There's some additional info about BlueGene and what Livermore thinks of it here. What this interview neglects to mention is the millions of dollars being spent on IBM and internal developers to get this code (and any others) working on BlueGene. I was briefed by the hardware and software teams that built BlueGene and I can tell you, it's no easy task to bring apps to that platform. Kuznezov seems to trivialize it in the interview and I'm gonna have to go back and review the process again. Maybe it has changed since my briefing in early 2004, but somehow I doubt it.
In response to other postings, we do have industry contacts but you must appreciate that when an educational institute comes knocking asking for information, the priority on answering is way down on the list of things to do like emptying the garbage can...
Well, frankly, you have very poor relations with your corporate partners and need to work on this. I work in academia and can tell you that any of our faculty, or myself, that picks up the phone and calls one of our vendor contacts will have an answer immediately, if not within 24 to 48 hours. If you're not getting the same level of response then either you're doing something wrong, or your institution and/or students have a bad reputation.
You need to make friends with the engineers in the companies you're working with, not just the HR and management types. If you have a good relationship with multiple people within an organization, there's no reason for you not to get your questions answered. Again, unless you're constantly bugging them, or they're not interested in you or your students because they're just not that good.
I apologize if something I said upset you, but if you're having this much difficulty you need to take a step back and evaluate your situation objectively. If I may ask, what companies have you been targeting with your search and inquiries? Also, what's your current placement rate for your students, and their average salaries coming out? Do you have any alumni that would be interested in assisting? Please feel free to email me privately as there maybe be some additional assistance I can provide.
Catia is really an engineering CAD package, along the lines of Unigraphics. It's targeted primarily at industrial/mechanical applications and not architectural or more general design applications. Catia's interface, when I last played with it, was extraordinarily user-unfriendly and counter intuitive. I can only hope that subsequent versions over the last few years have addressed usability issues that long plagued that application and drove people to alternative CAD packages if they were not tied to Catia for job/market specific reasons. It certainly has its niche and is used in a lot of machine shops.
Don't get me wrong, AutoCAD is a piece of crap from a usability standpoint as well! It's gotten a lot better in the last five or six years, but a lot of useful things are still buried or hidden. There are very few robust CAD packages that are even remotely user friendly. In my experience, I prefer(ed) Microstation because it was easy to customize the interface and you could pull just about any menu/submenu out as a window, with tabs in some cases. The windows were like the tool and function windows in Adobe's design apps. It was also an application that really required a dual monitor setup to use effectively, and that really made the Mac platform superior at the time I was using it. I could have the main window and menus on one monitor and all my tool windows on the second one. Windows didn't easily (or at all) support multiple monitors with a continuous desktop until, what?, 1997, or was it Windows 98 that really got that nearly right? Anyway, it was long after I graduated with my architecture degree and had any use for a CAD package.
So a beta program (boot camp) that can screw up your system is good for work stuff? Where a system going down can cost you lots of productivity? I'd imagine it's more common and makes more sense to use it to play games.
Ummm...No, I believe I said that a virtual machine is better for "work stuff"...other than that isn't the rest what I pretty much said (other than the nonsense whining about it screwing up your computer)? BTW, it's BETA SOFTWARE!!!!!! As a perennial product BETA tester for various and sundry software houses for more than a decade I can tell you without an instant of pause:
YOU'RE A F**KING MORON IF YOU RUN BETA SOFTWARE ON A PRIMARY/PRODUCTION MACHINE!!!!
If you took the time to read the docs that shipped with Boot Camp Public Beta, you will find words to that effect in them, and every other piece of BETA software from any vendor. It's called legally covering your ass against morons that load BETA software on their primary machines and complain when it gets hosed.
I'm really not trying to be rude, but I have an architecture degree and know what CAD packages are available for both platforms. AutoDesk made AutoCAD for the Mac up until Release 12, when they decided to ditch the Mac platform. They have been reconsidering that stance with the latest development efforts for the next revision of AutoCAD.
Personally, I think AutoCAD sucks! I much prefer Microstation as a CAD package, but honestly have little use for one, period. However, there are times when I do review drawings for building projects on the Virginia Tech campus, and occasionally have to use AutoCAD. As a faculty member in the College of Engineering, I get AutoCAD for free (or close to it anyway). I can tell you that AutoCAD files from firms will often require AutoCAD (and certain add-ons) to be viewed. Architosh can read in simple AutoCAD and DXF files, but the more complex files it doesn't work so well on.
Not sure what planet that other guy was from, nor the moderators that upped him, but you simply spanked that one!
But, now that you've done that I'd like to hear/see your comment on the actual FA, or at least your opinion of the $9.99 flat movie rate and/or the $0.99 flat per audio track rate. Clearly, the market has accepted one, even at the grumblings of the RIAA (asswads, as some so eloquently named them). The artists are getting the short end of the stick on this deal, but I don't blame iTMS for that. Actually, I can see ITMS driving the artists to tell the record studios to f**k off and go straight to iTMS from their own recordings (given how cheap gear and recording software is these days). Now the movie studios still have considerably more entanglement when it comes to films. The actors, directors, cinematographers, and the like can't just tell the studios to f**k off because they need their facilities (soundstages and the like), if nothing else. Sure, you can grass-roots a movie together, Kevin Smith did it, but you can't do every project that way. So the flat rate is harder to defend for iTMS, and easier to attack from a MPAA perspective. Making a record is more-or-less going to cost about the same every time. Promotional budgets and the like are different for each one based on the artist, but the actual product, the record (CD, album, whatever you want to call it) costs the same. Movies aren't like that, at all! So, to me, I can see the MPAA's point about the flat rate. It's not the same animal. Now, Jobs' animated features may have similar production budgets, but live action films rarely do.
