsoft, SCO et..all) will defeat the GPL -- read some of the statements and the actions that the company has taken. I think the same goes for Open Office... it is all about developer man hours. How else can a company on the decline develop software quickly?
Yeah it's free... for now...
They already have had mini-pcs for some time now.. (shuttle comes to mind) so it's nothing new. Apple is going to take a shot at actually selling a lot of them.
1) I have a theory 2) Poke holes in theory (Try to disprove, not prove anything) 3) Make the theory better -- fit the facts that distroyed my first theory, then repeat until hopefully we got it right!
Religion: 1) I believe something -- therfore it is! 2) See 1
I would say that is like comparing Apples to Oranges. Science is great because it is ever changing. Religion is great because it is comfortable and never changes (much). With that said, if you are going to teach evolution and creationism, which versions do you teach and how? Wouldn't it better to teach children to think instead of ideas?
They could really screw it up, which I am suprised they did not do in the first place. In real Disney style they could add:
1) Dancing and singing after every scene.
2) Little kid jokes and "potty" comedy.
3) Add some sort of Man saves Woman, like every other disney flick! (hmmmm.. I always wondered why there are so many disfunctional relationships)
4) Put lots of advertisments for Apple Computer and Coke throughout the movie in "discrete" places. I am sure the main character will probably be using a Sony Vaio or Apple Macintosh and be wearing a Coke t-shirt or you will see Coke containers on tables with the logo always towards the camera.
5) Microsoft could slip in an Advertisment for the X - Box, with X-Box live playing a Disney Game;)
Then they could finish junking it up by writing an awfull script and paying top name actors and actresses to play in a real stinker of a film. Eddie Murphy could play the computer hacker who gets sucked in, Making it a great film in the likes of Lawn Mower Man II. He could then tell bad jokes written by the best disney writers.
Besides Pirates of the Carribean -- which I thought was a good film because of Jonny Depp -- Most modern films by Disney have not been too good IMHO.
Didn't apple already do a cheaper headless mac? It was a cheaper version of the tower. The Icube or something like that. I can't remember the name, I just remember the product was a flop and the price was around $1000 which was not bad for market conditions.It had problems with heat, a friend of mine had one and the clear plastic (plexiglass) would crack. It would overheat and have weird flakey crashing problems. It had a gforce card or something for video? How would this $500 cube thing differ from that flop?
-Ron
Compiling some stuff into the kernel instead of using modules and prelinking http://www.linuxforum.com/man/prelink.8.php -- getting rid of daemons that you don't use makes a world of difference. For one thing, when things are prelinked then X starts a hell of a lot faster. KDE just rocks instead of being dog slow.
I usually delete the symbolic links to the daemons that I don't need and as a rule if I am using linux as a desktop and if it is working well I even remove the symbolic link from syslogd. (I know some UNIX diehards are squirming) You can use utilities to do this, or you can delete symbolic links in/etc/rc.d/rc5.d. The rc then number corrisponds to your current run level. If you mess one up you can put it back by linking from/etc/init.d/. You can change the startup order by changing the K (startup) and S (Shutdown) number. For example S10sysklogd and S15hotplug - means that Syslog is going to shutdown before hotplug (the number 10 comes before 15). By changing the number I can change the order of things. Some things you can't change the order of because they are dependent on one another. I have been able to speed things up by playing with that. I have been able to get linux to boot faster into X with KDE running than my Windows XP desktop just by cleaning things up and prelinking. It depends on your configuration; is it a desktop or a server?
Also running XDM, GDM, or KDM earlier in the boot process also makes things usable faster. This requires running the X font server earlier.
Just a thought...
-Ronald Stoddard
Without the DOJ on Microsoft's back and $100,000,000 dollars from said company then Apple Computer would be the way of Commodore and the dodo bird.
