The PHP server application that you refer to is probably part of a web server setup, so naturally it would HAVE to be "exposed to the internet".
Not really. Probably more than half of the web servers, wikis, etc., that I know about are confined to an internal network for use by employees only. The company I am working for right now has a public facing web server. We have a couple of mail servers and VPNs. We have some custom application servers and an RSS feed. That accounts for maybe 15 internet facing machines. We probably have a hundred servers internal to our network. More importantly, most of those servers are not hardened machines, maintained by professionals as the major part of their job. They are wikis and web servers and the like that someone threw together for a specific purpose and are tertiary to their job. A wiki maintained by a software developer to allow collaboration with his team is not as likely to be as meticulously updated. I can't imagine too many Macs are used as public facing, production servers, but I can believe a lot are casual servers. Most of these are probably not exposed to the internet.
The smart ones know that $20k more a year is more valuable than a few "free" bottles of beer!!!
How much of your life do you spent at work? 1/3? What is the value of enjoying that time rather than spending it stressed out or unhappy? What is the value of being able to express yourself in your hairstyle and clothing? What is the value of having that 14 inch tall mohawk that attracts the punk-rock chicks like crazy and contributes to your getting laid every weekend? What is the value of being able to say, "hey guys my kid's school was just closed for the day due to leaky pipes, I'm going to go take him to the zoo. I'll see you all tomorrow. Maybe I'll be online later tonight." What is the value of being able to say, "hey my kid's school was just closed for the day due to leaky pipes. I have to get this project out today, so I'm going to go get him and let him play Quake III on the extra PC over there. If anyone feels like it, you should join in and frag him a few times." What is the value of you and four other guys coming into the office at midnight till 4 am to work on a special project you all enjoy and making something really, really cool?
$20K is a bargain for the return of enjoying your workplace and hence enjoying a lot more of your life. I'd much rather ride a motorcycle to work and enjoy it than drive a top of the line beamer and be miserable for eight hours a day. Personally I drink about $1K in beer every year. I eat less than that in free snacks and soda and coffee. I probably put in more than 8 hours in the average day. But I enjoy doing what I do and that makes a huge difference in my life. More than that, the people here care about what they are doing and are motivated to do it well. The managers care about the people and aren't trying to screw us over. If someone needs to move, telecommuting is an option. If someone is not working out, they are told that and they either need to pull it together or start looking for a more compatible job. I think maybe one or two people have ever been fired. Some are encouraged to move on because they are not working out. Some move on to other places that interest them (like google). The lowest evaluated 10% aren't fired every year. Everyone is not expected to be in the office 10 hours a day. If you have a repairman coming, no one says a word if you log in from home. The value of all of that is much more than $20K in my estimation and in the estimations of a lot of other very bright people who I work with every day.
Don't be stupid. It has everything to do with "Macs" and any other unix-like operating system that runs perl & php.
Here's what I find both interesting and confusing about this whole issue. These people reported that they were following a Mac OS X botnet. Actually they claim it is a Mac OS X and Linux botnet. These machines were running one of a handful of PHP based servers. How many people run a PHP server application on top of OS X and expose it to the internet (as opposed to an intranet)??? Pretty much everyone I know runs OS X as a workstation. The majority of the boxes are laptops. Most of those I do see being used as "servers" are being used as PVRs and multimedia machines in the living room. I'm sure there are a few OS X boxes out there someone has casually thrown up a quick server on, and a few hobbyists who just have the one g5 tower that is everything for them, including running their own little wiki. Are there really enough to make up a significant part of a botnet?
I'd really like to see some more information on this. How many OS X machines are they talking about here? I know a lot of people who run a small server on Linux and who might become part of a botnet. Small businesses and organizations set these up all the time. Most are administered indifferently with only small regard for security. I can't think of anyone doing so with an OS X box. So what was this 900 linux boxes and 15 OS X boxes? Or is my view of the ecosystem unusual?
In any case, I hope this is a wake up call to those casual web admins. Keeping security fixes up to date needs to be a priority on any server.
As someone who spent one summer installing security cameras in a Wal-mart (so they could more carefully watch their cashiers) and assembling lawn-mowers etc. for displays and for customers who paid for that option, I can confirm that the quality of the machines they sell is abysmal. It was not at all unusual to go through three sets of parts to get enough properly made parts to assemble one lawn mower. I wouldn't accept one as a gift.
MICROSOFT OWNS PART OF APPLE - On Aug. 6, 1997 Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple
Microsoft settled an antitrust lawsuit with Apple. Buying these shares was part of the agreement. They have long since sold them for a very good ROI (although not as good as if they still had them).
Microsoft continued support for MS Office on the mac was also part of settlement (although dropping it would have just started another successful anti-trust suit for Apple). That part of the settlement also expired, although MS has made a newer deal with Apple ensure they continue it for another four years.