As someone that aspires to filmmaking I have a certain amount of bias, but am being very objective as I watch this play out. I really don't see a flat rate charge for movies working the same way it does for audio tracks. I am a strong proponent of the fixed rate, $0.99 per track model for music. It works. I see that model hurting the consumer, the studio, the directors, the cinematographers, and the actors, Hell, the whole movie industry end-to-end! if applied to movies. I don't see it as a positive agent for change in the movie industry as much as it is in the music industry. I guess that's the bottom line, IMHO.
Ok, for everyone that thinks, i.e., assumes and doesn't know, that Boot Camp from Apple or Parallel's Desktop for Macintosh were created for gamers, you're dead wrong!
Neither product claims to be able to play games, nor offers much in the way of support for gaming. Although, Boot Camp and running Windows XP natively on the hardware will certainly give you a better chance of doing so.
These applications are for people (like me) who work in an office that is Windows abundant so they can run stupid, lousy, poorly written pieces of software like Outlook and can get on the Exchange server to do what they're already doing BETTER with an open source product running someplace else. It's also for those of us that need access to applications like AutoCAD from time-to-time or some other application that only runs under Windows.
Yes, for some, the desire to play Windows-based games is driving them to these products, but they're no where near ready for that crowd. Parallels Desktop is RC2 and even though it has a version number of 2.1, it's really the first revision for the Intel-based Macs. Boot Camp, well, it's clearly labeled on the web page as "Public BETA", i.e., use at your own peril.
Please stop bashing a product simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do even though it wasn't designed (or intended) to do that task. Parallels is a very capable virtual machine application and is very easy to setup and use. As someone who has used a dual-boot system as his primary machine, I can tell you (IMHO) the Parallels product kicks dual booting in the ass! Dual boot is fine if you're only going to use the one partition for gaming. If you're talking about a work environment where you need to switch back and forth fairly regularly, dual-booting sucks! Again, IMHO.
1. Who ignored issues? I certainly am aware of all the ones you mentioned and a ton more. 2. Create an account and then you'll start getting modded up. 3. You have "5" twice in your post. Ooops!
He (Wabbit Wabbit) was talking about modding my post, not the one I was responding to. I have a firm grasp of the realities of Apple and the overall IT market. The guy (or anyone) that thinks Apple will sell OS X (or should) on anything but their own hardware is in a reality distortion field of their own.
Nope, hasn't "slipped my mind", just won't happen. Apple will not put their OS on ANY hardware that doesn't have an Apple logo on it; not as long as Steve Jobs lives and breathes, and probably longer. There is one thing that you are assuming, or missing, as well. You are assuming that Apple, after the transition to Intel is complete, will continue to use the exact same hardware you can get for any white box out there. You have missed the fact that intel has been trying to get Apple to switch architectures since the early 1990s. Why? Because they are sick and tired of boring white box hardware manufacturers and Microsoft. Intel wants to do cool new things that only a niche market player like Apple might be interested in. If you think that this Intel-Apple partnership isn't going to yield hardware technology that will CLEARLY differentiate Apple Intel-based hardware from the field you are in for a BIG surprise in a few years.
Here, here! to what you stated. I think everyone is over-reacting to the reasons why the kernel source hasn't been released, or has been closed. Again, speculation, but I wouldn't look to see it released before Leopard goes public, i.e. ships. I don't think the kernel disappearing from the source tree is a permanent thing, and Apple is ALWAYS cagey about future products and features. This behavior is legendary and totally in character. They are obviously protecting something for business reasons, and the why's and where for's remain to be seen.
First, there is no mention of Apple in the article you reference. In order to reinforce a claim of what a company "has planned" you should really find something that actually mentions those words in it, or at least the company.
Second, I know quite a bit about what "Apple has planned" for their OS based on the relationship we've built over the past three years and I can't even say (not because of NDA) what Apple has planned as far as using the TPM technology in their hardware and software. To make any claim is PURE speculation.
Third, there are probably a handful of people inside Apple that know what Apple has planned for the TPM technology and last I checked they weren't talking about it.
Fourth, I doubt, VERY, VERY seriously that Apple will take a Microsoft-like stance (as you have described) as far as signed/blessed code goes. It would not be in their interests to do so as they are still trying to woo developers to the platform from Microsoft.
Finally, "and effectively, Apple will have total and complete control over the machine and be able to operate with total secrecy with the hardware protecting their privacy, not yours." HUH? Where on Earth are you getting that idea from? What, ever, in Apple's history makes you even think they would want to do something like that? Can I get some of what you're smoking? The paranoia effects aside, it must be good stuff.
As a representative member of two of the communities he references (academia and HPC), I can say that having the kernel closed *DOES* cause concern. We have modified and compiled alternate kernels for Mac OS X running on System X at Virginia Tech. We did, however, get the kernel source and assistance from Apple to do this. I would imagine (not being perfectly positive) that legitimate requests for kernel source *MAY* still be an option even with the closed kernel.
The one thing that Yager does fail to address is the reason WHY Apple closed the kernel. I think everyone knows that answer, but for the sake of discussion I'll inject the prominent theory. The kernel was closed so Apple could protect the code used to lock the Mac OS to Apple Intel-based hardware. Until Apple can find, or invent, a better way to secure that Mac OS X will not get into the wild, i.e., installed on non-Apple hardware, or just gives up trying and declares that they will not support it running anywhere else, the kernel source will remain closed. I do believe that Apple will re-open the entire Mac OS X source in the future, but they are presently protecting their fragile sliver of market share in the mean time. Is it an affront to the OSS community? Yeah, but it's also business. They have a product to sell and shareholders to protect. Was it uncool? Yeah. Will the recent actions be nullified and a fully open Mc OS X re-released? I believe so.
