Go to an Apple Store and ask people buying Macs there "Why are you buying a Mac instead of a Dell?" Do you really think that *anybody* will mention "PowerPC" vs. "x86"? People will only mention the G5 processor because its as much a brand/trademark as it is a processor. Nobody knows/cares about the CPU architecture.
OK, you're right, for 99 percent of the people who buy Macs, buy them for the experience, and applications available on the Macintosh platform. But there are a number of people out there who want the G5 for it's industry leading efficiency, google for the interviews of institutions who've built clusters out of G5's, like UIUC, Virginia Tech, or the US Army. The number one reason why? Because for the price, you can't build a cluster that will be faster, and run cooler, and use less wattage than the Xserve G5. These folks sure as hell care about the CPU.
You have to wonder if they talked to AMD at all. As the PC Mag article mentioned, there's never been much talk between Apple and AMD.
And all sorts of Apple products have contained AMD and Intel chips for various functions over the years. I'm sure they talk to Intel and AMD all the time. I don't really think this whole thing is as big a deal as everyone's making it out to be.
Plus AMD has been the 64 bit pioneer in the x86 world, though Apple has never really shown a real conviction about going 64 bit for their software.
Apple released their 64-bit Power Mac G5's 4 months after AMD released their Opteron. It's a year later now and where's Windows XP 64-bit edition? Or even Longhorn for that matter. Apple has a 64-bit capable OS now, and 64-bit development tools in 10.4. What makes you think they're not interested in 64-bit?
Anyway, Apple by virtue of being a monopoly can use x86 hardware and still keep their margins. Instead of selling a $2500 computer for $3000, they can now sell a $500 for $1000, and lure more people to buy it.
because the BHB's I work for all happen to like Netscape
This it totally OT, but... Just curious, WTF is a BHB? Bald Headed Boss?? I tried wikipedia to no avail.
Now, back on topic, I understand your scenario. My boss is always freaking out about new spyware that his machine is getting infested with, and I'm always like, don't use IE to surf pr0n!. I tell him to use FF, and he's all like, "I'm not using that shareware crap", and I'm like, it's open source, not shareware, huge difference. He's like, "well our website doesn't render properly in that browser", and I'm like yeah, it doesn't render properly in anything but IE (thanks crappy consultants with your shitty client side ASP), fine use Netscrape, anything but IE.
I just got an email from him about: "Spyware: 10 New Tactics to Protect Systems - Audio Conference 6/7", "Interested in attending?". Pfft! Yeah, got my own simple tactics:
1. Use any other operating system except Windows (the ultimate solution).
2. Use any other browser except IE.
3. If you must use IE, disable ActiveX.
4. If you must use ActiveX, use a runas script to execute IE under a underprivileged account such as guest.
Now that I think about it, you're probably running 10.4, which the Cisco client is broken in. I hear if you don't use Group Authentication (we do) on your Cisco VPN Gateway that the built in VPN client in 10.4 will work though.
VPC is slower under the G5 than it was under the G4 -- the G4 can flip its byte ordering to match the x86.
I'll second that, I have VPC7 running on my 1.5GHz G4 Mini, and it benchmarked competitively with 650-750MHz AMD and Intel CPUs. It's pretty damn snappy. The graphics emulation is what sucks real bad though, and I'm pretty sure M$ would like to keep it that way, otherwise there would be a lot more Windows games running on VPC macs, and they can't have people abandoning PC's for Macs.
GP, why are you using VPC to VPN and RDP? The built in VPN client in 10.3 is compatible with most VPN implementations including Microsoft's, or the Cisco VPN client is available for OS X (That's what I use, and also why I can't upgrade to 10.4 yet). Remote Desktop Client is also available native on OS X from Microsoft for free.
So does IE. ActiveX controls have ALWAYS prompted.
HAH, yeah, assuming the page wasn't exploiting one of the numerous, patched and/or unpatched vulnerabilities in IE, in order to run the executable without even prompting the user.
