Re: unholy OS wars
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 10:07 PM Wednesday 9/20/2006, Julia Thompson wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 11:49 AM Monday 9/11/2006, Gibson Jonathan wrote: [...] do you let the programmers self-test in a vacuum If so, you probably go through a _lot_ of testers that way. And you have to wonder about the reports they gasp out in the last stages of hypoxia. Dammit, Ronn!, I can't read anymore listmail tonight. You made me laugh. Aren't you the one who warns others about the dangers of drinking anything while reading list mail? Yup. And that hurts right now! Sorry. I hope you didn't pull anything loose. And I do hope you heal soon. Nothing pulled loose. Just some pain. :) It's getting a little bit better. And laughing is a lot more pleasant than coughing. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 11:49 AM Monday 9/11/2006, Gibson Jonathan wrote: [...] do you let the programmers self-test in a vacuum If so, you probably go through a _lot_ of testers that way. And you have to wonder about the reports they gasp out in the last stages of hypoxia. Dammit, Ronn!, I can't read anymore listmail tonight. You made me laugh. And that hurts right now! :) (Aside from the pain, I did appreciate it.) Julia so now you know where I am in my catch-up ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
At 10:07 PM Wednesday 9/20/2006, Julia Thompson wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 11:49 AM Monday 9/11/2006, Gibson Jonathan wrote: [...] do you let the programmers self-test in a vacuum If so, you probably go through a _lot_ of testers that way. And you have to wonder about the reports they gasp out in the last stages of hypoxia. Dammit, Ronn!, I can't read anymore listmail tonight. You made me laugh. Aren't you the one who warns others about the dangers of drinking anything while reading list mail? And that hurts right now! Sorry. I hope you didn't pull anything loose. And I do hope you heal soon. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 14 Sep 2006 at 3:37, William T Goodall wrote: OS X also has a significant share in this market with several supercomputing clusters in use. http://www.apple.com/science/ Nope, don't see the American DoD listed there. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 14 Sep 2006, at 7:42PM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006 at 3:37, William T Goodall wrote: OS X also has a significant share in this market with several supercomputing clusters in use. http://www.apple.com/science/ Nope, don't see the American DoD listed there. A quick Google gives this http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/colsa/ and this http://www.apple.com/itpro/profiles/echostorm/index.html for starters. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. - Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
Thank you Andrew for a much more reasonable tone.
You have cleared a few items up this time around and I'll respond in
time kind.
Claws sheathed.
On Sep 12, 2006, at 11:31 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote:
On 12 Sep 2006 at 6:38, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
Face it: If your making games you've forgotten more computer
technology
than regular folk will ever know exists. Assuming this isn't your
first game job.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with the *attitude* a person takes
towards technology!
I'm in games because I'm interested in telling a story, games happen
to be the medium. I also write short stories. (And yes, if you're
interested I would post a spare one to the list).
Technology *itself* has no interest to me, just its uses.
Of course. Wonderful motivation.
Which has nothing to do with how the bus driver or cook would view your
work, which was my own point. Or did you even notice in your haste?
It begs the question: Why are you ashamed of having technical
knowledge?
Isn't it just another hat you can wear?
Why do you have a problem with the fact that some people who can use
technology don't view it as sacred?
What, no answer, again?!?
Anyway, I don't worship at any alter. Why do you insist I do?
I grew up in a dirt floor cabin in the woods. I live exceedingly
simple and spend little - exactly as I did when I was a more
high-flying {so to speak} entrepreneur back when we had a proper
economy. I love tools and can't imagine living without them. It
started with a pencil and paper for drawing and has evolved ever-so
much since then. I guess that makes me a snob all right, because I
don't want to live in a cave.
I do appreciate simpler living and getting things back to basics. I
work hard to remove all EM and RF from my environment as well as the
numerous chemical agents our tech tools are made from and exude
throughout their useful life. I also believe our current
socio-economic-industrial model is congenitally flawed and the cracks
show up more and more. My wife runs a surf camp for women in Mexico
where we spend a great deal of our free time loving the utterly
low-tech fishing villages - where they only recently got more than one
phone line in. I am proud to be a pioneering contributor to Burning
Man from it's inception. I fail to see in what I've written that
dismisses these values.
I simply differ on your terms.
No, you're being rude and insulting because I'm bursting your
preconceptions.
Foolish mortal. I feel no pinprick shattering anything of the sort. I
am confirming a judgment of you as an erstwhile misanthropic sucking at
the tit of the system you clearly despise. You've rarely made any
points at all in your quest to squelch my POV. Lots of heat, not a lot
of light - until lately.
Sure, function is important, but I simply argue it's best to
have both.
Okay, so you care about it. I don't. I don't claim that anyone else
should
share my views, but don't speak for me.
Great. Good for you! Ignore my points and watch the train wreck... I
really don't care if you make the half-assed goods that get left at the
waysides of time - and rather expect it thus far. You want to make an
anti-war game, then what good is your months of toil if nobody plays it
because the christopathic Left Behind game is more usable to the
marketplace? What a foolish enterprise if your truly UN-concerned
about having an impact. If this were so I'd argue your only looking
for a paycheck and you can drop the altruism.
Of course, you may be motivated to see it fail as a chip to place on
your lifelong shoulder, proof of how a cruel world doesn't deserve your
fine works. Another excuse to use caustic words in email discussions,
that sort of thing.
Your arguing it's either-or.
No, that is YOUR argument. What I said was that I don't rate how
something looks in the criteria for if I will find something useful
or not. Sure, once I've decided to get something, if I have 2 items
which do it for the same price I'll pick the prettier. But that's
litterally the last consideration on my list.
interface the iPod success proves Ease Of Use is a term with teeth.
And interface is a pure useability issue. Thing is, my minidisk
recorder is also easy to use. So why should I spend cash on something
else? (the ability to record is, for me, required).
You are dead wrong on usability.
How is usability not in the realm of function?
What good is an el cheap-o product if nobody can figure out how to use
it?
Sure, it could be better, Sure, it could be cheaper. So what? Time
will do that.
Dream on. Future devices will have DRM lockdowns which make them
considerably less useful. Heck, iPod's do for their legal tunes and
its getting more restrictive every other update or so. To me, that's
a pure restriction on function.
Your arguing that mass market consumer component electronics will not
get cheaper?
DRM = Probably. But I run all my music
Re: unholy OS wars
On 13 Sep 2006 at 7:20, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
Why do you have a problem with the fact that some people who can use
technology don't view it as sacred?
What, no answer, again?!?
Anyway, I don't worship at any alter. Why do you insist I do?
Because it's evidently a creed for you, and you insist on making
assumptions. So that's one made back. It's as valid as yours.
I grew up in a dirt floor cabin in the woods. I live exceedingly
simple and spend little - exactly as I did when I was a more
Shrug, I'm a city boy. Wilderness is nice, but I prefer living
somewhere with infrastructure. (Tech is in no way bad or dirty as
far as I'm converned, I'm just not interested in anything but the
uses I can put it to).
the tit of the system you clearly despise. You've rarely made any
You're making an assumption again. And you're wrong. Again. I don't
despise anyone who's tolerant of other views, as you are not.
And interface is a pure useability issue. Thing is, my minidisk
recorder is also easy to use. So why should I spend cash on something
else? (the ability to record is, for me, required).
You are dead wrong on usability.
How is usability not in the realm of function?
That's precisely what I said. Useability is a pure function issue,
and is *thus* very important to me. The minidisk player fills what I
need perfectly. I'm only going to move to something else as and when
I'm offered a substantial increase in functionality, or the minidisk
recorder dies.
Dream on. Future devices will have DRM lockdowns which make them
considerably less useful. Heck, iPod's do for their legal tunes and
its getting more restrictive every other update or so. To me, that's
a pure restriction on function.
Your arguing that mass market consumer component electronics will not
get cheaper?
DRM = Probably. But I run all my music through as AIFF {call me a
snob} - until I got this small 4GB Nano and there I only use my own
ripped MP3's. Someone will work around this if it becomes too onerous
and we'll all move in that direction.
Cheaper, sure. But less useable. Apple's leading the charge to lock
down media devices with DRM. This is very much part of how I see
things: DRM is a simple and plain negative because it removes
function.
I'm shipping a story, in the form of a game. The medium is not the
message. Rogue Trooper, for example, is basically a paen on the
futility of war.
That sounds like an oxymoron of a game there.
You think selling a shoot'em-up is going to teach people not to
An utterly incorrect assumption again. It's not there to TEACH people
directly, anymore than Brin's novels do. They are, and Rogue Trooper
IS, a story. They are in a different medium, sure, but that does not
dictate the message.
Why not film a documentary?
Because that's not a story. I'm not interested in telling about real
life, I'm interested in telling a story.
called you on it and I'm glad you've stopped, but your silence is
damning and makes a mockery of your finger-wagging here. I have
Your assumptions say all I need to know about you - you're just
another internet troll.
move small dev groups to do this. Your management needs to insist on
the funds to test properly as part of the package - else the whole
investment falls over in a heap. Publishers ought to see the value of
Funny, Rogue Trooper's selling widely, especially in America and is
widely praised for its story. Expanding the market is not what
Rebellion do. This isn't a descision made on my level, it's a
descision from the very top. I'm not there. Yet.
allowing this Trojan beast into all reaches of our government and
business.
*laughs*
That's a case for Linux, *not* the Mac.
Agreed. Never made any other case except to point out a Mac is better
secured than PC.
No, you're not. Because bluntly Mac's are just another OS as far as
security is concerned. It has none of the advantages of open source
code path review that Linux has in terms of security.
Keep your assumptions to yourself. Really.