Open the Windows OS code. That's the *ONLY* thing that will give MS any credibility among the OSS community at this point. If MS is truly serious about OSS and "interoperability" then they need to take a MAJOR leap of faith to show they mean it. They can keep the application code closed all they want, but the OS going open source would be a good thing for everyone!
Ok, let's rebut that devil's advocacy with a slight twist in point-of-view. What if the side effect is not physical, or even psychological? What if the side effect was that you ended up having no life. If all you did was work harder because you could stay awake and do more work. What kind of quality of life would you have? Does a lousy quality of life equate to a side effect of taking a drug to be smarter/work harder as might be the case relating to the article in question.
Personally, and I'm speaking simply for myself, I'd much rather be dumber and maybe do less with my work days if it meant I could spend more time with family and friends; if it meant I could travel more and see more of the world. I would gladly trade uber skill/knowledge acquisition for a less hectic, more enjoyable life (all inclusive). Bottom line, there's almost always a side effect to what we do. It might not affect our health-mental or physical-but it certainly may affect our quality of life.
Well, if you have to ask yourself those questions, then the answer, to you, is no. It's the ones that don't ask those questions, push themselves beyond their natural ability, and burn out before they're thirty-five that pay the price. Moral and ethical behavior starts by questioning your own. You're not crazy if you question your own sanity. You're friggin' nuts when you do things without question!
My take on this is, if you have to burn the candle that hard to get ahead, then maybe you're not right for that major, that job, that career. Taking a drug to get an edge, no matter how safe it may appear, is certainly not going to serve you throughout your life. You'll have missed more things that you should have enjoyed along the way. Plus, staying awake that long is bound to cause a psychotic episode. Going that long without REM sleep on a repeated basis is a recipe for disaster.
Well, with an alias like "nolife" I can see why you would be offended by my comments. As for me getting off my soap box, you seem to have missed the whole point of a web forum. You seem to be fine on your rickety soap box spouting off against something yourself. Quite interesting that the pot calls the kettle black. As for the tool and toy argument, you seem to have missed my point, again, probably because you spend more time using the tool as a toy as opposed to actually using it to seek and acquire knowledge. Yes, the functionality is there in any computer, that was not in dispute. The pathos that now falls on you is that derived from my point. That the tool is used more often as a toy, and that, truly, is sad; made more so by your act of exemplifying my point.
Absolutely not, especially when you also add in the time of application development with MPI. Why on earth would you spend $10,000.00USD for an OS to run a 20 node cluster when your real costs are in the porting and development of software to run on the cluster, not the cluster itself? MS has lost their rack trying to compete in this space! If big business is the target market for this, they're dumber than I thought. Any company CIO or manager that invests in this OS over a free Linux alternative should have their ass removed. The costs for a Windows-based cluster (TCO) would be astronomical when you include application development and porting time ON TOP of the initial cost of hardware and OS licensing! Oh wait, but MS will "support it", right? LMFAO! Sure, ok, they have no idea how much of a support nightmare they are walking into. They are selling an OS, not a turnkey cluster solution and will have no idea the minute details of a customer's cluster setup. They will have to take weeks to diagnose and fix user problems. Also, I can't see the turnkey providers, like Dell and HP, touching this with a ten meter cattle prod! They are having enough fun supporting their Linux installations, that are a lot more mature than this new Windows thingy. I don't see this going much of anywhere.
Ummm...I know of several clusters on our campus (VT) that are made of white boxes running Fedora, Gentoo, or Suse. One is a 200 node (400 CPU) Opteron cluster with a Myrinet interconnect named Anantham, and built by Dr. Varadarajan's graduate students. There are other smaller clusters ( 16 - 32 nodes ) of various design that are running on GigE. All of them built of white boxes and other off-the-shelf components ordered from mail-order companies. In the case of Anantham, all parts were ordered separately, i.e., RAM, motherboards, processors, cases, etc., and the system integration was done onsite. So, when you say, "Not to [sic] many are using Fedora or Slackware on some white box with parts from Best Buy to do HPC," I'm guessing you are referring to those in the TOP500 List? If so, yes, there aren't many that submit to the TOP500 List (from large sites) that are using a non-commercial version of Linux, i.e., RHEL. Many of the larger sites are going through first tier vendors (Dell, HP, IBM) for a turnkey cluster solution, but they are paying a premium for those systems for the sake of time to production. They could just as well buy white boxes, but they would be spending a great deal of their own time weeding out problem nodes and components that could be better spent on doing science and supporting users. Academia can afford to take the time to do this, DOE labs cannot, although, that paradigm is quickly shifting as academic budgets tighten and competition in the Computational Science and Engineering arenas heats up among research institutions.
Clusters (the topic of this original post) are not "traditionally [...] done by tuned versions of commercial Unices [sic]". Clusters are traditionally built with off-the-shelf components with Linux and specialized APIs and drivers for the interconnect being used. If you want to talk about HPC BEFORE 1998, then you are looking at large monolithic systems of a custom built nature.
System X does have a GigE network, but it is primarily used for management and job startup within the cluster. We have had a few users with specific MPICH2 needs that have used the GigE network for message passing, but the GigE network was not designed for that task. Our primary communication fabric is IB. We are currently running Mac OS X (10.3.9) on the system, but are evaluating alternatives.
I use that for the people that claim Steve does not like games and draw the conclusion that Apple will not push for game support, that connection of ideas does not make sense because one person responsible to a board of directors and share holders of a publicly traded company does not make those sweeping decisions based on something that small.
