IBM buys AMD, uses circumstances to:
-Advance the fab capabilities of AMD generally (hopefully invest to actually keep up with Intel instead of lagging by a year or so)
-Release a Cell processor variant, replacing the PPC core with an x86 core.
It seems far fetched, but at the same time, the #1 supercomputer is already an AMD/Cell hybrid (two Cell processor packages for every AMD package). However, I wouldn't anticipate that core being any more performance than the PPC core, just a different instruction set. It *could* really cause some grief for intel if it caught on though. The ability to run Windows and games like normal (maybe with a penalty), but SPU enabled software could really make for some amazing media manipulation and incredible games.
I have thought along similar lines, and I agree such a setup would be amazing.
The only problem is, IIRC, AMD's x86 license has a clause preventing its transfer if AMD is bought out, and IBM doesn't (to my knowledge) have an x86 license of its own.
Re:Kernel debugger considered harmful by Linus
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Linux 2.6.26 Out
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With high level code, a decent debugger is really really useful. With low level code, not so much.
(It's amazing though how many high level programmers don't understand the way debugging
changes program behaviour (variable initialization etc - don't even mention
heisenbugs)).
I second this. While I *love* debuggers, I've seen otherwise capable programmers *cough* befuddled by unexpected behaviors introduced by the debugger -- such as when stepping through code executing in separate threads.
And yes, the explanation was found through the "cardboard man" debugger.
However, this was not the fault of the debugger, but the developer's lack of understanding. This brings up a wider point: developers need to understand their *toolset* -- language, compilation, and runtime enviornment. If you don't understand what is going on when you hit the nice "build and run" button, you code will eventually suffer.
I still have a Sun 1.6 JDK installed, which I use for all my development work; however, IcedTea is my default JRE, and I've not had any issues so far. It's eased my need for a Java plugin. no more 32bit firefox^W Iceweasel for me!
Gawd, nobody wants frigging Java anywhere near anything they have to actually use, much less *pay* to use. Has anybody, anywhere EVER had a positive user experience with a Java app?
hate to break this to you, but much of the software you run on your typical cellphone is written in Java. I have quite a few positive java apps on my blackberry
not to mention, if you use ebay, you're using a Java-based web app. I hear it's a pretty decent piece of software.
oh, and I have a daily (mostly) positive experience with Eclipse.
The idea that "java apps are obvious due to their slowness and crappiness" is an old, tired adage. It's just false. You might as well say, "C++ apps are obvious due to their memory leaks". Just because you've run some crappy Java code doesn't mean the language itself and all code written in it is crap. It brings you more benefits than you know.
Disclaimer: I do a lot of J2EE coding. I also hate Java, but for more technical reasons.;-)
AMD never got that essential buy in from the OEMs, so now the knee jerk anti Wintel thing is over, people are once again following the age old habit of following the winner. hat's Intel, always has been really, even though they don't own the entire market.
I don't know what you mean by "essential buy-in" -- AMD's OEM support has skyrocketed over the past few years. AMD has taken double-digit market share in every area. AMD has reached a point where their products are acceptable to the general public. Talk to the average consumer in Best Buy, and they honestly could care less who makes the CPU, as long as it works. Thus, even with their current woes, AMD's market share has remained consistent.
AMD's woes are from an unavoidable price war it can't afford. Combine the CPU price war with the overall trend towards commoditization in the computer industry, and we have the plummeting of CPU ASPs we've seen these past couple of years.
Perhaps it's not about "buying". Perhaps it's about "giving it away and seeing how it becomes popular." With tracking information from the watermarks, the labels will have some better understanding of how & when a song becomes a "hit", making it easier for them to market future artists.
Microsoft may try to pitch this as not "control", but "make money from free music". RIAA companies need to find a new way to market and distribute their money for profit, and they need it fast. What better way to do that than give away music for free, that can be freely distributed? They can make up the hit with the ads, and ad-free, higher-quality sales of the same free track.
I am sure most slashdotters would immediately rail against "listening to stupid ads in my music!" Fair enough. But most people pay money to watch ads on TV; I suspect this may not be much different. Web and TV mediums have built this concept into us: free means ad supported, pay to not see ads. It's only a matter of time before music follows.
Novell has plenty of options here. They are in the same position as SCO right now. Novell holds the UNIX copyrights, and has a linux distro that is gaining market share. They could very easily start up the infringement train and force everyone to use SuSE linux as not to infringe on their IP. They could even sell indemnification licenses, at, oh, say $699 a pop.
Right. And then, someone would grab the GPL'd sources to SuSE, then publish it for free.
The problem is, *if* Novell publishes SuSE, knowing that there are UNIX copyrights in SuSE, then the infringing code is now freed under the GPL. I think that'd be hard to litagate.
Novell: "they're stealing our copyrighted code!"
Court: "didn't you publish that copyrighted code under a license that allows anyone to use it, via the GPL?"