As for the feature set of MS Office, releases are staggered so usually a few features are added to the mac version that don't make the Windows version (which typically is released a year earlier).
I'm sorry to burst your conspiracy theory bubble and all.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not trolling.
There are plenty of elite PC manifacturers that make slick designs such as the recently purchased by DELL, Alienware computers.
Ummm, alienware is junk with "cool" cases and high prices. They haven't put together a reasonable machine in years. You fell for marketing tripe.
Now they joined BAPCo, to pull their latest ace: OSX, the only thing remaining that makes them unique.
We'll see a lot of tests proving how superior OSX is compared to Windows in terms of speed and reliability.
I don't know about you, but most of the people here buy Macs because of the OS, not the hardware. The fact that the hardware is nice is a requirement, but it is not the driving factor of the sale. They joined so that they can have a hand in making sure Macs perform well with Windows so that they don't have all sorts of FUD about how "inferior" and "slow" their machines are.
They lied before when they claimed G5 is the fastest CPU on Earth, they lied when they said the Intel chips are 2x faster than the G5 (I mean they lied at least one of the times, right)...
Probably, their motivation is to fight just the kind of crap you're parroting. The g5 was the fastest desktop machine you could buy for quite a while. It is still trouncing the competition on many benchmarks. When someone says, "these chips are up to two times faster than the old chips, of course since the disk, memory, and other hardware is often the bottleneck you won't see applications running twice as fast" you'd think the press could accurately report it. Instead what you get is a bunch of crap about how applications aren't running twice as fast and he lied. What a crock.
That is not to say Apple's marketing has not been over the top. I would never base a purchase on the marketing from any company, as they are all basically paid to sell things, not provide the most accurate assessment of something. Maybe you should try looking at independent evaluations now and again and stop listening to the marketing.
Why is that even remotely resonable as a criteria? No time? Well too bad, then go ahead and make stupid decisions based on pure fluff.
I'm not suggesting that this is a good criterion, nor advocating that people use it for decision making. What I'm saying is that, realistically, the people who influence and make the purchasing decision, usually do so with only a small subset of the information that would be useful to them. While the dress of the people presenting the product is one of them, it is not clear which way that influences them in a given market. Common opinion in the tech field is that sloppy dress equates to competence. For those without the means to determine this from the product, one presented by someone in less standard attire, may well seem the better choice. Even for those who have an understanding of the technology, said style of clothing may be an influencing factor.
By all means I'd encourage you to fully evaluate each and every product, right down to the source code comments. That does not mean everyone will, so if you are selling something you might want to take into account the effect you think clothing will make.
Shower. Shave. Buy some button up shirts and a pair of slacks. From my experience, this makes all the difference in the world. Like it or not - it's the way the game is played.
Funny, having worked at several successful software companies I've heard the phrase, "he wore a suit to the interview," used in a negative way more than once. Often your appearance does matter, but you need to tailor it to your audience. In some markets bringing along a sloppily dressed geek will instill in your potential customers a belief that your product must be advanced. In others, it is seen as a sign of a small player, not worth dealing with. Most customers expect a somewhat professional looking salesman, but in many cases they are happy to see "those geeky guys" if they tour the facilities or if someone comes out to install a few million dollars of high-tech gear for them.
As for the game, that isn't half of it. Knowing where the good strip clubs/bars/hookers/drugs are is more likely to get you sales than your dress, from what I've seen. I've seen us lose sales to people we were pounding into the ground in head-to-head comparisons, because the competition spent a week taking the purchaser out to strip clubs. The point is, sales is more than dress code, and lack of dress code may actually get you more sales in some markets.
I once worked at a startup where our dress code was, "genitals must be covered when guests are in the building." No one took it quite that far, but it made for a nice, relaxed atmosphere.
would you rather interact with the guy that's in the shorts and stained tshirt or the guy in the nicer button-up/slacks (assuming their level of technical knowledge is the same)? in the "normal" world, i might say the guy in the shorts/tshirt, but in the business world? button-up hands down. it's just more professional. i think there's something to be said about perception.
You're making a logical error here. When you're meeting someone and making purchasing decisions, you usually don't have the time to really understand which of these to hypothetical people is more technically knowledgeable. Maybe the one who is a better speaker will convince you that they are. The question is, if you have to judge the competence of two people using their clothing as a criteria, which type of clothing would you think the more technically knowledgeable person is likely to be wearing?
The answer to this question varies in different markets, but in much of the technology field people will perceive a shabbily dressed geek as more proficient than a nice looking guy with a buzz-cut, wearing a tasteful suit. That may not be a valid correlation, but it is certainly a commonly believed one. If your life was on the line and you had to pick one of two people to get that T1 back online, pronto, and given that you don't have any other criteria upon which to pick, which would you choose?