AndrewC
Dawn Falcon
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 14 Sep 2006, at 1:47AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 13 Sep 2006 at 7:20, Gibson Jonathan wrote: Agreed. Never made any other case except to point out a Mac is better secured than PC. No, you're not. Because bluntly Mac's are just another OS as far as security is concerned. It has none of the advantages of open source code path review that Linux has in terms of security. http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html Keep your assumptions to yourself. Really. You should try that. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ If you listen to a UNIX shell, can you hear the C? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 14 Sep 2006 at 2:22, William T Goodall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006, at 1:47AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 13 Sep 2006 at 7:20, Gibson Jonathan wrote: Agreed. Never made any other case except to point out a Mac is better secured than PC. No, you're not. Because bluntly Mac's are just another OS as far as security is concerned. It has none of the advantages of open source code path review that Linux has in terms of security. http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html core. Not the entire OS, as GNU/Linux. THAT is the critical point. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 14 Sep 2006, at 2:32AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006 at 2:22, William T Goodall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006, at 1:47AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 13 Sep 2006 at 7:20, Gibson Jonathan wrote: Agreed. Never made any other case except to point out a Mac is better secured than PC. No, you're not. Because bluntly Mac's are just another OS as far as security is concerned. It has none of the advantages of open source code path review that Linux has in terms of security. http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html core. Not the entire OS, as GNU/Linux. THAT is the critical point. It's not 'none' though is it? None/some/all are different you know. OS X clearly has at least some of the open source advantages of Linux and certainly a great more than Windows. What about the proprietary ATI and Nvidia drivers on Linux? Or Flash? Or Oracle? Or Java? It's possible to run a completely 'pure' open source Linux, but how many actually are? Purity Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Every Sunday Christians congregate to drink blood in honour of their zombie master. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 14 Sep 2006 at 2:58, William T Goodall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006, at 2:32AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006 at 2:22, William T Goodall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006, at 1:47AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 13 Sep 2006 at 7:20, Gibson Jonathan wrote: Agreed. Never made any other case except to point out a Mac is better secured than PC. No, you're not. Because bluntly Mac's are just another OS as far as security is concerned. It has none of the advantages of open source code path review that Linux has in terms of security. http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html core. Not the entire OS, as GNU/Linux. THAT is the critical point. It's not 'none' though is it? None/some/all are different you know. OS X clearly has at least some of the open source advantages of Linux and certainly a great more than Windows. Nope. But to people like, say, the US Department of Defence, the difference is quite clear. A cursory google search shows how they're using large numbers of Linux systems, especially as heavy duty data processing units and servers. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 14 Sep 2006, at 3:13AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 14 Sep 2006 at 2:58, William T Goodall wrote: It's not 'none' though is it? None/some/all are different you know. OS X clearly has at least some of the open source advantages of Linux and certainly a great more than Windows. Nope. But to people like, say, the US Department of Defence, the difference is quite clear. That's because many scientists and engineers prefer to use a UNIX environment and Linux has often displaced the ailing HP/Apollo/SGI systems they previously used. A cursory google search shows how they're using large numbers of Linux systems, especially as heavy duty data processing units and servers. OS X also has a significant share in this market with several supercomputing clusters in use. http://www.apple.com/science/ -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux. - Bill Joy. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
Yawn, Andrew you are becoming as predictable as a one-note Samba. OK, I have time just now... let's really start to dance and see what moves you got beyond boyish bluster. Clear the floor, everyone. Thermal suits and flame-throwers at the ready? On Sep 11, 2006, at 10:39 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 11 Sep 2006 at 9:49, Gibson Jonathan wrote: My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you? You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this topic. Expect push-back. It's called reason, applied, and a defence of a tolerant view. And Except what I'm getting from you isn't push-back, it's mudslinging. LoL... my, aren't we full of ourselves? Wasn't your first sentence something about blithering retards? Your defense of tolerance is just a silly offensive attempt to distract from a weak position. Charging into the thread with bipolar words of IN-tolerance is a sure way to win an argument - NOT. Your obviously keen to inflame, or is English a second language for you in order to plead ignorance? Explain in your own caustic words just how this approach is reasonable. Mudslinging it might actually be if I'd told everyone something like... PC-minded developers are micro-cephalic cretins who are simply too congenitally scared to venture beyond the safety fencing of the Gates herd... and can you prove you don't have a MicroSoft brand seared on your hindquarters? If I was mudslinging. As much fun a dance partner as you may turn out to be, up to now I've seen little reason to give you much more than a few throw away lines. You're boring me, frankly, but I'm toe-stepping bravely on hoping to salvage a conversation out of this in spite of your two left feet. By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Your Absolute rubbish. A lot of them these days have digital cameras, have digiboxes, have ipods. I don't have any camera, I don't have a TV whatsoever, I don't have a MP3 player. None of these things are USEFUL to me. Tech is a pure tool - that I have kepy skills as a tech is because those skills are purely useful, it gets me cheaper PC's and is considered a useful skill by others. Monkeys can also push colored buttons and make sign language, but they aren't uplifted - yet. Riddle me this: can regular folk program such devices? Do they have a working understand of hardware substrates? Read functional flow diagrams of how it works? Open the instructions and follow along? Face it: If your making games you've forgotten more computer technology than regular folk will ever know exists. Assuming this isn't your first game job. WARNING: You maintain a stale air about you might want to check your sell-by date because you appear to be peddling old goods. Good thing your proud of being so damn cheap. Tech is a means to an end. I don't care if you paint chapel ceilings with cherubs farting rainbows when your not spouting off about your critically superior abilities: to most people what little you've described of yourself counts as a techie. Too bad if this bursts some thin bubble you hold dear, but its the relative scale I'm talking about that you can't seem to address. Widen the topic if your so offended by the expectation you yourself have created here. It begs the question: Why are you ashamed of having technical knowledge? Isn't it just another hat you can wear? there are vast technical reaches remain unexplored - you are in fact in that specialized subspecies known as the Game Developer. There is no subspecies called Game Developer when it comes to views of technology. The vast majority are technophile, I am not. Games are just ONE medium, and the medium is not the message. I simply found your claim of ignorance odd and wondered why. Interest, not ignorance. Got your Marshall Macluhan memorized yet? I haven't heard anybody spew his good words so much since... college. Put it up there on a shelf next to Edward Tufte when you think you've got it down pat. All you've said about yourself is in tech terms within a tech conversation. You said you where NOT a techie as prelude to a technical explanation. I simply differ on your terms. You were pleading ignorance of the deep technology one COULD be conversant with. You know, there's always someone richer and thinner than oneself. I was pointing out a lack of perspective on where along that tech spectrum you might actually sit. I read your words - the first time. Some people think an enormous HVAC system hanging on the outside off building is an engineering solution whereas I'd call it an eyesore that reflects poor planning and design. That's nice. I don't care - if it works better than the other soloutions, then aesthetics can take the back seat. Again, function and not flash is what I care about. What a limited web we weave... Your assertion that function is the measure
Re: unholy OS wars
On 12 Sep 2006 at 6:38, Gibson Jonathan wrote: Face it: If your making games you've forgotten more computer technology than regular folk will ever know exists. Assuming this isn't your first game job. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the *attitude* a person takes towards technology! I'm in games because I'm interested in telling a story, games happen to be the medium. I also write short stories. (And yes, if you're interested I would post a spare one to the list). Technology *itself* has no interest to me, just its uses. It begs the question: Why are you ashamed of having technical knowledge? Isn't it just another hat you can wear? Why do you have a problem with the fact that some people who can use technology don't view it as sacred? I simply differ on your terms. No, you're being rude and insulting because I'm bursting your preconceptions. Sure, function is important, but I simply argue it's best to have both. Okay, so you care about it. I don't. I don't claim that anyone else should share my views, but don't speak for me. Your arguing it's either-or. No, that is YOUR argument. What I said was that I don't rate how something looks in the criteria for if I will find something useful or not. Sure, once I've decided to get something, if I have 2 items which do it for the same price I'll pick the prettier. But that's litterally the last consideration on my list. interface the iPod success proves Ease Of Use is a term with teeth. And interface is a pure useability issue. Thing is, my minidisk recorder is also easy to use. So why should I spend cash on something else? (the ability to record is, for me, required). Sure, it could be better, Sure, it could be cheaper. So what? Time will do that. Dream on. Future devices will have DRM lockdowns which make them considerably less useful. Heck, iPod's do for their legal tunes and its getting more restrictive every other update or so. To me, that's a pure restriction on function. I'd use my mini-disc too, if it wasn't broken. Or even my old DAT machine, but again, time has taken it's toll on moving parts. Shrug, mine isn't. When it does, or when someone shows me another device with a clear and useful advantage over my minidisk recorder will I look at getting something else. with such pride over self-proclaimed reasoning skills and purity of Again, your assumption. I never typed anything of the sort. let me give a little history Guess what? I could care less, since you're rude. Your fooling nobody but yourself with this usefulness-only mantra. I never said I was trying to fool anyone, you're just being a fool by assuming that I was trying to. I didn't say I was, you just went right ahead and assumed it. your trying to ship a frivolous, time-sucking, distraction of a game no-less! I'm shipping a story, in the form of a game. The medium is not the message. Rogue Trooper, for example, is basically a paen on the futility of war. You apparently can't take criticism Yes, I can. But you're plain insulting - you're reading again and again things I never typed and are responding rudely to them. I haven't seen one piece of critisism, just techno-snobbery. according to what you've offered to this conversation. I take a wider view because I need versatile image generation easy media integration: found primarily on Macs since the dawn of this multimedia era. Microsoft has been playing catchup a long time on this one. Oh completely. And the guys on 2000AD comics, same company and next door, *do* use Mac's. All the game dev guys use PC's, though, since every single tool we use is written for the PC - historical inertia, user base and the console developer tools keep it that way. There is no choice to the matter for the game developer. It's how it is, and you deal with it. (Ports are allready a cornered market...) Re-iterative design cycles are there for a reason and user testing and Okay, two things: Firstly, game devs don't interact directly with users, in the main. That's what publishers do, and they return reports to the dev. No, it's not ideal but it's the publishers cash. We get new hires to play the games Second, you're trying to say that, somehow, an emphasis on function in my purchasing descisions - and that is what I've been talking about, pure and simple - carrys over to my game design work. Because it does and it doesn't - I'm quite aware of the aeesthetic angle of games, but I'm also one of the people who prefers a minimal interface for immersion. allowing this Trojan beast into all reaches of our government and business. *laughs* That's a case for Linux, *not* the Mac. Explain yourself with some clarity - if you can. No, I've been perfectly plain. Stop making assumptions and it's quite clear. Surprise, this isn't a pub pissing-match. You decided to be a tech-snob and to make assumptions, shrug, going on the offensive about
Re: unholy OS wars
My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you?