It seems Apple Computer's largest future enemy will not be the old "devil" Microsoft because that foe is now an unlikely friend. Linux could be Apple's bigest enemy because it could potentially steal the "think different" market place. Look at how many production companies are starting to use linux render stations and such. Macintosh rules those niches now but give it ten years. People thought in the 80s that Commodore would be alive forever, and also Atari, Texas Instruments and others would still have computers on peoples desks, because of their respective "following". There would not be an Amiga.com if there was not a "following". That did not keep Commodore Business Machines alive. The bigest thing that Apple has right now is their IPOD. If they screw that up, then there may not be another Microsoft to invest in a floundering company.
Mac Zelot, Commie 64 worshiper, Beos Maniac Unite
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 1
Linux users are communists, Wintel boxes are for dummies, all and all are we all thinking "different"? Maybe we are after all. So go ahead and make your computer a god, and start a little fire, burn some candles and start chanting your montra. Blessed is the BSD daemon in all his infinite wisdom! Shall the penguin be burnt at the stake! And shall Bill be selling you more copies of Office for offering to your avatar.
Amen.
I can remember a time (circa late 80's) when Macintosh viruses were more common then they are now. This was mainly due to the fact that the Macintosh was a much more popular and common computer. One virus I remember that was very nasty used to write itself to boot blocks on floppy disks and every Mac you inserted the disk in would be infected, and the infected Macintosh would infect every floppy disk in turn. The virus would keep itself running in the clock memory of the Macintosh and delete and corrupt files at random. I remember it wiped out all of the Macintosh Computers in a high school lab. It came back numerous times.. destroying files at random. This was long before there was Windows and the PC as we know it. (hopefully I got that correct.. it has been a while)
Now.. people think that just because I virus can't run as root, it doesn't do any damage. Well, here is the problem with that thinking: Say I have 100 document files in my home directory -- virus X comes along and deletes all those files but leaves my OS intact... I lost my files... (It did not have to run a delete of my files as root )
Another thing that I think is funny: It would not be to hard for a good programmer to exploit code in modern operating systems because of the millions of daemons and services that are running. Hell, any one of them that has 1 little security flaw is an open door. That goes for Windows, BSD, Linux, Mac OS... any modern OS with a billion lines of code and 100 different services running. It is a matter of statistics.. the more lines of code... the more flaws... the more flaws.. the more hacks... the more back doors... the more viruses...
Windows of course has two things working against it. First it has a bad design from a functional perspective (bad design makes it an easier target) Also it is a target for political reasons (It is cool to hate "big" "bad" Gates). Many people hack Windows because they hate Microsoft. Apple is the underdog currently, so people don't have it out for Mac. When Apple squeezes more than 10% of the total computers out there; then you will see a lot more viruses. Most of them may not kill your OS, but most will kill your files (Keep copies of everything important). As Apple gains more market share, by default you will have more Apple haters. Again a numbers game. If more people hate Apple then more people will write viruses to attack Macintosh computers.
With all that said my only point is as a Mac OS and Linux user -- you should keep copies of important files.
I think a good analogy would be "Just because you have never had a car accident, doesn't mean you won't have one." This is not a holy war, it is a damn computer. It is like two friends once talking about what is faster... the Millenium Falcon or the USS Enterprise?
"My Macintosh can run Photoshop 1% faster and you can lick the icons" -- "Oh yeah, I can run Microsoft Word 2% faster in XP then it does on your Mac and you can lick the keyboard after I pressed the ctrl-alt-del 100 times"
Ron Stoddard
blah blah blah.. they are not selling anything to do with c64! However, if you read their product lists -- besides the players they are selling some hardware that is a "C64" in a joystick.
if you look here --> http://www.commodore.net/site/DesktopDefault.aspx? tabindex=5&tabid=45&itemid=2&sitemid=9&prod=17&cat =1
Also if you look these devices have games for download (portable Mp3 players).. if you notice the games are C64 games when you go to the section of downloads.
--> http://www.commodore.net/site/DesktopDefault.aspx? tabindex=5&tabid=45&itemid=2&sitemid=9&prod=16&cat =1
I like the old games, but I don't think I would want to pay for them. They are over 20 years old now;).
This is supposed to be news for nerds, except there are not too many nerds here because I don't think people read the website or the articles.
