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Here's the real metadata page you were looking for (can't believe Slashdot did not link to that instead of the older one!!!).

Basically what you want are Extended Attributes. They do have some well defined names for keys you can use, and you set them using the xattr command - from the article, an example:


% xattr --set name John file
% xattr --set color red file

% xattr --list file
file
color red
name John

% xattr --delete color file
% xattr --list file
file
name John

I actually clicked the "metadata"link in the original slashdot post, because that's the topic of most interest to me, but that link (as you might have noticed) leads to an old report that does not address the issue. I assumed that the link was the only focus on metadata we have -- but it's actually somewhat of outdated diversion.

Thanks for the ref, although it was made in a somewhat rough and impolite manner. For those directly interested in metadata in tiger, follow: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 6 http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 7

I actually clicked the "metadata"link in the original slashdot post, because that's the topic of most interest to me, but that link (as you might have noticed) leads to an old report that does not address the issue. I assumed that the link was the only focus on metadata we have -- but it's actually somewhat of outdated diversion.

Thanks for the ref, although it was made in a somewhat rough and impolite manner. For those directly interested in metadata in tiger, follow: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 6 http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 7

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/macos-x-gui/ma cos-x-gui-4.html

Not saying you are definately wrong, but you need a bit more that "last I heard".

In this review, look closely at this photo... http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 3 Isn't apple at all concerned their engineers are all white, 30-40 years old and middle class? How about some diversification?

Why develop something as impressive as Quartz 2D Extreme and then leave it turned off by default? My inquiries to Apple have gone unanswered, so I can only speculate about the reasoning behind this decision. My best guess is that all of the bugs could not be excised from Q2DE in time for Tiger's launch date, and that it will be enabled by default in a subsequent update--perhaps as early as version 10.4.1."

I told you so.

Why develop something as impressive as Quartz 2D Extreme and then leave it turned off by default? My inquiries to Apple have gone unanswered, so I can only speculate about the reasoning behind this decision. My best guess is that all of the bugs could not be excised from Q2DE in time for Tiger's launch date, and that it will be enabled by default in a subsequent update--perhaps as early as version 10.4.1."

I told you so.

Ars says:

For ACLs to work at all, they must be enabled for a particular volume. The Workgroup Manager application in Mac OS X 10.4 Server can do this, but that application is not included with the normal (non-server) version of Tiger. There is a command-line work-around, however. This command will enable ACLs on the boot volume.

% sudo /usr/sbin/fsaclctl -p / -e

I'm just guessing here but it's probably related to Quartz 2D and lack of VRAM. Your system might be shuttling several copies of the windows onto the videocard while doing the Expose effect instead of leaving them all in RAM while doing some of the effects on the CPU as it did in Panther.

Check out these pics.
http://ars.ord.cachenetworks.com/images/tiger/quar tz-10.0-4.png

Notice in the Panther shot there's a bit of Quartz 2D done in RAM before the result is shuttled off to the video card. I can't explain this near as well as the MAN.

Check "The devils in the details" here http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 14

-Don.

Spotlight isn't a general-purpose annotation system. In order for you to apply metadata to files, you have to have three things. First, a file format that supports metadata. (Metadata is actually stored inside files.) Two, an application that supports adding metadata. And finally, you have to have a Spotlight importer that extracts the metadata.

I don't think that's entirely true. Take a look at the Ars Technica review of Tiger, the page linked is actually about the arbitrarily extensible metadata information.

The example given is making a text file, then applying random attributes like 'color' or 'name' to it, with data associated to those attributes. It's pretty slick.

And it's possible that you're thinking of something more specific than this, but I believe this will fulfill the parent post's requirements for a general-purpose automatic filing system based on metadata information.

=Brian

Has a far better and more detailed review (warts and all).

In particular, it looks at UI issues with Spotlight, the implementation of file metadata (think: Copland's any number of forks in a file concept is now working), vast architectural and performance improvements to Quartz 2D, even running in software, etc.

Here's the url for the article:

Er... I must have forgotten how to read English, because that page and the article it links to don't really say anything at all about censorship.

For an alternate view on that issue, see here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050425-4847 .html

But seriously folks, can we talk about anything here without it degenerating into a "religious nazi" versus "liberal degenerate" argument?

...Cue the "You must be new here" posts...

