Like I said earlier today, you either own a Microsoft appliance or a personal computer, these days you can't have both. Switch to something else or stay with Windows.
Only if life were that simple; if WINE were 100% reliable and every application worked out of the box, the need to use Windows for many users would be a non-issue; the problem is, people remain with Windows for the very reason that they need applications, they aren't available for *NIX, but at the same time, they're not going to biff out their 3month old Dell computer in favour of purchasing an unfamilar MacOS X box.
So lets remember people would move if they could; but the fact that Linux is also fragmented (KDE vs. GNOME) and ideas that are not pragmatic, like the failure to adopt a stable driver API for Linux (as one example.
The big problem when they do this is compatibility testing. I work at numerous companies where we need to read through each patch to see what they 'fix'. Now when Microsoft does this we will just have to guess what they might break in a legacy application deployed across the world.
Companies actually testing their software against the latest releases of Windows? thats definately a change from what I normally see; lazy software companies sitting around, rolling naked in money, then running an anti-Microsoft campaign when compatibility is broken with a bug fix. Rather than providing a fix to the end users, they run that campaign hoping that Microsoft will cave in and make some sort of elabortate work around.
I'll say it once, and say it again; it isn't Microsofts responsibility to provide backwards compatibility to people who would rather spend time whining about Microsoft than sifting through Microsofts knowledge base and product errata's and update their software to be compatible with the latest service pack/quickfix.
If you're a customer, a particularly large customer, and a software breaks when you update your Windows machine, your first port of call should be to the software vendors phone line and demand that they provide a patch; if they don't provide a patch, and you're a particular large customer, threaten to drop their product - send them a clear message, that you paid for a product, and you expect support, both telephone and prompt updates to address an compatibility issues that may arise when Windows is updated.
Algorithms are just as important as the actual code itself.
Anyone can programme, its just a matter of learning syntax, and throwing the algorithm in that particular syntax, and voila, you end up with a widget/library/application.
Too many times I see programmers just jump straight into a programme, start pumping out code, then going, 'oh shit, I haven't considered.....' - it happens in opensource projects, especially in the lower levels of an application. The programmer not properly thinking out all the possibilities in which the library might need to cover, so the net result you have this library in a constant state of flux as things constantly need to get re-written, compatibility thrown out the window because nothing has actually been nailed down at each phase of the system development lifestyle; its just code getting throwing at problems, hoping something that will eventually stick.
I can't shake off that feeling that I've seen the same sort of excuse being used in the first episode of the first series of "Yes Minister" in regards to open Government:
Bernard Woolley: "Minister, allow me to present Sir Humphrey Appleby, Permanent Under Secretary of State and head of the DAA."
Jim Hacker: "Hello, Sir Humphrey."
Sir Humphrey: "Hello and welcome."
Bernard Woolley: "I believe you know each other."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes, we did cross swords when the Minister gave me a grilling over the estimates in the Public Accounts Committee."
Jim Hacker: "I wouldn't say that."
Sir Humphrey: "You came up with all of the questions I hoped nobody would ask."
Jim Hacker: "Well, opposition is about asking awkward questions."
Sir Humphrey: "And government is about not answering them."
Jim Hacker: "Well, you answered all mine anyway."
Sir Humphrey: "I'm glad you thought so, Minister."
I'm here, down in Christchurch, New Zealand - sure, not exactly 'silicon valley' but ok none the less; Where are the IT jobs? Here are my pet peeves so far with job searching:
1) When a person applies for an IT job at your organisation, do the curtious thing and actually get back to him, thank him for his resume, and actually make a decent effort to setup a interview - you might actually find that he or she will be able to expand upon what they told you in their CV, and will give you the opportunity to probe them on their knowledge.
2) When you advertise for a position - how about listing what the requirements are; case in point, in Christchurch there was an advertisement I replied to that simply said, "IT GURU WANTED!" then further down, it went on about a system administrator wanted - all very nice, I followed it up, sent a resume in, and low and behold, I receive no reply, followed this individual up - I didn't fit the criteria; to which I said, "there was none" and gave him the link; he was quiet.
