koobcamuk
Apr 9, 01:23 AM
Nope, obviously the biggest screen you have is your ipad. The console gaming experience is nothing like the mind numbing games which make the bulk of the App store. Sure there are maybe 20 games that have anything like the look of a console, but touch is no replacement for tactile feedback. Take a peek: Appshopper (http://appshopper.com/iphone/games/)
Nicely said. Even if you can output the iPod/iPhone/iPad video to a TV, it doesn't matter. The games are 99c for a reason! The app store is FULL of rubbish, as you rightly point out.
Nicely said. Even if you can output the iPod/iPhone/iPad video to a TV, it doesn't matter. The games are 99c for a reason! The app store is FULL of rubbish, as you rightly point out.
edifyingGerbil
Apr 24, 10:16 AM
I don't know, I don't have any answers. It's easier to destroy than create.
A few European posters have backed up my assessments tho, about Europeans being less likely to be challenged on their beliefs. In fact, you're more likely to be viewed as odd if you profess a strong Christian belief.
Maybe deep down I'm an atheist too, and I'm just entertaining the notion of agnosticism as a kind of nod to the great debt we owe Judaism and Christianity. If it wasn't for those two faiths which allowed for reformations (such a thing would be impossible under, say, Islam) then secular Western democracies would be vastly different.
Don't forget, many of the batshit crazy rules that a lot of Christians are meant to follow are actually interpretations of the clergy, rather than being derived from the Bible. This was (along with papal bulls, simony, etc) what helped spur the creation of protestantism which did away with a lot of the incomprehensible dross inherent in Catholicism and tried instead to get back to the most fundamental message in the Bible.
If Europe had succumbed to the advance of Islam, if Vienna had fallen in the 17th century things likely would be very different today. Europe would have produced as many Nobel Prize winners as the entire Islamic World
A few European posters have backed up my assessments tho, about Europeans being less likely to be challenged on their beliefs. In fact, you're more likely to be viewed as odd if you profess a strong Christian belief.
Maybe deep down I'm an atheist too, and I'm just entertaining the notion of agnosticism as a kind of nod to the great debt we owe Judaism and Christianity. If it wasn't for those two faiths which allowed for reformations (such a thing would be impossible under, say, Islam) then secular Western democracies would be vastly different.
Don't forget, many of the batshit crazy rules that a lot of Christians are meant to follow are actually interpretations of the clergy, rather than being derived from the Bible. This was (along with papal bulls, simony, etc) what helped spur the creation of protestantism which did away with a lot of the incomprehensible dross inherent in Catholicism and tried instead to get back to the most fundamental message in the Bible.
If Europe had succumbed to the advance of Islam, if Vienna had fallen in the 17th century things likely would be very different today. Europe would have produced as many Nobel Prize winners as the entire Islamic World
zap2
Apr 11, 10:51 AM
I'm getting the 2010 mac mini Monday (and switching to OSX) but kinda worried what my dad will say about me getting one... I guess he can't do anything about it since it's my money
I think you'll love your Mac mini, I'm a big fan of the form factor.
As far as you father, I expect he'll be impressed with it if he's not a tech person. I know people always seemed impressed the Mac mini was a full computer, and OS X makes it even cool.
If he is a tech person, he might insist that PCs are cheaper, but not in the same form factor(its rather hard to find a simiar PC with Intel chip...Dell makes the Zino HD, but it runs on AMD) And you can always run XP/Windows 7 to make him happy.
I think you'll love your Mac mini, I'm a big fan of the form factor.
As far as you father, I expect he'll be impressed with it if he's not a tech person. I know people always seemed impressed the Mac mini was a full computer, and OS X makes it even cool.
If he is a tech person, he might insist that PCs are cheaper, but not in the same form factor(its rather hard to find a simiar PC with Intel chip...Dell makes the Zino HD, but it runs on AMD) And you can always run XP/Windows 7 to make him happy.
ten-oak-druid
Apr 12, 11:34 PM
Now Steven Spelberg can tweek the Star Wars movies.
CaoCao
Mar 26, 06:59 PM
No- according to you, love conquers all until it includes people you don't like. That's not love, it's control.
Jesus never did that to anyone, did he? Nope. Jesus loved everyone no matter what. You are as far from Jesus as you could be. Jesus was nice to whores, even when they continued to be whores. Could you do that?