Ok, wanna make a bet? Ever wonder why Apple mice didn't have strain relief where the cable went into the mouse itself, until recently? Answer from an Apple hardware engineer: "Because Steve didn't like the way it looked."
Steve reigns ultimate power over ALL Apple products since coming back to the company in 1997. From everything I've heard about how things have worked in the product development cycles since 1997, Steve must have negotiated this level of control as part of his return.
The quality, speed, performance, and functionality may or may not be better then what is out there (mostly opinion factors) or better as a whole compared to other models of similar function but forst and foremost, thier products do stand out physically. That is the Apple claim to fame. If Apple can not make it different to stand out and make a profit, they will not make it at all.
Again, very little facts and a lot of supposition on your part. Apple isn't ONLY about looks. Sure, their products look better, or stranger, than a lot of others out there, but that's just them attracting people to their product; like a woman or man attracts the opposite sex. Apple sells products that WORK, right out of the box. That's Apple's appeal, driving vision and mission. Not making almost as good, or slightly better products just to make a profit. No company would exist long doing such a thing. Apple profits from their product philosophy because the markets they have historically held are not very technically savvy and have just wanted computers that provide utility with fewer hassles; not really caring too much about performance as long as they could get their work done.
This approach is changing within Apple as they branch out to new markets. They are still carrying the same credo, "make products that work out of the box", but are focusing more and more on overall performance to appeal to markets that demand such things from their hardware.
Getting back to your assertions about John (whom I know personally) and Steve (who I have yet to meet), do you know either man? Have you met them? Did you work along side them during a project to be able to back up any of your shots at what John knows about Steve; his likes and dislikes? I doubt it. John was high enough in the management structure at Apple to get a good read on Mr. Steve Jobs. Your comment about accountability by a CEO certainly does hold true in most publicly traded companies, but Apple isn't your everyday company either, especially with Steve Jobs at the helm. Bottom line, if he truly doesn't like it, it doesn't happen. It's hard to believe, but as long as Apple keeps turning profits, no one on the board or among the share holders is going to argue with the man. You may not like his style, but the man does know what he's doing and has proven himself time and time again. Again, not perfect in that respect, but doing better than most.
Wait a minute. Why was MY reply "Flamebait" and the parent, which was certainly baiting this type of response "Insightful". I'm not angry, just curious to know how that works exactly? My post is COMPLETELY plausible, and would make good business sense for both companies. The parent to my original reply is very argumentative in nature and makes some very poor assumptions about how business and the technology world work (relative to Apple, MS, and the gaming and digital music markets). Apple has momentum in the digital music market, MS wants to get in on that market and get their DRM to the top of the heap. MS has a really firm foot hold in the gamin market with the Xbox (taking a bath on profits to get there), Apple wants into the gaming market (let's suppose). This type of deal makes more sense than Apple launching ANOTHER console into a market that can barely tolerate the three major consoles in it now. But, remember that the digital music market was all but cornered by Creative, until Apple released the iPod. Apple may have odd ball fans, but they are a very smart company, overall, since Steve came back.
Ummm...the Xbox dev stations are Macs. Duh! Microsoft is sucking dust on the Xbox hardware. They are practically GIVING them away, i.e., selling them for a LOSS, just to flood the market. Let's hypothesize that Microsoft LICENSES the technology production rights to Apple, IF they (Apple) back the MS DRM and allow Windows Media files to play on iPods. MS gets a piece of the Apple iTunes Music Store pie, Apple gets a gaming platform for their hardware, and MS DRM gets a market boost. It's a DOUBLE WIN for MS, and a good compromise for Apple.
How you like them Apples? Ooooo...boggles the mind doesn't it!
First, it's not "just one man's opinion". The article is based on the realities of Apple's corporate vision and strategy. It's not about what John believes is true, it's about what John has observed to be true working for Apple.
Second, what he is stating isn't an argument. He's not challenging anything nor stating a divergent or opposing view to why Apple is not that interested in gaming, or the gaming market.
Third, if you think it's an opinion or argumentative in any way, then you are totally clueless about Apple as a corporation and should not comment at all.
Finally, if rumors are true, Apple may be making an experimental "foray", if you will, into the gaming market with an upcoming set of products, and Mac OS X improvements. I can assure you that it's an experiment at best and if sales (and developers) don't increase with the foray, it will die a very quick and painless death.
Apple is about creating tools, not toys. Yes, this is contrary to popular opinion-an opinion that Apple has had little success in reshaping-but it is, nevertheless, true. Apple's computers, for some mind boggling reason, have never been accepted as "real computers" because they weren't user customizable, nor able to have games played on them. Well, that's because they designed them to be tools, not toys! The unfortunate reality is that a majority of society's first entree into the computer world is buying a PC to play games on. I find this sad that someone would plunk down hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a tool only to use it as a distraction from reality; a complete and total time sink. When you stop and take a good hard look at it, it's really pathetic. I can't think of a similar purchase or endeavor to relate it to, it's that stupefying to me.
Sure, when I was eight, the initial thing that attracted me to a computer was the games, but as soon as I learned about programming (which was also at age eight) and the ability to create applications for utility purposes, science, etc., that initial attraction immediately turned into admiration of the tool.
Computers have the ability to change the world at the will of man. They can be used to create or discover things that man would take centuries to create or discover on his own, if ever. Sure, I will occasionally play a computer game, but I don't spend a lot of time doing so. I'd much rather be using it to create than to pretend. THAT'S an opinion. Feel free to argue with it all you want.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/699401.html
There's some additional info about BlueGene and what Livermore thinks of it here. What this interview neglects to mention is the millions of dollars being spent on IBM and internal developers to get this code (and any others) working on BlueGene. I was briefed by the hardware and software teams that built BlueGene and I can tell you, it's no easy task to bring apps to that platform. Kuznezov seems to trivialize it in the interview and I'm gonna have to go back and review the process again. Maybe it has changed since my briefing in early 2004, but somehow I doubt it.