I don't use IE, but half-assed ASP on our company's website mandates it for some users. I stood there behind multiple users backs watching a seemingly legitimate website (www.anywho.com, a directory website A/R was using, owned by AT&T/p0wNeD by script kiddies) try to download, and execute an executable that was flagged as a worm (don't remember which one) by our anti-virus software. This is on fully patched, and up to date Windows 2000 boxen. Luckily the damn AV software caught it, 'cause IE didn't bat an eye, as long as Active-X scripting was turned on, it didn't matter what the zone settings were, or if "Active-X prompting" was turned on. I sent numerous flaming e-mails to various standard administrative contact addresses in that domain, after I blocked www.anywho.com on our proxy, haven't been back since.
I kinda remember reading somewhere how some web servers don't support HTTP Pipelining, and by turning it on you might screw up browsing some how if you come across one of these websites, I might just be imagining things.
But I did just turn pipelining on Firefox here at work, and so far slashdot seems way faster.
Who want's to shoot that fucking dog that comes up when you try to search for a file? They finally took away clippy and now we get that bastard. I hate the new search dialogs in XP. Didn't they learn their lesson?
When you click whatever makes it go away, you have to wait and watch a stupid animation of it walking away too, I think if I've decided I don't want to see the stupid thing it shoud poof away in a split second, not stroll off the screen at it's own leisure. Get out of the way and let me do my damn search (for spyware elements usually).
It appears to me that shortcuts are handled by the shell (explorer.exe), and not even properly by some programs, ever tried to open a shortcut expecting to get the file, and you get the contents of the.lnk file instead? Ick! Shortcuts are an ugly hack. On Unix symlinks are handled by the kernel, and that's how it should be.
It does appear that NT has some kind of support for symlinks. In Win2K or newer, if you go to Admin Tools>Local Security Settings>Local Policies>Security Options, you'll see near the bottom an option "System Objects: Strenghten default permissions of internal system objects (e.g. Symbolic Links)" I think I read somewhere that NT can only do symlinks on directories, and there's no utility that comes with the OS to create them. Nice.
"Hey, maybe males are more likely to get spyware on their computers than females?"
Hell yeah they are, they're the ones cruisin' all the pr0n sites that are loaded with malware.
Ever got this one: "Sorry, your browser is not Win32 compatable." Hah! I use FireFox on a Mac, spyware whores, you're damn right it's not win32 anything!
I look at it as job security, and I tell my non-tech clueless co-workers this all the time. While I sit behind my Powermac using RDP/Terminal Services to admin all the windoze stuff. As long as Microsoft keeps writing buggy software that's full of holes, I keep my job, meanwhile I use a Mac here and at home so I can keep some sanity when all hell breaks loose in the Winblows world.
BTW, in a totally offtopic rant; Services For Macintosh on Windows 2003 server is a total piece of shit, avoid it like the plauge.
I haven't had good luck with SUS. Seems even though I have all the updates I want approved, machines still don't get them all, or get them on a completely random interval.
I have three different OU's set up with different policies, the machines that get them forced down their throat all seem to get updated within 2 days of approval. The other two OU's are servers and power users/workstations, they get to decide when the updates are installed, or downloaded and installed. When you log onto a machine via RDP the SUS globe rarely shows up (It usually only shows up on the console), and even when it does there'll be like only 3 of the 7 necessary updates showing up in there (this behavior is the same on RDP or the console). I install the updates, reboot and the globe doesn't show up again 'till days later, if I go to the Windows Update site manually, the missing ones show up there.
I've used GFI's stuff before and it worked real well, but it's not free like SUS is, when the demo ran out I moved to SUS. I wish there was a way to host your own Windows Update site using the SUS repository of updates, so you could install them when you want instantly, not have to wait for BITS, SUS, etc. to get it's shit together.
Certain motorcycles have a flywheel effect. My friend had a '95 CR500R (an open class Motocross bike) and it would literally stand itself up in slippery turning situations if you wound it out enough.
Umm, having a printer driver crash an NT server is flawed design from the get-go. Having an unhandled exception fall through successive rings all the way past ring 0 is a flaw. Intermingling kernel and userspace through anything but deliberate and well defined interfaces is bad design!