You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this
topic.
Expect push-back.
On Sep 8, 2006, at 1:48 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote:
On 7 Sep 2006 at 20:04, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
As an artist hovering around the computer industry since High School I
find it amazing that AndrewC initially claims to be a non-expert, yet
sells computers he regularly builds. Andrew, you undercut yourself on
Go back and actually read it. What I said is I'm not a technophile. I
don't get caught up in the wow factor, the tech for the sake of
itself. What the tech does, the end result, is all I'm interested in.
That I'm fully conversant with how to handle the tech relates to the
fact that it's a useful skill which I've maintained because it's seen
of value - I frequently do simple stuff like driver changes at work
for the less technically inclined when the IT department as too busy.
It's years since I was a professional coomputer tech. I design games
these days.
how else does one troubleshoot? I do not understand what is gained
from such a pre-loaded frame on the conversation. That you bluster
with rudeness and intended insults reveals an arrogance I find
irresistible - where's my pile of throwing rocks and favorite sling?
By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are
a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Your
hip deep in it by Normal standards and I have no reason to retract my
initial call. Your knowledge of arcane digital substrates is huge
compared to most grandmothers and although you may feel you still feel
there are vast technical reaches remain unexplored - you are in fact in
that specialized subspecies known as the Game Developer.
I simply found your claim of ignorance odd and wondered why.
As you couldn't even be bothered to properly read what I wrote, and
have put your own ignorant misunderstandings forwards purely so that
you could bash me, bluntly I'd of prefered it if you'rd of stayed
busy. And personally I prefer an axe.
And I couldn't care less about the aesthetics of the case, for
example. My current PC's best features are not that it's blue and
grey, but that the power button is on the top front and that it has a
carry handle on top.
Some people think an enormous HVAC system hanging on the outside off
building is an engineering solution whereas I'd call it an eyesore that
reflects poor planning and design.
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a tad
I don't have a MP3 player. There's nothing wrong with my minidisk
recorder (which I was given ages back for recording lectures in
University, since I'm dyslexic) for listening to music on the go.
Tender spot rubbed wrong?
Hey, stop jumping at shadows. I love mini-disc, but you have to admit
No Moving Parts makes more sense long term. Welcome to the new
millennia!
Ask your
mother writing letters, sister ripping CD's, or cousin working at the
car repair what machine perks their interest and more often than not
they point at a Mac
The asethetics have zero to do with function. Sure, most PC cases are
ugly. It's a case. I really could't care less on the topic.
In reality you, Andrew, are heir to the mainframe and mini support
class of technicians who migrated out of the air conditioned
I'm a games designer. To quote an overused phrase, The medium is not
the message.
You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire It
looks good so it must be superior class who are either gamers who go
for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's.
Rubbish. I'll thank you to not project your own shadows upon me. I
save my admiration for those designs that are the best of both worlds.
Anybody can, and they do, design swiss army knife dood-ads hastily
attached to a box trying to grab attention, but getting multiple uses
out of a single feature simplifies the overall design, makes for
greater product longevity, and fewer COG parts or repairs.
You do user testing of that game your working on don't you? Or, do you
let the programmers self-test in a vacuum
employed and users grateful to get them running, again. Macs simply
didn't require such overhead, and still don't - relatively speaking.
'Course not, you can support more 'NIX-based computers than you can
Windows with the same staff. Been known for ages. There's nothing
magical about Apple in that respect.
Even under the old Mac OS it was rare I had to do a fresh install
{even
as a developer} and since the advent of OS X it's even better as I've
only installed from discs when Apple issues a major upgrade - about
once a year.
So more frequently than I'm forced to reach for the Windows disks
then (24-30 months).
'Cept I don't have to do it even as often as your example.
I install fresh when I want a feature
Re: unholy OS wars
On 11 Sep 2006 at 9:49, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you?
You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this
topic.
Expect push-back.
It's called reason, applied, and a defence of a tolerant view. And
Except what I'm getting from you isn't push-back, it's mudslinging.
By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are
a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Your
Absolute rubbish. A lot of them these days have digital cameras, have
digiboxes, have ipods. I don't have any camera, I don't have a TV
whatsoever, I don't have a MP3 player. None of these things are
USEFUL to me.
Tech is a pure tool - that I have kepy skills as a tech is because
those skills are purely useful, it gets me cheaper PC's and is
considered a useful skill by others.
there are vast technical reaches remain unexplored - you are in fact in
that specialized subspecies known as the Game Developer.
There is no subspecies called Game Developer when it comes to views
of technology. The vast majority are technophile, I am not. Games are
just ONE medium, and the medium is not the message.
I simply found your claim of ignorance odd and wondered why.
Interest, not ignorance.
Some people think an enormous HVAC system hanging on the outside off
building is an engineering solution whereas I'd call it an eyesore that
reflects poor planning and design.
That's nice. I don't care - if it works better than the other
soloutions, then aesthetics can take the back seat. Again, function
and not flash is what I care about.
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a tad
I don't have a MP3 player. There's nothing wrong with my minidisk
recorder (which I was given ages back for recording lectures in
University, since I'm dyslexic) for listening to music on the go.
Tender spot rubbed wrong?
Hey, stop jumping at shadows. I love mini-disc, but you have to admit
No Moving Parts makes more sense long term. Welcome to the new
millennia!
No, welcome to a waste of cash. As long as the minidisk recorder
works, it makes absolutely zero sense to waste cash on something
which can't even record, has battery life issues compared and are
extremely fragile.
YOU'RE the one jumping because I don't share your technophile
outlook. This is normal.
You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire It
looks good so it must be superior class who are either gamers who go
for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's.
Rubbish. I'll thank you to not project your own shadows upon me. I
save my admiration for those designs that are the best of both worlds.
There's one technophile world, and your snobbery is the so-called
shadow which is entirely your own..from your nose, as you look down
at me for not sharing your views.
Anybody can, and they do, design swiss army knife dood-ads hastily
attached to a box trying to grab attention, but getting multiple uses
out of a single feature simplifies the overall design, makes for
greater product longevity, and fewer COG parts or repairs.
Multi-uses can make something more complex, generalising is worse
than useless. Look at the IBM PS/2 for a good example of that. Also,
longevity is utterly unrelated to multi-use, a single use tool in
many cases is more robust since it only has to be designed for the
stress of that single use, and so on.
You do user testing of that game your working on don't you? Or, do you
let the programmers self-test in a vacuum
Of course I do. This has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Router with comprehensive firewall (on a linux core), check. Free
antivirus, check. Free anti-spyware, check. There we go! (Oh, there's
spam, but I haven't used Outlook in a decade at home)
Nice. Apple's is pretty good out the box as well.
And if it was the majority system it would have a lot of attacks as
well. You know fullwell it's a pure self-generated popularity issue.
Tech-as-a-tool is NOT popular in todays society, as you prove. Shrug,
that doesn't bother me either.
AndrewC
Dawn Falcon
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
At 11:49 AM Monday 9/11/2006, Gibson Jonathan wrote: My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you? You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this topic. Expect push-back. [...] By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Since Mundanes is such an overworked term . . . [...] I love mini-disc, but you have to admit No Moving Parts makes more sense long term. Like the format will last long enough for the hardware to wear out. Welcome to the new millennia! All of them? [...] do you let the programmers self-test in a vacuum If so, you probably go through a _lot_ of testers that way. And you have to wonder about the reports they gasp out in the last stages of hypoxia. [...] Evangelism of any particular platform for anything but price/performance and functionality makes me roll my eyes. Does compatibility with other people whose stuff you have to be able to read and run fit in there somewhere? -- Ronn! :P Professional Smart-Aleck. Do Not Attempt. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 11 Sep 2006 at 12:47, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: [...] Evangelism of any particular platform for anything but price/performance and functionality makes me roll my eyes. Does compatibility with other people whose stuff you have to be able to read and run fit in there somewhere? If it's not compatible, then it's not performing is it? AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
At 08:01 PM Saturday 9/9/2006, maru dubshinki wrote: On 9/6/06, Richard Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called OS X. Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data? Rich Tradition! Why, without tradition, we'd be like... like a fiddler on a roof! That's the third list this week on which that reference has been made (two of them this weekend) . .. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 7 Sep 2006 at 20:04, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
As an artist hovering around the computer industry since High School I
find it amazing that AndrewC initially claims to be a non-expert, yet
sells computers he regularly builds. Andrew, you undercut yourself on
Go back and actually read it. What I said is I'm not a technophile. I
don't get caught up in the wow factor, the tech for the sake of
itself. What the tech does, the end result, is all I'm interested in.
That I'm fully conversant with how to handle the tech relates to the
fact that it's a useful skill which I've maintained because it's seen
of value - I frequently do simple stuff like driver changes at work
for the less technically inclined when the IT department as too busy.
