Domain: mac.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mac.com.
Comments · 1,680
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Re:I actually like this idea
i agree that its a good idea to give 3d artists/programmers the exposure they deserve, and i certainly appreciate the talent and effort that goes into the production of digital figure painting/sculpting. but i think its sad that it will probably only further the problems of female representation in the media already. i enjoy looking at beautiful women, physical or virtual, but seriously, i can't even turn on the tv or open a fashion magazine without a sudden panic attack that i will never be so fortunate looking and therefor my life will suck until i do or buy some product. every music video you see in american has the women vertically stretched in medium to long shots to make them appear thinner.
its not just playboy where the airbrushing is so blatantly obvious, but this practice of digital manipulation/re-creation permeates american culture to a pretty extreme and subtle level.
here's an example of it...
i love computer graphics as much as anyone else on here, and i want it to get the appreciation as an art medium it deserves, but the results are kind of confusing sometimes, for a female. -
Re:Easy way to check
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Re:Easy way to check
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In case of slashdotting...
here is a link to the picture [mac.com] Call it Karma whoring if you will, but I have been damn curious about this for awhile...
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Tournament Started
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Panther alone might boost the VT cluster.I have a Power Mac G5 2x2.0GHz here, and this evening I compared XBench numbers on it under Jaguar (10.2.8 G5, build 6S90) and Panther (10.3 build 7B85). The overall score in XBench went from around 180 to around 210, a 16-17% increase in benchmark performance, but some of the subtests showed more significant changes.
The XBench CPU Test score went from 148.72 to 193.29. There was a slight decline in the "Floating Point Basic" category, but performance in "AltiVec Basic" and "vecLib FFT" improved by over 50% and "Floating Point Library" performance also improved by over 20%.
The XBench Thread Test score went from 185.93 to 209.27, with most of that accounted for by an 18% gain in the "Computation" subtest. The XBench Memory Test score went from 293.70 to 312.41, gaining primarily in the System (vs. Stream) memory subtests, particularly "Allocate" which went up almost 40%. (On my iBook G3-600, Panther improved "Allocate" scores 304%!)
So if my machine - roughly equivalent to a single node of VT's cluster (theirs have more RAM; mine has more disk) - can get a 30% boost on the CPU test, a 12%+ boost on the thread test, and a 6% boost on the memory test, it looks like the planned upgrade to Panther mentioned in a previous article might help it get past the 10-TeraFLOP mark.
(Hypothetically speaking, if VT's code for LINPACK made extensive use of the AltiVec and vecLib bits included in the OS, going to Panther could boost things up into the 12-14 TeraFLOP range. However, I believe they're probably using custom-written libraries built with optimizing compilers, so I don't think the difference will be that profound.)
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clan EIT ownz devnull
We have been training for months for this tournament!
You are going DOWN!!!
hahahahaha -
Re:User experience
someone who owns a NeXT Station cannot possibly own a sexier computer
I consider my dual G5 sexier than both my NeXT Cube and NeXT Station Color machines.
Or at least equally. -
Re:FACT:"Big Macs are bad for your health."
Someone really, really needs to tell these kids that nugget of information.
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Picture up on a safe ISP
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Re:Any others?
Well, I'm pretty sure they got permission for this one:
Flurry screensaver -> Flurry screensaver built into Mac OS X 10.2 but as a "light" version.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screen savers/flurry.html -
Yeah...
I wrote about that too. Mine is implemented using a simple Servlet.
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Good Proof-of-Concept... but not quite finished!
First: you've done the hard part, and done it well.
But...You could really stand to clean the project up and take it to the "next-level."
Thoughts:
* There are an awful lot of wires running around. See: (here and here)
You could do away with the tape adapter by going with one of those short-range radio transmitters and hooking that into the audio-out of the laptop. This would clean up the cassette wire that pops out and then runs back inside the stereo housing.
It would also be nice if you could run the video wires in through the PVC tubing and then under the floor or inside of the paneling on the left-side of the passenger's foot. Wires are ugly, do whatever you can to hide them.
* The actual monitor housing unit needs to be polished.
OK, you posted asking for feedback, so here's some: clean up the monitor display. The black duct-tape and white-PVC tubing just isn't going to cut it.
Thoughts: Instead of cheap, white, bulk PVC how about getting some brushed metal tubing? It will do the job just as well, but look more professional. I mean... it is a Mac, right? You gotta tie in the brushed metal.
Also, the duct-tape reeks of a DIY (do-it-yourself) hack. I'm not sure what options you have here, but you simply gotta clean this up.
