If the cost is even half that, at $30 to get your name on the page, thats 1,667 names they're going to have to cram into the advert. And if only a portion of each donation goes towards the cost of the Ad, there'll be even more names. There'll be no space left for the message!
As to your question, one of the main reasons that OSX is able to be so stable and still provide all of the eye-candy is because of a very small HCL. That advantage would be lost by moving to the rather chaotic wintel platform
The answer to this is quite simple. Apple decide to produce their own x86 systems, and only sell and support Mac OS X on their own products. Every other vendors x86 platforms they ignore. That way they get to control the size and quality of the HCL, can innovate in the same way they do today, and keep hold of their hardware profits.
So what's the point of that I hear you ask... well, Darwin is Open Source and already runs on x86. So those people who wanted to run Mac OS X on their off the shelf standard PC would be able to write drivers for it, or piggy back on other people doing it for them. Hey, it works that way for Linux and the other BSD projects. I'm sure there are loads of drivers in FreeBSD that would port over very easily too. Potentially Apple could even work with VMWare to make it a guest OS option to give people the experience, and add to the sales volume.
I admit that I don't see this ever happening in reality. But I do think Apple could make it work in a profitable way if they wanted to.
Imagine this: download a movie or other video content on your Mac. Perhaps via the iTunes Store. Sync with your iPod. Drop your iPod into its dock at your entertainment center. Select content (a movie?) and play. Simple. Clean
I like that idea and can see how it would work in the future. But I think you've overlooked a couple of things:
- For one, they're going to have to get the download size way down. A few Gig's per movie is going to blow most people's daily usage limits by a big margin. More and more ISP's in the UK are capping 'unlimited' bandwidth at 1GB per day. To most people that's as good as unlimited, but for movies and such, no chance. They'd have to use something more space efficient, like dvix perhaps.
- For two, there's that oh so insignificant matter of piracy and protection. They wouldn't just start distributing raw ripped DVD's over the net, they'd get crucified. So you'd be looking at some new format that:
a) compressed the size down to something manageable, and..
b) had some kind of 'fairplay' DRM lock-in to stop you passing your files onto your friends.
- And lastly, there's all that licensing crap they're going to have to get over before they can distribute film or tv over the net. And that's going to take as long to figure out as it did with iTMS for music. Especially for global distribution.
Personally I don't think tv/dvd content is anywhere near ready for prime time. We need gobs more bandwidth in the home before it becomes a viable proposition.
Thanks for the reply. Would this technique be viable for a future orbital Space Shuttle design, or would an orbital Shuttle be traveling too fast? By that I mean, would it rip the wings off?
Why don't you try it first and find out for yourself rather than jumping to conclusions. We've had this in the UK for a while now, and it reduced my nuisance telemarketing calls from 3/day to about 3/year.
I'm trying to get my head around how the shuttlecock wing formation works for re-entry. Unfortunately their web site is a little bit snowed under at the moment for me to dig around much on their site.
Hopefully both. And if not this technology then one day something that is fast enough and dense enough to do the job. CPU power is one area where we can increase the speed of our systems. A Gigabye/Terabyte storage mechanism that could replace RAM, operate at the speed of RAM, or something close to the clock speed of the CPU would have terrific bandwidth potential, and give us a huge increase in overall performance. And being non-volatile hopefully it wouldn't need the same power requirements as todays RAM. Just think of the battery life you'd get out of a laptop.
Yeah, kind of;-) Though it's a true statement. The Alpha technology that was going to make EV8 so special isn't going to make it into the Itanium until Tukwilla arrives some time in 2007.
That's what "sudo -s" is for... it gives you a temporary "root" shell without having to know the root password. Assuming your rights in/etc/sudoers allow that.
Something that caught my attention in the review was the statement that root is disabled by default, with all management tasks being performed by sudo, and graphical tools that make use of it. Sounds like they've taken a leaf out of Apple's books.
Is this the first Linux distro to do this?
My personal experience of using Mac OS X now for the last 2+ years is that this works really well. If I really need to do anything that needs the root UID for any length of time, then "sudo -s" sorts me out and off I go. I've never needed to enable the root account once.
So is an active root account a thing of the past? I'm curious to know what you (the reader) think about that.
You can either get the Mac OS X driver for this card direct from Vodafone in Germany, here.
Or, Nova Media have a package that adds support not just for this card, but a range of other 3G cards as well as 3G and 2G phones. I'm not overly sure why, as Mac OS X comes with builtin support for 2G connections via a long list of phones already (as well as AddressBook and Calendar iSync support). And there are a number of free dial-up scripts out there to support some of the newer phones until Apple fill the gap.
I've already tried the default Vodafone driver, as one of my work colleagues has one of these cards and uses it to VPN into his company network when he's out and about. The install was a snap, just taking a few minutes. No reboot was necessary, and I was up and running. I was quite impressed. When the coverage improves (it's patchy at the moment) and the cost comes down a bit, I'll probably get one.