My friend who is Chinese tells me you can get any DVD you want on the street in China, even some movies before they even come out in the US. So does this mean that we impose sanctions on China for pirating American movies? Or do we only prosecute those that can not retaliate by threatening to cut off an endless supply of cheap labor?
Movie theater profits go up every year so I don't see the justification of this legislation, maybe they will start taking away DVD copiers and any other means to capture an image (VHS) that is copyrighted in order to solve this problem?
This article says the net profit margins on DVD sales are 50-60%, while the lingering VHS business sees 20-30% net profit. To put this into plain English, your average $20 DVD apparent costs around $9 to produce, advertise, distribute, etc., leaving about $11 on top as pure profit. For an industry supposedly under dire threat from piracy, things look pretty rosy.

Those two all-beef patties you mentioned are explained in detail by Hannibal at Ars Technica.

Here

Read it. Its more informative that the short writeup above.

Kerry wouldn't have done the same.

Find me ONE other instance of a Presidential Administration (other than George W. Bush's) denying access to an event based on which political campaigns people contributed money to.

This is a blatant violation of the first amendment. More discussion from this morning's thread on Ars.

Found my source. See the second paragraph.

The Transcend Jetflash 2A from their review last year is still available.

How can such a blatant piece of disinformation be modded up? The 1GB Shuffle costs $149. Here are all the reviewed drives. Which one is over $149 in the 1GB model?

They excluded all mp3 players from the review.

If they added mp3 players, the review would have grown from 12 devices to 30.

However, if I had a choice between a 512MB Flash Drive for $60, and a 512MB Flash Drive/mp3 player for $99, I would definately consider the latter.

I used to think that graphical filemanagers all suck. I didn't like Windows Explorer, pre-spatial Nautilus, gmc or Konqueror. I used only command line for file management. The first time I tried spatial browsing was on MacOS System 7.5 running on Basilisk II Mac 68k emulator (this was a few years back) and after 15 minutes or so I found that it was something I actually enjoyed using. I thought: "This Finder thingy is insanely great. Why can't GNOME or KDE people do something like this?" And then, soon after GNOME 2.6 was released, I bought a new computer and installed Slackware 10 on it. Using spatial Nautilus and the entire GNOME 2.6 environment was absolutely wonderful! It was the best user experience I had ever had (I have used Windows, OpenLook, CDE, GNOME 1.x, KDE, FVWM, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, OS/2 Warp and Indigo Magic (on SGI O2 workstation running Irix)). Now I use GNOME 2.10 on Ubuntu and FreeBSD. I do most of my personal file management tasks using spatial Nautilus. I actually use command line only for file management related to system administration (bash + vi rule in those tasks). I have to wonder why I like GNOME 2.10 and spatial Nautilus so much?

One reason for this is that spatial nautilus is extremely simple and fast to use. For me using spatial file managers is very intuitive and natural. A good analysis on spatial filemanagers is found here.

Other parts of GNOME 2.10 are also very nice. I really like the way GNOME 2.10 handles filetypes and connecting them to certain applications. It is so intuitive and effortless to use that it puts the abomination known as Windows Filetypes dialog to shame!

GNOME dialogs are also awesome. The new open and save dialogs are finally usable (again: simple, fast, effortless, efficient). They are vastly superior to the pre Gtk 2.4 dialogs. As for other dialogs, they are also extremely nice and logical. Finally we have gotten over annoying "Yes/No or OK/Cancel -dialogs should be enough for anyone". Using verbs in dialogs (when it makes sense, that is) is a huge improvement!

Finally, to sum everything up: Great work GNOME developers! Keep up the good work!

I don't know if you remember, but this is how windows 95 worked. It was the most anoying thing, and I was extremely relieved when 98 came out and Microsoft changed the file manager. I cannot understand why the Gnome people would clone a decade old Microsoft model

It's been pointed out multiple time in this thread, but Microsoft has never shipped a spacial file manager. The Mac had one. BeOS had one. GNOME has one. Windows has never had one. Spatial Managers are explained here

"Opening every folder in a new window" is no more the same thing as "spatial" than "has four wheels" is the same thing as "sports utility vehicle". It's one aspect (and not, by far, the single most important) of a very particular kind of thing.

Oh, right. The Windows 2000/XP file browser sucks! I have an idea! Let's don't copy the Win2k/XP file browser! Let's copy the Windows 98 file browser instead! That's innovation!

You'd have a good point... if the Windows 95 and 98 browsers had been in any way, shape, or form spatial.

"Spatial" is not equivalent to "opens folders in a new window". Educate yourself.

I'd highly recommend you read this article at Ars Technica regarding the Finder and spatialness. It's more than up to Ars' usual high standard, and should give a better idea of what a spatial interface is, and why it can be a good idea, if implemented right.

For fucks sake, is this really so important to be on the front page of Slashdot? I will probably be modded down for this, but anyway...