Novell: "...weeell, yes... but make them stop anyway! We want more money!"
Court: "Uh, no. Too late. Sux2bu."
Seriously, religious wars aside, you pick the tool that will best meet your needs. That's largely going to be based on applications. Increasingly, there are good choices on both platforms here for a wide variety of different things. The one thing I will say -- if you're looking to do video editing, buy a Mac. 'cause the state of video editing on Linux right now still sucks. If you need Microsoft Office, buy a Mac.
For me, I do a lot of software development work and audio production. I could pick either platform, really, but lots of factors make me choose Linux over Mac OS X -- software freedom, hackability, and cost are my 3 biggest reasons. OS X is nice, don't get me wrong, it's just not for me.
Thank you. I agree completely. Choice is nice. If OS X is better for my needs, I use that. If Linux is better for my needs, I use that. I tried to point this out a few days ago, and it was amusing to see the response. I tried to explain why I preferred a good OS to another good OS, and yet most of the response completely missed the point.
If you're happiest with Linux, use Linux. If you're happiest with OS X, use OS X. If you're happiest with Windows (shudder), then, well, go ahead and use Windows.
Don't get me wrong; it's good to discuss and compare the strengths and weaknesses of various platforms for any given task. It's also good to break the FUD surrounding a platform (and all platforms seem to be surrounded by plenty of it). If you're going to make a choice, it helps to be well-informed.
However, and this may be shocking to some, it is entirely possible for someone to look at the same set of strengths and weaknesses of a platform, but prioritize them differently from you, and make a different choice than you. This is not inherently "wrong" or "stupid". It is healthy for our market.
The problem is it's not just the solar panels: it's the batteries and other infrastructure (and then maintenance!), and the last time I looked at it, it was closer to 20-yrs to pay back a whole system, and the system had a 20-yr life expectancy. That's break-even assuming it makes it to life expectancy.
Exactly. Also, the life expectancy of a solar roof is even worse if you live in a high-risk area, such as Florida. How well does a solar roof hold up to a hurricane? How much will it cost to repair?
How well would a solar roof hold up to, say, 1 foot of snow cover? Or a hailstorm?
What I am interested in is directly attaching an AC unit to a solar panel.
Yeah, that is the real application of solar power that I see -- auxiliary power. It's already common for swimming pools to be heated with solar panels. This is a nice new step.
Note also that the creators of this panel developed it for the US military, with the specific application of powering the field equipment of soldiers. They see it as a possible secondary power source for cell phones, laptops, etc. I think this is the right track; if these solar panels are being manufactured in large quantities for smaller goods, it can bring down the cost of the tech enough for applications like yours to be feasible.
I've been running Macs for years. I bought my PowerBook before I started using linux seriously, and Dell's Ubuntu offerings certainly didn't exist 2 years ago. Also, I'm considering buying another Mac because the MacBook is a really nice laptop. And I can put linux on that.;)
1. Right, they are a hardware company whose "value adds" are industrial design and a unique software offering. Unfortunately, when they don't offer a hardware product in a category you need, you're SOL for OS X. That's why I would prefer to migrate to a more portable OS.
2. & 4. Fink is great. I love APT on Debian/Ubuntu. great stuff. However, X11 apps on OS X tend to suck, don't you think? They really don't integrate well into the environment, and performance is 2nd rate. That's improved massively since Apple's first X offering, but it still has a way to go. As to Eclipse on OSX, yeah, I use it daily, as well. Great piece of software.:) However, I was referring to a specific Eclipse *plugin* that VMWare offers with its VMWare Workstation product, which is not offered for OSX. As far as I can tell, that specific functionality is now available in VMWare fusion. I sent them an email recently asking them to clarify, but haven't heard back yet.
3. I hope it does, too, but Apple seems to treat security as a marketing buzzword, not a technology issue. OSX may have to take a bad fall for Apple to change its direction. I hope not.
5. Ha, I've traversed the opposite path. I've used Apple since my first computer in 1988. I have had over a half-dozen Macs since then. I hated Windows, Gnome, KDE, CDE, etc passionately. I still hate Windows, but I've come to appreciate the flexibility of Gnome & KDE.
(P.S.: My software projects are not enormous or complicated, so take my opinions on coding environments with a grain of salt. I admit it's been awhile since I've given Xcode a try... I may have to take another look at it.)
XCode is a very good IDE, and well worth taking a second look. But if you're used to KDevelop, you probably won't find much new in XCode. It's really a wash between the two, IMHO. But like all things, try it and see. I think KDevelop does debugging a little better, but XCode does documentation and project management a little better... YMMV.
That's a good question. For me, my move from OS X to Linux is motivated by several reasons.
1. Portability
OSX runs on Apple Hardware. It can be hacked, sure, to run on some non-Apple systems, but widescale hardware compatibility is lacking (just look at the difficulties in getting a GeForce 8x00 series card running). With Linux, I have a much wider choice of hardware vendors.