Simply -- Stuff the matters.
-Ron
Most of the memory footprint in Mandrake Linux or and distrobution stems from all the daemons they have running on startup, the X window system, and a bloated kernel. I found by comiling the X window system to use Kdrive (had to add this line in startx to get the mouse wheel to work defaultserverargs="-mouse/dev/input/mice,5")
, and recompile the kernel to use only the options that are necissary, (ie disable extra logging, all extra drivers and compile kernel for size, disable all schedulers except dead line, use premptive), and I still use my standard KDE install and it seems to work well and takes up around 35- 50 Megs of Ram (Mandrake 10.0). The daemons I have reduced down to iptables, network, xfs, portmap, sshd, ntpd, hpoj, and cups... because those are the only ones I use for various things. I also got rid of using dm on startup and just added 3 lines to my.bashrc to startup X without dm.
if [ "`ps -A |grep X |awk {'print $4'}`" != X ]; then
startx
fi
dm seems to almost double the amount of used memory.
I thought like everyone else here that the problem was the window manager. It is not.. it is all the other crap running in the backgroud, as well as the monolithic kernels, X windows (really bloted), and 20 daemons enabled by default. If you strip all of that you can run on low amounts of ram with no swap. My desktop machine only has 128megs and it almost never has to swap out, with several apps open at a time. Linux is about building your own;).
-Ron
Slashdot Mirror
When you buy a Mac (A wonderful consumer device and computer) and still own PCs that does not mean you are "switching". Is Apple one of Slashdot's sponsers. It is almost like saying that I own a toyota automobile and I just bought a chevy truck; I must be "switching" and should not like my Toyota anymore. I can't own both or like both that would be "evil". Few Mac users don't own several computers. Just the ones that blather in your face about my brand of "blue jeans" is better than your brand. I own several computers and plan on purchasing more computers in the future. I have a Linux X86 based PC, A Windows XP based PC and a Mac. They all have different things I like and don't like about them. FYI Apple is just as much a fucked up company as microsoft -- they will buy out the little guy, use the little guys work (rip it off), and sue over pantents and other such nonsense at a drop of a hat. With all that said I use both types of computers and like them.
Hmmm... lemme think.. oh yeah ipod linux dd if=ibm.img of=/output device not to hard from ipod linux I am sure!
From the article: "The teddy bear sitting in the corner of the child's room might look normal, until his head starts following the kid around using a face recognition program, perhaps also allowing a parent talk to the child through a special phone, or monitor the child via a camera and wireless Internet connection." How is this different from a baby monitor? I don't think they are even talking about someone leaving the house with this. People have used baby monitors for years (intercom) and this is nothing new. How would a BSOD even effect this? It does not say anything about walking and talking, just following the child like a security camera. Instead of sweeping around the room, always following the child with face recognition. This enables you to have your monitor in the restroom when you need to go. Also these are ideas of products and not actual products -- this is like going to a car show and seeing concept cars, often these are never made in production.
I don't think the end user should be the target for this sort of thing -- I would think a company such as Dell or HP would profit most from OpenBios because it would not have to pay Phoenix or Ami money for a bios?
;)
The down side would be many companies would loose money (intel, Ami, Phoenix), the end user could see substantial gains and not have to worry about industry-levied "protective" technologies (such as non-certified OSes such as only being alowed to run windows for instance). I think the FSF needs to push the profit motive to Dell, HP, Gateway and company -- they would see the most substantial initial effect. I think it would be wrong to only do this for AMD as it would undermine the effort and OpenBios would never catch on.