While Slashdot thinks it is important to post news about Microsoft backing away from a gay bill with a source of from a random blog, there has been GCC 4 released, Apple has been paying tech editors to praise iPod, they managed to put 200 Gbits on a holographic disk and ton more of real news that matters.

Why stop at dual core?
Once a way to link multiple cores of a CPU is firmly implemented scaling the chip to 4, 8, or even 32768 cores should be relatively easy.
With chip dies getting smaller and smaller the only real reasons not to continue this multi-core scaling would be physical space and power usage.
Perhaps they could scale multiple cores vertically instead of just making the chip wider and longer.
And perhaps the cores could only be "turned on" when called for instead of using up juice all the time.

Interesting look at the future of chips.
Sony's Playstation 3 is using a "cell processor" or similar multi-core design that has already been covered here in the past.

Arstechnica article on the cell processor here.
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NoVA Underground: Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Arlington, Price William chat and local forums

How sad that there has been no mention of the excellent MSN Desktop Search, which has been available for some time now. MSN Desktop Search is fantastic, it really kicks google's offering in the nuts. Don't believe me? Ask these guys:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/desktop-search .ars/4/

OS X Beta: $29.95

DN

At least it will be a year or more before we start seeing broad adoption of WiMAX.

It doesn't sound like much, but I gather we needn't be too worried about the copyright owners' or licencees' profit margins.

You see, John Siracusa is a Mac fan who's hard on Apple. John Gruber is a Mac fan who is hard on Apple. Paul Thurrot is a Microsoft-shill who writes uninformed trolling articles to drive pageviews. Go ahead, read any of his articles on Longhorn, Windows XP, anything Apple/Linux/Google related and try and tell me he's even the slightest a "fan" just trying to be constructive.

He's a very skillful troll. Thanks for feeding him.

Well, there is the DRM-less music store Michael Robertson started some time ago.

AMD plans to charge a bit less than twice the price of an equivalent single-core model for each dual-core chip. This puts the aforementioned 875 (2.2GHz 800 series) at an expected $2649 according to CNET, with prices going down from there as you go down in series and in speed grade.

A point we made in the first article was that Intel's pricing strategy for dual core is extremely aggressive, with the cheapest 2.8GHz Pentium D soon to be introduced at $241.

but the courts are likely to give a raised eyebrow in return, and provide a cautious decision in their favor at best.

I hope you're right, but the decision doesn't need to be a slam-dunk to do an awful lot of harm. Even a cautious decision could be pretty detrimental.

I'd like to see some outside group come in and audit the research done by the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA, among others, to see how well it stands up to scrutiny.

Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but Ars Technica has an article that might be of interest.

Ars Technica reviewed the Disk Jockey a while ago. You can plug in drives to copy, wipe, or compare them. Use alone or connect to your computer via USB or Firewire.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/diskjockey .ars
http://www.diskology.com/products.html

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/ 174096756/m/747001362731

The above discussion get's into the DVD vs VHS price differentual.

Maybe what this audiance needs is a russian schooled in economic math.

Hello, Given into consideration that LCD is ALREADY an obsolete technology since the future lies in OLED, why not wait another 2 or 3 years and buy an OLED display when the price comes down ? After all for a VERY cheap price you can get an IIYAMA CRT monitor which WILL last for at least 3 years (that's their warranty time) and in 3 years you buy an OLED stuff. Look at what happened to the hasty people who bought plasma screens for their TV's.... Here's a link on an article on the subject, interestingly they say that in 3 years the technology should be ok http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050105-4500 .html

The one site I like, though the reviews are few and far between, is Ars.Technica. Only reason, is because they BUY THEIR OWN HARDWARE :)

In a forum posting, I bitched about how the Ars.Technica folks had put up a combination of hardware that was nearly guaranteed to fail for what they recommended. The reply doesn't give much hope that they've improved.

1. Macs are made with higher quality, so their users tend to hold on to them longer than the equivalent PC and they have a higher resale value. Which is why you tend to see Macs (Toyota Avalons) be more expensive than their PC (Ford Focus) equivalent.