Your attitude is what turned me off to religion years ago. Jesus was a seriously great person. His fans, suck- nastiest people I've ever met. You don't even know what Jesus was about. Jesus was about unconditional love. Jesus basically said he loved everyone no matter what. That is a beautiful message. Now, it would be nice if the people he talked to would live it, and stop being such jerks.
Who were the whores who continued to whore?
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
My parents had two children. They (mom & dad) were good Christians (not Catholics, though). They hit a "rough patch". До свидание. Your anecdotes are meaningless BS. Religious devotion + children + love < stability.
Many marriages don't get over the rough patch, some don't even try :(
You will say anything to rationalize your prejudice, won't you? I have trouble believing anyone is as dense as you pretend here.
Just in case, though, the government offers legal concessions to men and women who legally (not religiously) commit to a marriage. It refuses to extend those same concessions to same-sex couples, and can demonstrate no legitimate state interest in this discrimination. That is denial of equal treatment under the law, and is unconstitutional.
I'm inarticulate. Well, if it is extending benefits heterosexual marriages then examine why it is doing so and then see what the differences between a heterosexual marriage and a homosexual marriage would be.
So why deny gay families this devotion that is needed, the commitment of marriage? Seems your reasoning is based out of malice if you really believe what you said.
Please explain what I said (I probably badly phrased it).
If you really love someone, surely you don't want to be with anyone else? If so, then it would be pretty moronic not to ultimately work out your issues with the other person.
What the problem is some people can't tell between infatuation and love.
There is no good reason why priests are expected to do it. Peter was married, as were many of the apostles and the priests of the early church. Nor was this confined to the early church:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes
The Renaissance was a very dark time for the Church.
Actually you're not, because it's not an arbitrary rule. As someone explained to you earlier, there's at least one reason behind banning copulating in the street.
There is no valid reason for prohibiting same-sex marriages. That is arbitrary, and shameful - particularly since it seems to be antiquated, bigoted dogma (that not everyone shares) that is promoting this prohibition.
What a touching story. Don't know what any of this has to do with homosexuality.
And if you are being beaten in the street, and the police walk by instead of coming to your aid - is that depriving you of liberty, or merely "not supporting" you?
Again, don't know what that has to do with homosexuality.
To be fair, I knew what you meant with your comment, but frankly there wasn't any sarcasm in my statement. You were attempting to defend your earlier poorly-constructed post, and I was bemused by it.
What does being gay have to do with being a priest?
I didn't say in the street
Examine the benefits of heterosexual marriage, examine why they are given and then compare with homosexual couples
Marriages don't need to be about love, they need to be a permanent commitment.
Situation would never happen, police don't walk the beat here anymore (thought it would be nice). Also police are obligated to stop crimes in action while the government isn't obligated to create new rights because a very small demographic demands it.
You agree with a mangled, meaningless phrase of dog Latin? Mirabile dictu.
I guess I need a better dictionary
A sentence is also a phrase: all sentences are phrases, but not all phrases are sentences. However, frater, my Latin does not include either subcribo (unless of course he was looking up "sign" and found the word for to sign beneath or subscribe(!)), or of, or a as an indefinite article, for that matter. You could try Id est signum contradictionis, which might make slightly more sense, even in the Vatican. Actually, the id is optional. Hence dog Latin, frater.
Apologies for the horrible Latin, the only non-English language I am fluent in is Mandarin Chinese (specifically the Beijing dialect).
Jesus never did that to anyone, did he? Nope. Jesus loved everyone no matter what. You are as far from Jesus as you could be. Jesus was nice to whores, even when they continued to be whores. Could you do that?
Your attitude is what turned me off to religion years ago. Jesus was a seriously great person. His fans, suck- nastiest people I've ever met. You don't even know what Jesus was about. Jesus was about unconditional love. Jesus basically said he loved everyone no matter what. That is a beautiful message. Now, it would be nice if the people he talked to would live it, and stop being such jerks.
Who were the whores who continued to whore?
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
My parents had two children. They (mom & dad) were good Christians (not Catholics, though). They hit a "rough patch". До свидание. Your anecdotes are meaningless BS. Religious devotion + children + love < stability.
Many marriages don't get over the rough patch, some don't even try :(
You will say anything to rationalize your prejudice, won't you? I have trouble believing anyone is as dense as you pretend here.