It's years since I was a professional coomputer tech. I design games
these days.
how else does one troubleshoot? I do not understand what is gained
from such a pre-loaded frame on the conversation. That you bluster
with rudeness and intended insults reveals an arrogance I find
irresistible - where's my pile of throwing rocks and favorite sling?
As you couldn't even be bothered to properly read what I wrote, and
have put your own ignorant misunderstandings forwards purely so that
you could bash me, bluntly I'd of prefered it if you'rd of stayed
busy. And personally I prefer an axe.
My initial emotions fade into bemused humor and assume you simply had
too much caffeine - or too many pints - at the time this was written
since your tone has moderated over time. Others have rebutted this
enough in detail, so I'll try keeping mine somewhere around the 50,000
ft altitude.
You are so far the ONLY other person to support the comparison of
hardware lifetime vs time connected to the internet before you catch
nastyware.
It is evident to even my technophobic mother that these are not the
same thing.
know appreciate the differences. Been there, done both. For reasons
of aesthetics {from OS architecture to casing product design} I've been
much more interested in the Apple-thang than anything else I've come
across from the very beginning. The Mac literally drew me away from a
And I couldn't care less about the aesthetics of the case, for
example. My current PC's best features are not that it's blue and
grey, but that the power button is on the top front and that it has a
carry handle on top.
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a tad
I don't have a MP3 player. There's nothing wrong with my minidisk
recorder (which I was given ages back for recording lectures in
University, since I'm dyslexic) for listening to music on the go.
Ask your
mother writing letters, sister ripping CD's, or cousin working at the
car repair what machine perks their interest and more often than not
they point at a Mac
The asethetics have zero to do with function. Sure, most PC cases are
ugly. It's a case. I really could't care less on the topic.
In reality you, Andrew, are heir to the mainframe and mini support
class of technicians who migrated out of the air conditioned
I'm a games designer. To quote an overused phrase, The medium is not
the message.
You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire It
looks good so it must be superior class who are either gamers who go
for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's.
employed and users grateful to get them running, again. Macs simply
didn't require such overhead, and still don't - relatively speaking.
'Course not, you can support more 'NIX-based computers than you can
Windows with the same staff. Been known for ages. There's nothing
magical about Apple in that respect.
Even under the old Mac OS it was rare I had to do a fresh install {even
as a developer} and since the advent of OS X it's even better as I've
only installed from discs when Apple issues a major upgrade - about
once a year.
So more frequently than I'm forced to reach for the Windows disks
then (24-30 months).
I am writing on a G4/500 mHz machine that certainly feels
it's age when I look at minimal reqs for current games, but I bought
this and the original Cinema Display in 2000 and expect to hand both
down to my son soon for yet more life. Similarly I have almost all my
I have a Fujitsu Stylistic 1200, a P120. Oh sure, it's a pad-style PC
which I used to take notes in university in electronic form using a
scratchpad-app, but still.
My parents use my last PC, and will get the guts of this time the
next time I upgrade.
original machines and they still run fine - I keep them around to run
projects that I worked on that couldn't migrate to modern systems since
I have a resume/portfolio to protect - but they all are useful even if
they use more wattage {especially screens} than current gear.
Shrug, anything old I can generally boot to Linux and run, if it
won't work under windows. Don't need to keep old
Re: unholy OS wars
At 10:04 PM Thursday 9/7/2006, Gibson Jonathan wrote: - Jonathan Real Men Don't Use Backspace Keys Gibson - So you blindly rely on the good graces of the spell checker? -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
At 03:48 AM Friday 9/8/2006, Andrew Crystall wrote: You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire It looks good so it must be superior class who are either gamers who go for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's. Personally, I am rather tired of blue LEDs used as indicator lights. They're too darned bright. I have put masking tape over some of them (others I have been able to turn the other way) so they aren't so bright. Though their excess short-wave emission does bring back memories of the 60s when it hits anything with day-glo or gitd pigment . . . Red Light Preserves Night Vision Maru -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9 Sep 2006, at 10:21AM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 03:48 AM Friday 9/8/2006, Andrew Crystall wrote: You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire It looks good so it must be superior class who are either gamers who go for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's. Personally, I am rather tired of blue LEDs used as indicator lights. They're too darned bright. I have put masking tape over some of them (others I have been able to turn the other way) so they aren't so bright. Yes, they can be very annoying. A new firewire disk enclosure I recently bought has one for disk access (the power light is a less annoying green) and it's way too bright. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. - Bertrand Russell ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
At 05:01 AM Saturday 9/9/2006, William T Goodall wrote: On 9 Sep 2006, at 10:21AM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 03:48 AM Friday 9/8/2006, Andrew Crystall wrote: You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire It looks good so it must be superior class who are either gamers who go for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's. Personally, I am rather tired of blue LEDs used as indicator lights. They're too darned bright. I have put masking tape over some of them (others I have been able to turn the other way) so they aren't so bright. Yes, they can be very annoying. A new firewire disk enclosure I recently bought has one for disk access (the power light is a less annoying green) and it's way too bright. I have two exterior disk enclosures which use them for that purpose.* Plus I recently had to replace an old amplified TV antenna with one which turned out to have a blue LED to indicate when the amplification was turned on. Hardly need to light the room any more . . . _ *The default indicator on the new graphics tablet is also blue, but it changes color depending on what the tablet is doing. And it is indirect, so it is not quite so annoying as the others . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On Sep 9, 2006, at 3:01 AM, William T Goodall wrote: Yes, they can be very annoying. A new firewire disk enclosure I recently bought has one for disk access (the power light is a less annoying green) and it's way too bright. I have a KGear USB2/FW enclosure that has *four* bright blue LEDs on its face, which is bad enough, but they flicker on disk access -- it's quite a light show. I folded a sheet of heavy card-stock around the front of the drive to tone it down. I consider this business of putting ultra-bright LEDs on the front of everything just one more step towards the annoying computer consoles in Star Trek TOS, where every time they touched the screen, it went bee-do-weep!, biddle-doop, blee-doo-wah? or chip-chip-chip. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9/6/06, Richard Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called OS X. Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data? Rich Tradition! Why, without tradition, we'd be like... like a fiddler on a roof! Non-facetious answer: you're seriously underestimating the incredible constraint of backwards compatibility. There's millions and millions of lines of C and other Unixy languages programs, representing uncountable millions of dollars and man-hours of which crucial bits depend on that rats nest. Rewriting that for a more sensible operating system design is simply unfeasible - I've heard that IBM maintains backwards compatibility for programs back to the IBM 360 and even earlier -- they're not doing it for the hell of it you know. There are endless scads of research operating systems that are clearly superior to the big 6 - in capability (Genera, the LMI OS, Plan 9), mathematically verified reliability and security guarantees (think Coyotos and such), extensibility (SPING, the Lisp machine OSs) etc. And why has essentially none of them caught on? (I'm going to except GNU HURD here since there's an outside possibility that when it gets POSIX decently implemented the Debian HURD project might actually accomplish something) No backwards compatibility. Go ahead and analyze the various big 6: Windows was backwards compatible with DOS, which was the first big mover in the small microcomputers; Mac OS X, see Mac OS 9 and the larger microcomputers; the BSDs and Linux were determinedly backwards compatible with the long lineage of Unix. If people don't value security enough to take the comparatively trivial tasks of switching from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice's formats, and so on and so forth, why the *dickens* do you think the *developers* will dive back into their code to port to some novel operating system which presumably would otherwise break their programs in all sorts of novel ways (since otherwise there would seem to be little point to the new OS)? Chicken and egg problem. In the short-term, that rats nest is utterly rational. Unfortunately, the short term turns into the long term. ~maru notice I'm typing this with a Qwerty keyboard... ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
Hullo,
So many missives to catch up on. I've been busy.
As an artist hovering around the computer industry since High School I
find it amazing that AndrewC initially claims to be a non-expert, yet
sells computers he regularly builds. Andrew, you undercut yourself on
the credibility factor with a statement like that while admitting this
an ongoing business... I don't know too many in this area of commerce
who are not labeled technical by the majority of people and certainly
not ANY providers who survive long w/o leaning towards the technical -
how else does one troubleshoot? I do not understand what is gained
from such a pre-loaded frame on the conversation. That you bluster
with rudeness and intended insults reveals an arrogance I find
irresistible - where's my pile of throwing rocks and favorite sling?
As someone who took up the daunting challenge of hand soldering a Timex
Sinclair 1000, circa 1982, I allowed myself a wry grin and followed
this thread belatedly, with interest. I'll hold back my razor sharp
tongue and be positive in the face of gross ignorance and in the
interest of propelling the conversation forward.
Yes, if you're a blithering retard, as apparently you are. There are
no other words for it.
Let's see, on one hand you're comparing the length a machine can run
without breaking down, which is based largely on build quality.
Moreover, that mac largely is a sealed box, and you can't upgrade
parts, etc.
On the other hand, you're comparing the time a computer can be
connected to the internet, entire unprotected, before it picks up
nastyware. Which a variety of free firewalls and virus scanners
protect against.
Blithering. Retard.
It's not even elephant vs mouse. It's a piece of paper vs the
transdimensional ghost who inhabits your frontal lobes.
My initial emotions fade into bemused humor and assume you simply had
too much caffeine - or too many pints - at the time this was written
since your tone has moderated over time. Others have rebutted this
enough in detail, so I'll try keeping mine somewhere around the 50,000
ft altitude.
I am a confirmed Mac-centric developer who is ambidextrous enough to
know appreciate the differences. Been there, done both. For reasons
of aesthetics {from OS architecture to casing product design} I've been
much more interested in the Apple-thang than anything else I've come
across from the very beginning. The Mac literally drew me away from a
career in architecture. Technically, the Mac has always been ahead of
most competitors {'cept for CPU wars of late} and one reason they could
get away with a closed box - it was always the market model and price
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a tad
like the original Mac profile {and I think they missed an intro PR
opportunity by not building on that Susan Kare iconography}.