2. I can see you are using the archaic clockspeed (GHz or MHz) metric for measuring CPU speed and performance. I would say that a PowerMac G4 w/ 256 RAM and a 500MHz PowerPC processor running Mac OSX 10.3 Panther is faster than an IBM Aptiva w/256 RAM and 500MHz Pentium III running Windows XP SP2, in that same token BeOS would run circles around both Windows and Mac OSes on the same hardware but I digress. My statement is based on the fact we have both in our department and the older Macs with Panther feel faster against older PC of the same clock speed running Windows XP SP2. Now you might think this is a smoke screen and an apologists version of CPU speeds. So let me point to you to the company that made plenty of money on marketing the clockspeed metric years ago. About Intel Processor Numbers

When comparing processor numbers, it's important to keep in mind that there are other key features besides clock speed that contribute to the processor's overall value. For example, there may be a case where the processor number increases because a front-side bus speed increases (e.g. from 400 MHz to 533 MHz), or cache increases (e.g. from 512KB to 1MB), while the clock speed stays constant or even decreases.

A muscle car Pontiac GrandAM may have plenty of horsepower under the hood but it doesn't translate to speed on the road. Compare that to a BMW 3 series which costs more can have the same horsepower but has better performance. You're not comparing two equal products. Take a top of the line Toshiba laptop or IBM Thinkpad and then compare that to a Apple Powerbook. Your comparisons are not comparing the same types of products in my opinion.

HyperThreading (guessing that is like the velocity engine, although I don't know what either term means, probably slick marketing)

Actually they are quite different technologies. SIMD is Motorola's Velocity Engine/AltiVec/VMX is equivalent to Intel's SSE2. Intel's HyperThreading is equivalent to IBM's simultaneous multithreading (SMT) on their Power 5 processors. CPUs like Intel's which have very deep pipelines sometimes benefit from HyperThreading and other times not. The IBM PowerPC (not Power) line of processors don't have as deep pipelines which is why they use a more superscalar architecture like the PowerPC 970 which has four ALUs, two FPUs and two SIMD units. I hope that helps and sheds some light on the confusing technical lexicon.

Here what I would recommend if you can save up for it. An older PowerMac G4 running at 500MHz with 256MB of RAM and 32MB graphics card OR a newer MacMini with 512MB of RAM. Don't bother with any G3 based Mac on eBay, as the SIMD (velocity engine) makes a difference in the performance of the machine and so does any video memory below 32MB. There are other conveniences of the Apple Mac OSX platform which become more apparent with the imminent release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Good luck which ever direction you go. May your firewall protect you from worms, your web browser from spyware and your operating system not burdened by viruses.

But if you're naive about the net and you go online maybe once a month...then you're a raw piece of meat in a pool full of sharks.

I am one of those naive that really don't have a clue what hardware review sites to trust. My comfort is that I am probably far from alone, in this matter.

To assist me and other naives(sp?), please join this silly poll and review the following sites (regarding credibility) with a scale ranging from 1 to 10, where 1 is "No credibility at all" and 10 is "Perfect credibility, these guys wouldn't post a biased review for world domination":

About PC Hardware Reviews
Ace's Hardware
Anandtech
Ars Technica
Beyond 3D
Cnet Reviews
Dan's Data
Dev Hardware
Extremetech
Firingsquad
[H]ard|OCP
Hardware Analysis
Hardwarecentral
Hardwarezone
IT Reviews
OcPrices
Overclockers.com
ProCooling.com
The Tech Report
The Tech Zone
Tom's Hardware
TrustedReviews
Viperlair
Xtreme Resources

If you know only a few of them, give your opinion on those.

Maybe someone with the right facilities could set up an independent poll?

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/ 8300945231/m/886008328631/r/886008328631/

And don't knock Spotlight until you've tried it. You don't like instantaneous searching?

Wow, how that display of ignorance got modded +5 Insightful on a site like Slashdot really makes you think.
First of all, Moore's Law implies that the number of transistors per integrated circuit will double every 18 months (which, is not really what he said, see Understanding Moore's Law).
Second of all, this has held true and is continuing to hold true.
Third of all, clock speed does not reflect transistor number or density, neither of which are the sole contributing factor to 'power' or 'performance'.


I don't know what's sadder; wondering if the parent was actually a joke, or wondering how it got +5 insightful. Damn.

On Topic:

That said, I think I know why Jobs hasn't pursued the hand-held media player thingy. Remember Sony's (former)[0] President standing next to him at the launch of the imac? [1] What do you bet that those two know very well what the other is up to?

Sony gets to try be the iTMS of the movie biz, without jumping through the hoops that Apple would to convince movie studios to go along. (The are a move studio!) Apple gets to watch Sony take all the risks. (Dead pixels , anyone?) Meanwhile, they can continue to focus on the minaturization tech they've got going for the ipod. Why would Jobs want to produce an ipod for watching movies on a tiny little screen, when he could make an ipod in a year or two that lets you watch High Def movies on any screen in your house? Sounds like this could fit rather well with the miniMac as a home entertainment PC.