He said I lacked "MacOS X skills", to which I said, "I classify those as UNIX skills; had you spent a little time picking up the telephone receiver and actually calling me, we could have gone through the CV together, clarifying any possibly misunderstandings".
3) When a person such as I, give 5 different forms of contacts, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for not being able to get in contact with me, at all.
Right now I am back at university (again!), studying a Bachelor of Commerce, Majoring in Management - am I going to get a job afterwards, no bloody way; I'm starting my own business, and all I can say, is when I hire people, I won't be relying on 'recruitment agencies', I'll hire them myself, I'll interview them myself, and I'll actually take a damn interest in interviewing each one who replies - and those who I need to question in reference to their resume, will actually get contacted!
People look at the original legal text, and they're assuming that you already know all the ups and downs of closed source software, and their legal ramafications, so hence, if we look at it from our perspective it sounds like an OpenSource bash, when in reality, its on the side of caution; its more, "before you use opensource, look at all the facts that make up the arguments for and against".
Hell has just frozen over; on the spot is FOX News correspondance, and close friend of Satan, Karl Rove...
"So Satan, it appears that hell has frozen over.."
"NO, thats just a vicious rumour spread by enemies of the US, sorry, Hell.....things are just getting ready for Christmas.....this snow is just.....decorations.....*excellent*"
"Really?!"
"Yes really, so piss off...I"m trying to order my Dell AMD machine...."
In other news Satan, sometimes known as Toby, insisted that he would NEVER do work with such a third rate evil empire;
"They're the margarine of evil, they're the Diet Coke of evil - one calorie, no more!"
Microsoft's representative for technology alliances, know to the world as Demon, not to befused with Daemon, "We've developed a working relationship with Devil incorporated; it combines the hellish features of damation, hell, fire and brimstone, with the userfriendly, integrated approach that Microsoft brings to their products - thus giving us access to over 100million desktops"
Steve Jobs quickly stepped out of his patented RDF, whilst between sips of his café Latté he states, "like, yo man, its like, we need to create like a world of, like cool devices and than Devil is so uncool - like, he is such a dampner on my Shacra, I'll need to do some medidation to get my ora in alignment"
People need to also realise this; GST is liable for those who exceed $50,000 *HOWEVER* it also has to be a regular situation of buying and selling. For example, lets say over a period of 3 years, I see goods totally more than $50,000 on each occasion - THAT wouldn't be taxed as it was a private sale, a once off sale, and the money isn't being used as a regular form of income.
Second hand goods and exempt from GST as well, since the cost of administrating such piddly amounts of money would be outweigh any possible revenue they might generate clamping down on John Higgins and his local Cricket card swapping moonshining.
We have the same situation in New Zealand with GST, which is on everything (I feel sorry about Australian businesses and all the extra paper work required for the whats exempt and what isn't) - but like I said, there are exemptions.
The underlying this is this; if you use eBay as a way of making a regular income, aka, you're a business, *THEN* you have to pay GST on those sales *HOWEVER* if you're just Joe private seller, wanting to get rid of some stuff, then its all good.
Interesting, and silly me, I have the Parallel Importing Legislation right in front of me, in regards to New Zealand. Oh, and silly me, I can import it without restriction.
Oh, and how am I part of that 'crowd' when in actual fact, I have no problems with Apples DRM policy - Apple have to protect the IP of these companies, or they can say good bye to their contract. Unlike *YOU*, I'm don't throw everyone in the same basket. May I suggest you pick up some comprehension skills before the next time you reply.
I'd say the most likely scenario, as outlined by some:
1) ScaleX (ARM) based processor for the iPod, possibly to be able to power the H264 videos that they'll be selling soon - music videos first, then work up to movies once the studios feel comfortable with the idea - I'm sure Steve will win them over with his charm.