Products overseas were routinely 2x what they are here in America -
this has more to do with where the goods originated and the early days
of the industry than now where manufacturing development is dispersed
wider and larger. Things are much better now and this is reflected in
how much cheaper even Macs have become around the world. I never
agreed with the initial $2400 retail price point Apple staked out for
the first few years they shipped Macs and as time has shown, a lower
price spreads the goodness much farther than something only the Be$t
of Us can afford - especially when the product is superior. Ask your
mother writing letters, sister ripping CD's, or cousin working at the
car repair what machine perks their interest and more often than not
they point at a Mac {OK, an iPod with Mac dangling behind} and there is
no doubt your grandfather will get more done with a Macintosh unless
your camped out at his house to nurse him through Bill's glitchware.
Gates lacks panache and real vision and only his immense wealth {buying
time and space to refine} raised the Windows UI to a notable level of
mimicry and smoothed over its ad-hoc internal architecture - and we
still see that legacy dragging it down the security bung-hole. Face
it: Gates has always been looking over his shoulder and paying off
spies to find out what Apple is cooking up. I'd call him more clever
{conniving} than smart {brilliant}: remember their workgroup chant,
Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run? I'll grant Bill certain
redeeming features now that he's giving away vast sums to real-world
causes, it's just too bad he had to chew up so many people under cruel
degrading work environments and BORG-like/pedophile-style raids on
small companies to become such a wealthy respected elder gentlemen.
In reality you, Andrew, are heir to the mainframe and mini support
class of technicians who migrated out of the air conditioned
institutional monsters that required heavy technical support to a
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9/3/06, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrew Crystall wrote: I do dual-boot windows 2k and linux, but I don't feel that Linux is ready for most home users, unlike projects like OpenOffice, which I've recommended for some years... it's a shame that I can't move away entirely because of some of the more arcane Excel spreadsheets used by friends of mine don't translate to Calc well. I have dual-boot Windows XP and Linux, and Linux is increasingly more useful for my home users than Windows. For most tasks there is only Linux, and Windows is relegated to games. It's a pity that there's no way to play The Sims 2 with Linux, or I would thrash Windows completely. My system is a dual boot XP/Ubuntu machine, and I 'm using Ubuntu as I write this. But it took me days of struggle to get my xorg.conf file in my /etc/X11 directory edited correctly before I could get the 1440x900 display I'm using to work properly. And that is even though in Dapper Drake, the latest and greatest Ubuntu version, the right Nvidia driver was automatically installed when I installed the operating system. On the XP side of my machine, by contrast, all I had to do was download and install the Nividia driver and everything worked perfectly. It took me maybe five minutes. What is better on the desktop, a two day struggle editing a text file of technical jibberish and searching online forums and user groups to learn what to do, or a five minute download and install? Linux is going to take off when it is better than Windows, not merely just as good. Both operating systems are pieces of crap compared with what we really need. Twenty years from now people will shake their heads in wonder that anyone could use a desktop computer back in first decade of the century. We can't even keep malware, the RIAA and abusive governments out of our machines. And tomorrow, Google will be forced to turn over all our search history to George Bush just so he can make sure he approves of where we visit on the web. Why are these companies keeping sensitive data on us anyway? Are there laws that require them to? I don't think so? Why aren't there laws that prohibit them from collecting such data? What ever happened to our rights to be secure in our persons and effects as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights? And how come none of these free men and women in this country seem to care? John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9/4/06, Andrew Crystall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Those people either buy from people like me (who pre-install the software), or they buy a brand..which allready has antivirus and firewalls loaded. I have not seen a PC sold in the last 4 years without that software...the ones loaded with infections are older than that, IME. Moreover, a 70-80 minute process lets me reinstall a fresh windows install from scratch without deleting any data. Infections are no problem on a PC, just reinstall the operating system. You have to do that every couple of months anyway just to replace the system files that are damaged every time it crashes and you have to do a cold reboot without shutting down properly. If you are backed up, no big deal. I wonder if a guy could keep all his most important files on one of these new 2GB flash drives, and boot his operating system from a read only DVD or CD-ROM like these Live CDs that some Linux distributions come on? How would malware get you then? You wouldn't even need to have an operating system on your computer, maybe not even as hard drive. Wouldn't that give the makers of spyware, viruses, etc. the fits? John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 6 Sep 2006, at 1:24PM, John W Redelfs wrote: What ever happened to our rights to be secure in our persons and effects as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights? And how come none of these free men and women in this country seem to care? I blame it on religion myself :- Opiate of the People Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again. -George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9/4/06, Dave Land [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 3, 2006, at 8:12 PM, Andrew Crystall wrote: No: I'm afraid WTG made a mistake in making that equation, so I won't throw my lot in with him on that account. They're both valid points, however: Macs *do* tend to have a longer productive life than PCs and Macs *are* significantly less prone to attack than PCs for reasons that are far too boring to discuss here. Besides Unix and its variants are el spiffo. Unlike Windows, they actually make sense. There is only one right way to do something, and if you do it like that it always works. With Windows there are a dozen ways to do anything, and none of them work all of the time. What a confusing mess. What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9/3/06, Andrew Crystall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 3 Sep 2006 at 20:01, Dave Land wrote: On the contrary, there may well be better words for it, such as better informed about the current state of the Macintosh line than you seem to be. Or, not just shooting his mouth off without being in possession of the facts. Okay, you're supporting the direct comparison of component lifetime vs unprotected time connected to the internet without catching nastyware? Just to be clear. From the page: The brilliantly redesigned Mac Pro enclosure accommodates up to four drives and 2TB of storage; offers 8 DIMM slots to fill with up to 16GB of RAM; provides up to two SuperDrives. You also have four PCI Express slots, and more I/O ports - including two additional ports up front. That's nice. I can't change the motherboard, there are seriously limited drivers avaliable for graphics cards, sound cards...forget it, and so on. And when I upgrade, I can't take much of it with me, with a Mac, compared to a PC. There are no options just to get a new Motherboard and RAM, if everything else would still be useful. Marketing hype aside, I think if you actually look, you'll see that not only do Macs come equipped with a lot that you'd have to _add_ to most PCs, Like what? Remember I build my own PC's, so that's not something I'm bothered about. The premium for pre-assembly is a direct strike against Mac's for me. And you'll find that opening up a Mac and accessing all that expandability is a darn sight easier than most PCs: Entirely based on case choice. My case is very well designed and I have no issues working with it. Blithering. Retard. Don't be so hard on yourself: lots of Windows users are uninformed about how far the Mac has progressed. Yes, it's only 60% more expensive, as I said. Only. Given another, what, twenty years, it might even become avaliable for sale in a form I'd consider buying - one that dosn't tying me to a specific base box. And hard on myself, right. I'm REALLY enthused about getting a mac when all its zealots seem unable to stop themselves from taking cheap potshots about the superiority of their machines when I have zero dogma and are interested in precisely what they do - and how friendly and helpful the community are (which is why I picked SuSe Linux over Red Hat, for reference). Given a lot of the professional programs I run are DirectX/.NET based, and will not run on a Mac without installing Windows (and no, I'm not a good coder and am not prepared to port them), there is absolutely no reason for me to consider one. And no, I'm not changing profession just so I can use a Mac. I wonder if anyone has two machines, a Mac and a PC? That way you could use whichever one seems to be doing best whatever you want to do. I used to have a Linux machine and a Windows machine side by side on my computer desk. I used both of them. Right now I've got both Linux and Windows running on my PC, and I use both sides of the machine every day. When our computers get past the horse and buggy stage, we won't have to do all this switching around. Everybody's machine will do everything. All it takes is software. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9/4/06, Dave Land [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think anybody's suggesting that you change careers just so you can use a Mac, but you could always run Windows via Parallels (http://www.parallels.com) and enjoy the best of both worlds (on a box that you did _not_ build yourself, I understand). CrossOver Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/), which is in Beta, lets Windows apps run under Mac OS X without having to run Windows itself. This probably wouldn't cover your need for .NET stuff, though. Or you could buy a machine with lots of RAM, hard drive and a fast chip. Then install VMware and a half dozen operating systems and use all of them at the same time. I wonder if anyone finds doing that to be useful? John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called OS X. Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
JohnR said: Or you could buy a machine with lots of RAM, hard drive and a fast chip. Then install VMware and a half dozen operating systems and use all of them at the same time. I wonder if anyone finds doing that to be useful? I tried doing that at work but the video performance was annoyingly slow. We mostly use VMware for server applications. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 6 Sep 2006, at 2:46PM, Richard Baker wrote: JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called OS X. Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data? Because the original grew up piecemeal over three decades and Linux and the BSDs faithfully cloned every idiosyncrasy. OS X already breaks with that tradition with its Mach kernel, file bundles and other OS Xisms leaving Apple free to innovate further. I got Singh's _Mac OS X Internals_ the other week. 1641 pages of hard- bound fun to dip into! No library is complete without it Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ A bad thing done for a good cause is still a bad thing. It's why so few people slap their political opponents. That, and because slapping looks so silly. - Randy Cohen. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
Richard Baker wrote: JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called OS X. Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data? Because they aren't slaves of Steve Jobs? John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