Sometimes dressing in less "professional" apparel can lose you a sale. Sometimes, it can gain you a sale. I know a lot of the sales guys are somewhat leery of dragging along scruffy looking geeks to business meetings, but from what I've seen it often works to convince businessmen of the credibility of tech. "Wow look at all those piercings, if the company lets him get away with that he must be brilliant!" This works well in smaller, more technical markets I imagine.
I also notice that the work environment at a company is one of the most important aspects in attracting really talented people. Smart people, who love what they do would rather dress like slobs, have free beer, and a ping-pong table than make an extra $20K a year. The environment is worth a lot to a person's quality of life. Now that does not mean just because a company is relaxed it has talented people, but if you are looking for extraordinary people, that is one very visible sign.
I also notice that given a relaxed or absent dress code, the clothing of choice widely varies. Some people prefer to wear a suit every day, even if they are just going to sit at a desk and code for 12 hours. Others will be wearing shirts with fake boobs attached. I have not noticed that either type tends to be more or less proficient.
I know I'm not the only one to have noticed this trend and I know it is something in some businessmen's minds when they are meeting with new partners, suppliers, or customers. The rule that a dress code will get you more sales is not universal and does not apply to all market segments. A dress code might get you more sales, right up till all your talent moves on and your more relaxed competitor starts to clobber you in head-to-head comparisons.
Free & Open software is great on the most part, but developers need to pay bills too. If all software was free and open, who'd want to learn to make it?
What is with all these uninformed business plan questions? Most major open source projects are funded by users. Developers get paid to work on them by people who want to use them and want some given feature. It is not as though open source coders are working for free all the time. Some are as a hobby, but for the most part it is just not the case. Now and more-so in the near future MegaCorp does not care if they are paying some company X dollars to give them a product with certain features or if they are paying a developer (or five) Y dollars to add the features they need to an existing open source project. What they care about is whether X or Y is larger and the quality of the software they plan to use.
I don't think we need to waste everyone's time asking sophomoric questions about how open source software fits into various business plans.
Most executables for OS X have been larger on the PPC because of the instruction set. The overall size of an installed program means jack for performance, since most of that size comes from data files rather than executable code.
Performance? Disk space is the issue. The same game for both platforms generally takes significantly more disk space on Windows. Good programs share the same data files, but all the extra crap makes a difference. I never understood why friends were buying big hard drives for workstations until I put together a gaming PC. Some of those games take orders of magnitude more space on Windows for some reason.
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.
If Hussein doesn't join the alliance, he's seen as factious and self-serving.
If Hussein joins the alliance, he's seen as sneaky, underhanded, factious and self-serving.
Maybe if you don't build up a reputation as a sneaky, underhanded, factious, self-serving, criminal, people won't suspect the worst of you all the time. If MS completely changes its business practices and behaves fairly, evenly, and honestly for a few years people will start to change their minds. Until that time, there is no use crying that people are judging you based upon your past misdeeds.
Re:2 points I would like to make
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Why Windows is Slow
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Here are two points I'd like to make. First, this article is about the speed with which new version are released, not how fast they perform a given task. Second, anyone who complains about FAT binaries needs to have their head examined. The file size difference is so small in most cases that no one will ever notice and Windows programs in general tend to be monstrous in size compared to the same program for the Mac.
You're preaching to the choir here. I think the package management apps on Linux and OS X have a piece of the puzzle. It would be great to see Linux distros standardize on a GNUStep or OpenStep implementation that integrates with any number of custom software repositories and includes the ability to do updates. It would be great to have a single package for Linux and OS X for those of us who realize our executables only take up about 2% of our disk space. Drag and drop on Linux would be great. Nicely consolidated packages for application management would be great. On OS X a service that lets all your applications update without their own implementation, allows for review of applications, and provides the ability to search repositories for types of applications would rule. Right now you can get both of these on Linux and OS X, but not in one nice, integrated and standardized environment.
What's the general opinion? If the majority of casual surfers used Firefox or other alternative, would reverse engineers switch focus to those apps?
What makes you think the majority don't focus on alternative browsers now? From what I've seen there are about as many people pounding on Firefox as there are on IE. It's just the people who find things in Firefox usually get them fixed much more quickly. Of course if Firefox gains in market share more people will look for holes, but that does not mean it will ever have the level of problems IE does because of the design decisions and the development process. Heck, right now their are two completely different unpatched remote exploits to install and execute Foo via IE. The fact that a hole can be discovered, reported, the discoverer can get tired of waiting for MS, it can be publicly published, someone can make an exploit, and script kiddies can deploy it everywhere all before MS can get a patch out is intolerable. That more than one such hole can happen at a time is just sad.
So how do these sites get hits? Are they Good sites that have just been compromised?
The most common scenario right now is a server is hacked, then e-mails and IMs are sent out with links to it. I don't know of any really popular sites that have been hacked to include this.