Hm, thinking about this some more though there would need to be some safeguard to protect people who's PC's got Owned from excessive bills. Maybe the ability for users to set a limit for themselves on the number of SMTP MB's sent per month before their connection gets locked out. Plus good support from their ISP on how to lock down their PC to avoid these issues in future.
At first I didn't like the idea of having to pay to send email, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
If it's really the only way left then it should be factored into the cost of the ISP service. i.e. a fixed price per month for downloading any data, and an additional cost per MB for outgoing SMTP traffic. I could live with that. I receive quite a lot of email, but that wouldn't be included in the additional cost. And I don't send that much either, so the extra cost to me would be negligible. For a spammer it would be crippling though.
In the case of OSX, Apple may be able to pay a licensing fee to get the new USB hardware standard included in their machines. Apple controls it's own hardware and though they make heavy use of Open Source (Darwin, FreeBSD) they have no problem with paying licensing fees if they're reasonable.
This is another one of the reasons why I've converted over to OSX. Apple will not want to go down this route and may try and resist it, but if it becomes inevitable then they will embrace it for the benefit of their customers. And it will be easier for them than for Linux vendors because the blend of licensing models they use gives them more room to maneuver in situations like this.
I know that the moral thing to do here is to resist and fight the good fight; but the other half of me that just wants to use my computer and not be bothered by any of this sh*t feels secure that my future interests are in good hands no matter what happens.
Apple have a Bluetooth keyboard, and mouse. And I use Bluetooth all the time to sync up the address book, calendar and todo items on my SE K700i with my PowerBook.
In fact probably the most use I have for Bluetooth is when I'm away on business, like this:
PowerBook Phone Internet
Just last week I was in a hotel room with dodgy mobile reception. The only way I could get a good signal was to place the phone on the window ledge in the bathroom. Thanks to Bluetooth I could still sit at the room desk and connect from about 15m away.
That depends on whether you''re buying more of the same hardware, or newer hardware with updated chipsets, etc. If your chosen production kernel supports your new hardware, then you can stay with the same kernel. But if not, then you'll need to choose a version that does. And if you want a common kernel across all systems, then in the latter case you'll have to upgrade the kernel on your older systems too.
That's just the way of things, and it's the same in the commercial world too, except that kernel updates are sometime bundled with patch kit releases, and other times you're forced into an entire OS upgrade to get the functionality you want. At least with OSS you get a bit more flexibility.
Personally I agree with you. Though pragmatically I think that they'll have to retain the money for a while first to: 1- recoup their up front investment (through lost earnings, advertising, travel, etc) and, 2- make sure they can generate enough cash to sustain the business in the long term.
Most new businesses don't make much if any profit for the first 1-2 years.
Before Bruce gets into answering that, assuming that he will, how about you first step out from behind the AC smoke screen and prove that you really are a Debian developer, not just a Troll.
Slashdot Mirror
If the cost is even half that, at $30 to get your name on the page, thats 1,667 names they're going to have to cram into the advert. And if only a portion of each donation goes towards the cost of the Ad, there'll be even more names. There'll be no space left for the message!
Someone has not thought this through at all.
The answer to this is quite simple. Apple decide to produce their own x86 systems, and only sell and support Mac OS X on their own products. Every other vendors x86 platforms they ignore. That way they get to control the size and quality of the HCL, can innovate in the same way they do today, and keep hold of their hardware profits.
So what's the point of that I hear you ask
I admit that I don't see this ever happening in reality. But I do think Apple could make it work in a profitable way if they wanted to.
Imagine this: download a movie or other video content on your Mac. Perhaps via the iTunes Store. Sync with your iPod. Drop your iPod into its dock at your entertainment center. Select content (a movie?) and play. Simple. Clean
I like that idea and can see how it would work in the future. But I think you've overlooked a couple of things:
- For one, they're going to have to get the download size way down. A few Gig's per movie is going to blow most people's daily usage limits by a big margin. More and more ISP's in the UK are capping 'unlimited' bandwidth at 1GB per day. To most people that's as good as unlimited, but for movies and such, no chance. They'd have to use something more space efficient, like dvix perhaps.
- For two, there's that oh so insignificant matter of piracy and protection. They wouldn't just start distributing raw ripped DVD's over the net, they'd get crucified. So you'd be looking at some new format that:
- And lastly, there's all that licensing crap they're going to have to get over before they can distribute film or tv over the net. And that's going to take as long to figure out as it did with iTMS for music. Especially for global distribution.
Personally I don't think tv/dvd content is anywhere near ready for prime time. We need gobs more bandwidth in the home before it becomes a viable proposition.
Nice idea though.
Thanks for the reply. Would this technique be viable for a future orbital Space Shuttle design, or would an orbital Shuttle be traveling too fast? By that I mean, would it rip the wings off?
Why don't you try it first and find out for yourself rather than jumping to conclusions. We've had this in the UK for a while now, and it reduced my nuisance telemarketing calls from 3/day to about 3/year.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating !!
Why don't you read the article? They quite clearly state that these switches are extremely robust and work quite well even after being dropped.