Okay, stop reading. I'm going to relentlessly connect the dots now, and I know you've probably heard all this before.

You know the drill: the miniMac plus a broadband connection plus a computer monitor becomes a platform for watching downloaded movies...particularly HD movies, since Jobs has a thing for them, and people who can afford really good broadband tend to have HD tv's anyway. So, you get the miniMac as a user-friendly Tivo-iTMS combination.

But wait! There's more! Now, for a low, low, price, (heh) you can get a iPod-Video! Take your rental movies, and play them on any screen, anywhere! Show grandma your home movies by just hooking up the (included) rf adaptor to her 30 year old TV! Show your boss footage of the latest progress on the big engineering project! Keep your kids occupied in the SUV with an endless loop of Barney! (And no pesky DVD's in the van to get lost or scratched!) If you are really bored on that 20 hour plane ride to Japan, you can squint at the small OLED screen that covers the entire surface of the ipod. (No ipod tatoos for you! One year!)

oh, and if that doesn't blow your mind, think about the kind of PDA Apple could make with an ipod covered in a high resolution OLED skin.

____________

[0] President Kunitake Ando, replaced by Ryoji Chubachi. Not to be confused with the new Chairman-CEO, Howard Stringer. AP press release here.

[1]see this Ars Technica article.

On Topic:

That said, I think I know why Jobs hasn't pursued the hand-held media player thingy. Remember Sony's (former)[0] President standing next to him at the launch of the imac? [1] What do you bet that those two know very well what the other is up to?

Sony gets to try be the iTMS of the movie biz, without jumping through the hoops that Apple would to convince movie studios to go along. (The are a move studio!) Apple gets to watch Sony take all the risks. (Dead pixels , anyone?) Meanwhile, they can continue to focus on the minaturization tech they've got going for the ipod. Why would Jobs want to produce an ipod for watching movies on a tiny little screen, when he could make an ipod in a year or two that lets you watch High Def movies on any screen in your house? Sounds like this could fit rather well with the miniMac as a home entertainment PC.

Okay, stop reading. I'm going to relentlessly connect the dots now, and I know you've probably heard all this before.

You know the drill: the miniMac plus a broadband connection plus a computer monitor becomes a platform for watching downloaded movies...particularly HD movies, since Jobs has a thing for them, and people who can afford really good broadband tend to have HD tv's anyway. So, you get the miniMac as a user-friendly Tivo-iTMS combination.

But wait! There's more! Now, for a low, low, price, (heh) you can get a iPod-Video! Take your rental movies, and play them on any screen, anywhere! Show grandma your home movies by just hooking up the (included) rf adaptor to her 30 year old TV! Show your boss footage of the latest progress on the big engineering project! Keep your kids occupied in the SUV with an endless loop of Barney! (And no pesky DVD's in the van to get lost or scratched!) If you are really bored on that 20 hour plane ride to Japan, you can squint at the small OLED screen that covers the entire surface of the ipod. (No ipod tatoos for you! One year!)

oh, and if that doesn't blow your mind, think about the kind of PDA Apple could make with an ipod covered in a high resolution OLED skin.

____________

[0] President Kunitake Ando, replaced by Ryoji Chubachi. Not to be confused with the new Chairman-CEO, Howard Stringer. AP press release here.

[1]see this Ars Technica article.

The only problem is that it's hard to notice all but the most egregious offenders.

I've love Google to add a link to the standard search results. Something like "Report Spam." If enough (100k, a million, whatever) unique people/IPs reported a site or result, it would be flagged for human review.

I lke OS X too -- since this thread is a big Mac love-fest, I'll say that I'm typing this from a PowerBook -- but that doesn't necessarily mean MS is going to dry up and blow away tomorrow.

Ars Technica has taken their review http://arstechnica.com/reviews/other/make_magazine .ars one step further by building the $14 steadicam project and testing it out.

Couple things:

1) Active/inactive window effects are not the Finder's job but Aqua's.

2) The performance issue you've mentioned is actually due to polling. One can only hope that Apple is adopting the kqueue mechanism from FreeBSD or something like it in 10.4 to eliminate those delays.

I fully agree that the Finder is a disappointment in both capability and usability, though.

Couple things:

1) Active/inactive window effects are not the Finder's job but Aqua's.

2) The performance issue you've mentioned is actually due to polling. One can only hope that Apple is adopting the kqueue mechanism from FreeBSD or something like it in 10.4 to eliminate those delays.

I fully agree that the Finder is a disappointment in both capability and usability, though.