2. Flexibility
Linux gives me a lot more control over my OS. While this is pointless for 90% of users, for me, it is very nice to be able to custom compile a kernel with the options I need, recompile any given app for the characteristics I need, and so on. I can enable, disable, theme, customize, and otherwise hack my environment to suit my needs much more easily than in OS X.
3. Security
OSX is pretty good, but I'm a little worried at Apple's highly negative response to security concerns (anyone remember the wireless driver exploit fiasco?). Also Linux offers some features that OSX doesn't currently offer, such as MAC. 10.5 is supposed to have MAC, but I can't find any info on it. While both systems are good, I perceive the Linux market as responding more credibly to security issues.
4. Software Ecosystem
OSX software is great. However, Linux offers me a great deal more choice, and that choice tends to be much more configurable to my needs. While I love the Cocoa API and what it allows apps to do, Linux is catching on fast, and I find that good GNOME or KDE apps perform most, if not all, the functionality I care about in OSX, while being beer free, and offering me more choices (i.e. Anjuta, Geany, Eclipse, KDevelop vs XCode, Eclipse). There's also a lot of software I like to use that aren't available on OSX yet. I'm starting to learn CUDA, for example, and that is not yet offered for OSX. Also, VMWare workstation offers some nice features targeted at developers (such as host-to-VM project deployment & debugging) which I haven't seen offered yet on OSX.
5. Usability
I know a lot of people disagree with this, but I find a lot of OSX's UI broken, at least for how I use my system. I find the window management to be frustrating, the Dock to be very limited, and the lack of decent app launching & management to be very frustrating (although QS does manage to solve app launching in a pretty nice way). GNOME's clean usability and massive customization have allowed me to create a Linux system that I actually find to be more usable for me than OSX.
I guess I could summarize all of that by one word: choice. For my needs and uses, I find the flexibility of Linux far more convenient.
If OSX's behaviors work well for you, and you are happy with Apple's hardware offerings, then you have the choice of OS X instead!
I'd like to know why they compared a Woodcrest Xeon, circa June 2006 to the latest and greatest Opteron of today.
Do you really think that's unfair?
1. the Woodcrest processor *is* the latest and greatest Intel CPU. So, they're comparing the *best* Intel to the *best* AMD. How is that not fair?
2. Both architectures are do for replacement later this year, but samples have not been released to reviewers, as of yet.
3. The Opteron was released cira August 2006, a scant 2 months after the Woodcrest. The Windsor stepping on which the Opteron is based was released in May 2006, a month *before* Intel. The architecture for the Opteron was released in April 2003, and has seen little modification. However, the Intel architecture was a complete overhaul of the P6 uArch, adding extensive capabilities (4 issue uArch? damn).
4. The Intel CPU is made on a much newer, more power-efficient 65nm process, as opposed to the AMD's 90nm process.
5. The Intel CPU has a much lower rated power dissipation (65w vs 89w or 125w, I forget which for the current 3ghz AMD parts).
So, overall, the year-old Intel processor has a *lot* of advantages, and should have come out on top. Actually, in desktop comparisons, Intel usually does come out on top. However, the Intel Xeon server platform has a few disadvantages. For one, FB-DIMMs use a lot more power than DDR or DDR2 ECC DIMMs. Also, to counter-act the memory bandwidth advantages of AMD's IMC, Intel adds separate FSB's for each socket. However, this also draws more power.
All in all, it is a reasonable CPU to CPU, Platform to Platform comparison.
I agree in general with your thrust, however, I see some "grey areas". What happens when you are trying to overthrow an existing authority? Often, attacks against that authority will cause popular panic and unrest. Sometimes, the most effective way to overthrow an existing authority is to directly create that unrest.
Case in point -- Nelson Mandela. Freedom fighter or terrorist?
1 - The GPLv2 license has an option to specify that code is licensed by "GPL version 2 or later". If this is the case then the argument goes that many of those who wrote code under GPLv2 could simply say "well now my code is licensed under GPLv3".
They can say that, but the code originally distributed under the GPL2 can still be used and redistributed under the GPL2, even if the original author republishes it as GPL3. (Of course, the republished version is bound by v3).
The purpose of the "or later" clause is to allow forward compatibility with future licenses. It should not, and can not, be used to revoke rights previously enjoyed by the end users. It's really not that scary of a clause.
Seeing as how Novell is an owner of some of the GNU/Linux codebase, I doubt that's going to happen. They'll also do their best to keep the Linux kernel from moving to GPL3.
As long as Novell abides by the terms of the license the kernel is distributed under, it would be completely against the intent and spirit of the GPL to prevent them from redistributing it.
Inept ? Incompetent ? You just described one of the most brilliant schemes to get around the laws proctecting ordinary citizens from arbitrary arrest I've ever heard of, and you call the people who came up with it incompetent ? Just what are your standards for competence, pray tell ?