In response to other postings, we do have industry contacts but you must appreciate that when an educational institute comes knocking asking for information, the priority on answering is way down on the list of things to do like emptying the garbage can...
Well, frankly, you have very poor relations with your corporate partners and need to work on this. I work in academia and can tell you that any of our faculty, or myself, that picks up the phone and calls one of our vendor contacts will have an answer immediately, if not within 24 to 48 hours. If you're not getting the same level of response then either you're doing something wrong, or your institution and/or students have a bad reputation.
You need to make friends with the engineers in the companies you're working with, not just the HR and management types. If you have a good relationship with multiple people within an organization, there's no reason for you not to get your questions answered. Again, unless you're constantly bugging them, or they're not interested in you or your students because they're just not that good.
I apologize if something I said upset you, but if you're having this much difficulty you need to take a step back and evaluate your situation objectively. If I may ask, what companies have you been targeting with your search and inquiries? Also, what's your current placement rate for your students, and their average salaries coming out? Do you have any alumni that would be interested in assisting? Please feel free to email me privately as there maybe be some additional assistance I can provide.
Catia is really an engineering CAD package, along the lines of Unigraphics. It's targeted primarily at industrial/mechanical applications and not architectural or more general design applications. Catia's interface, when I last played with it, was extraordinarily user-unfriendly and counter intuitive. I can only hope that subsequent versions over the last few years have addressed usability issues that long plagued that application and drove people to alternative CAD packages if they were not tied to Catia for job/market specific reasons. It certainly has its niche and is used in a lot of machine shops.
Don't get me wrong, AutoCAD is a piece of crap from a usability standpoint as well! It's gotten a lot better in the last five or six years, but a lot of useful things are still buried or hidden. There are very few robust CAD packages that are even remotely user friendly. In my experience, I prefer(ed) Microstation because it was easy to customize the interface and you could pull just about any menu/submenu out as a window, with tabs in some cases. The windows were like the tool and function windows in Adobe's design apps. It was also an application that really required a dual monitor setup to use effectively, and that really made the Mac platform superior at the time I was using it. I could have the main window and menus on one monitor and all my tool windows on the second one. Windows didn't easily (or at all) support multiple monitors with a continuous desktop until, what?, 1997, or was it Windows 98 that really got that nearly right? Anyway, it was long after I graduated with my architecture degree and had any use for a CAD package.
Go fuck yourself in the ear with a beer you rat bastards. That's how I would finished that one had I been able to post it before you. :-)
So a beta program (boot camp) that can screw up your system is good for work stuff? Where a system going down can cost you lots of productivity? I'd imagine it's more common and makes more sense to use it to play games.
Ummm...No, I believe I said that a virtual machine is better for "work stuff"...other than that isn't the rest what I pretty much said (other than the nonsense whining about it screwing up your computer)? BTW, it's BETA SOFTWARE!!!!!! As a perennial product BETA tester for various and sundry software houses for more than a decade I can tell you without an instant of pause:
YOU'RE A F**KING MORON IF YOU RUN BETA SOFTWARE ON A PRIMARY/PRODUCTION MACHINE!!!!
If you took the time to read the docs that shipped with Boot Camp Public Beta, you will find words to that effect in them, and every other piece of BETA software from any vendor. It's called legally covering your ass against morons that load BETA software on their primary machines and complain when it gets hosed.
I'm really not trying to be rude, but I have an architecture degree and know what CAD packages are available for both platforms. AutoDesk made AutoCAD for the Mac up until Release 12, when they decided to ditch the Mac platform. They have been reconsidering that stance with the latest development efforts for the next revision of AutoCAD.
Personally, I think AutoCAD sucks! I much prefer Microstation as a CAD package, but honestly have little use for one, period. However, there are times when I do review drawings for building projects on the Virginia Tech campus, and occasionally have to use AutoCAD. As a faculty member in the College of Engineering, I get AutoCAD for free (or close to it anyway). I can tell you that AutoCAD files from firms will often require AutoCAD (and certain add-ons) to be viewed. Architosh can read in simple AutoCAD and DXF files, but the more complex files it doesn't work so well on.
[golf claps] and "Huzzah!"
Not sure what planet that other guy was from, nor the moderators that upped him, but you simply spanked that one!
But, now that you've done that I'd like to hear/see your comment on the actual FA, or at least your opinion of the $9.99 flat movie rate and/or the $0.99 flat per audio track rate. Clearly, the market has accepted one, even at the grumblings of the RIAA (asswads, as some so eloquently named them). The artists are getting the short end of the stick on this deal, but I don't blame iTMS for that. Actually, I can see ITMS driving the artists to tell the record studios to f**k off and go straight to iTMS from their own recordings (given how cheap gear and recording software is these days). Now the movie studios still have considerably more entanglement when it comes to films. The actors, directors, cinematographers, and the like can't just tell the studios to f**k off because they need their facilities (soundstages and the like), if nothing else. Sure, you can grass-roots a movie together, Kevin Smith did it, but you can't do every project that way. So the flat rate is harder to defend for iTMS, and easier to attack from a MPAA perspective. Making a record is more-or-less going to cost about the same every time. Promotional budgets and the like are different for each one based on the artist, but the actual product, the record (CD, album, whatever you want to call it) costs the same. Movies aren't like that, at all! So, to me, I can see the MPAA's point about the flat rate. It's not the same animal. Now, Jobs' animated features may have similar production budgets, but live action films rarely do.