Just a thought
>People are fans of Apple because they keep cranking out impressive innovations to the way humans and computers interact, and when at their best, sell really spiffy hardware that takes advantage of these innovations. I don't agree: Apple and Microsoft have never been known for "innovations" contrary to what their marketing departments tell you. Innovation has become a marketing term for reusing someone else's idea and repackaging it with your brand name. Innovation no longer means inventing something. Apple has just been good as of late at puting together things (applications) with their hardware and OS that people want to use (iLife). These Applications don't do anything new, but Apple has done the smart thing and packaged the things that people need and want. I love the Mac and it is a good computer and I use one quite a bit -- it is not new or original. I have not seen it do anything that was not done before in the last 30 years. Jobs has done an outstanding job at marketing and packaging, this is evedent because the people that hated Apple in the late 90's during it's financial troubles are crowing about how good Apple is now. If Jobs had not come back to Apple, it would have become the Commodore of the late 90s and been extict. -R
Give it 30 years and yes it will be available on your local home computer ;)
C64 Specs from 30 years ago:
Processor = around 1 mhz
Now processors are around 3800 mhz and doing more per instruction. (that is more that a 4000x increase)
And I am sure that the modern 160gig hd can hold a billion times more information than any cassette deck.
Fuck! Let's beat a dead horse! Before I begin, I own several Computers with several OSes and they ALL suck! (MAC OSX is not exception) I am sorry but why are computers still so damn complex? It seems we add more features but have failed at making anything better!
/bin, and even though you show him where the Documents folder is he still tries to save it off the root or is he in /usr/local. Hiarchial data driven file systems should go the way of the dodo-bird. CPM can be more intuitive then some of the modern command line crap. I love Unix, but Joe-user should not have to be exposed to it for every thing -- including figuring out where to save a file!
... AppleScript could easily be hacked because it would not take much to get a user to run an applescript application to fuck up their computer. All you would need to do is fuck with metadata. You have to type in your password for everything anyways, and the average joe would not know the difference. Hell, you can run almost anything as root in AppleScript!
With a modern filesystem a user should not have to wade through directories to find the pictures of his/her kids. It should be more like a damn database. If I am bringing up word processing files I should only see word processing files. Does grampa care about
User interfaces are all rehashes of old shit. Hell, Mac OSX looks like OS/2 2.0 interface on steriods. It has the same ungly dock (with lickable sugary looking shit added to it), but doubled the complexity for new user by adding the finder into the foray. Closing a window in Mac OSX sometimes saves the contents, sometimes not (sometimes there is a save button). The only saving grace is the bouncing buttons, too bad it eats up so much CPU power! Windows looks like A 1984 Mac or Amiga Clone (ripped from Xerox), with better graphics.. but a LOT slower. Premptive Blah, blah.. has done little for the real user. It still crashes! The geek has got more, but what does windows do that a 1985-86 commodore Amiga couldn't do? Not much in the OS realm.
Yeah, OSX does not crash usually (but we do get something I have heard other people refere as the grey-screen-of-death which is a kernel panic), but it sure can freeze while waiting on something like network. The candy stripe twirly thing can get really anoying when you are wainting for you AFP share to update! It freezes forever and you cant even force quit. You can't do anything else requires a restart This freezing problem is better in 10.3, but still exists when you do certain things on the network and it sorta hangs (remote printing is a good example) Windows XP rarley ever sees a blue screen, but freezing happens the same way as Mac OSX. You plug in a USB device and the twirly thing hangs the system. Or the computer is "sleeping" and when you wake it up it gets frozen on the twirly thing when it tries to refresh your fileshares.
Mac OSX is new, and I am not talking about NexTStep on X86 or 68000k from years back. (less than 5 years -- 2 years of substantial growth 10.2 - 10.3 (2003 - 2005)
A lot of websites do not work properly with the default installed "Apple Recommended" browsers. I always have to download firefox because Safari and Internet Explorer 5.2 fuck up a lot of web pages.
Bottom line is I work, play and use OSX every day and I think it SUCKS! I love the underlying unix part of it, but it is nothing new. Why can't someone in this decade come up with a new way of doing things that is not cluttered with crap! "think different" is really a marketing slogan for more of the same?
Apple has done two things right IMHO and it is not the Macintosh OS. It is iLife and the IPOD. Without those packages the mac would just be another computer.. instead it is becoming a consumer appliance.
Microsoft Windows kicks Ass in the Office arena. I am sorry but it has more productivity and Office packages than anything else. Excel and Word are good solid products, and I still think that is the reason people buy windows.