Richard Baker wrote: JohnR said: Or you could buy a machine with lots of RAM, hard drive and a fast chip. Then install VMware and a half dozen operating systems and use all of them at the same time. I wonder if anyone finds doing that to be useful? I tried doing that at work but the video performance was annoyingly slow. We mostly use VMware for server applications. I guess we just need faster hardware. Maybe that will come. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 06/09/2006, at 3:51 PM, John W Redelfs wrote: I wonder if anyone has two machines, a Mac and a PC? iBook, Athlon 2200XP based PC currently running XP SP2, Claire's iMac. Had a dual-boot to Fedora Core 3 but I use the PC for media storage and Civ and Half-Life and I currently don't have the room to dual-boot. Use the Mac most of the time for most of the things I use a puter for. The only app I've not found a totally satisfactory option for on the Mac is personal finance. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 6 Sep 2006 at 6:46, Richard Baker wrote: JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called OS X. Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. Except like Ubuntu, it can't run a vast range of apps, some not even with add-on software. And like XP you have to pay for it. So... Also, that ease of use thing is entirely relative - I haven't used a standard windows shell for years, and the OS X doesn't have anything remotely like... AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 6 Sep 2006 at 4:38, John W Redelfs wrote: On 9/4/06, Andrew Crystall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Those people either buy from people like me (who pre-install the software), or they buy a brand..which allready has antivirus and firewalls loaded. I have not seen a PC sold in the last 4 years without that software...the ones loaded with infections are older than that, IME. Moreover, a 70-80 minute process lets me reinstall a fresh windows install from scratch without deleting any data. Infections are no problem on a PC, just reinstall the operating system. You have to do that every couple of months anyway just to replace the system files that are damaged every time it crashes and you have to do a cold reboot without shutting down properly. If you are backed up, no big deal. Heh. Getting on for 18 months on this Win 2k install, and the one before lasted over 2 years. Not usual. I'd suggest that if your windows is corrupting itself that frequently, it's a disk/disk controller issue. IME. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On Sep 6, 2006, at 5:51 AM, John W Redelfs wrote: I wonder if anyone has two machines, a Mac and a PC? That way you could use whichever one seems to be doing best whatever you want to do. Sure. I do it almost every day: I use an aging Powerbook G4 for 99% of my work) as well as lugging around a behemoth HP Compaq thing because of the scourge to Web Design and engineering productivity that is Internet Explorer. That is to say, I do all my design and engineering work on the Mac, then look at the dog-awful mess that IE makes of it on Windows and go back to the Mac to try to straighten it out. Also, my son plays lots of racing sims on the PC -- his latest addiction is TrackMania Sunrise. When our computers get past the horse and buggy stage, we won't have to do all this switching around. Everybody's machine will do everything. All it takes is software. As close as we are today is a PowerMac plus Parallels or CrossOver Mac. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
William said: I got Singh's _Mac OS X Internals_ the other week. 1641 pages of hard-bound fun to dip into! That one's on my list of books I'd like to read in the near future. At the moment, I'm reading Scott's _Programming Language Pragmatics_, Hennessy and Patterson's _Computer Architecture_ and Bacon's _Concurrent Systems_ though. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
John W Redelfs wrote: And tomorrow, Google will be forced to turn over all our search history to George Bush just so he can make sure he approves of where we visit on the web. If you think Bush is an Evil Dictator, you should know that here in Brazil the Justice is trying to _close_ Google, because Google doesn't give the identities of its Orkut users. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
I doubt I'm the only one here who is old enough to be reminded of endless similar discussions re: HP vs. TI scientific calculators . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 5 Sep 2006, at 12:56PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: I doubt I'm the only one here who is old enough to be reminded of endless similar discussions re: HP vs. TI scientific calculators . . . What discussion? Everyone knows HP are the only scientific calculators to get. TI were for losers! HP-25 from 1975 to 1990 HP-15C from 1990 - current HP-48 emulator on the iMac RPN Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ [Microsoft’s Windows Vista] Beta 2 is a good looking operating system with a number of new features, which will be familiar to you if you’ve played with recent versions of Apple’s OS X. - Gary Krakow, Columnist, MSNBC ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
At 12:55 PM Tuesday 9/5/2006, William T Goodall wrote: On 5 Sep 2006, at 12:56PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: I doubt I'm the only one here who is old enough to be reminded of endless similar discussions re: HP vs. TI scientific calculators . . . What discussion? I used that word to be polite (about both discussions). Everyone knows HP are the only scientific calculators to get. TI were for losers! HP-25 from 1975 to 1990 HP-15C from 1990 - current I still have one of those somewhere. (Haven't seen or used it in awhile.) I do know where my 16C is, and keep fresh batteries in it. Have a 28 somewhere also. And a 48GX. HP-48 emulator on the iMac Wrote an emulator of (more-or-less) the HP-45 in FORTRAN back in 80 or 81 because it was easier than getting the company to buy one. notationfix maru -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 4 Sep 2006, at 3:05AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 4 Sep 2006 at 2:49, William T Goodall wrote: On 4 Sep 2006, at 2:27AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote: Andrew Crystall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as much as the equivalent PC-cum-Windoze. But that's a short sighted view. The Mac is much cheaper in the long term. I recently retired an old Mac still in working order, that was nearly ten years old. Ten years of useful life! Reliable technical sources available on the internet confirm that a Windows PC connected to the internet is filled with backdoors, trojans, key-loggers and other malware in ten minutes. Ten minutes of useful life! Thus even if a Mac cost $100,000 and a PC only $1 over the course of ten years the Mac would work out cheaper! Still only $100,000 whereas you'd need over $500,000 worth of PCs! Comparisons Maru Yes, if you're a blithering retard, as apparently you are. There are no other words for it. Let's see, on one hand you're comparing the length a machine can run without breaking down, which is based largely on build quality. Moreover, that mac largely is a sealed box, and you can't upgrade parts, etc. I upgraded the RAM and HD in a 1999 iMac last week. I've added RAM, hard drives, USB cards, 802.11 networking cards and whatnot to a wide variety of desktop and laptop Macs over the years. The original iMacs are a bit of a pain - took me 40 minutes start to finish the first time I opened one up - but most are 5 minutes. On the other hand, you're comparing the time a computer can be connected to the internet, entire unprotected, before it picks up nastyware. Which a variety of free firewalls and virus scanners protect against. But most people aren't non-technophiles like you and don't know how to protect themselves against malicious intrusions. And a computer that's part of a botnet launching DoS attacks and mailing millions of spams out through its unknowing owner's cable or DSL connection is very far from useful. More useful Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again. -George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Zombies (was Re: unholy OS wars)
On 4 Sep 2006, at 2:06PM, William T Goodall wrote: On 4 Sep 2006, at 3:05AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On the other hand, you're comparing the time a computer can be connected to the internet, entire unprotected, before it picks up nastyware. Which a variety of free firewalls and virus scanners protect against. But most people aren't non-technophiles like you and don't know how to protect themselves against malicious intrusions. And a computer that's part of a botnet launching DoS attacks and mailing millions of spams out through its unknowing owner's cable or DSL connection is very far from useful. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4685238.stm Statistics gathered by security firm Ciphertrust reveal just how bad the problem of botnets is getting. Every day we are detecting more than 250,000 connecting to the internet and sending mail, said Paul Judge, chief technology officer at Ciphertrust. That's unique machines that have never done it before, he said. It's a distribution platform that is becoming more popular for attackers. Mr Judge said the count of new bots had hit 250,000 every day in November 2005 and had stayed at that level ever since. [...] Most zombies are recruited by viruses and trojans. Some of these backdoors into computers are installed if users visit the wrong website in so-called drive-by downloads but many are e-mailed and rely on naive users opening infected attachments. [...] Botnets were used as hosts for pornographic or illegal material, launch pads for spam and phishing mail messages and some are used to knock websites offline unless a ransom is paid. Mr Lovet said there was evidence that a lot of companies hit by botnet attacks that bombard them with data, pay the ransom because it costs so much more to be off the net. They do not want to disclose that they paid because it's not good for business, he said. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ And yes, OSX is marvelous. Its merest bootlace, Windows is not worthy to kiss. - David Brin ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On Sep 3, 2006, at 8:12 PM, Andrew Crystall wrote: ... A much better-reasoned post, for which I think we can all be grateful. I may say some nice things about Macs below, but I am by no means trying to get you to change platforms -- or careers -- by doing so. On 3 Sep 2006 at 20:01, Dave Land wrote: On the contrary, there may well be better words for it, such as better informed about the current state of the Macintosh line than you seem to be. Or, not just shooting his mouth off without being in possession of the facts. Okay, you're supporting the direct comparison of component lifetime vs unprotected time connected to the internet without catching nastyware? Just to be clear. No: I'm afraid WTG made a mistake in making that equation, so I won't throw my lot in with him on that account. They're both valid points, however: Macs *do* tend to have a longer productive life than PCs and Macs *are* significantly less prone to attack than PCs for reasons that are far too boring to discuss here. I'm just suggesting that there are probably more productive ways to debate this (if it needs debating) than impugning the mental health of our list-mates. Marketing hype aside, I think if you actually look, you'll see that not only do Macs come equipped with a lot that you'd have to _add_ to most PCs, Like what? Remember I build my own PC's, so that's not something I'm bothered about. The premium for pre-assembly is a direct strike against Mac's for me. Agreed: the Mac would indeed be a poor choice for you, given your preference for rolling your own. In effect, you've taken yourself out of the debate by building your own. Wouldn't a nice, brief I build my own computers, so none of this religious war stuff matters to me have covered it, with no ad hominem attacks needed? Granted, our esteemed colleague seems to relish these flame wars, so your attack may not have been as unwelcome as it might for others. Blithering. Retard. Don't be so hard on yourself: lots of Windows users are uninformed about how far the Mac has progressed. Yes, it's only 60% more expensive, as I said. Only. Given another, what, twenty years, it might even become avaliable for sale in a form I'd consider buying - one that dosn't tying me to a specific base box. No argument there: Paying someone else to build and test your computer is going to cost more than building your own, whether you take the value of your time into consideration or