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. -- Robert J. Hanlon
If you just make sure you always use prepared SQL statements with positional arguments, you will never have any problems with SQL injection.
Well, prepared statements have their own shortcomings -- they're not the magic bullet to solve all our DB issues. Some would have you believe they are, but don't be fooled.
I suppose the over-use of PHP (which for a long time didn't even support prepared statements (does it even do it today?)) combined with stupid users that created the current situation.
IIRC, when PHP 4's mysql drivers were written, MySQL did not support prepared statements. However, PHP 5's mysqli driver does support MySQL prepared statements. Also, PHP 5's PDO system offers a unified DB API with prepared statements.
1. No, OSX ships with all the tools you've come to expect from a UNIX-like system. Bash, perl, Apache2, ssh, X11 all come standard. Installing the developers tools also adds a lot of usefullness.
2. In a word, no. OSX's JVM is getting better, and is far better than it once was, but it's really not as good as Linux or Windows. Eclipse just runs like shit. I've moved most of my Java programming to my linux box. On the plus side, Xcode is a very, very good general IDE -- but for Java, Eclipse smokes it.
3. On OSX 10.4, I regularly get 90+ days of uptime. the only time I ever restart is to install the 3 month backlog of security updates. In 5 years of OSX, I've had 6 kernel panics in normal use, and 3 of them were because of Classic.
4. Anything compiled for Unix-like OS's is easily ported to OSX, and pretty much anything you care to name has been. If you're familiar with debian's apt-get, you'll love Fink, which is a port of apt-get to OSX. The Fink team also maintains a huge repository of free software for OSX. Almost anything you care to name is just a sudo apt-get packagename away.
5. Apple has, for the most part, excellent craftsmanship. I'm rediculously picky about hardware, and I can't buy dells for that very reason. I HATE it when little plastic pieces bend or twist or have visible, uneven gaps. IBM and Apple are about the only laptop manufacturers who meet my level of acceptiblity.
6. Apple uses the same Intel procs you'll get from any other manufacturer. So, on a hardware level, exactly the same. ArsTechnica did a OSX86 vs WinXP comparison on a Dell laptop, and IIRC, OSX had a pretty good showing.
The hard part is comparing apps that aren't maintained as well across platforms. Adobe doesn't really maintain Premiere on OSX as well as it does on Windows, because most people who use Apple for video editing use Final Cut Pro, which is widely agreed to be far superior to Premiere in every aspect.
I don't know of many recent XP vs OSX86 performance comparisons. However, what little I have seen shows OSX performing well. If you switch to OSX, you won't have performance issues due to the OS.
7. My powerbook doesn't have that feature, but for me, it sucks. However, I have always had funky personal issues with touch sensitivity on touchpads. I've personally had 6 laptops from 4 different manufacturers in the past 9 years, and I've always had issues. YMMV
If MS doesn't join the alliance, they're seen as factious and self-serving.
If MS joins the alliance, they're seen as sneaky, underhanded, factious and self-serving.
Yep./.'rs, by and large, see MS as facetious, self-serving, and sometimes sneaky and underhanded... This is because by and large MS *is* facetious, self-serving, and sometimes sneaky and underhanded.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I think we have very good historical reasons for keeping a very, very wary and suspicious eye on MS's behaviors.
The reason why the root/sa passwords start blank is so you can configure the server immediately after installation. Using a default username/password of some sort (ala Oracle) wouldn't change the security situation to any appreciable degree, and only serves to force the DB administrator to look up the default every time he does an installation. (Which is likely to be rare enough to prevent him from memorizing it.)
Here's an interesting anecdote regarding this... A friend of mine is an IT manager for a multi-million dollar corporation, which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons.
Shortly after taking this position, he discovered that the root/sa password for their MS SQL Server database was BLANK. Understandably, he was incensed, and called up his predecessor. This fellow then informed my friend that a rather critical, extremely expensive, supposedly "enterprise" software module deployed by *his* predecessor expected and REQUIRED a blank sa password to operate -- and the company responsible had not bothered to write a fix.
While this is not Microsoft's fault, I do think "enterprise" database products *should* require, upon setup, the creation of a non-blank password, instead of some sort of "default" password to be changed... sometime.
Yes, of course....this incentive is to protect the consumer...not the multi-billion dollar software giant the Yankee Group is actually beholden to. 'Won't somebody think of the children', indeed. It's clear that if you have reservations about this in any way, you are un-american and hate our children. Why do you hate our children? Why do you hate America?
That depends on your definition of significant. Any headway they make is likely to save them much more than it costs, and that's all Microsoft really cares about in the final analysis....not stamping out piracy...not 'protecting the children', but enhancing the bottom line.
Wow. Where to even start.
Ok. Chain of events: shifty online retailer falsely markets a product. The deceived consumer purchases this product. When the product doesn't work, the customer loses his money.