2.4 ghz... yum....
Where is my soldering Iron and my dry ice!
I use inline skates and go all over town (we live in a city of about 40k people): it has not been uncommon to be almost hit by drivers talking on cell phones (and it is someone talking on a cellphone 99% of the time). This has caused several close calls. One lady even brushed my leg with her automobile until I tapped the glass with my finger and I pointed at her. She was so scared she dropped her phone. She was making a right turn and was more interested in her phone conversation then me being there! At least when there is a conversation in the car with a person being there -- the other person is a second pair of eyes warning of pedestrians.
-Ron
How long before we see OSX on pocket PC type computers? A newton on steroids? For me that would be cool. I would love to have a multimedia computer that would fit in the palm of your hand and that you could hook USB and Firewire devices to. Pocket guitar and video editing studio ;)
I love Windows and Linux, but OSX seems to be geared to Multimedia, so why has it not happened yet?
"It would seem that I understand my freedoms and democracy better than you." Yes ... You are right the process worked and failed at the same time. Maybe the "popular" idea was wrong. We were all wrong. It was wrong in Germany in World War II. People loved the Nazis and they were the "popular" movement, they made people feel safe from "those other people" that made them loose the first World War.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773.
I could not remeber the exact quote so I got it from here: http://www.flownet.com/gat/freedom.html
Our represenitives did not screw up, they gave us what the "popular vote" people wanted; they wanted "Safty" over freedom. Patriot act was an act of Democracy, even though I do not like, nor agree with it -- however, people like the "idea" of a someone keeping them safe. People always talk about "We need a law..." and then we bitch about " We have this law ..." With every law to keep us safe, we loose a freedom. Yet people choose safty and this was Democracy. You can not close every border and search every citizen and then claim to be free. Freedom and Democracy are not the same thing.
I love the United States of America, but damn it we have been wrong. Every citizen is responsible for acting in an irresponsible manner. Why did we sell Iraq weapons in the first place? We created a monster, no matter how you look at it. Our corporations sold weapons, our people made money, and our goverment basked in the "new" destablized middle east and then we bought lots of cheap oil. End of story! Not just Bush is responsible, or the house of reps, or the senate, the Democrats or Republicans. We the people are resposible. I love my country, but we screwed up!
-R
No... it's about Sun Solaris using Linux people's hard work to build on its OS and then a few years down the line fight the GPL and close source it again. I know Sun is waiting and "thinks" that people (Microsoft, SCO et..all) will defeat the GPL -- read some of the statements and the actions that the company has taken. I think the same goes for Open Office... it is all about developer man hours. How else can a company on the decline develop software quickly? Yeah it's free... for now...
They already have had mini-pcs for some time now.. (shuttle comes to mind) so it's nothing new. Apple is going to take a shot at actually selling a lot of them.
That's how "psychics" do it!
Science is the process of elimination:
1) I have a theory
2) Poke holes in theory (Try to disprove, not prove anything)
3) Make the theory better -- fit the facts that distroyed my first theory, then repeat until hopefully we got it right!
Religion:
1) I believe something -- therfore it is!
2) See 1
I would say that is like comparing Apples to Oranges. Science is great because it is ever changing. Religion is great because it is comfortable and never changes (much). With that said, if you are going to teach evolution and creationism, which versions do you teach and how? Wouldn't it better to teach children to think instead of ideas?
They could really screw it up, which I am suprised they did not do in the first place. In real Disney style they could add: 1) Dancing and singing after every scene. 2) Little kid jokes and "potty" comedy. 3) Add some sort of Man saves Woman, like every other disney flick! (hmmmm.. I always wondered why there are so many disfunctional relationships) 4) Put lots of advertisments for Apple Computer and Coke throughout the movie in "discrete" places. I am sure the main character will probably be using a Sony Vaio or Apple Macintosh and be wearing a Coke t-shirt or you will see Coke containers on tables with the logo always towards the camera. 5) Microsoft could slip in an Advertisment for the X - Box, with X-Box live playing a Disney Game ;)
Then they could finish junking it up by writing an awfull script and paying top name actors and actresses to play in a real stinker of a film. Eddie Murphy could play the computer hacker who gets sucked in, Making it a great film in the likes of Lawn Mower Man II. He could then tell bad jokes written by the best disney writers.