I remember a particular Windows 2000 server with a shittly coded HP LaserJet driver on there. All of the sudden apps would start crashing like crazy with uber-informative error messages like: "Memory refrenced from location 0xffffff could not be read." and my favorite: "The application <NUL> generated an error <NOSYMBOLS> and will be closed".
Actually they finally fixed this in Windows 2003 Server and XP, the printing subsystem is now out of the kernel space (and you need new print drivers as a result). YAY! There's still plenty of other goodies such as the graphics subsystem and IIS still in the kernel though.
IMHO, Mozilla or even firefox is a heavier app than IE. Once running, they're faster (to a trained eye) but sometimes, when pulling out of swap, they will still slug along.
IE probably seems faster because MS is tying IE into the kernel somehow, that's their favorite thing to do. Take a look at some Windows whitepapers on MSDN sometime, their favorite thing to do, to get more speed out of a particular subsystem, application, etc. is to put it into the freakin' kernel, not optimize the code, just throw the whole damn thing in the kernel. Also bits of IE are always running in windows since it uses it to do almost everything from explorer shell windows, to help. Personally I think this is the reason why DirectX is so much faster than OpenGL, and Windows is the ultimate gaming platform. Soon as a badly coded video driver, or game running in DirectX comes along, it has the potential to do all kinds of BSOD fun to the machine.
So, you have a toy operating system, pick your sacrafices, play games well, or scale up to supercomputing clusters like Linux/OSX/BSD/etc.
Enough ranting for now... I have to go install some Windows Media Player, and IE patches on our "Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition Server".
That's neat, EVDO is very promising technology, I just hope it comes down in price eventually, or the coverage gets way better at least.
In an offtopic rant, I dont' see the point in zipping a single highly compressed media file for download, like mp3, mp4, divx, etc. It actually results in a larger file usually.
I remember having bad luck with the VIA chipsets back in the Intel 440BX days, with Intel P2/Celery procs.
But I've always had good luck with 'em on AMD boxes, in fact, that's one of the few chipset choices for AMD boards, since they rarely (only once that I remember, for the first Athlon MPs) make their own chipsets, which was buggy too. I remember calling Tyan's tech support like: Yeah, this sounds crazy but... my board only sees one processor when I boot it up out of the case, and when I put it back in the case it boots up detecting both CPUs. Turns out, through some strange IRQ issue in the bios, if you didn't have a PS/2 mouse plugged in to the board you only got 1 CPU!!
They're better than ALI and that other no-name chipset vendor that I can't think of right now, and I haven't heard anything great about Nvidia's Nforce stuff.
I believe they do have headers for two FireWire ports on the board. At least my Epia M1000 board does, so I would assume the newer boards have it.
As a Mac user for my primary desktop, I agree, PS/2 ports suck, and need to be replaced by USB already, as well as the legacy shit that is the floppy drive.
Ok, so Windows uses the same microkernel as Mac OS X. Where'd they go wrong? Mac OS X kicks teh shit out of Windows.
I agree Windows generally sucks, but this whitepaper is very informative and interesting, though a lot of it goes over my head. Reads to me like, Windows wouldn't suck so bad if they didn't run things "kernel mode" like fuckin' IE, the printing subsystem, and the whole GUI, etc. I'd like to see a Linux kernel hacker's views on this whitepaper.
Yeah, but it's probably a good idea to simply change the init string for the modem so it shuts up after the handshake. It's those kind of non-attention to detail things (hearing the modem, laggy key strokes, annoying flashing advertisements, recipt coming out 30 seconds after the transaction, calling 3 different places, etc.) that make me really question the quality of Diebold's products (and/or that bank's implementation of them).
Yeah, that's not just Wells Fargo ATM's, that's all Diebold ATM's. There's one by my work in a Shell station, I actually drive two blocks farther down the road to use a different ATM just because that one sucks sooo bad. I've never timed it, but even with all the extra driving, I still think it's faster overall.
After you get done entering in all the laggy key strokes, it then procedes to call 3, yes 3 different locations, all the while it plays loud dialing sounds and modem carrier sounds for everyone in the place to hear (it's a 28.8 handshake). I know they use encryption, but wouldn't it be possible to record the sound on a tape recorder, then take it home and demodulate it, then work on breaking the encryption?!