It happens all the time... it has happened to several people I know. Software piracy has hurt consumers. So, this large corporation sees a way to improve it's bottom line by helping consumers. I'm sorry, I think this is a rather *good* thing. In fact, it should be encouraged. I think companies making money by helping consumers is much preferable to either of the alternatives, don't you?
Microsoft isn't a good company. But your knee-jerk "hurr microsoft bad hurr" is completely off the mark. Reservations? Why would you have reservations about a company using legal (and ethical) methods to protect itself and its customers from illegal (and unethical) behavior? Good job working in the red herring and ad hominim, at any rate.
As for WGA... yes, I think it is stupid, and a hassle, and is yet another way Windows makes itself a complete PITA and thorn in my side. On the other hand, it is also another side-benefit of using Kubuntu and OSX as my primary OS's.;-)
For what it's worth, I'm glad MS is cracking down on this kind of piracy. This isn't "sharing", it's fucking people over, and it really needs to stop. So, as rarely as these words escape my lips, go MS.
Slashdot Mirror
Though I doubt it would ever happen.
IBM buys AMD, uses circumstances to: -Advance the fab capabilities of AMD generally (hopefully invest to actually keep up with Intel instead of lagging by a year or so) -Release a Cell processor variant, replacing the PPC core with an x86 core.
It seems far fetched, but at the same time, the #1 supercomputer is already an AMD/Cell hybrid (two Cell processor packages for every AMD package). However, I wouldn't anticipate that core being any more performance than the PPC core, just a different instruction set. It *could* really cause some grief for intel if it caught on though. The ability to run Windows and games like normal (maybe with a penalty), but SPU enabled software could really make for some amazing media manipulation and incredible games.
I have thought along similar lines, and I agree such a setup would be amazing.
The only problem is, IIRC, AMD's x86 license has a clause preventing its transfer if AMD is bought out, and IBM doesn't (to my knowledge) have an x86 license of its own.
I didn't even know Intel made graphics cards!
They don't yet, but they plan to.
With high level code, a decent debugger is really really useful. With low level code, not so much.
(It's amazing though how many high level programmers don't understand the way debugging changes program behaviour (variable initialization etc - don't even mention heisenbugs)).
I second this. While I *love* debuggers, I've seen otherwise capable programmers *cough* befuddled by unexpected behaviors introduced by the debugger -- such as when stepping through code executing in separate threads.
And yes, the explanation was found through the "cardboard man" debugger.
However, this was not the fault of the debugger, but the developer's lack of understanding. This brings up a wider point: developers need to understand their *toolset* -- language, compilation, and runtime enviornment. If you don't understand what is going on when you hit the nice "build and run" button, you code will eventually suffer.
IcedTea works pretty well on my X64 Debian system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IcedTea
I still have a Sun 1.6 JDK installed, which I use for all my development work; however, IcedTea is my default JRE, and I've not had any issues so far. It's eased my need for a Java plugin. no more 32bit firefox^W Iceweasel for me!
hate to break this to you, but much of the software you run on your typical cellphone is written in Java. I have quite a few positive java apps on my blackberry
not to mention, if you use ebay, you're using a Java-based web app. I hear it's a pretty decent piece of software.
oh, and I have a daily (mostly) positive experience with Eclipse.
The idea that "java apps are obvious due to their slowness and crappiness" is an old, tired adage. It's just false. You might as well say, "C++ apps are obvious due to their memory leaks". Just because you've run some crappy Java code doesn't mean the language itself and all code written in it is crap. It brings you more benefits than you know.
Disclaimer: I do a lot of J2EE coding. I also hate Java, but for more technical reasons. ;-)
that already exists. All 8 series GPUs (the ones with CUDA support) will have PhysX support, since PhysX is just going to run on CUDA. http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2008/02/15/nvidia-announces-software-support-for-physx-in-all-8-series-cards
AMD never got that essential buy in from the OEMs, so now the knee jerk anti Wintel thing is over, people are once again following the age old habit of following the winner. hat's Intel, always has been really, even though they don't own the entire market.I don't know what you mean by "essential buy-in" -- AMD's OEM support has skyrocketed over the past few years. AMD has taken double-digit market share in every area. AMD has reached a point where their products are acceptable to the general public. Talk to the average consumer in Best Buy, and they honestly could care less who makes the CPU, as long as it works. Thus, even with their current woes, AMD's market share has remained consistent.
AMD's woes are from an unavoidable price war it can't afford. Combine the CPU price war with the overall trend towards commoditization in the computer industry, and we have the plummeting of CPU ASPs we've seen these past couple of years.
Perhaps it's not about "buying". Perhaps it's about "giving it away and seeing how it becomes popular." With tracking information from the watermarks, the labels will have some better understanding of how & when a song becomes a "hit", making it easier for them to market future artists.