2) Another supplier for the wireless chipset. Currently Broadcom supplies the wireless chipset for Apples Air Port Extreme; coupled with the use of Intel NICs, and the move to try and lower costs with the mini-Mac, you might just find that Apple might try to negotiate a better deal if the computer chipset + wireless + nic were all Intel.
1) Relative to the cost of a CD, its not worth the hassle. When you can purchase a whole cd for $5 less than in the shop, *THEN* you can say there has been a push forward in the music selling front.
2) They need to make payment *alot* easier; those who will adopt iTunes will be young kids, 15 years old, make it easier by allowing them to make payments into a virtual 'iTunes account' like would would pay bills via the internet using online banking.
3) What is it with companies like Apple, operating on the internet, and still acting like they can only sell to Americans. Please, you've got a global site, how about acting global by allowing *ANY* Tom, Dick, Harry or Mary to purchase their music off the iTunes store instead of expecting them to wait for the 'big roll out'.
Its all about covering ones own ass; make the damn thing so complex and convoluted, your job is secure as you're able to keep pushing the same crap that the only person who "administrate it properly" is you, and no one else.
Kinda like IBM; they know it would be cheaper to rip out the WHOLE infrastructure and start again OR they could sell you *MORE* servers and services, then charge an arm, leg and demand your first born son, to integrate the whole thing together; and like above, since the damn thing is so complex and convoluted, only they can administrate it properly.
Before you know it, you've been ass raped by the IBM Global Services, and you're limping off wondering what the heck just happened, and what was snuck into your drink the night before.
Its a sad situation, and Microsoft knows it; keep advertising in those C*O magazines about so-called studies and companies that don't exist, and these idiots will keek purchasing Windows servers; That is the reason why SUN has never been able to take on Microsoft. Whilst Microsoft is courting the management types who ACTUALLY make the decisions, we have the SUN morons still trying to push Solaris via the IT staff, who have NO, NADA, BUGGER ALL say in the decision making process.
Interesting how these 'apparently' bright people can't work things out in their head.
Purchase a 7200rpm Hitachi drive, sell the old one on http://www.trademe.co.nz/ or http://www.ebay.com/ taking everything into cost, it'll be a matter of only paying an extra US$50 or so for a faster and larger hard disk - small price to pay for having a small and fast little pocket rocket for the desktop.
As for playing games; not to sound elitist, but isn't it getting pathetic when 20 somethings are sitting at home playing games? I mean, geeze.
Not to sound negative, but I'm mounting and unmounting Windows XP shares all day without so much of a problem. If there are problems, I'd say it has more to do with configuration issues at the Debian end, because quite frankly, if there were something to go wrong, it'd be between Windows XP and SAMBA, not between one SAMBA server and another.
Then again, like someone else mentioned, why not use NFS? if you've got Windows XP Pro machines, why not chuck services for UNIX on, and mount the NFS shares?
They've added this new KPI thing recently; I haven't had much of a looky, however, it does make life alot easier for those who want to tinker with MacOS X's ticker without fearing breakages betwen verions.
NT 3 was the zeneath of Micro kernel design for Microsoft; they then buggered it up completely, not for pragmatic reasons like, "this is getting too complex", it was more, "we need fast graphics, and I want it now, so take all short cuts necessary". It has proven in the Linux and Mac world that shoving graphics display drivers into kernel isn't necessay to get good performance.
Sure, there are issues with *NIX and X11; thats bound to happen, but that has *NOTHING* to do with the idea of keeping the drivers out of kernel space, and *EVERYTHING* to do with syncronisation etc. Once XCB replaces XLib, and ATI and Nvidia put down their giant size bongs, and start writing some quality code for once, life should improve in the UNIX world.
What would be interesting will be how the Nvidia drivers for Solaris run since the heavy work has been done by SUN rather than Nvidia.
One of those things you have to get *really* correct. When its good, its *VERY* good, and when its bad, its bloody horrible - in laymens terms.
Sounds like the debate between 1:1 threading vs M:N threading - when M:N threading is done properly (like in Tru64), its a bloody great idea, but when it is shithouse, as the case of Solaris (prior to Solaris 9, now replaced with 1:1 in later Solaris 9 release, and default in 10), its horrible to the point that no bastard would want to touch it for all the tea in China.