Slashdot Mirror
OK, you're right, for 99 percent of the people who buy Macs, buy them for the experience, and applications available on the Macintosh platform. But there are a number of people out there who want the G5 for it's industry leading efficiency, google for the interviews of institutions who've built clusters out of G5's, like UIUC, Virginia Tech, or the US Army. The number one reason why? Because for the price, you can't build a cluster that will be faster, and run cooler, and use less wattage than the Xserve G5. These folks sure as hell care about the CPU.
The G5 Power Mac's and Xserve's use AMD's baby, HyperTransport:
http://www.hypertransport.org/products/productdet
And all sorts of Apple products have contained AMD and Intel chips for various functions over the years. I'm sure they talk to Intel and AMD all the time. I don't really think this whole thing is as big a deal as everyone's making it out to be.
Apple released their 64-bit Power Mac G5's 4 months after AMD released their Opteron. It's a year later now and where's Windows XP 64-bit edition? Or even Longhorn for that matter. Apple has a 64-bit capable OS now, and 64-bit development tools in 10.4. What makes you think they're not interested in 64-bit?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/64bit/
Um... We have a $500 Mac already, and it's called the Mac Mini:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/
I forgot steps 5 & 6...
5. ???
6. PROFIT!!!
because the BHB's I work for all happen to like Netscape
This it totally OT, but... Just curious, WTF is a BHB? Bald Headed Boss?? I tried wikipedia to no avail.
Now, back on topic, I understand your scenario. My boss is always freaking out about new spyware that his machine is getting infested with, and I'm always like, don't use IE to surf pr0n!. I tell him to use FF, and he's all like, "I'm not using that shareware crap", and I'm like, it's open source, not shareware, huge difference. He's like, "well our website doesn't render properly in that browser", and I'm like yeah, it doesn't render properly in anything but IE (thanks crappy consultants with your shitty client side ASP), fine use Netscrape, anything but IE.
I just got an email from him about: "Spyware: 10 New Tactics to Protect Systems - Audio Conference 6/7", "Interested in attending?". Pfft! Yeah, got my own simple tactics:
1. Use any other operating system except Windows (the ultimate solution).
2. Use any other browser except IE.
3. If you must use IE, disable ActiveX.
4. If you must use ActiveX, use a runas script to execute IE under a underprivileged account such as guest.
Now that I think about it, you're probably running 10.4, which the Cisco client is broken in. I hear if you don't use Group Authentication (we do) on your Cisco VPN Gateway that the built in VPN client in 10.4 will work though.
VPC is slower under the G5 than it was under the G4 -- the G4 can flip its byte ordering to match the x86.
I'll second that, I have VPC7 running on my 1.5GHz G4 Mini, and it benchmarked competitively with 650-750MHz AMD and Intel CPUs. It's pretty damn snappy. The graphics emulation is what sucks real bad though, and I'm pretty sure M$ would like to keep it that way, otherwise there would be a lot more Windows games running on VPC macs, and they can't have people abandoning PC's for Macs.
GP, why are you using VPC to VPN and RDP? The built in VPN client in 10.3 is compatible with most VPN implementations including Microsoft's, or the Cisco VPN client is available for OS X (That's what I use, and also why I can't upgrade to 10.4 yet). Remote Desktop Client is also available native on OS X from Microsoft for free.
So does IE. ActiveX controls have ALWAYS prompted.
HAH, yeah, assuming the page wasn't exploiting one of the numerous, patched and/or unpatched vulnerabilities in IE, in order to run the executable without even prompting the user.
I don't use IE, but half-assed ASP on our company's website mandates it for some users. I stood there behind multiple users backs watching a seemingly legitimate website (www.anywho.com, a directory website A/R was using, owned by AT&T/p0wNeD by script kiddies) try to download, and execute an executable that was flagged as a worm (don't remember which one) by our anti-virus software. This is on fully patched, and up to date Windows 2000 boxen. Luckily the damn AV software caught it, 'cause IE didn't bat an eye, as long as Active-X scripting was turned on, it didn't matter what the zone settings were, or if "Active-X prompting" was turned on. I sent numerous flaming e-mails to various standard administrative contact addresses in that domain, after I blocked www.anywho.com on our proxy, haven't been back since.