Just in case, though, the government offers legal concessions to men and women who legally (not religiously) commit to a marriage. It refuses to extend those same concessions to same-sex couples, and can demonstrate no legitimate state interest in this discrimination. That is denial of equal treatment under the law, and is unconstitutional.
I'm inarticulate. Well, if it is extending benefits heterosexual marriages then examine why it is doing so and then see what the differences between a heterosexual marriage and a homosexual marriage would be.
So why deny gay families this devotion that is needed, the commitment of marriage? Seems your reasoning is based out of malice if you really believe what you said.
Please explain what I said (I probably badly phrased it).
If you really love someone, surely you don't want to be with anyone else? If so, then it would be pretty moronic not to ultimately work out your issues with the other person.
What the problem is some people can't tell between infatuation and love.
There is no good reason why priests are expected to do it. Peter was married, as were many of the apostles and the priests of the early church. Nor was this confined to the early church:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes
The Renaissance was a very dark time for the Church.
Actually you're not, because it's not an arbitrary rule. As someone explained to you earlier, there's at least one reason behind banning copulating in the street.
There is no valid reason for prohibiting same-sex marriages. That is arbitrary, and shameful - particularly since it seems to be antiquated, bigoted dogma (that not everyone shares) that is promoting this prohibition.
What a touching story. Don't know what any of this has to do with homosexuality.
And if you are being beaten in the street, and the police walk by instead of coming to your aid - is that depriving you of liberty, or merely "not supporting" you?
Again, don't know what that has to do with homosexuality.
To be fair, I knew what you meant with your comment, but frankly there wasn't any sarcasm in my statement. You were attempting to defend your earlier poorly-constructed post, and I was bemused by it.
What does being gay have to do with being a priest?
I didn't say in the street
Examine the benefits of heterosexual marriage, examine why they are given and then compare with homosexual couples
Marriages don't need to be about love, they need to be a permanent commitment.
Situation would never happen, police don't walk the beat here anymore (thought it would be nice). Also police are obligated to stop crimes in action while the government isn't obligated to create new rights because a very small demographic demands it.
You agree with a mangled, meaningless phrase of dog Latin? Mirabile dictu.
I guess I need a better dictionary
A sentence is also a phrase: all sentences are phrases, but not all phrases are sentences. However, frater, my Latin does not include either subcribo (unless of course he was looking up "sign" and found the word for to sign beneath or subscribe(!)), or of, or a as an indefinite article, for that matter. You could try Id est signum contradictionis, which might make slightly more sense, even in the Vatican. Actually, the id is optional. Hence dog Latin, frater.
Apologies for the horrible Latin, the only non-English language I am fluent in is Mandarin Chinese (specifically the Beijing dialect).
Evangelion
Jul 12, 04:11 AM
there's no way apple's going to use woodcrest in the upcoming powermac rev because there are no motherboards for socket 771 (woodcrest) that support anything above pci express 8x.
I beg to differ (http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/5000x/index.htm)
I beg to differ (http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/5000x/index.htm)
econgeek
Apr 12, 10:57 PM
I don't understand the outrage at this announcement UNLESS this means Color, Motion etc are going to be 'dumbed down' and integrated as extras into FCPX. That will upset a lot of people.
Seems logical that the suite can remain separate applications-- or better yet-- the new FCPX supports more extensive plugins so that you don't have the issues of round tripping, and you can use Magic bullet or whoever wants to make a grading app inside of FCPX.
Likely this is the kind of thing that will be announced in more detail at WWDC when Apple is able to give developers the tools and training they need to plug into the new architecture.
Seems logical that the suite can remain separate applications-- or better yet-- the new FCPX supports more extensive plugins so that you don't have the issues of round tripping, and you can use Magic bullet or whoever wants to make a grading app inside of FCPX.
Likely this is the kind of thing that will be announced in more detail at WWDC when Apple is able to give developers the tools and training they need to plug into the new architecture.
notabadname
Apr 20, 05:57 PM
If you don't know what you're doing with your own devices then maybe you need Apple to hold your hand.
It about not knowing what the software writers are doing with my own device. Not whether I need someone to "hold my hand".
Red Sphere Abstract Render
Softwares| Wallpapers
wallpaper purple abstract.
Purple Abstract Building
purple abstract fractal
Purple Abstract PSP Wallpaper
N ABSTRACT ART
stock photo : Purple Financial
Purple abstract background
Wallpapers · B.Themes Ecto
Purple Abstract Flower
It about not knowing what the software writers are doing with my own device. Not whether I need someone to "hold my hand".