I was the teachers pet; the only one who could name the one *TRUE* operating system, OpenVMS! mwahahaha:P
In all honesty, comparing Windows NT to UNIX is like comparing a twink to Joe Average. Now sure, the twink may look cute from the outside, but nothing is working up stairs. Joe average may look average, but when you want something more than non-stop root (no pun pointed at Windows), its possible:D
With that being said, its really of no use to worry about who was based off what considering that it would only be relevant had they stayed static; the likelihood of Tru64 *NEVER* merging 3.0 improvements? highly unlikely.
As for MacOS X itself, they probably sat down, kicked out the ugly parts (over engineered, convoluted or riddled with patents etc from other contributers to Mach development) and embraced the nice parts from BSD to replace them.
Ultimately, they've done a nice job; although its not as scalable as say Tru64 or Solaris, it does the job well, and if it can scale up to 8 way ( 4 x cpus, with two cores in each (8 cores total)), then I'd say that Apple would be hitting the sweet spot in regards to where volume is in the server market.
As for the desktop - It'll be interesting to see how they embrace dual core processors; I don't see them coming to the consumer line soon, as quite frankly, very few application vendors out there are actually taking advantage of it.
[ Yeah, I know, waaaaay off topic, but I tend to embrace the grand-unified conversation model:-) ]
Over 90% of the code in OO.o is contributed by SUN programmers, and now, at the last minute, we get non-contributing opensource fan boys doing their prunes because its not going in the direction of which they wanted it to.
Question, where the hell were they for the last several months? why did it *suddenly* take them *just months* before the release for them to rattle their chains and start whining?
I mean, from what it appears, like the article has pointed out; the only people complaining are a few whiners from the peanut gallery, and some roudy rent-a-crowd from the opensource 'programming' world (I used programming in such a manner as many call themselves one even though all they've ever done is submit a one line patch to a opensource project, correcting a problem that even GWB could fix).
I mean, there has been soooo much work getting Abiword and Gnucalc up to speed with all those *massive* contributions by the anti-OO.o crowd
Re:So what's 5.4 like for 4.x users?
on
FreeBSD 5.4 Released
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· Score: 1, Informative
Personally, I'd wait till 6.0 comes out; they're moving to time based releases, and hopefully by then, they would have optimised it enough to provide a decent enough performance improvement over 4.x to make it a worthwhile move.
On the side issue, however, it would be nice if they actually updated their website, inreference to the smp, kse and busdma status; I mean, not to sound whiny and flamebaitish, but it'd be nice to see a status of how things are *ACTUALLY* progressing *NOW* rather than from up to 12months ago, in regards to the kse status page (since it was last updated).
Sorry, but the fact remains, problems *STILL* have not been corrected on the MacOS. I know I'll be flamed, called a "herritic" and my karma will take a greater dive than if a Republican came out and said he was not only gay, but supported same sex marriage AND abortion, but here is my take.
Same crappy widgets, same crappy usage of QuickDraw when Quartz has been available for over 3 years. Same shonky memory usage (32MB, clean install on MacOS X 10.4) - good lord! Camino, believe it or not, is WORSE! Jesus Christ! when is someone going to knock these programmers heads together and get them to realise that demanding people have a machine loaded with a gig and a ghz processor is simply an insane demand, simply to get hald-decent performance!
they didn't want to be accused of "embrace and extend"
Good lord, when has *that* ever stopped them from embracing and extending - heck, they're doing it RIGHT NOW when it comes to implementing protocols on.NET.
Now, don't get me wrong, some cases, the standards are *VERY* thin on detail and could lack features that could be deemed important - hypothetically, a wireless protocol that doesn't have a secure enough encryption algorith as one example of this.
With that being said, the lack of improvements, and a sudden surge of interest in developing IE further has NOTHING to do with all altruistic stance by Microsoft, but more of a reply to the threat from Firefox.