Microsoft may try to pitch this as not "control", but "make money from free music". RIAA companies need to find a new way to market and distribute their money for profit, and they need it fast. What better way to do that than give away music for free, that can be freely distributed? They can make up the hit with the ads, and ad-free, higher-quality sales of the same free track.
I am sure most slashdotters would immediately rail against "listening to stupid ads in my music!" Fair enough. But most people pay money to watch ads on TV; I suspect this may not be much different. Web and TV mediums have built this concept into us: free means ad supported, pay to not see ads. It's only a matter of time before music follows.
Right. And then, someone would grab the GPL'd sources to SuSE, then publish it for free.
The problem is, *if* Novell publishes SuSE, knowing that there are UNIX copyrights in SuSE, then the infringing code is now freed under the GPL. I think that'd be hard to litagate.
Novell: "they're stealing our copyrighted code!"
Court: "didn't you publish that copyrighted code under a license that allows anyone to use it, via the GPL?"
Novell: "...weeell, yes... but make them stop anyway! We want more money!"
Court: "Uh, no. Too late. Sux2bu."
Thank you. I agree completely. Choice is nice. If OS X is better for my needs, I use that. If Linux is better for my needs, I use that. I tried to point this out a few days ago, and it was amusing to see the response. I tried to explain why I preferred a good OS to another good OS, and yet most of the response completely missed the point.
If you're happiest with Linux, use Linux. If you're happiest with OS X, use OS X. If you're happiest with Windows (shudder), then, well, go ahead and use Windows.
Don't get me wrong; it's good to discuss and compare the strengths and weaknesses of various platforms for any given task. It's also good to break the FUD surrounding a platform (and all platforms seem to be surrounded by plenty of it). If you're going to make a choice, it helps to be well-informed.
However, and this may be shocking to some, it is entirely possible for someone to look at the same set of strengths and weaknesses of a platform, but prioritize them differently from you, and make a different choice than you. This is not inherently "wrong" or "stupid". It is healthy for our market.
Viva la difference.
But don't you wish it were?
Official Unixes: OSX, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, and... GNU's Not Unix.
You see, it's funny because it *says* that it's not Unix, but it really *would* be unix. ha ha ha! I kill me.
Exactly. Also, the life expectancy of a solar roof is even worse if you live in a high-risk area, such as Florida. How well does a solar roof hold up to a hurricane? How much will it cost to repair?
How well would a solar roof hold up to, say, 1 foot of snow cover? Or a hailstorm?
Yeah, that is the real application of solar power that I see -- auxiliary power. It's already common for swimming pools to be heated with solar panels. This is a nice new step.
Note also that the creators of this panel developed it for the US military, with the specific application of powering the field equipment of soldiers. They see it as a possible secondary power source for cell phones, laptops, etc. I think this is the right track; if these solar panels are being manufactured in large quantities for smaller goods, it can bring down the cost of the tech enough for applications like yours to be feasible.
I've been running Macs for years. I bought my PowerBook before I started using linux seriously, and Dell's Ubuntu offerings certainly didn't exist 2 years ago. Also, I'm considering buying another Mac because the MacBook is a really nice laptop. And I can put linux on that. ;)
Thanks for the reply
1. Right, they are a hardware company whose "value adds" are industrial design and a unique software offering. Unfortunately, when they don't offer a hardware product in a category you need, you're SOL for OS X. That's why I would prefer to migrate to a more portable OS.
:) However, I was referring to a specific Eclipse *plugin* that VMWare offers with its VMWare Workstation product, which is not offered for OSX. As far as I can tell, that specific functionality is now available in VMWare fusion. I sent them an email recently asking them to clarify, but haven't heard back yet.
2. & 4. Fink is great. I love APT on Debian/Ubuntu. great stuff. However, X11 apps on OS X tend to suck, don't you think? They really don't integrate well into the environment, and performance is 2nd rate. That's improved massively since Apple's first X offering, but it still has a way to go. As to Eclipse on OSX, yeah, I use it daily, as well. Great piece of software.
3. I hope it does, too, but Apple seems to treat security as a marketing buzzword, not a technology issue. OSX may have to take a bad fall for Apple to change its direction. I hope not.
5. Ha, I've traversed the opposite path. I've used Apple since my first computer in 1988. I have had over a half-dozen Macs since then. I hated Windows, Gnome, KDE, CDE, etc passionately. I still hate Windows, but I've come to appreciate the flexibility of Gnome & KDE.
XCode is a very good IDE, and well worth taking a second look. But if you're used to KDevelop, you probably won't find much new in XCode. It's really a wash between the two, IMHO. But like all things, try it and see. I think KDevelop does debugging a little better, but XCode does documentation and project management a little better... YMMV.
That's a good question. For me, my move from OS X to Linux is motivated by several reasons.
1. Portability
OSX runs on Apple Hardware. It can be hacked, sure, to run on some non-Apple systems, but widescale hardware compatibility is lacking (just look at the difficulties in getting a GeForce 8x00 series card running). With Linux, I have a much wider choice of hardware vendors.