As someone that aspires to filmmaking I have a certain amount of bias, but am being very objective as I watch this play out. I really don't see a flat rate charge for movies working the same way it does for audio tracks. I am a strong proponent of the fixed rate, $0.99 per track model for music. It works. I see that model hurting the consumer, the studio, the directors, the cinematographers, and the actors, Hell, the whole movie industry end-to-end! if applied to movies. I don't see it as a positive agent for change in the movie industry as much as it is in the music industry. I guess that's the bottom line, IMHO.
Ok, for everyone that thinks, i.e., assumes and doesn't know, that Boot Camp from Apple or Parallel's Desktop for Macintosh were created for gamers, you're dead wrong!
Neither product claims to be able to play games, nor offers much in the way of support for gaming. Although, Boot Camp and running Windows XP natively on the hardware will certainly give you a better chance of doing so.
These applications are for people (like me) who work in an office that is Windows abundant so they can run stupid, lousy, poorly written pieces of software like Outlook and can get on the Exchange server to do what they're already doing BETTER with an open source product running someplace else. It's also for those of us that need access to applications like AutoCAD from time-to-time or some other application that only runs under Windows.
Yes, for some, the desire to play Windows-based games is driving them to these products, but they're no where near ready for that crowd. Parallels Desktop is RC2 and even though it has a version number of 2.1, it's really the first revision for the Intel-based Macs. Boot Camp, well, it's clearly labeled on the web page as "Public BETA", i.e., use at your own peril.
Please stop bashing a product simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do even though it wasn't designed (or intended) to do that task. Parallels is a very capable virtual machine application and is very easy to setup and use. As someone who has used a dual-boot system as his primary machine, I can tell you (IMHO) the Parallels product kicks dual booting in the ass! Dual boot is fine if you're only going to use the one partition for gaming. If you're talking about a work environment where you need to switch back and forth fairly regularly, dual-booting sucks! Again, IMHO.
1. Who ignored issues? I certainly am aware of all the ones you mentioned and a ton more. 2. Create an account and then you'll start getting modded up. 3. You have "5" twice in your post. Ooops!
He (Wabbit Wabbit) was talking about modding my post, not the one I was responding to. I have a firm grasp of the realities of Apple and the overall IT market. The guy (or anyone) that thinks Apple will sell OS X (or should) on anything but their own hardware is in a reality distortion field of their own.
Nope, hasn't "slipped my mind", just won't happen. Apple will not put their OS on ANY hardware that doesn't have an Apple logo on it; not as long as Steve Jobs lives and breathes, and probably longer. There is one thing that you are assuming, or missing, as well. You are assuming that Apple, after the transition to Intel is complete, will continue to use the exact same hardware you can get for any white box out there. You have missed the fact that intel has been trying to get Apple to switch architectures since the early 1990s. Why? Because they are sick and tired of boring white box hardware manufacturers and Microsoft. Intel wants to do cool new things that only a niche market player like Apple might be interested in. If you think that this Intel-Apple partnership isn't going to yield hardware technology that will CLEARLY differentiate Apple Intel-based hardware from the field you are in for a BIG surprise in a few years.
Here, here! to what you stated. I think everyone is over-reacting to the reasons why the kernel source hasn't been released, or has been closed. Again, speculation, but I wouldn't look to see it released before Leopard goes public, i.e. ships. I don't think the kernel disappearing from the source tree is a permanent thing, and Apple is ALWAYS cagey about future products and features. This behavior is legendary and totally in character. They are obviously protecting something for business reasons, and the why's and where for's remain to be seen.
First, there is no mention of Apple in the article you reference. In order to reinforce a claim of what a company "has planned" you should really find something that actually mentions those words in it, or at least the company.
Second, I know quite a bit about what "Apple has planned" for their OS based on the relationship we've built over the past three years and I can't even say (not because of NDA) what Apple has planned as far as using the TPM technology in their hardware and software. To make any claim is PURE speculation.
Third, there are probably a handful of people inside Apple that know what Apple has planned for the TPM technology and last I checked they weren't talking about it.
Fourth, I doubt, VERY, VERY seriously that Apple will take a Microsoft-like stance (as you have described) as far as signed/blessed code goes. It would not be in their interests to do so as they are still trying to woo developers to the platform from Microsoft.
Finally, "and effectively, Apple will have total and complete control over the machine and be able to operate with total secrecy with the hardware protecting their privacy, not yours." HUH? Where on Earth are you getting that idea from? What, ever, in Apple's history makes you even think they would want to do something like that? Can I get some of what you're smoking? The paranoia effects aside, it must be good stuff.
As a representative member of two of the communities he references (academia and HPC), I can say that having the kernel closed *DOES* cause concern. We have modified and compiled alternate kernels for Mac OS X running on System X at Virginia Tech. We did, however, get the kernel source and assistance from Apple to do this. I would imagine (not being perfectly positive) that legitimate requests for kernel source *MAY* still be an option even with the closed kernel.
The one thing that Yager does fail to address is the reason WHY Apple closed the kernel. I think everyone knows that answer, but for the sake of discussion I'll inject the prominent theory. The kernel was closed so Apple could protect the code used to lock the Mac OS to Apple Intel-based hardware. Until Apple can find, or invent, a better way to secure that Mac OS X will not get into the wild, i.e., installed on non-Apple hardware, or just gives up trying and declares that they will not support it running anywhere else, the kernel source will remain closed. I do believe that Apple will re-open the entire Mac OS X source in the future, but they are presently protecting their fragile sliver of market share in the mean time. Is it an affront to the OSS community? Yeah, but it's also business. They have a product to sell and shareholders to protect. Was it uncool? Yeah. Will the recent actions be nullified and a fully open Mc OS X re-released? I believe so.