Firefox by itself isn't a threat, but when you take into account Microsofts long term view of their long term view of.NET, XAML, their application server technology, remotely hosted applications, delivered to the webbrowser, using IE specific technologies (as apposed to the current thin client/dumb terminal model) - you can see how Firefox could turn out to be a royal pain in the ass if they don't box it in, and reserve it to the alternative platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if life were that simple; if WINE were 100% reliable and every application worked out of the box, the need to use Windows for many users would be a non-issue; the problem is, people remain with Windows for the very reason that they need applications, they aren't available for *NIX, but at the same time, they're not going to biff out their 3month old Dell computer in favour of purchasing an unfamilar MacOS X box.
So lets remember people would move if they could; but the fact that Linux is also fragmented (KDE vs. GNOME) and ideas that are not pragmatic, like the failure to adopt a stable driver API for Linux (as one example.
Companies actually testing their software against the latest releases of Windows? thats definately a change from what I normally see; lazy software companies sitting around, rolling naked in money, then running an anti-Microsoft campaign when compatibility is broken with a bug fix. Rather than providing a fix to the end users, they run that campaign hoping that Microsoft will cave in and make some sort of elabortate work around.
I'll say it once, and say it again; it isn't Microsofts responsibility to provide backwards compatibility to people who would rather spend time whining about Microsoft than sifting through Microsofts knowledge base and product errata's and update their software to be compatible with the latest service pack/quickfix.
If you're a customer, a particularly large customer, and a software breaks when you update your Windows machine, your first port of call should be to the software vendors phone line and demand that they provide a patch; if they don't provide a patch, and you're a particular large customer, threaten to drop their product - send them a clear message, that you paid for a product, and you expect support, both telephone and prompt updates to address an compatibility issues that may arise when Windows is updated.
Algorithms are just as important as the actual code itself.
Anyone can programme, its just a matter of learning syntax, and throwing the algorithm in that particular syntax, and voila, you end up with a widget/library/application.
Too many times I see programmers just jump straight into a programme, start pumping out code, then going, 'oh shit, I haven't considered.....' - it happens in opensource projects, especially in the lower levels of an application. The programmer not properly thinking out all the possibilities in which the library might need to cover, so the net result you have this library in a constant state of flux as things constantly need to get re-written, compatibility thrown out the window because nothing has actually been nailed down at each phase of the system development lifestyle; its just code getting throwing at problems, hoping something that will eventually stick.
I can't shake off that feeling that I've seen the same sort of excuse being used in the first episode of the first series of "Yes Minister" in regards to open Government:
I'm here, down in Christchurch, New Zealand - sure, not exactly 'silicon valley' but ok none the less; Where are the IT jobs? Here are my pet peeves so far with job searching:
1) When a person applies for an IT job at your organisation, do the curtious thing and actually get back to him, thank him for his resume, and actually make a decent effort to setup a interview - you might actually find that he or she will be able to expand upon what they told you in their CV, and will give you the opportunity to probe them on their knowledge.
2) When you advertise for a position - how about listing what the requirements are; case in point, in Christchurch there was an advertisement I replied to that simply said, "IT GURU WANTED!" then further down, it went on about a system administrator wanted - all very nice, I followed it up, sent a resume in, and low and behold, I receive no reply, followed this individual up - I didn't fit the criteria; to which I said, "there was none" and gave him the link; he was quiet.
He said I lacked "MacOS X skills", to which I said, "I classify those as UNIX skills; had you spent a little time picking up the telephone receiver and actually calling me, we could have gone through the CV together, clarifying any possibly misunderstandings".
3) When a person such as I, give 5 different forms of contacts, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for not being able to get in contact with me, at all.
Right now I am back at university (again!), studying a Bachelor of Commerce, Majoring in Management - am I going to get a job afterwards, no bloody way; I'm starting my own business, and all I can say, is when I hire people, I won't be relying on 'recruitment agencies', I'll hire them myself, I'll interview them myself, and I'll actually take a damn interest in interviewing each one who replies - and those who I need to question in reference to their resume, will actually get contacted!