PDF does not suck. PDF rocks! The diabolical combination of MS Windows (The OS that can't multitask its way out of a wet paper bag), Adobe Acrobat Reader (the bloated and glacially slow reader), and your favorite flavor of browser sucks. People click on a link in their browser then scream as their system grinds to a halt while the reader launches and the PDF downloads, which can take significant time. The the reader itself is slow due to trying to multitask with the browser. That sucks.
PDFs on Linux or OS X are much nicer, especially when viewed by a separate program instead of a browser plug-in and especially when not using anything from Adobe. It is sad that the people who pretty much invented the standard now have such a popular and horrendous implementation of it.
All seriousness aside, one feature this really doesn't have (at least I couldn't find it) I absolutely must have is spell check.
Normally I'm a big advocate of OS-wide services for things like spelling checkers, grammar checkers, translation, and the like. Having access to them in OS X has pretty much spoiled me. I don't want to teach the spellchecker on a website or built into one more application not to mark "SNMP" as a misspelled word. And since my browser uses the standard text handling APIs, I don't have to with an online word-processor.
If we really do move into the world of online, Web-based applications, however, what we really need is a way to integrate individual user preferences and services with one another seamlessly. Give it another 15 years of development and I think we'll be there (well except Microsoft they still be dragging their feet).
In summation I'd just like to say, "ha! ha! your spellchecker doesn't work everywhere!"
Why should the MacBook be any faster then any other DuoCore notebook out there.
Because each laptop uses slightly different hardware. They use different brands, with different specs, and in different configurations. For any given test, one will win. If you read the article you'd know Macbook Pros scored about the same as the best other Duo Core notebooks out there. Sure they took first in a given photoshop test, but not by a really significant margin. They did worse in some other tests. There are no conspiracies here.
People willfully misinterpreting this test should be ashamed of the FUD they are spreading. This does not prove MacBooks are the "fastest" laptop. It proves they are (aside from the non-existant video drivers) as good as anything else out there for running Windows. This is good news for people who plan to dual boot. This is a good sign for those interested in emulating/VMing Windows. It is just trivia to anyone else.
A few years ago, the Mac crowd said there was no need for stuff like PCI, AGP, PMT, SMP, protected memory, Intel, USB, etc. etc....
Ummm, what? More than a few years ago macs already shipped with USB and PCI by default. Heck macs had USB before anyone else was producing a significant number of peripherals for it. The only item on this list I ever heard people argue against was Intel (as in processors).
But just how is a Mac running x86 and Windows XP, a Mac?
Macintosh is a brand name. How is a Dell Inspiron running Linux still a Dell Inspiron? The answer to both questions is that is the name under which it is sold.
I'm against a tiered Internet as much as the next guy, but there are precedents. Snail mail, for example, has a tiered system where you pay your 39 cents to get a letter someplace in sometime less than a week. You pay extra to get it there the next day.
You're still not understanding the issue. In those cases, you are paying extra for more service. In this case it would be more like the post office charging particular, wealthy receivers of mail extra if they did not want mail sent to them to be delayed and extra two days. These companies have no relationship with Google. They are common carriers. Think of it like many postal systems that work together. They are given special privileges in return for acting as common carriers who treat mail from everyone the same. Now they are abusing that position and failing to act as common carriers. As a result they should lose all their common carrier privileges. If they want to charge extra to people with deep pockets, fine, But they should no longer be immune to prosecution for all the copyright violation and kiddie porn the copy from router to router. They should no longer have exclusive, government sponsored right of ways to run lines. They should have to pay back all the money the government used to subsidize them in the first place.
They can be common carriers or they can be ordinary businesses. They should not be able to have it both ways.
You are retarded. There is no high-end hardware in any of the Intel Macs
I never said there was. Although, one could consider EFI to be "high end" and Windows does not fully support it. You could consider support for Firewire to be high-end, especially support for target mode booting. Both OS X and Windows "support" this hardware, but only OS X allows you to use certain capabilities of said hardware.
The only hardware in any of these computers that isn't 100% generic PC hardware is the built-in cameras.
Really, where are all the desktop/laptop EFI implementations that work with Windows and standard chips then? Sure it is commodity, but commodity that Windows does not support yet.
Maybe someday Windows will be get ATI's mobility Radeon drivers...
And maybe someday Windows will get support for all the high-end tablets, Firewire spectography and microscopic gear, high end publishing systems, etc.
Macs are very similar to commodity PCs, but PCs built without regard for Windows and its limitations. There is hardware and combinations of hardware that are pretty cool, but are not used because they don't work with Windows. There are also cool technologies that Windows only supports in a half-assed fashion. Apple, in some cases, makes good use of both of these and as a result Windows users of Mac hardware will occasionally experience issues, especially with the newest hardware. If this comes as a surprise to you, then you're clueless.