All-in-all, good proof-of-concept job! Now get back out there and put the finishing touches on it! -
Good Proof-of-Concept... but not quite finished!
First: you've done the hard part, and done it well.
But...You could really stand to clean the project up and take it to the "next-level."
Thoughts:
* There are an awful lot of wires running around. See: (here and here)
You could do away with the tape adapter by going with one of those short-range radio transmitters and hooking that into the audio-out of the laptop. This would clean up the cassette wire that pops out and then runs back inside the stereo housing.
It would also be nice if you could run the video wires in through the PVC tubing and then under the floor or inside of the paneling on the left-side of the passenger's foot. Wires are ugly, do whatever you can to hide them.
* The actual monitor housing unit needs to be polished.
OK, you posted asking for feedback, so here's some: clean up the monitor display. The black duct-tape and white-PVC tubing just isn't going to cut it.
Thoughts: Instead of cheap, white, bulk PVC how about getting some brushed metal tubing? It will do the job just as well, but look more professional. I mean... it is a Mac, right? You gotta tie in the brushed metal.
Also, the duct-tape reeks of a DIY (do-it-yourself) hack. I'm not sure what options you have here, but you simply gotta clean this up.
All-in-all, good proof-of-concept job! Now get back out there and put the finishing touches on it! -
iBook Glovebox Heat & Original Saab Model 95
A little rough (uh, duct tape?), but a great idea . I wonder if he has the glovebox/fridge thing going on? That would certainly keep the iBook cool enough. I think it will be a while before I do that to our iBook, but maybe someday. We do have a mount for an iPod in the ashtray of our 1968 Model 95 (why GM had to go and start reusing model numbers I will never know). -t
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Re:WinFS == Apple's "Piles", patented in the '90sI tried the Piles UI Flash Demo a while back, and I remember thinking two things: 1) This *idea* isn't patent worthy, and 2) It's just fancy eye-candy version of a folder full of icons/thumbs that pops up.
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Re:WinFS == Apple's "Piles", patented in the '90s
The similarity to Apple's piles is the first thing that jumped out at me too. There's more on piles here
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Re:Yeah
It's Windows XP, but with an obnoxiously larger clock and sidebar! Great!
Hmm, it made me think of Hal 9000. I suspect that wasn't an accident ... -
Panther launch..
This picture cracked me up. -
Re:Aqua X Logo
Here's a nice copyright-free panther-X within the slashtopicon proportions...
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REAL woodworkers make their own jigs
Usually out of scrap left around the floor. Even amateurs make their own.
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Virus free??
If OSX was "100% virus free", why would they have Virex, which has updates once a month? Are they writing their own virus and patching them just for fun?
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Re:Ehh...
How this got modded up is totally beyond me.
And just why do you need to generate 2048x1536 images on your cell phone? That's twice the resolution of most people's monitors, and well above most quality monitors(1600x1200).
Um...I believe most modern computers have the ability to scale images. When you scale an image down, it tends to look better because it becomes less grainy.
I don't see the point in anything higher than 1.5-2MP unless you're printing out your photos.
What makes you think that people who like to...gasp...print photos are somehow some tiny minority?
They are too large to use as desktop wallpapers, too large to email or put on the web, and I HATE scrolling to see a whole image.
Again, I recommend you check out the "scale" function on whatever image management application you happen to use. Scroll? Are you crazy? When you put something on the web, you scale it down to the proper proportions and compress it first.
Bigger is not always better.
True that, but not in this case. I will give you the network argument, but it's got 192 megs of storage...
I, for one, welcome the day that we have really high quality cameras on phones (or whatever device we happen to be carrying around all the time). I like taking pictures, and the higher resolution the better...I'd love to be able to put my trusty Pentax K1000 on the shelf for good. -
I'm surprised no one's done this yet (image link)
Just threw this together a few minutes ago.
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Right here...http://www.pc2rent.co.uk/images/ibm600e.jpg
This Thinkpad has a little, bitty, tasteful logo on the lower right corner. Nothing to offend. Actually I would have loved it if my new refurbed TP600E had a huge blue IBM logo on the top...I kinda like the symbolism of having a nice, big, badass (even though they are from 1999 they still kick ass) IBM Thinkpad running Linux. I guess the sticker I'm going to have made up with Calvin whizzing on the SCO logo will have to suffice. Suck on that, Darl Vader!