not. What I heard in an earlier post (comparing a Power Mac with some Dell or other) were two separate points regarding cost: First, that the ratio of cost between your home-brew and a comparably-equipped Mac would likely be *less* than the ratio of that same home-brew and a comparably- equipped commercial PC. Second, that the lifetime cost of ownership of the Mac would be less than either the home-brew or the pre-built running Windows. And hard on myself, right. I'm REALLY enthused about getting a mac when all its zealots seem unable to stop themselves from taking cheap potshots about the superiority of their machines when I have zero dogma and are interested in precisely what they do - and how friendly and helpful the community are (which is why I picked SuSe Linux over Red Hat, for reference). While we can agree that it is impressive how much passion Apple has been able to engender in its customers, we Mac users and owners can be a tad defensive about our choice of platform. Something about being in a minority, maybe. Funny thing about Red Hat -- when Nick and I were doing analysis of open-source software communities, I remember getting the sense that Red Hat had kind of turned into yet another faceless corporation, and that the open-source software community wasn't enjoying it... I'm happy that you found a more helpful community. I think you'd be pleasantly impressed with the helpfulness of the Mac community. Given a lot of the professional programs I run are DirectX/.NET based, and will not run on a Mac without installing Windows (and no, I'm not a good coder and am not prepared to port them), there is absolutely no reason for me to consider one. And no, I'm not changing profession just so I can use a Mac. I don't think anybody's suggesting that you change careers just so you can use a Mac, but you could always run Windows via Parallels (http://www.parallels.com) and enjoy the best of both worlds (on a box that you did _not_ build yourself, I understand). CrossOver Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/), which is in Beta, lets Windows apps run under Mac OS X without having to run Windows itself. This probably wouldn't cover your need for .NET stuff, though. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
Andrew said: Here's a hint: A base price of £1000 is more than I spend on an entire PC which is considerably more powerful than the one you linked. This seems somewhat unlikely when 2.66GHz Xeon 5150 processors cost around £470 each and the base Mac Pro configuration has two of them, as well as a relatively high-end graphics card. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 4 Sep 2006 at 14:06, William T Goodall wrote: But most people aren't non-technophiles like you and don't know how to protect themselves against malicious intrusions. And a computer that's part of a botnet launching DoS attacks and mailing millions of spams out through its unknowing owner's cable or DSL connection is very far from useful. Those people either buy from people like me (who pre-install the software), or they buy a brand..which allready has antivirus and firewalls loaded. I have not seen a PC sold in the last 4 years without that software...the ones loaded with infections are older than that, IME. Moreover, a 70-80 minute process lets me reinstall a fresh windows install from scratch without deleting any data. And no, me not being a technophile has nothing to do with it and is another example of the fact you cannot pass up a cheap shot however silly in context. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 4 Sep 2006 at 18:43, Richard Baker wrote: Andrew said: Here's a hint: A base price of £1000 is more than I spend on an entire PC which is considerably more powerful than the one you linked. This seems somewhat unlikely when 2.66GHz Xeon 5150 processors cost around £470 each and the base Mac Pro configuration has two of them, as well as a relatively high-end graphics card. The entire system price for the low-end MacPro is £1700. It comes with a Nvidia 7300 GT. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html?modelx=33model1=51 9model2=547chart=227 The 7300 GT scores 289. The card I would look at, the X9100XT, scores 1657, and is avaliable for well under £200. Draw your own conclusions. (Incidentally, the CPU's you are reference are only £320 each inc VAT from Insight). Regardless, I do find it a little amusing that the Intel Mac's show such a radical degree of power increase over their PowerPC predecessors when said Intel was put down for years by Mac advocates. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
Andrew said: (Incidentally, the CPU's you are reference are only £320 each inc VAT from Insight). This Insight http://uk.insight.com/apps/nbs/index.php?K=xeon+5150lang=en- gbM=C=107S=1042 or some other one? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 4 Sep 2006 at 20:36, Richard Baker wrote: Andrew said: (Incidentally, the CPU's you are reference are only £320 each inc VAT from Insight). This Insight http://uk.insight.com/apps/nbs/index.php?K=xeon+5150lang=en- gbM=C=107S=1042 or some other one? Ah, yes, you're quite right. On a quick investigation, for some reason the external search I used gave me the *upgrade* price for an existing PC. (this page: http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=FJ SOA03SJRcm_mmc=Froogle-_-OA-_-FJS-_-FJSOA03SJRsrc=FRO1 ) AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
Andrew said: Ah, yes, you're quite right. On a quick investigation, for some reason the external search I used gave me the *upgrade* price for an existing PC. That one isn't even remotely the same processor. It has a 533MHz front-size bus, 512KB of cache, a single core, and is based on the obsolete Netburst microarchitecture. The 5150s in the Mac Pro have a 1333MHz front-size bus, 4MB of cache, two cores and are based on the new Core microarchitecture. The Core architecture has much better performance per clock cycle than NetBurst does too, so the fact that the two have the same clock speed is extremely misleading. (You may be interested to know - or may already know - that the Core microarchitecture was designed by Intel's team in Haifa.) I was pretty much astonished by the price and performance of the Mac Pro, especially as someone who spends quite a bit of money on Xeon servers to run Windows applications. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 4 Sep 2006 at 20:50, Richard Baker wrote: Andrew said: Ah, yes, you're quite right. On a quick investigation, for some reason the external search I used gave me the *upgrade* price for an existing PC. That one isn't even remotely the same processor. It has a 533MHz front-size bus, 512KB of cache, a single core, and is based on the obsolete Netburst microarchitecture. The 5150s in the Mac Pro have a 1333MHz front-size bus, 4MB of cache, two cores and are based on the new Core microarchitecture. The Core architecture has much better performance per clock cycle than NetBurst does too, so the fact that the two have the same clock speed is extremely misleading. (You may be interested to know - or may already know - that the Core microarchitecture was designed by Intel's team in Haifa.) Yes, I did. I was pretty much astonished by the price and performance of the Mac Pro, especially as someone who spends quite a bit of money on Xeon servers to run Windows applications. And I don't know that much about them because for what I do, I'm nearly allways GPU-limited or bus-limited, not CPU-limited. So I'm looking at high-end graphics cards combined with a (dual core) 4600 Mhz Athlon X2. The only people (and of course, the high-performance servers..) who have Opteron/Xeon processors at work are the video specalists. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Those crazy Apple people (was Re: unholy OS wars )
On 9/4/06, Richard Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The 5150s in the Mac Pro Hmm... the Mac Pro's processors are called 5150s, eh? Pretty funny considering what 5150 means to anyone in law enforcement, emergency medical services, etc., here in California. It is the statute for a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold, as in Respond to a possible 5150 at... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5150_(Involuntary_psychiatric_hold) Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 3 Sep 2006 at 12:51, Dave Land wrote: On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:05 AM, William T Goodall wrote: And yes, OSX is marvelous. Its merest bootlace, Windows is not worthy to kiss. - David Brin With all the things that you and I have to disagree about, it is nice that we have this in common. And I'm going to keep on using windows purely because it's what the programs I use run on, and the Mac's charge a stiff premium for their hardware. I'm not a technophile, which occasionally is a hinderance in an industry of little but technophiles - I use tech-as-a-tool, and my purchasing descisions are purely based on the programs I use, many of which are DirectX/.NET dependent and have no Linux/Max equivalent. (And the pricing issue). I do dual-boot windows 2k and linux, but I don't feel that Linux is ready for most home users, unlike projects like OpenOffice, which I've recommended for some years... it's a shame that I can't move away entirely because of some of the more arcane Excel spreadsheets used by friends of mine don't translate to Calc well. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
Andrew Crystall wrote: I do dual-boot windows 2k and linux, but I don't feel that Linux is ready for most home users, unlike projects like OpenOffice, which I've recommended for some years... it's a shame that I can't move away entirely because of some of the more arcane Excel spreadsheets used by friends of mine don't translate to Calc well. I have dual-boot Windows XP and Linux, and Linux is increasingly more useful for my home users than Windows. For most tasks there is only Linux, and Windows is relegated to games. It's a pity that there's no way to play The Sims 2 with Linux, or I would thrash Windows completely. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 3 Sep 2006, at 10:45PM, Andrew Crystall wrote: And I'm going to keep on using windows purely because it's what the programs I use run on, and the Mac's charge a stiff premium for their hardware. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060823/ap_on_hi_te/tech_test_mac_pro_3 The recently released Mac Pro maintains the Apple shine in design, usability and software but also does something unexpected: It turns the old Mac versus Windows PC price equation on its head. A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a nearly identically configured Dell Precision Workstation 490. The Mac is about $947 cheaper — and the gap widens when you start piling on options such as more memory, faster processors and bigger hard drives. Best Value Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ And yes, OSX is marvelous. Its merest bootlace, Windows is not worthy to kiss. - David Brin ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 4 Sep 2006 at 1:02, William T Goodall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. In the UK, the difference for someone like me who builds my own is in the region of 60% more expensive for the mac in raw performance terms, and I cannot get a base spec Mac which suits me as a gamer. Here's a hint: A base price of £1000 is more than I spend on an entire PC which is considerably more powerful than the one you linked. AndrewC ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 4 Sep 2006, at 1:14AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 4 Sep 2006 at 1:02, William T Goodall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. In the UK, the difference for someone like me who builds my own is in the region of 60% more expensive for the mac in raw performance terms, and I cannot get a base spec Mac which suits me as a gamer. So by non-technophile you don't mean somebody who doesn't build their own PC or run Linux. OK, so what do the technophiles do then? Blue LEDs in the nose Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ A bad thing done for a good cause is still a bad thing. It's why so few people slap their political opponents. That, and because slapping looks so silly. - Randy Cohen. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 4 Sep 2006 at 1:33, William T Goodall wrote:
In the UK, the difference for someone like me who builds my own is in
the region of 60% more expensive for the mac in raw performance
terms, and I cannot get a base spec Mac which suits me as a gamer.