Having had a look through this site; here is a good link: http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-sourc e-200303/chapter1.html which goes into explaining OpenSource.
People look at the original legal text, and they're assuming that you already know all the ups and downs of closed source software, and their legal ramafications, so hence, if we look at it from our perspective it sounds like an OpenSource bash, when in reality, its on the side of caution; its more, "before you use opensource, look at all the facts that make up the arguments for and against".
Hell has just frozen over; on the spot is FOX News correspondance, and close friend of Satan, Karl Rove...
"So Satan, it appears that hell has frozen over.."
"NO, thats just a vicious rumour spread by enemies of the US, sorry, Hell.....things are just getting ready for Christmas.....this snow is just.....decorations.....*excellent*"
"Really?!"
"Yes really, so piss off...I"m trying to order my Dell AMD machine...."
In other news Satan, sometimes known as Toby, insisted that he would NEVER do work with such a third rate evil empire;
"They're the margarine of evil, they're the Diet Coke of evil - one calorie, no more!"
Microsoft's representative for technology alliances, know to the world as Demon, not to befused with Daemon, "We've developed a working relationship with Devil incorporated; it combines the hellish features of damation, hell, fire and brimstone, with the userfriendly, integrated approach that Microsoft brings to their products - thus giving us access to over 100million desktops"
Steve Jobs quickly stepped out of his patented RDF, whilst between sips of his café Latté he states, "like, yo man, its like, we need to create like a world of, like cool devices and than Devil is so uncool - like, he is such a dampner on my Shacra, I'll need to do some medidation to get my ora in alignment"
Here is something to scare the Americans a little:
MetService, a State-Owned Enterprise.
He he he, a government owned company that makes money. Can't wait to hear the customary ranting that goes with the territory.
People need to also realise this; GST is liable for those who exceed $50,000 *HOWEVER* it also has to be a regular situation of buying and selling. For example, lets say over a period of 3 years, I see goods totally more than $50,000 on each occasion - THAT wouldn't be taxed as it was a private sale, a once off sale, and the money isn't being used as a regular form of income.
Second hand goods and exempt from GST as well, since the cost of administrating such piddly amounts of money would be outweigh any possible revenue they might generate clamping down on John Higgins and his local Cricket card swapping moonshining.
We have the same situation in New Zealand with GST, which is on everything (I feel sorry about Australian businesses and all the extra paper work required for the whats exempt and what isn't) - but like I said, there are exemptions.
The underlying this is this; if you use eBay as a way of making a regular income, aka, you're a business, *THEN* you have to pay GST on those sales *HOWEVER* if you're just Joe private seller, wanting to get rid of some stuff, then its all good.
Interesting, and silly me, I have the Parallel Importing Legislation right in front of me, in regards to New Zealand. Oh, and silly me, I can import it without restriction.
Oh, and how am I part of that 'crowd' when in actual fact, I have no problems with Apples DRM policy - Apple have to protect the IP of these companies, or they can say good bye to their contract. Unlike *YOU*, I'm don't throw everyone in the same basket. May I suggest you pick up some comprehension skills before the next time you reply.
I'd say the most likely scenario, as outlined by some:
1) ScaleX (ARM) based processor for the iPod, possibly to be able to power the H264 videos that they'll be selling soon - music videos first, then work up to movies once the studios feel comfortable with the idea - I'm sure Steve will win them over with his charm.
2) Another supplier for the wireless chipset. Currently Broadcom supplies the wireless chipset for Apples Air Port Extreme; coupled with the use of Intel NICs, and the move to try and lower costs with the mini-Mac, you might just find that Apple might try to negotiate a better deal if the computer chipset + wireless + nic were all Intel.
1) Relative to the cost of a CD, its not worth the hassle. When you can purchase a whole cd for $5 less than in the shop, *THEN* you can say there has been a push forward in the music selling front.