Multimedia
Nov 1, 01:49 AM
FBDIMMs are designed for maximum bandwidth, not for best possible latency, so they cope with this better than any other kind of memory. You may read that bandwidth is the bottleneck for these processors. However, that is only the case for pure copying operations. Code that calls memcpy () on all eight cores simultaneously will run out of steam quite quickly. However, most code does actually do some work with that data (like video compression), and the bandwidth won't be that big a problem.
Lets say you compress a two hour dual layer DVD with Handbrake at 1 Megabit per second. DVD = 9.5 GB takes ages to read from DVD, takes about two seconds to copy in memory. Copying the 1 Megabit takes two dozen microseconds. Most of the action will happen in L2 cache, so you should be fine.Thank you for the positive feedback. But I don't rip anything from DVDs much at all. I crush EyeTV2 broadcast recordings with Toast 7.1 (UB) to DVD Images on hard drives. Then I 2-pass rip from those images with Handbrake to mp4 so I'm not having any optical bottleneck at all. From what you say, this should be much faster like I'm hoping with all those cores.
Lets say you compress a two hour dual layer DVD with Handbrake at 1 Megabit per second. DVD = 9.5 GB takes ages to read from DVD, takes about two seconds to copy in memory. Copying the 1 Megabit takes two dozen microseconds. Most of the action will happen in L2 cache, so you should be fine.Thank you for the positive feedback. But I don't rip anything from DVDs much at all. I crush EyeTV2 broadcast recordings with Toast 7.1 (UB) to DVD Images on hard drives. Then I 2-pass rip from those images with Handbrake to mp4 so I'm not having any optical bottleneck at all. From what you say, this should be much faster like I'm hoping with all those cores.
KindredMAC
Jul 11, 11:37 PM
My DualCore 2.0 PM G5 is just fine and will be REALLY fine until CS 3 is released next spring/summer. Until then, I wouldn't be able to fully utilize the new Mac Pro. I installed my CS 2 on my MacBook and what a dog compared to my G5 at home and my G5 at work. Granted my buddy who is stuck on a 867 QuickSilver at work says that it runs about the same, but that doesn't cut it when I've been using a G5 for 2 years at work and 6 months at home.
I hope that the "little apps" out there hurry up and get converted over quicker than has been happening. Flash Player has bugged me. They keep using "Betas" and "trials". Flip4Mac hasn't released their update yet for Universal so viewing WMV's is near impossible on the MacIntels. Little things like that make a world of difference.
I hope that the "little apps" out there hurry up and get converted over quicker than has been happening. Flash Player has bugged me. They keep using "Betas" and "trials". Flip4Mac hasn't released their update yet for Universal so viewing WMV's is near impossible on the MacIntels. Little things like that make a world of difference.
kuwisdelu
Apr 12, 10:57 PM
I don't claim to know anything at all about professional video editing. I only listened to the live feed. And I can say that the FCP pros at NAB sounded like teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert.
So I'm going to assume it's good.
So I'm going to assume it's good.
rcp27
Apr 13, 04:59 PM
Actually, I do think this would bug me. I love that I have all of my most used programs (Word, Excel, Photoshop, Lightroom, Notepad, etc, plus one particular folder) right there for easy access with 1 click of the Start button -- yet hidden away completely out of sight (until I click on Start). I also love having quick access to my "Recent Items" list, to quickly open a file I was recently working on.
Basically if you want to use it a lot (say top 5 or so programs) drag it to the dock and it's always there, one click to launch. On the right side of the dock is instant access to the applications folder. One click and the full contents are visible, so two clicks to launch (same as start menu). Next to it is the documents folder, same idea. You can set the dock to hide unless you bring the mouse to the edge (like auto hide on the windows task bar). It's not quite the same but offers basically the same degree of easy access and flexibility.
eek... I use "alt-tab" and "copy & paste" A LOT! :eek:
Doesn't Mac have these things too? :confused:
Copy and paste are there. I believe alt tab is too (or is it command tab?), but expos� and spaces handle the problem sooooo much better that I never feel the need for it. When I switched and discovered expos� I really did wonder how I ever lived without it (and when I have to use a Windows box it is the one thing I really miss most).