Then again, the glowing white Apple on my dual-boot MacOS/Yellow Dog Linux-running PowerBook G3 Series (aka Wallstreet II, Wallstreet PDQ) is only part of the Shock and Awe factor that still exists with this machine. Whip that puppy out, start it up, and that beautiful 14.1" TFT is enough to make you weep it's so gorgeous. The pic doesn't do it justice but here it is:
http://homepage.mac.com/techedgeezine/images/wall
s treet_14inch_shark.jpgYeah, both of these machines are older machines. Both of them cannot go beyond 288MB RAM. (256MB on the PB, although some have gotten rare 256MB SO-DIMMS to work on it bringing the RAM up to 512MB...and the 256MB SO-DIMMS you need are hard to get) But I still love them. The Thinkpad was bought last week for the lordly sum of $320. Gotta love off-lease purchases...
And damn straight, both run Linux.
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Re:AAC ripped CDs: unprotected?
In the list view, you can have it show the kind of file it is.
Screenshot
Songs bought through the ITMS will be called Protected AAC audio file, with a file extension of ".m4p" Other aac files ripped into itunes will be a ".m4a" -
And MS Word 5.1a
I'm running an app from 1992 on Jaguar (via Classic). It still runs beautifully. (That's Microsoft Word 5.1a, the best word processor ever.)
The parent is absolutely right. A lot of developers use unpublished, private API's.
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It's rather ineffective
Just for some reference, I am a volunteer firefighter in my spare time.
First we need quick lessons in one of many effective venting techniques called Positive Pressure Ventilation (PPV).
Here is an example of a PPV fan.
The vehicle-mounted fan basically works in the opposite direction. We actually have an electric fan that was used in a similar fashion (Smoke Ejector). "Used" being emphasized. It has been proven over and over again in training and actual fire events that "sucking" air out of a building is not anywhere near as effective as PPV.
One of the keys that makes ventilation so successful today is the close timing of fire attack with ventilation techniques. You vent too soon, you draw the fire further away from the seed of the fire. You ventilate too late, and you steam firefighters and victims still in the building. To position and start ventilation using a vehicle mounted fan is just not reasonable.
Assuming that this truck can displace large volumes of air quickly, you might actually push too much fresh air into a building, pushing the fire further from the seed faster than attack crews can respond (especially in larger buildings such as skyscrapers).
One other thing to consider is the cost of a fire apparatus. To purchase a new vehicle without any tools or custom options, you are looking at over $250,000. To be able to justify the cost of a vehicle that did nothing but ventilate buildings is impossible. Volunteer and even paid companies are struggling with increasing costs to maintain and improve firefighting techniques and equipment. New vehicles need careful considerations. I don't expect any fire company to have a "vent" truck available to them in the near or far future. -
Re:Is it a good standalone MP3 player?
I do the same as you, and take it one step further. I control everything via Bluetooth and my T68i.
The Salling Clicker is a pretty cool application! Works great with iTunes. -
Re:Too early to say so...
There is a software available called Salling Clicker and it does that.
How? I guess it can be done because the application will got notify upon a BT device attach/detach, similar to a USB device. So, a device_attached signal will cause the application to kick up the screen saver, and vice versa.
Also, as the Mac OS X is a fully scriptable system, you can in fact carry out more complicated tasks upon attach/detach of the BT device other than just launching/killing the screensaver.
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Apple & Sony/Ericsson rock!
Last week I received my $0 Sony/Ericsson T610, part of my new mobile subscription. It rocks with bluetooth! I pair it with my Powerbook once, and after that I can:
sync my telephone list with my Mac
sync my calendar with my phone
use the internet while the phone is in my pocket.
up & download pictures with the phone.
and best of all: using Salling's Clicker software, I can use my phone to control a slideshow, my iTunes mp3 player, even steer the mouse around on the screen.
It works great & transparent.
Then I hooked up a Belkin bluetooth adapter with little external antenna, and the range extended from 10 meters to about 80. I wonder what's the use in that, but it's cool!
Oh, and the wireless Apple Mouse is pretty handy for presentations: you can walk around during lectures, just like with a ir remote, but you don't have to point to click.
All in all: I'm happy Bluetooth is finally usefull.
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Re:Idiocy - bluetooth just taking off
I don't know about the original poster, but I'm using Salling Clicker for MacOS X to move my cursor via the phone (T616). This is an almost completely useless feature, but it sure is cool. The features I do use are the "pause iTunes/iDVD when making/receiving a call" and the "pause iTunes/iDVD when away from computer". It's $10 shareware.
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For those too lazy to copy and paste . . .
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Re:I use it everyday...You can use the Sailing Clicker or Romeo. Great for presentations and locking your screen when you walk away from your machine (if you have your cell phone with you and walk out of range)..