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The PHP server application that you refer to is probably part of a web server setup, so naturally it would HAVE to be "exposed to the internet".
Not really. Probably more than half of the web servers, wikis, etc., that I know about are confined to an internal network for use by employees only. The company I am working for right now has a public facing web server. We have a couple of mail servers and VPNs. We have some custom application servers and an RSS feed. That accounts for maybe 15 internet facing machines. We probably have a hundred servers internal to our network. More importantly, most of those servers are not hardened machines, maintained by professionals as the major part of their job. They are wikis and web servers and the like that someone threw together for a specific purpose and are tertiary to their job. A wiki maintained by a software developer to allow collaboration with his team is not as likely to be as meticulously updated. I can't imagine too many Macs are used as public facing, production servers, but I can believe a lot are casual servers. Most of these are probably not exposed to the internet.
The smart ones know that $20k more a year is more valuable than a few "free" bottles of beer!!!
How much of your life do you spent at work? 1/3? What is the value of enjoying that time rather than spending it stressed out or unhappy? What is the value of being able to express yourself in your hairstyle and clothing? What is the value of having that 14 inch tall mohawk that attracts the punk-rock chicks like crazy and contributes to your getting laid every weekend? What is the value of being able to say, "hey guys my kid's school was just closed for the day due to leaky pipes, I'm going to go take him to the zoo. I'll see you all tomorrow. Maybe I'll be online later tonight." What is the value of being able to say, "hey my kid's school was just closed for the day due to leaky pipes. I have to get this project out today, so I'm going to go get him and let him play Quake III on the extra PC over there. If anyone feels like it, you should join in and frag him a few times." What is the value of you and four other guys coming into the office at midnight till 4 am to work on a special project you all enjoy and making something really, really cool?
$20K is a bargain for the return of enjoying your workplace and hence enjoying a lot more of your life. I'd much rather ride a motorcycle to work and enjoy it than drive a top of the line beamer and be miserable for eight hours a day. Personally I drink about $1K in beer every year. I eat less than that in free snacks and soda and coffee. I probably put in more than 8 hours in the average day. But I enjoy doing what I do and that makes a huge difference in my life. More than that, the people here care about what they are doing and are motivated to do it well. The managers care about the people and aren't trying to screw us over. If someone needs to move, telecommuting is an option. If someone is not working out, they are told that and they either need to pull it together or start looking for a more compatible job. I think maybe one or two people have ever been fired. Some are encouraged to move on because they are not working out. Some move on to other places that interest them (like google). The lowest evaluated 10% aren't fired every year. Everyone is not expected to be in the office 10 hours a day. If you have a repairman coming, no one says a word if you log in from home. The value of all of that is much more than $20K in my estimation and in the estimations of a lot of other very bright people who I work with every day.
Don't be stupid. It has everything to do with "Macs" and any other unix-like operating system that runs perl & php.
Here's what I find both interesting and confusing about this whole issue. These people reported that they were following a Mac OS X botnet. Actually they claim it is a Mac OS X and Linux botnet. These machines were running one of a handful of PHP based servers. How many people run a PHP server application on top of OS X and expose it to the internet (as opposed to an intranet)??? Pretty much everyone I know runs OS X as a workstation. The majority of the boxes are laptops. Most of those I do see being used as "servers" are being used as PVRs and multimedia machines in the living room. I'm sure there are a few OS X boxes out there someone has casually thrown up a quick server on, and a few hobbyists who just have the one g5 tower that is everything for them, including running their own little wiki. Are there really enough to make up a significant part of a botnet?
I'd really like to see some more information on this. How many OS X machines are they talking about here? I know a lot of people who run a small server on Linux and who might become part of a botnet. Small businesses and organizations set these up all the time. Most are administered indifferently with only small regard for security. I can't think of anyone doing so with an OS X box. So what was this 900 linux boxes and 15 OS X boxes? Or is my view of the ecosystem unusual?
In any case, I hope this is a wake up call to those casual web admins. Keeping security fixes up to date needs to be a priority on any server.
As someone who spent one summer installing security cameras in a Wal-mart (so they could more carefully watch their cashiers) and assembling lawn-mowers etc. for displays and for customers who paid for that option, I can confirm that the quality of the machines they sell is abysmal. It was not at all unusual to go through three sets of parts to get enough properly made parts to assemble one lawn mower. I wouldn't accept one as a gift.
MICROSOFT OWNS PART OF APPLE - On Aug. 6, 1997 Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple
Microsoft settled an antitrust lawsuit with Apple. Buying these shares was part of the agreement. They have long since sold them for a very good ROI (although not as good as if they still had them).
Microsoft continued support for MS Office on the mac was also part of settlement (although dropping it would have just started another successful anti-trust suit for Apple). That part of the settlement also expired, although MS has made a newer deal with Apple ensure they continue it for another four years.