Open the Windows OS code. That's the *ONLY* thing that will give MS any credibility among the OSS community at this point. If MS is truly serious about OSS and "interoperability" then they need to take a MAJOR leap of faith to show they mean it. They can keep the application code closed all they want, but the OS going open source would be a good thing for everyone!
It's full of stars!
Sorry, had to.
Ok, let's rebut that devil's advocacy with a slight twist in point-of-view. What if the side effect is not physical, or even psychological? What if the side effect was that you ended up having no life. If all you did was work harder because you could stay awake and do more work. What kind of quality of life would you have? Does a lousy quality of life equate to a side effect of taking a drug to be smarter/work harder as might be the case relating to the article in question.
Personally, and I'm speaking simply for myself, I'd much rather be dumber and maybe do less with my work days if it meant I could spend more time with family and friends; if it meant I could travel more and see more of the world. I would gladly trade uber skill/knowledge acquisition for a less hectic, more enjoyable life (all inclusive). Bottom line, there's almost always a side effect to what we do. It might not affect our health-mental or physical-but it certainly may affect our quality of life.
Well, if you have to ask yourself those questions, then the answer, to you, is no. It's the ones that don't ask those questions, push themselves beyond their natural ability, and burn out before they're thirty-five that pay the price. Moral and ethical behavior starts by questioning your own. You're not crazy if you question your own sanity. You're friggin' nuts when you do things without question!
My take on this is, if you have to burn the candle that hard to get ahead, then maybe you're not right for that major, that job, that career. Taking a drug to get an edge, no matter how safe it may appear, is certainly not going to serve you throughout your life. You'll have missed more things that you should have enjoyed along the way. Plus, staying awake that long is bound to cause a psychotic episode. Going that long without REM sleep on a repeated basis is a recipe for disaster.
Well, with an alias like "nolife" I can see why you would be offended by my comments. As for me getting off my soap box, you seem to have missed the whole point of a web forum. You seem to be fine on your rickety soap box spouting off against something yourself. Quite interesting that the pot calls the kettle black. As for the tool and toy argument, you seem to have missed my point, again, probably because you spend more time using the tool as a toy as opposed to actually using it to seek and acquire knowledge. Yes, the functionality is there in any computer, that was not in dispute. The pathos that now falls on you is that derived from my point. That the tool is used more often as a toy, and that, truly, is sad; made more so by your act of exemplifying my point.
Absolutely not, especially when you also add in the time of application development with MPI. Why on earth would you spend $10,000.00USD for an OS to run a 20 node cluster when your real costs are in the porting and development of software to run on the cluster, not the cluster itself? MS has lost their rack trying to compete in this space! If big business is the target market for this, they're dumber than I thought. Any company CIO or manager that invests in this OS over a free Linux alternative should have their ass removed. The costs for a Windows-based cluster (TCO) would be astronomical when you include application development and porting time ON TOP of the initial cost of hardware and OS licensing! Oh wait, but MS will "support it", right? LMFAO! Sure, ok, they have no idea how much of a support nightmare they are walking into. They are selling an OS, not a turnkey cluster solution and will have no idea the minute details of a customer's cluster setup. They will have to take weeks to diagnose and fix user problems. Also, I can't see the turnkey providers, like Dell and HP, touching this with a ten meter cattle prod! They are having enough fun supporting their Linux installations, that are a lot more mature than this new Windows thingy. I don't see this going much of anywhere.
Ummm...I know of several clusters on our campus (VT) that are made of white boxes running Fedora, Gentoo, or Suse. One is a 200 node (400 CPU) Opteron cluster with a Myrinet interconnect named Anantham, and built by Dr. Varadarajan's graduate students. There are other smaller clusters ( 16 - 32 nodes ) of various design that are running on GigE. All of them built of white boxes and other off-the-shelf components ordered from mail-order companies. In the case of Anantham, all parts were ordered separately, i.e., RAM, motherboards, processors, cases, etc., and the system integration was done onsite. So, when you say, "Not to [sic] many are using Fedora or Slackware on some white box with parts from Best Buy to do HPC," I'm guessing you are referring to those in the TOP500 List? If so, yes, there aren't many that submit to the TOP500 List (from large sites) that are using a non-commercial version of Linux, i.e., RHEL. Many of the larger sites are going through first tier vendors (Dell, HP, IBM) for a turnkey cluster solution, but they are paying a premium for those systems for the sake of time to production. They could just as well buy white boxes, but they would be spending a great deal of their own time weeding out problem nodes and components that could be better spent on doing science and supporting users. Academia can afford to take the time to do this, DOE labs cannot, although, that paradigm is quickly shifting as academic budgets tighten and competition in the Computational Science and Engineering arenas heats up among research institutions.
Clusters (the topic of this original post) are not "traditionally [...] done by tuned versions of commercial Unices [sic]". Clusters are traditionally built with off-the-shelf components with Linux and specialized APIs and drivers for the interconnect being used. If you want to talk about HPC BEFORE 1998, then you are looking at large monolithic systems of a custom built nature.
System X does have a GigE network, but it is primarily used for management and job startup within the cluster. We have had a few users with specific MPICH2 needs that have used the GigE network for message passing, but the GigE network was not designed for that task. Our primary communication fabric is IB. We are currently running Mac OS X (10.3.9) on the system, but are evaluating alternatives.