Basically if you want to use it a lot (say top 5 or so programs) drag it to the dock and it's always there, one click to launch. On the right side of the dock is instant access to the applications folder. One click and the full contents are visible, so two clicks to launch (same as start menu). Next to it is the documents folder, same idea. You can set the dock to hide unless you bring the mouse to the edge (like auto hide on the windows task bar). It's not quite the same but offers basically the same degree of easy access and flexibility.
eek... I use "alt-tab" and "copy & paste" A LOT! :eek:
Doesn't Mac have these things too? :confused:
Copy and paste are there. I believe alt tab is too (or is it command tab?), but expos� and spaces handle the problem sooooo much better that I never feel the need for it. When I switched and discovered expos� I really did wonder how I ever lived without it (and when I have to use a Windows box it is the one thing I really miss most).
Amazing Iceman
May 2, 07:04 PM
Ah, Geek Squad... Do they let you drive the Bug?
Sorry, I don't work for Best Buy... They don't pay enough... and their employees don't really know much about anything, specially about MACs.
You go ahead, drive the bug and be happy.
Sorry, I don't work for Best Buy... They don't pay enough... and their employees don't really know much about anything, specially about MACs.
You go ahead, drive the bug and be happy.
ddtlm
Oct 12, 03:46 PM
nixd2001, others:
Please note I am editing my previos post (last one on page 7) to address the issue.
Please note I am editing my previos post (last one on page 7) to address the issue.
spicyapple
Oct 25, 10:22 PM
If it's a simple swap of processors, then I would believe the rumors. :) 8-cores, wow! Much much faster than anyone anticipated.
firestarter
Mar 13, 02:49 PM
NO nuclear.
Problem is that you (or I) don't get to choose who uses nuclear.
- We can't stop Russia using unsafe reactors, or having poor security around them.
- We can't stop nuclear programs in India, Pakistan, Iran etc.
- We can't stop countries like Japan building power stations on fault lines.
All we can decide is whether we build them ourselves. We have a very real fuel crisis that manifests itself in war and terrorism, and will only get worse.
We can build our own nuclear power stations based on modern designs, in well guarded facilities away from seismic activity. If we choose not to, we face the worst of both worlds... we have all the downside of 'bad nuclear power' elsewhere coupled with the worsening ramifications of an oil crisis.
Problem is that you (or I) don't get to choose who uses nuclear.
- We can't stop Russia using unsafe reactors, or having poor security around them.
- We can't stop nuclear programs in India, Pakistan, Iran etc.
- We can't stop countries like Japan building power stations on fault lines.
All we can decide is whether we build them ourselves. We have a very real fuel crisis that manifests itself in war and terrorism, and will only get worse.
We can build our own nuclear power stations based on modern designs, in well guarded facilities away from seismic activity. If we choose not to, we face the worst of both worlds... we have all the downside of 'bad nuclear power' elsewhere coupled with the worsening ramifications of an oil crisis.
Bill McEnaney
Apr 26, 10:01 PM
It's quite possible they are "miraculous" recoveries. "Miraculous' as in exceedingly rare.
I wouldn't call Giffords's recovery miraculous.
I wouldn't call Giffords's recovery miraculous.
Alaerian
Apr 5, 06:00 PM
Don't read so much into it. Macs are perfectly capable of both copy/paste and Alt-Tab. However, Mac simply uses Command-Tab - Command is in the same place as the Alt key.
Under the Apple menu on the top toolbar, you can access both recently used programs and recently used files, just the same as in the Windows Start menu. It's essentially the same thing, but better.
Under the Apple menu on the top toolbar, you can access both recently used programs and recently used files, just the same as in the Windows Start menu. It's essentially the same thing, but better.
Evangelion
Jul 13, 02:42 AM
Even if the internal architecture of the two chips is the same, a Dual 3.0ghz Woodcrest configuration is still going to outperform a Single 2.66ghz Conroe.
It depends on what you are doing with it. Games would run faster on the Conroe ;)
It depends on what you are doing with it. Games would run faster on the Conroe ;)
Th3Crow
Apr 28, 09:00 AM
Agree. Too bad the iMac never took off in the enterprise sector. I remember when I was going to the university in the 90's I saw plenty of macs all around campus. Now the times I've gone all I see are Dell's, and HP's.