Besides Pirates of the Carribean -- which I thought was a good film because of Jonny Depp -- Most modern films by Disney have not been too good IMHO.
Didn't apple already do a cheaper headless mac? It was a cheaper version of the tower. The Icube or something like that. I can't remember the name, I just remember the product was a flop and the price was around $1000 which was not bad for market conditions.It had problems with heat, a friend of mine had one and the clear plastic (plexiglass) would crack. It would overheat and have weird flakey crashing problems. It had a gforce card or something for video? How would this $500 cube thing differ from that flop? -Ron
This sounds like Macintosh and Windows Zelots as well. It's a DAMN computer not a religion ;)
Compiling some stuff into the kernel instead of using modules and prelinking http://www.linuxforum.com/man/prelink.8.php -- getting rid of daemons that you don't use makes a world of difference. For one thing, when things are prelinked then X starts a hell of a lot faster. KDE just rocks instead of being dog slow. I usually delete the symbolic links to the daemons that I don't need and as a rule if I am using linux as a desktop and if it is working well I even remove the symbolic link from syslogd. (I know some UNIX diehards are squirming) You can use utilities to do this, or you can delete symbolic links in /etc/rc.d/rc5.d. The rc then number corrisponds to your current run level. If you mess one up you can put it back by linking from /etc/init.d/. You can change the startup order by changing the K (startup) and S (Shutdown) number. For example S10sysklogd and S15hotplug - means that Syslog is going to shutdown before hotplug (the number 10 comes before 15). By changing the number I can change the order of things. Some things you can't change the order of because they are dependent on one another. I have been able to speed things up by playing with that. I have been able to get linux to boot faster into X with KDE running than my Windows XP desktop just by cleaning things up and prelinking. It depends on your configuration; is it a desktop or a server?
Also running XDM, GDM, or KDM earlier in the boot process also makes things usable faster. This requires running the X font server earlier.
Just a thought...
-Ronald Stoddard
Acrhon and mail order monsters comes to mind.
;)
;)
There are several others. I am suprised no one had moded this beast yet and added a little portable screen. It would make a great hand held system.
A portable Amiga 500 would be great too
I want to buy one
Without the DOJ on Microsoft's back and $100,000,000 dollars from said company then Apple Computer would be the way of Commodore and the dodo bird. It seems Apple Computer's largest future enemy will not be the old "devil" Microsoft because that foe is now an unlikely friend. Linux could be Apple's bigest enemy because it could potentially steal the "think different" market place. Look at how many production companies are starting to use linux render stations and such. Macintosh rules those niches now but give it ten years. People thought in the 80s that Commodore would be alive forever, and also Atari, Texas Instruments and others would still have computers on peoples desks, because of their respective "following". There would not be an Amiga.com if there was not a "following". That did not keep Commodore Business Machines alive. The bigest thing that Apple has right now is their IPOD. If they screw that up, then there may not be another Microsoft to invest in a floundering company.
Linux users are communists, Wintel boxes are for dummies, all and all are we all thinking "different"? Maybe we are after all. So go ahead and make your computer a god, and start a little fire, burn some candles and start chanting your montra. Blessed is the BSD daemon in all his infinite wisdom! Shall the penguin be burnt at the stake! And shall Bill be selling you more copies of Office for offering to your avatar. Amen.
