Avoiding the meaningless baiting and religious zealotry that brings nothing to this conversation...

I'm a long-time linux user (since pre-1.0 Slackware), but have presentation needs that I personally prefer some software support for. Thus I use a presentation package --- PowerPoint typically. For a long time I would run linux on my laptop and dual-boot windows when I needed to do presentations. The nature of my work and personal preference requires the use of a Unix-based OS to get anything meaningful done.

I first migrated to the Mac when I noticed times had changed and they had built something I had always thought they should do every since they bought the NeXT properties --- tart it up to look sufficiently as they want it to, but leave the Unix underpinnings for the developer/power user crowd (NeXT was great for that --- all the Humanities people I knew that used it had no idea there was a terminal on the machine and loved it...the fact there was a terminal meant I loved it too =). With office available on the Mac, giddy-up - I get the machine I want without dual-booting. Great!

I've always had a worry in the back of my head that my happiness with Macs would be transient --- that as the platform regained traction they would start screwing with it in ways that are unfriendly to the unix crowd. So far, so good, but ever since the iPad I have been concerned they would push toward that being their OS rather than the full-blown OSX we have currently. I do understand the points people make about how developers need a development environment so the desktop OS won't be going anywhere, but that clearly isn't necessarily the case: no reason they can't build a suitable development environment for the more restricted OS, or simply leave it to developers to cross-compile. Bottom line is my utopian "main-stream unix-based OS that is friendly to the non-power user" may well be at risk.

So fine - it's their company, they'll do what they want and probably make oodles of money doing it. But it will ultimately push me back onto linux full-time, and I'll probably just suck it up and learn to live with PDF presentations or OpenOffice as I have no interest in going back to a dual-boot solution...I'm getting too old I guess :).

It will sadden me a little though as in spite of some of the vendor lock-in that Apple tries to encourage, I have been happy using their products and have built up a bit of an ecosystem I enjoy using. I realize I (we?) are not really the market they are concerned with dominating, but it's a shame they jettison the "win-win" product I feel they had in keeping both the unwashed masses and the developer/power user happy with what is available.

Maybe good for Linux longer-term though. We are light years from where we were a decade ago in terms of user-friendliness of the system. Maybe this can be a tipping point and we'll end up with a "win-win" free OS which would be very liberating for everyone involved =).

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~AC

They won't be successful if they cost $100 more for a "similar" model (similar in the public's mind). It's like when the iPod blew up and suddenly all these nice competitors came out at the same price and no one bought them. You can't beat Apple at the design and marketing game. You have to beat them on features AND price.

Er... not trying to spoil your joke... but... the issue is not with Perl, but with most 32bit Linux machines, simply because time_t is a 32bit number and it overflows after 2038. That's a real problem that is out there and looks worse then the Y2K issue. But maybe you're just hoping there will be no 32bit binaries in use in 2038, in which case you don't have to worry. But notice that this problem currently affects any 32bit binary that uses the system functions to handle date and time.

I never said it was a waste of money or resources. I said that it's a great option if I/O is important. But that doesn't mean that it's great in general... If most of your needs are simply for bulk storage or the added I/O isn't worth the considerable difference in price, then SSDs may not be for you. And 30 times the performance is only worth the price if you need that performance... My whole point was that there's more to consider than just purchase price or thermal savings when looking into SSD storage...

Welcome to Slashdot!

Actually I can think of two reasons for password aging right off the top of my head. The first is to limit exposure time. Once a password/passphrase is encountered, whether by keylogger, reading a sticky note, phone phreaking, whatever, it will take the attacker a while to figure out what they have access to. If the password changes before they've had time to get very far they're out in the cold and have to start over (this happened at Microsoft a number of years ago.)

The other is to prevent re-usage on non-secure sites. If a (l)user finds a password they like, let's say September_11^2001, they're going to re-use that password for their Hotmail account, their SlashDot account, their GeoCities account, their bank, etc. When their PayPal account information gets stolen (again) at least their work password is no longer at risk.

Try MPEG Streamclip: http://www.squared5.com/

It's free (but not open source); I've been using it for years and am quite happy with it. It has a slew of preset "iPod" export options which are excellent starting points for transcoding stuff to dump into iTunes (and thus a iPod/iPhone) --- you'll also have to refer to Apple's documentation (which I'd have to search for the link...you can google too I'm sure =) if necessary as iPods have limits to things like the bitrate they'll play back, and don't support B-Frames, etc.

If you run afoul of legal h.264 which exceeds the spec for the iPod hardware it won't sync to the iPod so there is a limit to the bit rate/quality you can practically achieve for iPod/iPhone consumption (if memory serves...never quote me, I could be high), but the software obviously lets you set all the options you'd like.

As a bonus, and for all I know Apple has improved their h.264 codec since I ran into this problem, the one MPEG Streamclip can use was *much* faster than Apple's.

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~AC

It seems increasingly common for us to be developing tests for things we cannot treat anyway. I wouldn't argue that we shouldn't develop such tests, however the significance of the test's development is debatable at best. I would agree that I don't want to know whether or not I have risks for something I couldn't do anything about anyway. That sounds like a way to increase people's stress levels worring about something that may or may not occur (or even will occur with certainty, but at an unknown time in the future). Some will argue it's better to know, however I'm almost certain the only outcome of having test results like this available is insurance companies having a reason to say you have a pre-existing condition and screw you for coverage and/or rates. If you never knew you were at higher risk, you'd still end up with the disease (or not) but won't have been bent over in the meantime. I know which way I'd go (mind you I'm the sort of person who never wants to be lying under a bus regretting I've been eating tofu for dinner for years when I'd rather have had steak). -- ~AC