2) They need to make payment *alot* easier; those who will adopt iTunes will be young kids, 15 years old, make it easier by allowing them to make payments into a virtual 'iTunes account' like would would pay bills via the internet using online banking.
3) What is it with companies like Apple, operating on the internet, and still acting like they can only sell to Americans. Please, you've got a global site, how about acting global by allowing *ANY* Tom, Dick, Harry or Mary to purchase their music off the iTunes store instead of expecting them to wait for the 'big roll out'.
You know, you put it perfectly in a nutshell.
Its all about covering ones own ass; make the damn thing so complex and convoluted, your job is secure as you're able to keep pushing the same crap that the only person who "administrate it properly" is you, and no one else.
Kinda like IBM; they know it would be cheaper to rip out the WHOLE infrastructure and start again OR they could sell you *MORE* servers and services, then charge an arm, leg and demand your first born son, to integrate the whole thing together; and like above, since the damn thing is so complex and convoluted, only they can administrate it properly.
Before you know it, you've been ass raped by the IBM Global Services, and you're limping off wondering what the heck just happened, and what was snuck into your drink the night before.
Its a sad situation, and Microsoft knows it; keep advertising in those C*O magazines about so-called studies and companies that don't exist, and these idiots will keek purchasing Windows servers; That is the reason why SUN has never been able to take on Microsoft. Whilst Microsoft is courting the management types who ACTUALLY make the decisions, we have the SUN morons still trying to push Solaris via the IT staff, who have NO, NADA, BUGGER ALL say in the decision making process.
Interesting how these 'apparently' bright people can't work things out in their head.
Purchase a 7200rpm Hitachi drive, sell the old one on http://www.trademe.co.nz/ or http://www.ebay.com/ taking everything into cost, it'll be a matter of only paying an extra US$50 or so for a faster and larger hard disk - small price to pay for having a small and fast little pocket rocket for the desktop.
As for playing games; not to sound elitist, but isn't it getting pathetic when 20 somethings are sitting at home playing games? I mean, geeze.
Not to sound negative, but I'm mounting and unmounting Windows XP shares all day without so much of a problem. If there are problems, I'd say it has more to do with configuration issues at the Debian end, because quite frankly, if there were something to go wrong, it'd be between Windows XP and SAMBA, not between one SAMBA server and another.
Then again, like someone else mentioned, why not use NFS? if you've got Windows XP Pro machines, why not chuck services for UNIX on, and mount the NFS shares?
They've added this new KPI thing recently; I haven't had much of a looky, however, it does make life alot easier for those who want to tinker with MacOS X's ticker without fearing breakages betwen verions.
NT 3 was the zeneath of Micro kernel design for Microsoft; they then buggered it up completely, not for pragmatic reasons like, "this is getting too complex", it was more, "we need fast graphics, and I want it now, so take all short cuts necessary". It has proven in the Linux and Mac world that shoving graphics display drivers into kernel isn't necessay to get good performance.
Sure, there are issues with *NIX and X11; thats bound to happen, but that has *NOTHING* to do with the idea of keeping the drivers out of kernel space, and *EVERYTHING* to do with syncronisation etc. Once XCB replaces XLib, and ATI and Nvidia put down their giant size bongs, and start writing some quality code for once, life should improve in the UNIX world.
What would be interesting will be how the Nvidia drivers for Solaris run since the heavy work has been done by SUN rather than Nvidia.
One of those things you have to get *really* correct. When its good, its *VERY* good, and when its bad, its bloody horrible - in laymens terms.
Sounds like the debate between 1:1 threading vs M:N threading - when M:N threading is done properly (like in Tru64), its a bloody great idea, but when it is shithouse, as the case of Solaris (prior to Solaris 9, now replaced with 1:1 in later Solaris 9 release, and default in 10), its horrible to the point that no bastard would want to touch it for all the tea in China.
Nothing horrible about OS classes :D
:P
:D
I was the teachers pet; the only one who could name the one *TRUE* operating system, OpenVMS! mwahahaha
In all honesty, comparing Windows NT to UNIX is like comparing a twink to Joe Average. Now sure, the twink may look cute from the outside, but nothing is working up stairs. Joe average may look average, but when you want something more than non-stop root (no pun pointed at Windows), its possible
Nope.