As for the feature set of MS Office, releases are staggered so usually a few features are added to the mac version that don't make the Windows version (which typically is released a year earlier).
I'm sorry to burst your conspiracy theory bubble and all.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not trolling.
There are plenty of elite PC manifacturers that make slick designs such as the recently purchased by DELL, Alienware computers.
Ummm, alienware is junk with "cool" cases and high prices. They haven't put together a reasonable machine in years. You fell for marketing tripe.
Now they joined BAPCo, to pull their latest ace: OSX, the only thing remaining that makes them unique. We'll see a lot of tests proving how superior OSX is compared to Windows in terms of speed and reliability.
I don't know about you, but most of the people here buy Macs because of the OS, not the hardware. The fact that the hardware is nice is a requirement, but it is not the driving factor of the sale. They joined so that they can have a hand in making sure Macs perform well with Windows so that they don't have all sorts of FUD about how "inferior" and "slow" their machines are.
They lied before when they claimed G5 is the fastest CPU on Earth, they lied when they said the Intel chips are 2x faster than the G5 (I mean they lied at least one of the times, right)...
Probably, their motivation is to fight just the kind of crap you're parroting. The g5 was the fastest desktop machine you could buy for quite a while. It is still trouncing the competition on many benchmarks. When someone says, "these chips are up to two times faster than the old chips, of course since the disk, memory, and other hardware is often the bottleneck you won't see applications running twice as fast" you'd think the press could accurately report it. Instead what you get is a bunch of crap about how applications aren't running twice as fast and he lied. What a crock.
That is not to say Apple's marketing has not been over the top. I would never base a purchase on the marketing from any company, as they are all basically paid to sell things, not provide the most accurate assessment of something. Maybe you should try looking at independent evaluations now and again and stop listening to the marketing.
Why is that even remotely resonable as a criteria? No time? Well too bad, then go ahead and make stupid decisions based on pure fluff.
I'm not suggesting that this is a good criterion, nor advocating that people use it for decision making. What I'm saying is that, realistically, the people who influence and make the purchasing decision, usually do so with only a small subset of the information that would be useful to them. While the dress of the people presenting the product is one of them, it is not clear which way that influences them in a given market. Common opinion in the tech field is that sloppy dress equates to competence. For those without the means to determine this from the product, one presented by someone in less standard attire, may well seem the better choice. Even for those who have an understanding of the technology, said style of clothing may be an influencing factor.
By all means I'd encourage you to fully evaluate each and every product, right down to the source code comments. That does not mean everyone will, so if you are selling something you might want to take into account the effect you think clothing will make.
Shower. Shave. Buy some button up shirts and a pair of slacks. From my experience, this makes all the difference in the world. Like it or not - it's the way the game is played.
Funny, having worked at several successful software companies I've heard the phrase, "he wore a suit to the interview," used in a negative way more than once. Often your appearance does matter, but you need to tailor it to your audience. In some markets bringing along a sloppily dressed geek will instill in your potential customers a belief that your product must be advanced. In others, it is seen as a sign of a small player, not worth dealing with. Most customers expect a somewhat professional looking salesman, but in many cases they are happy to see "those geeky guys" if they tour the facilities or if someone comes out to install a few million dollars of high-tech gear for them.
As for the game, that isn't half of it. Knowing where the good strip clubs/bars/hookers/drugs are is more likely to get you sales than your dress, from what I've seen. I've seen us lose sales to people we were pounding into the ground in head-to-head comparisons, because the competition spent a week taking the purchaser out to strip clubs. The point is, sales is more than dress code, and lack of dress code may actually get you more sales in some markets.
I once worked at a startup where our dress code was, "genitals must be covered when guests are in the building." No one took it quite that far, but it made for a nice, relaxed atmosphere.
would you rather interact with the guy that's in the shorts and stained tshirt or the guy in the nicer button-up/slacks (assuming their level of technical knowledge is the same)? in the "normal" world, i might say the guy in the shorts/tshirt, but in the business world? button-up hands down. it's just more professional. i think there's something to be said about perception.
You're making a logical error here. When you're meeting someone and making purchasing decisions, you usually don't have the time to really understand which of these to hypothetical people is more technically knowledgeable. Maybe the one who is a better speaker will convince you that they are. The question is, if you have to judge the competence of two people using their clothing as a criteria, which type of clothing would you think the more technically knowledgeable person is likely to be wearing?
The answer to this question varies in different markets, but in much of the technology field people will perceive a shabbily dressed geek as more proficient than a nice looking guy with a buzz-cut, wearing a tasteful suit. That may not be a valid correlation, but it is certainly a commonly believed one. If your life was on the line and you had to pick one of two people to get that T1 back online, pronto, and given that you don't have any other criteria upon which to pick, which would you choose?