2. Flexibility
Linux gives me a lot more control over my OS. While this is pointless for 90% of users, for me, it is very nice to be able to custom compile a kernel with the options I need, recompile any given app for the characteristics I need, and so on. I can enable, disable, theme, customize, and otherwise hack my environment to suit my needs much more easily than in OS X.
3. Security
OSX is pretty good, but I'm a little worried at Apple's highly negative response to security concerns (anyone remember the wireless driver exploit fiasco?). Also Linux offers some features that OSX doesn't currently offer, such as MAC. 10.5 is supposed to have MAC, but I can't find any info on it. While both systems are good, I perceive the Linux market as responding more credibly to security issues.
4. Software Ecosystem
OSX software is great. However, Linux offers me a great deal more choice, and that choice tends to be much more configurable to my needs. While I love the Cocoa API and what it allows apps to do, Linux is catching on fast, and I find that good GNOME or KDE apps perform most, if not all, the functionality I care about in OSX, while being beer free, and offering me more choices (i.e. Anjuta, Geany, Eclipse, KDevelop vs XCode, Eclipse). There's also a lot of software I like to use that aren't available on OSX yet. I'm starting to learn CUDA, for example, and that is not yet offered for OSX. Also, VMWare workstation offers some nice features targeted at developers (such as host-to-VM project deployment & debugging) which I haven't seen offered yet on OSX.
5. Usability
I know a lot of people disagree with this, but I find a lot of OSX's UI broken, at least for how I use my system. I find the window management to be frustrating, the Dock to be very limited, and the lack of decent app launching & management to be very frustrating (although QS does manage to solve app launching in a pretty nice way). GNOME's clean usability and massive customization have allowed me to create a Linux system that I actually find to be more usable for me than OSX.
I guess I could summarize all of that by one word: choice. For my needs and uses, I find the flexibility of Linux far more convenient.
If OSX's behaviors work well for you, and you are happy with Apple's hardware offerings, then you have the choice of OS X instead!
Isn't freedom of choice a great feeling?
Do you really think that's unfair?
1. the Woodcrest processor *is* the latest and greatest Intel CPU. So, they're comparing the *best* Intel to the *best* AMD. How is that not fair?
2. Both architectures are do for replacement later this year, but samples have not been released to reviewers, as of yet.
3. The Opteron was released cira August 2006, a scant 2 months after the Woodcrest. The Windsor stepping on which the Opteron is based was released in May 2006, a month *before* Intel. The architecture for the Opteron was released in April 2003, and has seen little modification. However, the Intel architecture was a complete overhaul of the P6 uArch, adding extensive capabilities (4 issue uArch? damn).
4. The Intel CPU is made on a much newer, more power-efficient 65nm process, as opposed to the AMD's 90nm process.
5. The Intel CPU has a much lower rated power dissipation (65w vs 89w or 125w, I forget which for the current 3ghz AMD parts).
So, overall, the year-old Intel processor has a *lot* of advantages, and should have come out on top. Actually, in desktop comparisons, Intel usually does come out on top. However, the Intel Xeon server platform has a few disadvantages. For one, FB-DIMMs use a lot more power than DDR or DDR2 ECC DIMMs. Also, to counter-act the memory bandwidth advantages of AMD's IMC, Intel adds separate FSB's for each socket. However, this also draws more power.
All in all, it is a reasonable CPU to CPU, Platform to Platform comparison.
I agree in general with your thrust, however, I see some "grey areas". What happens when you are trying to overthrow an existing authority? Often, attacks against that authority will cause popular panic and unrest. Sometimes, the most effective way to overthrow an existing authority is to directly create that unrest.
Case in point -- Nelson Mandela. Freedom fighter or terrorist?
They can say that, but the code originally distributed under the GPL2 can still be used and redistributed under the GPL2, even if the original author republishes it as GPL3. (Of course, the republished version is bound by v3).
The purpose of the "or later" clause is to allow forward compatibility with future licenses. It should not, and can not, be used to revoke rights previously enjoyed by the end users. It's really not that scary of a clause.
Seeing as how Novell is an owner of some of the GNU/Linux codebase, I doubt that's going to happen. They'll also do their best to keep the Linux kernel from moving to GPL3. As long as Novell abides by the terms of the license the kernel is distributed under, it would be completely against the intent and spirit of the GPL to prevent them from redistributing it.
If you just make sure you always use prepared SQL statements with positional arguments, you will never have any problems with SQL injection.
Well, prepared statements have their own shortcomings -- they're not the magic bullet to solve all our DB issues. Some would have you believe they are, but don't be fooled.
I suppose the over-use of PHP (which for a long time didn't even support prepared statements (does it even do it today?)) combined with stupid users that created the current situation.