:-) ]
Tru64 was developed off Mach 2.5
NeXT was developed off Mach 3.0
With that being said, its really of no use to worry about who was based off what considering that it would only be relevant had they stayed static; the likelihood of Tru64 *NEVER* merging 3.0 improvements? highly unlikely.
As for MacOS X itself, they probably sat down, kicked out the ugly parts (over engineered, convoluted or riddled with patents etc from other contributers to Mach development) and embraced the nice parts from BSD to replace them.
Ultimately, they've done a nice job; although its not as scalable as say Tru64 or Solaris, it does the job well, and if it can scale up to 8 way ( 4 x cpus, with two cores in each (8 cores total)), then I'd say that Apple would be hitting the sweet spot in regards to where volume is in the server market.
As for the desktop - It'll be interesting to see how they embrace dual core processors; I don't see them coming to the consumer line soon, as quite frankly, very few application vendors out there are actually taking advantage of it.
[ Yeah, I know, waaaaay off topic, but I tend to embrace the grand-unified conversation model
Over 90% of the code in OO.o is contributed by SUN programmers, and now, at the last minute, we get non-contributing opensource fan boys doing their prunes because its not going in the direction of which they wanted it to.
Question, where the hell were they for the last several months? why did it *suddenly* take them *just months* before the release for them to rattle their chains and start whining?
I mean, from what it appears, like the article has pointed out; the only people complaining are a few whiners from the peanut gallery, and some roudy rent-a-crowd from the opensource 'programming' world (I used programming in such a manner as many call themselves one even though all they've ever done is submit a one line patch to a opensource project, correcting a problem that even GWB could fix).
I mean, there has been soooo much work getting Abiword and Gnucalc up to speed with all those *massive* contributions by the anti-OO.o crowd
Personally, I'd wait till 6.0 comes out; they're moving to time based releases, and hopefully by then, they would have optimised it enough to provide a decent enough performance improvement over 4.x to make it a worthwhile move.
On the side issue, however, it would be nice if they actually updated their website, inreference to the smp, kse and busdma status; I mean, not to sound whiny and flamebaitish, but it'd be nice to see a status of how things are *ACTUALLY* progressing *NOW* rather than from up to 12months ago, in regards to the kse status page (since it was last updated).
No, not an Opera song :P
Sorry, but the fact remains, problems *STILL* have not been corrected on the MacOS. I know I'll be flamed, called a "herritic" and my karma will take a greater dive than if a Republican came out and said he was not only gay, but supported same sex marriage AND abortion, but here is my take.
Same crappy widgets, same crappy usage of QuickDraw when Quartz has been available for over 3 years. Same shonky memory usage (32MB, clean install on MacOS X 10.4) - good lord! Camino, believe it or not, is WORSE! Jesus Christ! when is someone going to knock these programmers heads together and get them to realise that demanding people have a machine loaded with a gig and a ghz processor is simply an insane demand, simply to get hald-decent performance!
Good lord, when has *that* ever stopped them from embracing and extending - heck, they're doing it RIGHT NOW when it comes to implementing protocols on .NET.
Now, don't get me wrong, some cases, the standards are *VERY* thin on detail and could lack features that could be deemed important - hypothetically, a wireless protocol that doesn't have a secure enough encryption algorith as one example of this.
With that being said, the lack of improvements, and a sudden surge of interest in developing IE further has NOTHING to do with all altruistic stance by Microsoft, but more of a reply to the threat from Firefox.
Firefox by itself isn't a threat, but when you take into account Microsofts long term view of their long term view of .NET, XAML, their application server technology, remotely hosted applications, delivered to the webbrowser, using IE specific technologies (as apposed to the current thin client/dumb terminal model) - you can see how Firefox could turn out to be a royal pain in the ass if they don't box it in, and reserve it to the alternative platforms.