And this is teh #1 reason why I don't use Windows.
I kinda remember reading somewhere how some web servers don't support HTTP Pipelining, and by turning it on you might screw up browsing some how if you come across one of these websites, I might just be imagining things.
But I did just turn pipelining on Firefox here at work, and so far slashdot seems way faster.
Who want's to shoot that fucking dog that comes up when you try to search for a file? They finally took away clippy and now we get that bastard. I hate the new search dialogs in XP. Didn't they learn their lesson?
When you click whatever makes it go away, you have to wait and watch a stupid animation of it walking away too, I think if I've decided I don't want to see the stupid thing it shoud poof away in a split second, not stroll off the screen at it's own leisure. Get out of the way and let me do my damn search (for spyware elements usually).
Whoa, shortcuts ARE NOT symlinks.
.lnk file instead? Ick! Shortcuts are an ugly hack. On Unix symlinks are handled by the kernel, and that's how it should be.
It appears to me that shortcuts are handled by the shell (explorer.exe), and not even properly by some programs, ever tried to open a shortcut expecting to get the file, and you get the contents of the
It does appear that NT has some kind of support for symlinks. In Win2K or newer, if you go to Admin Tools>Local Security Settings>Local Policies>Security Options, you'll see near the bottom an option "System Objects: Strenghten default permissions of internal system objects (e.g. Symbolic Links)" I think I read somewhere that NT can only do symlinks on directories, and there's no utility that comes with the OS to create them. Nice.
"Hey, maybe males are more likely to get spyware on their computers than females?"
Hell yeah they are, they're the ones cruisin' all the pr0n sites that are loaded with malware.
Ever got this one: "Sorry, your browser is not Win32 compatable." Hah! I use FireFox on a Mac, spyware whores, you're damn right it's not win32 anything!
Pfft! ActiveX can format drives, all from the convenience of visiting a web page! http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/newsletter/adn20/ac
I look at it as job security, and I tell my non-tech clueless co-workers this all the time. While I sit behind my Powermac using RDP/Terminal Services to admin all the windoze stuff. As long as Microsoft keeps writing buggy software that's full of holes, I keep my job, meanwhile I use a Mac here and at home so I can keep some sanity when all hell breaks loose in the Winblows world.
BTW, in a totally offtopic rant; Services For Macintosh on Windows 2003 server is a total piece of shit, avoid it like the plauge.
I haven't had good luck with SUS. Seems even though I have all the updates I want approved, machines still don't get them all, or get them on a completely random interval.
I have three different OU's set up with different policies, the machines that get them forced down their throat all seem to get updated within 2 days of approval. The other two OU's are servers and power users/workstations, they get to decide when the updates are installed, or downloaded and installed. When you log onto a machine via RDP the SUS globe rarely shows up (It usually only shows up on the console), and even when it does there'll be like only 3 of the 7 necessary updates showing up in there (this behavior is the same on RDP or the console). I install the updates, reboot and the globe doesn't show up again 'till days later, if I go to the Windows Update site manually, the missing ones show up there.
I've used GFI's stuff before and it worked real well, but it's not free like SUS is, when the demo ran out I moved to SUS. I wish there was a way to host your own Windows Update site using the SUS repository of updates, so you could install them when you want instantly, not have to wait for BITS, SUS, etc. to get it's shit together.
Certain motorcycles have a flywheel effect. My friend had a '95 CR500R (an open class Motocross bike) and it would literally stand itself up in slippery turning situations if you wound it out enough.
Audi is most certainly a VW brand as well as Bentley and Bugati.
I remember a particular Windows 2000 server with a shittly coded HP LaserJet driver on there. All of the sudden apps would start crashing like crazy with uber-informative error messages like: "Memory refrenced from location 0xffffff could not be read." and my favorite: "The application <NUL> generated an error <NOSYMBOLS> and will be closed".