IIRC, when PHP 4's mysql drivers were written, MySQL did not support prepared statements. However, PHP 5's mysqli driver does support MySQL prepared statements. Also, PHP 5's PDO system offers a unified DB API with prepared statements.
1. No, OSX ships with all the tools you've come to expect from a UNIX-like system. Bash, perl, Apache2, ssh, X11 all come standard. Installing the developers tools also adds a lot of usefullness.
2. In a word, no. OSX's JVM is getting better, and is far better than it once was, but it's really not as good as Linux or Windows. Eclipse just runs like shit. I've moved most of my Java programming to my linux box. On the plus side, Xcode is a very, very good general IDE -- but for Java, Eclipse smokes it.
3. On OSX 10.4, I regularly get 90+ days of uptime. the only time I ever restart is to install the 3 month backlog of security updates. In 5 years of OSX, I've had 6 kernel panics in normal use, and 3 of them were because of Classic.
4. Anything compiled for Unix-like OS's is easily ported to OSX, and pretty much anything you care to name has been. If you're familiar with debian's apt-get, you'll love Fink, which is a port of apt-get to OSX. The Fink team also maintains a huge repository of free software for OSX. Almost anything you care to name is just a sudo apt-get packagename away.
5. Apple has, for the most part, excellent craftsmanship. I'm rediculously picky about hardware, and I can't buy dells for that very reason. I HATE it when little plastic pieces bend or twist or have visible, uneven gaps. IBM and Apple are about the only laptop manufacturers who meet my level of acceptiblity.
6. Apple uses the same Intel procs you'll get from any other manufacturer. So, on a hardware level, exactly the same. ArsTechnica did a OSX86 vs WinXP comparison on a Dell laptop, and IIRC, OSX had a pretty good showing. The hard part is comparing apps that aren't maintained as well across platforms. Adobe doesn't really maintain Premiere on OSX as well as it does on Windows, because most people who use Apple for video editing use Final Cut Pro, which is widely agreed to be far superior to Premiere in every aspect. I don't know of many recent XP vs OSX86 performance comparisons. However, what little I have seen shows OSX performing well. If you switch to OSX, you won't have performance issues due to the OS.
7. My powerbook doesn't have that feature, but for me, it sucks. However, I have always had funky personal issues with touch sensitivity on touchpads. I've personally had 6 laptops from 4 different manufacturers in the past 9 years, and I've always had issues. YMMV
Yep. /.'rs, by and large, see MS as facetious, self-serving, and sometimes sneaky and underhanded... This is because by and large MS *is* facetious, self-serving, and sometimes sneaky and underhanded.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I think we have very good historical reasons for keeping a very, very wary and suspicious eye on MS's behaviors.
Here's an interesting anecdote regarding this... A friend of mine is an IT manager for a multi-million dollar corporation, which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons.
Shortly after taking this position, he discovered that the root/sa password for their MS SQL Server database was BLANK. Understandably, he was incensed, and called up his predecessor. This fellow then informed my friend that a rather critical, extremely expensive, supposedly "enterprise" software module deployed by *his* predecessor expected and REQUIRED a blank sa password to operate -- and the company responsible had not bothered to write a fix.
While this is not Microsoft's fault, I do think "enterprise" database products *should* require, upon setup, the creation of a non-blank password, instead of some sort of "default" password to be changed... sometime.
Yes, of course....this incentive is to protect the consumer...not the multi-billion dollar software giant the Yankee Group is actually beholden to. 'Won't somebody think of the children', indeed. It's clear that if you have reservations about this in any way, you are un-american and hate our children. Why do you hate our children? Why do you hate America?
That depends on your definition of significant. Any headway they make is likely to save them much more than it costs, and that's all Microsoft really cares about in the final analysis....not stamping out piracy...not 'protecting the children', but enhancing the bottom line.
Wow. Where to even start.
Ok. Chain of events: shifty online retailer falsely markets a product. The deceived consumer purchases this product. When the product doesn't work, the customer loses his money.
It happens all the time... it has happened to several people I know. Software piracy has hurt consumers. So, this large corporation sees a way to improve it's bottom line by helping consumers. I'm sorry, I think this is a rather *good* thing. In fact, it should be encouraged. I think companies making money by helping consumers is much preferable to either of the alternatives, don't you?
Microsoft isn't a good company. But your knee-jerk "hurr microsoft bad hurr" is completely off the mark. Reservations? Why would you have reservations about a company using legal (and ethical) methods to protect itself and its customers from illegal (and unethical) behavior? Good job working in the red herring and ad hominim, at any rate.
As for WGA... yes, I think it is stupid, and a hassle, and is yet another way Windows makes itself a complete PITA and thorn in my side. On the other hand, it is also another side-benefit of using Kubuntu and OSX as my primary OS's. ;-)
For what it's worth, I'm glad MS is cracking down on this kind of piracy. This isn't "sharing", it's fucking people over, and it really needs to stop. So, as rarely as these words escape my lips, go MS.