So by non-technophile you don't mean somebody who doesn't build their
own PC or run Linux. OK, so what do the technophiles do then?
I build my own PC because when I was first doing it ('92) that was
the only realistic option. It remains far cheaper and I can ensure
build quality.
And I have Linux...I just don't use it as my primary OS.
That wasn't what I meant, however. That's just your take on what I
typed, running a post of multiple parts into one.
And yes, I despite blue LED's. My case sits beside my desk. Its a
utilitarian grey and pale blue, and its best features are the power
button is on the top front and it has a carry handle on top.
AndrewC
Dawn Falcon
___
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Re: unholy OS wars
Andrew Crystall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as much as the equivalent PC-cum-Windoze. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 4 Sep 2006, at 2:27AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote: Andrew Crystall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as much as the equivalent PC-cum-Windoze. But that's a short sighted view. The Mac is much cheaper in the long term. I recently retired an old Mac still in working order, that was nearly ten years old. Ten years of useful life! Reliable technical sources available on the internet confirm that a Windows PC connected to the internet is filled with backdoors, trojans, key-loggers and other malware in ten minutes. Ten minutes of useful life! Thus even if a Mac cost $100,000 and a PC only $1 over the course of ten years the Mac would work out cheaper! Still only $100,000 whereas you'd need over $500,000 worth of PCs! Comparisons Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux. - Bill Joy. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 4 Sep 2006 at 2:49, William T Goodall wrote: On 4 Sep 2006, at 2:27AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote: Andrew Crystall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as much as the equivalent PC-cum-Windoze. But that's a short sighted view. The Mac is much cheaper in the long term. I recently retired an old Mac still in working order, that was nearly ten years old. Ten years of useful life! Reliable technical sources available on the internet confirm that a Windows PC connected to the internet is filled with backdoors, trojans, key-loggers and other malware in ten minutes. Ten minutes of useful life! Thus even if a Mac cost $100,000 and a PC only $1 over the course of ten years the Mac would work out cheaper! Still only $100,000 whereas you'd need over $500,000 worth of PCs! Comparisons Maru Yes, if you're a blithering retard, as apparently you are. There are no other words for it. Let's see, on one hand you're comparing the length a machine can run without breaking down, which is based largely on build quality. Moreover, that mac largely is a sealed box, and you can't upgrade parts, etc. On the other hand, you're comparing the time a computer can be connected to the internet, entire unprotected, before it picks up nastyware. Which a variety of free firewalls and virus scanners protect against. Blithering. Retard. It's not even elephant vs mouse. It's a piece of paper vs the transdimensional ghost who inhabits your frontal lobes. AndrewC. Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On Sep 3, 2006, at 7:05 PM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 4 Sep 2006 at 2:49, William T Goodall wrote: On 4 Sep 2006, at 2:27AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote: Andrew Crystall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as much as the equivalent PC-cum-Windoze. But that's a short sighted view. The Mac is much cheaper in the long term. I recently retired an old Mac still in working order, that was nearly ten years old. Ten years of useful life! Reliable technical sources available on the internet confirm that a Windows PC connected to the internet is filled with backdoors, trojans, key-loggers and other malware in ten minutes. Ten minutes of useful life! Thus even if a Mac cost $100,000 and a PC only $1 over the course of ten years the Mac would work out cheaper! Still only $100,000 whereas you'd need over $500,000 worth of PCs! Comparisons Maru Yes, if you're a blithering retard, as apparently you are. There are no other words for it. On the contrary, there may well be better words for it, such as better informed about the current state of the Macintosh line than you seem to be. Or, not just shooting his mouth off without being in possession of the facts. Let's see, on one hand you're comparing the length a machine can run without breaking down, which is based largely on build quality. Moreover, that mac largely is a sealed box, and you can't upgrade parts, etc. Oh. My. Gawd. That old line? It's only been 19 years since that was true. Here's a nice, short URL that might help: http://www.apple.com/macpro/ From the page: The brilliantly redesigned Mac Pro enclosure accommodates up to four drives and 2TB of storage; offers 8 DIMM slots to fill with up to 16GB of RAM; provides up to two SuperDrives. You also have four PCI Express slots, and more I/O ports — including two additional ports up front. Marketing hype aside, I think if you actually look, you'll see that not only do Macs come equipped with a lot that you'd have to _add_ to most PCs, they have all the expandability that most people could possibly want. And you'll find that opening up a Mac and accessing all that expandability is a darn sight easier than most PCs: it's like Apple actually _expected_ that people might want to expand their machines, so the made it easy and pleasant to do. Sealed box my achin' arse. Blithering. Retard. Don't be so hard on yourself: lots of Windows users are uninformed about how far the Mac has progressed. Peace, Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 3 Sep 2006 at 20:01, Dave Land wrote: On the contrary, there may well be better words for it, such as better informed about the current state of the Macintosh line than you seem to be. Or, not just shooting his mouth off without being in possession of the facts. Okay, you're supporting the direct comparison of component lifetime vs unprotected time connected to the internet without catching nastyware? Just to be clear. From the page: The brilliantly redesigned Mac Pro enclosure accommodates up to four drives and 2TB of storage; offers 8 DIMM slots to fill with up to 16GB of RAM; provides up to two SuperDrives. You also have four PCI Express slots, and more I/O ports - including two additional ports up front. That's nice. I can't change the motherboard, there are seriously limited drivers avaliable for graphics cards, sound cards...forget it, and so on. And when I upgrade, I can't take much of it with me, with a Mac, compared to a PC. There are no options just to get a new Motherboard and RAM, if everything else would still be useful. Marketing hype aside, I think if you actually look, you'll see that not only do Macs come equipped with a lot that you'd have to _add_ to most PCs, Like what? Remember I build my own PC's, so that's not something I'm bothered about. The premium for pre-assembly is a direct strike against Mac's for me. And you'll find that opening up a Mac and accessing all that expandability is a darn sight easier than most PCs: Entirely based on case choice. My case is very well designed and I have no issues working with it. Blithering. Retard. Don't be so hard on yourself: lots of Windows users are uninformed about how far the Mac has progressed. Yes, it's only 60% more expensive, as I said. Only. Given another, what, twenty years, it might even become avaliable for sale in a form I'd consider buying - one that dosn't tying me to a specific base box. And hard on myself, right. I'm REALLY enthused about getting a mac when all its zealots seem unable to stop themselves from taking cheap potshots about the superiority of their machines when I have zero dogma and are interested in precisely what they do - and how friendly and helpful the community are (which is why I picked SuSe Linux over Red Hat, for reference). Given a lot of the professional programs I run are DirectX/.NET based, and will not run on a Mac without installing Windows (and no, I'm not a good coder and am not prepared to port them), there is absolutely no reason for me to consider one. And no, I'm not changing profession just so I can use a Mac. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
On 9/3/06, William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 4 Sep 2006, at 2:27AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote: Andrew Crystall wrote: A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty, etc. Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as much as the equivalent PC-cum-Windoze. But that's a short sighted view. The Mac is much cheaper in the long term. I recently retired an old Mac still in working order, that was nearly ten years old. Ten years of useful life! Reliable technical sources available on the internet confirm that a Windows PC connected to the internet is filled with backdoors, trojans, key-loggers and other malware in ten minutes. Ten minutes of useful life! Thus even if a Mac cost $100,000 and a PC only $1 over the course of ten years the Mac would work out cheaper! Still only $100,000 whereas you'd need over $500,000 worth of PCs! Comparisons Maru -- William T Goodall Oh, how I wish PCs cost only $1... I'd buy a couple dozen and stick Linux on them; even accounting for the time to set up OpenMosix and a networked file system (to cope with those darn PCs dying on you every few years), I'd still be ahead by scores of thousands of dollars. ~maru /I hear the PDP-11 equivalent today would be less than $1... ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 9/3/06, Andrew Crystall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 4 Sep 2006 at 1:33, William T Goodall wrote:
In the UK, the difference for someone like me who builds my own is in
the region of 60% more expensive for the mac in raw performance
terms, and I cannot get a base spec Mac which suits me as a gamer.
So by non-technophile you don't mean somebody who doesn't build their
own PC or run Linux. OK, so what do the technophiles do then?
I build my own PC because when I was first doing it ('92) that was
the only realistic option. It remains far cheaper and I can ensure
build quality.
And I have Linux...I just don't use it as my primary OS.
That wasn't what I meant, however. That's just your take on what I
typed, running a post of multiple parts into one.
And yes, I despite blue LED's. My case sits beside my desk. Its a
utilitarian grey and pale blue, and its best features are the power
button is on the top front and it has a carry handle on top.
AndrewC
Could you elaborate on this? I'm kind of curious since I don't think
computer building has been discussed on list, and I've been
contemplating building a PC for some time now (following the template
of Ars Technica's Hot Rod
(http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200608.ars/3),
although I'd probably wait for a decent AMD replacement for the Core 2
Duo processors they reccomend - I just plain don't like Intel.
Something about them bugs me.)
~maru
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Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
On 3 Sep 2006 at 23:30, maru dubshinki wrote: Could you elaborate on this? I'm kind of curious since I don't think computer building has been discussed on list, and I've been contemplating building a PC for some time now (following the template Not really - it's a catch 22, I'm not buying anything for probably a year despite the fact my PC is aging because a lot depends on which platform the tools I use continue on (DX9 or DX10/Vista) and the first generation DX10 cards this Christmas are NOT going to be useable for a lot of DX10 functions in actual speed so that's not a consideration and it'll be summer at the earliest for the second gen ones which will be useful. In an ideal world the tools I'd use would go to OpenGL2, but they won't because of creator preferences and priorities. AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