Geoffeg
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Quicktime
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Re:PantherMy bandwidth will get blasted, but here's an example of expose:
1.8MB, someone mirror please...
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Re:webmail and POP3 are not exclusive
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Re:The question is then
heh heh. uhmm yeah
... uhm ... my dog ... Lee .. yeah :}. aww ok ok: yes i was that cheesy in naming my playlist :|.Heh i'm glad you didn't see Avril right below Aretha, you woulda prolly made me a foe
;]. I do like Avril tho.Those are sunset pics i actually took right by where i live with a Sony DSC P50 digital cam
:). They make for very soothing desktops :D -
Re:The question is then
heh heh. uhmm yeah
... uhm ... my dog ... Lee .. yeah :}. aww ok ok: yes i was that cheesy in naming my playlist :|.Heh i'm glad you didn't see Avril right below Aretha, you woulda prolly made me a foe
;]. I do like Avril tho.Those are sunset pics i actually took right by where i live with a Sony DSC P50 digital cam
:). They make for very soothing desktops :D -
Re:Just watched...
Not Matrix or SW related. But there is ST themed really high quality and ambitious fan fiction that you may enjoy. That is, if fan fictioning is your kick.
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Re:Those who can...
Does anyone think these yahoo's have a chance of actually fielding a working robosoccer team?
I think they can. In fact I hope that they kick ass and take names.
This is an academic contest. All of the teams are students and grad students, each sponsored by faculty members like them. There is a lot of work to do for this contest, but all previous work done by all previous teams is open to anyone who wants to join in.
My team gives away our design and code every year. Many others do as well. We do it to push ourselves. Every year, teams like this one come along with stuff that we haven't thought of yet, and advance the whole program. We learn stuff from every team that we play.
The fact that they have so many involved faculty speaks volumes about their interest in the program. Yes, students will do the work in the end, but it puts them in a much stronger position to have so many faculty to draw from.
-- Len
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Yup, another rip off.
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10.2.8 [installer] reducing battery life
Yes, this has happened again. Back in the days of 10.2.6, I used to own an iBook, where upgrading from 10.2.5 to 10.2.6 using the Mac OS X 10.2.6 Combo Update reduced my battery's (reported) life from 4:35 to 2:05 hours. At that time, I didn't know why it happened.
Now I changed my iBook to a PowerBook G4, and upgraded 10.2.7 to 10.2.8, and the same thing has happened.
I did have one hiccup though -- the screen saver kicked in, causing the system to hang during optimisation where it could not start the selected Screen Effect to run as the screen saver. I was forced to restart the machine during a time an upgrade was taking place. But I don't think that this would have contributed to the problem since a replacement power management driver got written to the disk anyway, and the system would have taken that into account on the next startup.
So, I installed the upgrade again, in the hopes that the installer would just overwrite the relevant files. This time, the upgrade succeeded (because I disabled sleep and the screen saver).
LESSON 1: disable all system extensions that would disrupt the operation of the installer.
I learned from the iBook ordeal that the fault occurred during installation time, and that users who installed their systems on a full battery did not experience any unexpected changes to their battery life or capacity reporting, and I myself concluded that this would have to have been the case, given my experiences and the overwhelming evidence provided by the discussion group for iBook users.
LESSON 2: only apply a system update when the battery is fully charged.
I changed by battery under warranty to solve the problem... and it looks like I'll be doing it again unless a software solution to this problem can be found. A software issue caused this mess... surely a software fix can be formulated to deal with it.
My next step is to charge the battery to 100%, and re-run the update installer again to see if this "fixes" the battery calibration issues. I'll get back to this discussion and tell you the outcome.
For anyone who thinks I'm joking... here's evidence of the aftermath! I didn't mean to do it--I installed it without checking my battery charge at the time--but it's done, and is proof to me that the problem will be with us until an effort is made to find and fix the bugs in the system kernel code that deals with the maintenance of the battery, especially at module initialisation.
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Why is linux still so ugly...Why is it still so damn ugly?
I'm looking at the screenshots; the backdrop is over-compressed and too low resolution, the KDE (or is it gnome) taskbar-wannabe still looks plain and bland, as if they've somehow tried to round the 3d appearance of the buttons (and it looks like ass), The fonts are badly hinted and waaay too thin, and just generally not visually appealing, the underlining of the letters in the menu looks like something from Windows 3.1...actually, it's mostly just the fonts (and whatever engine draws and renders the glyphs), and the ugly 3d elements.