I don't know what you're talking about. I work at a university, and I have watched as Macs have become more and more abundant. It used to be that one only saw Macs in niche programs, like Music or Film Studies. Now, one in three commerce and MBA students have MacBook Pros. Half of the Engineering profs have Mac laptops, and about a third of those students. Macs have exploded in the last 10 years, almost exponentially.
I don't know what you're talking about. I work at a university, and I have watched as Macs have become more and more abundant. It used to be that one only saw Macs in niche programs, like Music or Film Studies. Now, one in three commerce and MBA students have MacBook Pros. Half of the Engineering profs have Mac laptops, and about a third of those students. Macs have exploded in the last 10 years, almost exponentially.
Naimfan
Apr 24, 11:02 AM
As soon as you start down the slippery slope of stating that some things in the Bible (I use the Bible as an example but this applies equally to all religions) are not true (i.e the world was created in seven days) or that certain parts are meant to be interpreted by the reader (who's interpretation is correct?) you lose all credibility.
Well, only if you insist that yours is the ONLY correct interpretation, right? What about the denominations that say "Here's what WE believe, but if someone believes something else, that's fine?"
Well, only if you insist that yours is the ONLY correct interpretation, right? What about the denominations that say "Here's what WE believe, but if someone believes something else, that's fine?"
AppliedVisual
Oct 28, 01:03 PM
Probably true, and quite sad really. SGI was a heck of a company in its day. I'm not sure they could have adapted. Once everybody else abandoned MIPS SGI couldn't afford new processor revisions by themselves, and the false promise that was (and is) Itanium irrevocably doomed them. Itanium basically killed off all the competition when the Unix vendors all hopped on the Itanium bandwagon, and Intel's complete failure to deliver on Itanium's promises looks in hindsight to have been Intel's plan all along. Just think of the performance a MIPS cpu would have were it given the development dollars x86 gets.
SGI tried to build more popularity for MIPS by spinning it off as a totally separate company in the late '90s. But other than embedded applications and various closed architecture implementations, the MIPS CPUs became a dead product line. Too bad, they were always fairly nice CPUs... As for the Itanium deal, the only major UNIX vendor that essentially sunk with the Itanic was SGI. Sun just brushed it off and moved on, as did HP and IBM. SGI's ship was sinking long before thier jump to IA64... They initially started to even go x86 and it was totally obvious that this would work for them. But I think their corporate leadership and investors panicked when suddenly they had two Windows systems on the market that were outperforming their current model Irix workstations for less than half the price. If SGI was smart, they would have dug right in and milked that cow for all it was worth and continued to expand their x86 lines... 64bit x86 was already on the drawing board back then so it wasn't an unknown factor. SGI would have done well to port Irix to x86, too bad they didn't have the foresight to do it.
SGI's technology isn't so much obsolete (who else sells systems with the capacity of an Altix 4700?) as it is unnecessary. 4 CPU Intel machines do just fine for 99.9% of people these days, and the kind of problems SGI machines are good at solving are a tiny niche. That's not just number crunching, a big SGI machine has I/O capacity that smokes a PC cluster.
Altix is nice, but hardly unique in todays marketplace. That and it's still Itanium based, which is a glaring red flag. I'd much rather go for one of Sun's large-scale solutions based on Opteron CPUs. It may only give me 90% of the per-CPU performance with 70% of the bandwidth across the entire cluster, but it's also half the price and I know that the CPU architecture will still be supported several years from now. Itanium is all but dead and Intel doesn't even seem interested in supporting it anymore. Most major workstation and server vendors have dropped it already and Intel has missed ship dates for most of the IA64 products on their roadmap. SGI claims they came out of bankruptcy a very focused and agile company... Yet they're still producing products based on a CPU architecture most the rest of the industry has already written off. So yeah, niche market for sure. SGI can't even muster the resources to continue development of Irix and it's being discontinued this year. So now all they have is some overgrown IA64 Linux boxes. What's going to happen if their current sales figures stay about the same and their own technologies dry up? They're just going to become another business-oriented Linux server vendor placing off-the-shelf components in some of the prettiest boxes around for a super-premium price. ...That's practically all they are now and the only thing that really differentiates their products (other than the cool system bezels and rack enclosures) is their NUMALink design.
I used to be very fond of SGI and their products, but that was years ago... The past 6 years have been a continuous downhill spiral and the company I once loved has been dead and gone for a long time now.