I use that for the people that claim Steve does not like games and draw the conclusion that Apple will not push for game support, that connection of ideas does not make sense because one person responsible to a board of directors and share holders of a publicly traded company does not make those sweeping decisions based on something that small.
Ok, wanna make a bet? Ever wonder why Apple mice didn't have strain relief where the cable went into the mouse itself, until recently? Answer from an Apple hardware engineer: "Because Steve didn't like the way it looked."
Steve reigns ultimate power over ALL Apple products since coming back to the company in 1997. From everything I've heard about how things have worked in the product development cycles since 1997, Steve must have negotiated this level of control as part of his return.
The quality, speed, performance, and functionality may or may not be better then what is out there (mostly opinion factors) or better as a whole compared to other models of similar function but forst and foremost, thier products do stand out physically. That is the Apple claim to fame. If Apple can not make it different to stand out and make a profit, they will not make it at all.
Again, very little facts and a lot of supposition on your part. Apple isn't ONLY about looks. Sure, their products look better, or stranger, than a lot of others out there, but that's just them attracting people to their product; like a woman or man attracts the opposite sex. Apple sells products that WORK, right out of the box. That's Apple's appeal, driving vision and mission. Not making almost as good, or slightly better products just to make a profit. No company would exist long doing such a thing. Apple profits from their product philosophy because the markets they have historically held are not very technically savvy and have just wanted computers that provide utility with fewer hassles; not really caring too much about performance as long as they could get their work done.
This approach is changing within Apple as they branch out to new markets. They are still carrying the same credo, "make products that work out of the box", but are focusing more and more on overall performance to appeal to markets that demand such things from their hardware.
Getting back to your assertions about John (whom I know personally) and Steve (who I have yet to meet), do you know either man? Have you met them? Did you work along side them during a project to be able to back up any of your shots at what John knows about Steve; his likes and dislikes? I doubt it. John was high enough in the management structure at Apple to get a good read on Mr. Steve Jobs. Your comment about accountability by a CEO certainly does hold true in most publicly traded companies, but Apple isn't your everyday company either, especially with Steve Jobs at the helm. Bottom line, if he truly doesn't like it, it doesn't happen. It's hard to believe, but as long as Apple keeps turning profits, no one on the board or among the share holders is going to argue with the man. You may not like his style, but the man does know what he's doing and has proven himself time and time again. Again, not perfect in that respect, but doing better than most.
Wait a minute. Why was MY reply "Flamebait" and the parent, which was certainly baiting this type of response "Insightful". I'm not angry, just curious to know how that works exactly? My post is COMPLETELY plausible, and would make good business sense for both companies. The parent to my original reply is very argumentative in nature and makes some very poor assumptions about how business and the technology world work (relative to Apple, MS, and the gaming and digital music markets). Apple has momentum in the digital music market, MS wants to get in on that market and get their DRM to the top of the heap. MS has a really firm foot hold in the gamin market with the Xbox (taking a bath on profits to get there), Apple wants into the gaming market (let's suppose). This type of deal makes more sense than Apple launching ANOTHER console into a market that can barely tolerate the three major consoles in it now. But, remember that the digital music market was all but cornered by Creative, until Apple released the iPod. Apple may have odd ball fans, but they are a very smart company, overall, since Steve came back.
Ummm...the Xbox dev stations are Macs. Duh! Microsoft is sucking dust on the Xbox hardware. They are practically GIVING them away, i.e., selling them for a LOSS, just to flood the market. Let's hypothesize that Microsoft LICENSES the technology production rights to Apple, IF they (Apple) back the MS DRM and allow Windows Media files to play on iPods. MS gets a piece of the Apple iTunes Music Store pie, Apple gets a gaming platform for their hardware, and MS DRM gets a market boost. It's a DOUBLE WIN for MS, and a good compromise for Apple.
How you like them Apples? Ooooo...boggles the mind doesn't it!
First, it's not "just one man's opinion". The article is based on the realities of Apple's corporate vision and strategy. It's not about what John believes is true, it's about what John has observed to be true working for Apple.
Second, what he is stating isn't an argument. He's not challenging anything nor stating a divergent or opposing view to why Apple is not that interested in gaming, or the gaming market.
Third, if you think it's an opinion or argumentative in any way, then you are totally clueless about Apple as a corporation and should not comment at all.
Finally, if rumors are true, Apple may be making an experimental "foray", if you will, into the gaming market with an upcoming set of products, and Mac OS X improvements. I can assure you that it's an experiment at best and if sales (and developers) don't increase with the foray, it will die a very quick and painless death.
Apple is about creating tools, not toys. Yes, this is contrary to popular opinion-an opinion that Apple has had little success in reshaping-but it is, nevertheless, true. Apple's computers, for some mind boggling reason, have never been accepted as "real computers" because they weren't user customizable, nor able to have games played on them. Well, that's because they designed them to be tools, not toys! The unfortunate reality is that a majority of society's first entree into the computer world is buying a PC to play games on. I find this sad that someone would plunk down hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a tool only to use it as a distraction from reality; a complete and total time sink. When you stop and take a good hard look at it, it's really pathetic. I can't think of a similar purchase or endeavor to relate it to, it's that stupefying to me.
Sure, when I was eight, the initial thing that attracted me to a computer was the games, but as soon as I learned about programming (which was also at age eight) and the ability to create applications for utility purposes, science, etc., that initial attraction immediately turned into admiration of the tool.
Computers have the ability to change the world at the will of man. They can be used to create or discover things that man would take centuries to create or discover on his own, if ever. Sure, I will occasionally play a computer game, but I don't spend a lot of time doing so. I'd much rather be using it to create than to pretend. THAT'S an opinion. Feel free to argue with it all you want.