Actually they finally fixed this in Windows 2003 Server and XP, the printing subsystem is now out of the kernel space (and you need new print drivers as a result). YAY! There's still plenty of other goodies such as the graphics subsystem and IIS still in the kernel though.
IE probably seems faster because MS is tying IE into the kernel somehow, that's their favorite thing to do. Take a look at some Windows whitepapers on MSDN sometime, their favorite thing to do, to get more speed out of a particular subsystem, application, etc. is to put it into the freakin' kernel, not optimize the code, just throw the whole damn thing in the kernel. Also bits of IE are always running in windows since it uses it to do almost everything from explorer shell windows, to help. Personally I think this is the reason why DirectX is so much faster than OpenGL, and Windows is the ultimate gaming platform. Soon as a badly coded video driver, or game running in DirectX comes along, it has the potential to do all kinds of BSOD fun to the machine.
So, you have a toy operating system, pick your sacrafices, play games well, or scale up to supercomputing clusters like Linux/OSX/BSD/etc.
Enough ranting for now... I have to go install some Windows Media Player, and IE patches on our "Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition Server".
That's neat, EVDO is very promising technology, I just hope it comes down in price eventually, or the coverage gets way better at least.
In an offtopic rant, I dont' see the point in zipping a single highly compressed media file for download, like mp3, mp4, divx, etc. It actually results in a larger file usually.
I remember having bad luck with the VIA chipsets back in the Intel 440BX days, with Intel P2/Celery procs.
But I've always had good luck with 'em on AMD boxes, in fact, that's one of the few chipset choices for AMD boards, since they rarely (only once that I remember, for the first Athlon MPs) make their own chipsets, which was buggy too. I remember calling Tyan's tech support like: Yeah, this sounds crazy but... my board only sees one processor when I boot it up out of the case, and when I put it back in the case it boots up detecting both CPUs. Turns out, through some strange IRQ issue in the bios, if you didn't have a PS/2 mouse plugged in to the board you only got 1 CPU!!
They're better than ALI and that other no-name chipset vendor that I can't think of right now, and I haven't heard anything great about Nvidia's Nforce stuff.
I believe they do have headers for two FireWire ports on the board. At least my Epia M1000 board does, so I would assume the newer boards have it.
As a Mac user for my primary desktop, I agree, PS/2 ports suck, and need to be replaced by USB already, as well as the legacy shit that is the floppy drive.
I read somewhere that Windows NT/2K/XP etc. uses the Mach Microkernel, or scheduler implementation, or something. Where was that...
/ evaluate/featfunc/kernelwp.mspx
Ah-ha: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn
Ok, so Windows uses the same microkernel as Mac OS X. Where'd they go wrong? Mac OS X kicks teh shit out of Windows. I agree Windows generally sucks, but this whitepaper is very informative and interesting, though a lot of it goes over my head. Reads to me like, Windows wouldn't suck so bad if they didn't run things "kernel mode" like fuckin' IE, the printing subsystem, and the whole GUI, etc. I'd like to see a Linux kernel hacker's views on this whitepaper.
Yeah, but it's probably a good idea to simply change the init string for the modem so it shuts up after the handshake. It's those kind of non-attention to detail things (hearing the modem, laggy key strokes, annoying flashing advertisements, recipt coming out 30 seconds after the transaction, calling 3 different places, etc.) that make me really question the quality of Diebold's products (and/or that bank's implementation of them).
Yeah, that's not just Wells Fargo ATM's, that's all Diebold ATM's. There's one by my work in a Shell station, I actually drive two blocks farther down the road to use a different ATM just because that one sucks sooo bad. I've never timed it, but even with all the extra driving, I still think it's faster overall.
After you get done entering in all the laggy key strokes, it then procedes to call 3, yes 3 different locations, all the while it plays loud dialing sounds and modem carrier sounds for everyone in the place to hear (it's a 28.8 handshake). I know they use encryption, but wouldn't it be possible to record the sound on a tape recorder, then take it home and demodulate it, then work on breaking the encryption?!