SGI tried to build more popularity for MIPS by spinning it off as a totally separate company in the late '90s. But other than embedded applications and various closed architecture implementations, the MIPS CPUs became a dead product line. Too bad, they were always fairly nice CPUs... As for the Itanium deal, the only major UNIX vendor that essentially sunk with the Itanic was SGI. Sun just brushed it off and moved on, as did HP and IBM. SGI's ship was sinking long before thier jump to IA64... They initially started to even go x86 and it was totally obvious that this would work for them. But I think their corporate leadership and investors panicked when suddenly they had two Windows systems on the market that were outperforming their current model Irix workstations for less than half the price. If SGI was smart, they would have dug right in and milked that cow for all it was worth and continued to expand their x86 lines... 64bit x86 was already on the drawing board back then so it wasn't an unknown factor. SGI would have done well to port Irix to x86, too bad they didn't have the foresight to do it.
SGI's technology isn't so much obsolete (who else sells systems with the capacity of an Altix 4700?) as it is unnecessary. 4 CPU Intel machines do just fine for 99.9% of people these days, and the kind of problems SGI machines are good at solving are a tiny niche. That's not just number crunching, a big SGI machine has I/O capacity that smokes a PC cluster.
Altix is nice, but hardly unique in todays marketplace. That and it's still Itanium based, which is a glaring red flag. I'd much rather go for one of Sun's large-scale solutions based on Opteron CPUs. It may only give me 90% of the per-CPU performance with 70% of the bandwidth across the entire cluster, but it's also half the price and I know that the CPU architecture will still be supported several years from now. Itanium is all but dead and Intel doesn't even seem interested in supporting it anymore. Most major workstation and server vendors have dropped it already and Intel has missed ship dates for most of the IA64 products on their roadmap. SGI claims they came out of bankruptcy a very focused and agile company... Yet they're still producing products based on a CPU architecture most the rest of the industry has already written off. So yeah, niche market for sure. SGI can't even muster the resources to continue development of Irix and it's being discontinued this year. So now all they have is some overgrown IA64 Linux boxes. What's going to happen if their current sales figures stay about the same and their own technologies dry up? They're just going to become another business-oriented Linux server vendor placing off-the-shelf components in some of the prettiest boxes around for a super-premium price. ...That's practically all they are now and the only thing that really differentiates their products (other than the cool system bezels and rack enclosures) is their NUMALink design.
I used to be very fond of SGI and their products, but that was years ago... The past 6 years have been a continuous downhill spiral and the company I once loved has been dead and gone for a long time now.
Rt&Dzine
Mar 25, 11:46 PM
The Catholic Church recognizes that people don't choose to be homosexual, however it does recognize that acting on those urges is entirely their choice. Chastity is what they are called to.
That is only if they choose to be Catholic (or other manmade religion with such beliefs). Otherwise, they aren't called to chastity.
That is only if they choose to be Catholic (or other manmade religion with such beliefs). Otherwise, they aren't called to chastity.
CMMac
Apr 12, 09:41 AM
Really interesting thread for me, as i'm a "soon to be" switcher.
2) Is the mac command line a full unix one, with same commands, etc? As i said i'm used to linux command line from managing my web servers, and if i can write shell scripts in mac, it could save me good time.
Thanks for this nice thread that was very informative about the main differences/issues i'll find when switching over to Mac.
If you felt confortable with Linux and its command line, Mac OS X should be no real change for you. Its command line interface is no different. If I remember right, Mac OS X's standard Shell is in bash, but you can change it to the many other popular shells that are used with Unix and linux and even install your own.
Once you are using the shell program in OS X, you will find the not much has changed UNIX wise but remember that OS X is based on BSD and not linux so I guess there are some small (very small) differences.
2) Is the mac command line a full unix one, with same commands, etc? As i said i'm used to linux command line from managing my web servers, and if i can write shell scripts in mac, it could save me good time.
Thanks for this nice thread that was very informative about the main differences/issues i'll find when switching over to Mac.
If you felt confortable with Linux and its command line, Mac OS X should be no real change for you. Its command line interface is no different. If I remember right, Mac OS X's standard Shell is in bash, but you can change it to the many other popular shells that are used with Unix and linux and even install your own.
Once you are using the shell program in OS X, you will find the not much has changed UNIX wise but remember that OS X is based on BSD and not linux so I guess there are some small (very small) differences.
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