Sometimes dressing in less "professional" apparel can lose you a sale. Sometimes, it can gain you a sale. I know a lot of the sales guys are somewhat leery of dragging along scruffy looking geeks to business meetings, but from what I've seen it often works to convince businessmen of the credibility of tech. "Wow look at all those piercings, if the company lets him get away with that he must be brilliant!" This works well in smaller, more technical markets I imagine.
I also notice that the work environment at a company is one of the most important aspects in attracting really talented people. Smart people, who love what they do would rather dress like slobs, have free beer, and a ping-pong table than make an extra $20K a year. The environment is worth a lot to a person's quality of life. Now that does not mean just because a company is relaxed it has talented people, but if you are looking for extraordinary people, that is one very visible sign.
I also notice that given a relaxed or absent dress code, the clothing of choice widely varies. Some people prefer to wear a suit every day, even if they are just going to sit at a desk and code for 12 hours. Others will be wearing shirts with fake boobs attached. I have not noticed that either type tends to be more or less proficient.
I know I'm not the only one to have noticed this trend and I know it is something in some businessmen's minds when they are meeting with new partners, suppliers, or customers. The rule that a dress code will get you more sales is not universal and does not apply to all market segments. A dress code might get you more sales, right up till all your talent moves on and your more relaxed competitor starts to clobber you in head-to-head comparisons.
Free & Open software is great on the most part, but developers need to pay bills too. If all software was free and open, who'd want to learn to make it?
What is with all these uninformed business plan questions? Most major open source projects are funded by users. Developers get paid to work on them by people who want to use them and want some given feature. It is not as though open source coders are working for free all the time. Some are as a hobby, but for the most part it is just not the case. Now and more-so in the near future MegaCorp does not care if they are paying some company X dollars to give them a product with certain features or if they are paying a developer (or five) Y dollars to add the features they need to an existing open source project. What they care about is whether X or Y is larger and the quality of the software they plan to use.
I don't think we need to waste everyone's time asking sophomoric questions about how open source software fits into various business plans.
Most executables for OS X have been larger on the PPC because of the instruction set. The overall size of an installed program means jack for performance, since most of that size comes from data files rather than executable code.
Performance? Disk space is the issue. The same game for both platforms generally takes significantly more disk space on Windows. Good programs share the same data files, but all the extra crap makes a difference. I never understood why friends were buying big hard drives for workstations until I put together a gaming PC. Some of those games take orders of magnitude more space on Windows for some reason.
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.
If Hussein doesn't join the alliance, he's seen as factious and self-serving.
If Hussein joins the alliance, he's seen as sneaky, underhanded, factious and self-serving.
Maybe if you don't build up a reputation as a sneaky, underhanded, factious, self-serving, criminal, people won't suspect the worst of you all the time. If MS completely changes its business practices and behaves fairly, evenly, and honestly for a few years people will start to change their minds. Until that time, there is no use crying that people are judging you based upon your past misdeeds.
Here are two points I'd like to make. First, this article is about the speed with which new version are released, not how fast they perform a given task. Second, anyone who complains about FAT binaries needs to have their head examined. The file size difference is so small in most cases that no one will ever notice and Windows programs in general tend to be monstrous in size compared to the same program for the Mac.
You're preaching to the choir here. I think the package management apps on Linux and OS X have a piece of the puzzle. It would be great to see Linux distros standardize on a GNUStep or OpenStep implementation that integrates with any number of custom software repositories and includes the ability to do updates. It would be great to have a single package for Linux and OS X for those of us who realize our executables only take up about 2% of our disk space. Drag and drop on Linux would be great. Nicely consolidated packages for application management would be great. On OS X a service that lets all your applications update without their own implementation, allows for review of applications, and provides the ability to search repositories for types of applications would rule. Right now you can get both of these on Linux and OS X, but not in one nice, integrated and standardized environment.
What's the general opinion? If the majority of casual surfers used Firefox or other alternative, would reverse engineers switch focus to those apps?
What makes you think the majority don't focus on alternative browsers now? From what I've seen there are about as many people pounding on Firefox as there are on IE. It's just the people who find things in Firefox usually get them fixed much more quickly. Of course if Firefox gains in market share more people will look for holes, but that does not mean it will ever have the level of problems IE does because of the design decisions and the development process. Heck, right now their are two completely different unpatched remote exploits to install and execute Foo via IE. The fact that a hole can be discovered, reported, the discoverer can get tired of waiting for MS, it can be publicly published, someone can make an exploit, and script kiddies can deploy it everywhere all before MS can get a patch out is intolerable. That more than one such hole can happen at a time is just sad.
So how do these sites get hits? Are they Good sites that have just been compromised?
The most common scenario right now is a server is hacked, then e-mails and IMs are sent out with links to it. I don't know of any really popular sites that have been hacked to include this.
And pdf sucks anyway.