I'm trying to get my head around how the shuttlecock wing formation works for re-entry. Unfortunately their web site is a little bit snowed under at the moment for me to dig around much on their site.
Can someone explain how this works?
Thanks
Hopefully both. And if not this technology then one day something that is fast enough and dense enough to do the job. CPU power is one area where we can increase the speed of our systems. A Gigabye/Terabyte storage mechanism that could replace RAM, operate at the speed of RAM, or something close to the clock speed of the CPU would have terrific bandwidth potential, and give us a huge increase in overall performance. And being non-volatile hopefully it wouldn't need the same power requirements as todays RAM. Just think of the battery life you'd get out of a laptop.
A man can dream
Yeah, kind of
Put the following in
That's what "sudo -s" is for
Something that caught my attention in the review was the statement that root is disabled by default, with all management tasks being performed by sudo, and graphical tools that make use of it. Sounds like they've taken a leaf out of Apple's books.
Is this the first Linux distro to do this?
My personal experience of using Mac OS X now for the last 2+ years is that this works really well. If I really need to do anything that needs the root UID for any length of time, then "sudo -s" sorts me out and off I go. I've never needed to enable the root account once.
So is an active root account a thing of the past? I'm curious to know what you (the reader) think about that.
Merced goes on for years, uses lots of Alpha technology
No it doesn't. There isn't a scrap of Alpha technology in Itanium, not yet. It's still in the pipe line !!
Macka
You can either get the Mac OS X driver for this card direct from Vodafone in Germany, here.
Or, Nova Media have a package that adds support not just for this card, but a range of other 3G cards as well as 3G and 2G phones. I'm not overly sure why, as Mac OS X comes with builtin support for 2G connections via a long list of phones already (as well as AddressBook and Calendar iSync support). And there are a number of free dial-up scripts out there to support some of the newer phones until Apple fill the gap.
I've already tried the default Vodafone driver, as one of my work colleagues has one of these cards and uses it to VPN into his company network when he's out and about. The install was a snap, just taking a few minutes. No reboot was necessary, and I was up and running. I was quite impressed. When the coverage improves (it's patchy at the moment) and the cost comes down a bit, I'll probably get one.
Macka
Hm, thinking about this some more though there would need to be some safeguard to protect people who's PC's got Owned from excessive bills. Maybe the ability for users to set a limit for themselves on the number of SMTP MB's sent per month before their connection gets locked out. Plus good support from their ISP on how to lock down their PC to avoid these issues in future.
At first I didn't like the idea of having to pay to send email, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
If it's really the only way left then it should be factored into the cost of the ISP service. i.e. a fixed price per month for downloading any data, and an additional cost per MB for outgoing SMTP traffic. I could live with that. I receive quite a lot of email, but that wouldn't be included in the additional cost. And I don't send that much either, so the extra cost to me would be negligible. For a spammer it would be crippling though.
This is another one of the reasons why I've converted over to OSX. Apple will not want to go down this route and may try and resist it, but if it becomes inevitable then they will embrace it for the benefit of their customers. And it will be easier for them than for Linux vendors because the blend of licensing models they use gives them more room to maneuver in situations like this.
I know that the moral thing to do here is to resist and fight the good fight; but the other half of me that just wants to use my computer and not be bothered by any of this sh*t feels secure that my future interests are in good hands no matter what happens.
Damm, forgot to use ECODE to stop slashdot from mangling my text
Apple have a Bluetooth keyboard, and mouse. And I use Bluetooth all the time to sync up the address book, calendar and todo items on my SE K700i with my PowerBook.
In fact probably the most use I have for Bluetooth is when I'm away on business, like this:
PowerBook Phone Internet
Just last week I was in a hotel room with dodgy mobile reception. The only way I could get a good signal was to place the phone on the window ledge in the bathroom. Thanks to Bluetooth I could still sit at the room desk and connect from about 15m away.
That depends on whether you''re buying more of the same hardware, or newer hardware with updated chipsets, etc. If your chosen production kernel supports your new hardware, then you can stay with the same kernel. But if not, then you'll need to choose a version that does. And if you want a common kernel across all systems, then in the latter case you'll have to upgrade the kernel on your older systems too.
That's just the way of things, and it's the same in the commercial world too, except that kernel updates are sometime bundled with patch kit releases, and other times you're forced into an entire OS upgrade to get the functionality you want. At least with OSS you get a bit more flexibility.
Personally I agree with you. Though pragmatically I think that they'll have to retain the money for a while first to: 1- recoup their up front investment (through lost earnings, advertising, travel, etc) and, 2- make sure they can generate enough cash to sustain the business in the long term.
Most new businesses don't make much if any profit for the first 1-2 years.
Why would you need to change the kernel a year from now if you're still running on the same production hardware?
Before Bruce gets into answering that, assuming that he will, how about you first step out from behind the AC smoke screen and prove that you really are a Debian developer, not just a Troll.
Ctrl-Alt-Del
What, put my money where my mouth is