I can remember a time (circa late 80's) when Macintosh viruses were more common then they are now. This was mainly due to the fact that the Macintosh was a much more popular and common computer. One virus I remember that was very nasty used to write itself to boot blocks on floppy disks and every Mac you inserted the disk in would be infected, and the infected Macintosh would infect every floppy disk in turn. The virus would keep itself running in the clock memory of the Macintosh and delete and corrupt files at random. I remember it wiped out all of the Macintosh Computers in a high school lab. It came back numerous times .. destroying files at random. This was long before there was Windows and the PC as we know it. (hopefully I got that correct .. it has been a while)
Now.. people think that just because I virus can't run as root, it doesn't do any damage. Well, here is the problem with that thinking: Say I have 100 document files in my home directory -- virus X comes along and deletes all those files but leaves my OS intact... I lost my files... (It did not have to run a delete of my files as root )
Another thing that I think is funny: It would not be to hard for a good programmer to exploit code in modern operating systems because of the millions of daemons and services that are running. Hell, any one of them that has 1 little security flaw is an open door. That goes for Windows, BSD, Linux, Mac OS ... any modern OS with a billion lines of code and 100 different services running. It is a matter of statistics.. the more lines of code... the more flaws... the more flaws .. the more hacks... the more back doors... the more viruses...
Windows of course has two things working against it. First it has a bad design from a functional perspective (bad design makes it an easier target) Also it is a target for political reasons (It is cool to hate "big" "bad" Gates). Many people hack Windows because they hate Microsoft. Apple is the underdog currently, so people don't have it out for Mac. When Apple squeezes more than 10% of the total computers out there; then you will see a lot more viruses. Most of them may not kill your OS, but most will kill your files (Keep copies of everything important). As Apple gains more market share, by default you will have more Apple haters. Again a numbers game. If more people hate Apple then more people will write viruses to attack Macintosh computers.
With all that said my only point is as a Mac OS and Linux user -- you should keep copies of important files.
I think a good analogy would be "Just because you have never had a car accident, doesn't mean you won't have one." This is not a holy war, it is a damn computer. It is like two friends once talking about what is faster ... the Millenium Falcon or the USS Enterprise?
"My Macintosh can run Photoshop 1% faster and you can lick the icons" -- "Oh yeah, I can run Microsoft Word 2% faster in XP then it does on your Mac and you can lick the keyboard after I pressed the ctrl-alt-del 100 times"
Ron Stoddard
blah blah blah.. they are not selling anything to do with c64! However, if you read their product lists -- besides the players they are selling some hardware that is a "C64" in a joystick. if you look here --> http://www.commodore.net/site/DesktopDefault.aspx? tabindex=5&tabid=45&itemid=2&sitemid=9&prod=17&cat =1
Also if you look these devices have games for download (portable Mp3 players).. if you notice the games are C64 games when you go to the section of downloads.
--> http://www.commodore.net/site/DesktopDefault.aspx? tabindex=5&tabid=45&itemid=2&sitemid=9&prod=16&cat =1
I like the old games, but I don't think I would want to pay for them. They are over 20 years old now ;).
This is supposed to be news for nerds, except there are not too many nerds here because I don't think people read the website or the articles.
Simply -- Stuff the matters.
-Ron
Most of the memory footprint in Mandrake Linux or and distrobution stems from all the daemons they have running on startup, the X window system, and a bloated kernel. I found by comiling the X window system to use Kdrive (had to add this line in startx to get the mouse wheel to work defaultserverargs="-mouse /dev/input/mice,5")
, and recompile the kernel to use only the options that are necissary, (ie disable extra logging, all extra drivers and compile kernel for size, disable all schedulers except dead line, use premptive), and I still use my standard KDE install and it seems to work well and takes up around 35- 50 Megs of Ram (Mandrake 10.0). The daemons I have reduced down to iptables, network, xfs, portmap, sshd, ntpd, hpoj, and cups... because those are the only ones I use for various things. I also got rid of using dm on startup and just added 3 lines to my .bashrc to startup X without dm.
if [ "`ps -A |grep X |awk {'print $4'}`" != X ]; then
startx
fi
dm seems to almost double the amount of used memory.
I thought like everyone else here that the problem was the window manager. It is not.. it is all the other crap running in the backgroud, as well as the monolithic kernels, X windows (really bloted), and 20 daemons enabled by default. If you strip all of that you can run on low amounts of ram with no swap. My desktop machine only has 128megs and it almost never has to swap out, with several apps open at a time. Linux is about building your own ;).
-Ron