PDF does not suck. PDF rocks! The diabolical combination of MS Windows (The OS that can't multitask its way out of a wet paper bag), Adobe Acrobat Reader (the bloated and glacially slow reader), and your favorite flavor of browser sucks. People click on a link in their browser then scream as their system grinds to a halt while the reader launches and the PDF downloads, which can take significant time. The the reader itself is slow due to trying to multitask with the browser. That sucks.
PDFs on Linux or OS X are much nicer, especially when viewed by a separate program instead of a browser plug-in and especially when not using anything from Adobe. It is sad that the people who pretty much invented the standard now have such a popular and horrendous implementation of it.
All seriousness aside, one feature this really doesn't have (at least I couldn't find it) I absolutely must have is spell check.
Normally I'm a big advocate of OS-wide services for things like spelling checkers, grammar checkers, translation, and the like. Having access to them in OS X has pretty much spoiled me. I don't want to teach the spellchecker on a website or built into one more application not to mark "SNMP" as a misspelled word. And since my browser uses the standard text handling APIs, I don't have to with an online word-processor.
If we really do move into the world of online, Web-based applications, however, what we really need is a way to integrate individual user preferences and services with one another seamlessly. Give it another 15 years of development and I think we'll be there (well except Microsoft they still be dragging their feet).
In summation I'd just like to say, "ha! ha! your spellchecker doesn't work everywhere!"
Why should the MacBook be any faster then any other DuoCore notebook out there.
Because each laptop uses slightly different hardware. They use different brands, with different specs, and in different configurations. For any given test, one will win. If you read the article you'd know Macbook Pros scored about the same as the best other Duo Core notebooks out there. Sure they took first in a given photoshop test, but not by a really significant margin. They did worse in some other tests. There are no conspiracies here.
People willfully misinterpreting this test should be ashamed of the FUD they are spreading. This does not prove MacBooks are the "fastest" laptop. It proves they are (aside from the non-existant video drivers) as good as anything else out there for running Windows. This is good news for people who plan to dual boot. This is a good sign for those interested in emulating/VMing Windows. It is just trivia to anyone else.
A few years ago, the Mac crowd said there was no need for stuff like PCI, AGP, PMT, SMP, protected memory, Intel, USB, etc. etc....
Ummm, what? More than a few years ago macs already shipped with USB and PCI by default. Heck macs had USB before anyone else was producing a significant number of peripherals for it. The only item on this list I ever heard people argue against was Intel (as in processors).
But just how is a Mac running x86 and Windows XP, a Mac?
Macintosh is a brand name. How is a Dell Inspiron running Linux still a Dell Inspiron? The answer to both questions is that is the name under which it is sold.
I'm against a tiered Internet as much as the next guy, but there are precedents. Snail mail, for example, has a tiered system where you pay your 39 cents to get a letter someplace in sometime less than a week. You pay extra to get it there the next day.
You're still not understanding the issue. In those cases, you are paying extra for more service. In this case it would be more like the post office charging particular, wealthy receivers of mail extra if they did not want mail sent to them to be delayed and extra two days. These companies have no relationship with Google. They are common carriers. Think of it like many postal systems that work together. They are given special privileges in return for acting as common carriers who treat mail from everyone the same. Now they are abusing that position and failing to act as common carriers. As a result they should lose all their common carrier privileges. If they want to charge extra to people with deep pockets, fine, But they should no longer be immune to prosecution for all the copyright violation and kiddie porn the copy from router to router. They should no longer have exclusive, government sponsored right of ways to run lines. They should have to pay back all the money the government used to subsidize them in the first place.
They can be common carriers or they can be ordinary businesses. They should not be able to have it both ways.
You are retarded. There is no high-end hardware in any of the Intel Macs
I never said there was. Although, one could consider EFI to be "high end" and Windows does not fully support it. You could consider support for Firewire to be high-end, especially support for target mode booting. Both OS X and Windows "support" this hardware, but only OS X allows you to use certain capabilities of said hardware.
The only hardware in any of these computers that isn't 100% generic PC hardware is the built-in cameras.
Really, where are all the desktop/laptop EFI implementations that work with Windows and standard chips then? Sure it is commodity, but commodity that Windows does not support yet.
Maybe someday Windows will be get ATI's mobility Radeon drivers...
And maybe someday Windows will get support for all the high-end tablets, Firewire spectography and microscopic gear, high end publishing systems, etc.
Macs are very similar to commodity PCs, but PCs built without regard for Windows and its limitations. There is hardware and combinations of hardware that are pretty cool, but are not used because they don't work with Windows. There are also cool technologies that Windows only supports in a half-assed fashion. Apple, in some cases, makes good use of both of these and as a result Windows users of Mac hardware will occasionally experience issues, especially with the newest hardware. If this comes as a surprise to you, then you're clueless.
32 bit is old old old
Yeah, so old that new 32-bit desktop chips were released... today. Sorry, 32-bit is here for a while yet.