The Media Player winamp thingy looks great, beautiful clean interface with nice fonts. The rest of the OS? not so good. It reminds me of the harsh appearance of intuition on the Amiga. The shades which make the GUI elements look 3d need to be waaay more subtle. And just stupid things like in the panel at the top of the screen, the icons are just rammed across the top of the screen, with not so much as a 2 pixel border to make them look nice (look at the XMMS icon). And those two buttons near the xchat icon stick out like zits on a teenager.
Compare to the elegance of this. Ignore the one pixel cut off on the left side of the toolbar buttons (beta software glitch...)
Perhaps it's just what you're used to, but most people seem to agree the UI in linux is it's worse attribute, and that it's one of OS X's best. Please, PLEASE steal some ideas, and/or concepts. Go read Apple's UI guide, or even Microsoft's if they have one.
--THIS IS NOT A TROLL, THIS IS CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM--
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Why is linux still so ugly...Why is it still so damn ugly?
I'm looking at the screenshots; the backdrop is over-compressed and too low resolution, the KDE (or is it gnome) taskbar-wannabe still looks plain and bland, as if they've somehow tried to round the 3d appearance of the buttons (and it looks like ass), The fonts are badly hinted and waaay too thin, and just generally not visually appealing, the underlining of the letters in the menu looks like something from Windows 3.1...actually, it's mostly just the fonts (and whatever engine draws and renders the glyphs), and the ugly 3d elements.
The Media Player winamp thingy looks great, beautiful clean interface with nice fonts. The rest of the OS? Not so good. It reminds me of the harsh appearance intuition on the Amiga had.
The shades which make the GUI elements look 3d need to be waaay more subtle. And just stupid things like in the panel at the top of the screen, the icons are just rammed across the top of the screen, with not so much as a 2 pixel border to make them look nice (look at the XMMS icon). And those two buttons near the xchat icon stick out like zits on a teenager. The speaker icon looks like it was drawn by an 8 year old.
Compare to the simple elegance of this. Ignore the one pixel cut off on the left side of the toolbar buttons (beta software glitch...)
Maybe it's just what you're used to, but most people seem to agree the UI in linux is it's worse attribute, and that it's one of OS X's best. Please, PLEASE, steal some ideas, or concepts. Go read Apple's UI guide, or even Microsoft's if they have one.
--- THIS IS NOT A TROLL, THIS IS CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM --
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Re:I guess the RIAA doesn't know about Virtual PC
mldonkey works on OS X.
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Ooh, Jesus Christ
It's Lemmiwinks's great*10^32 uncle.
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Re:They'll also be standing by. . .Please only relay traffic coming from the disaster area!!
It goes against most of the Amateur Radio community, but it is ludicrous to flood a devestated area with Health & Welfare traffic. It simply will never get delivered and it burdens the overall relief effort.
Better yet, establish an out-of-area contact for yourself and send one message (radio, cell, Internet, etc) out of the disaster area to one person who is safe and sound elsewhere. Then that person can contact everyone else in the family, circle of friends, etc.
The mistake I saw during Hurricane Iniki on Kauai in 1992 came from the demand of those traffic nets to get those HW messages passed. They never were delivered and they sat on packet radio BBS' until deleted.
A lot of these traffic nets thought they were helping the relief effort by sending the HW traffic into the disaster area. Instead, those operators should have stood by and waited for someone on Kauai to come up and pass traffic out of the disaster area. That didn't happen much because most hams on the island went to help either themselves or the American Red Cross.
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Re:Goldtouch Good, Happy Hacking Bad
I've not come across a better keyboard to type on than the current white "Apple Keyboard". While that's a completely subjective judgment that won't apply to everyone, it's a good simple and pretty minimalist keyboard. A better action than the pro keyboards, with a good feel, and just seems to have the right balance between extreme click and soft mush.
pictures of the thing are here
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Re:1.6 & 1.8 single to dual processor upgradeDoes anyone know if this is possible or is the 2 Ghz the only configuration able to support dual G5's? (Can one purchase a single 2.0Ghz and add a proc later?)
Highly unlikely.
Based on history - I don't recall Apple every offering a "dual processor capable" (at least not without third-party upgrades) machine that only shipped with one CPU - and some of the (few) pictures around the place that actually show the inside of the single-CPU models, there doesn't seem to be anywhere to plug an extra CPU in.
There certainly isn't a BTO option on the dual 2Ghz model to only order a single CPU and I don't recall there ever being a similar option for earlier dual CPU machines from Apple.
Of course, what magic the third-party upgraders can weave remains to be seen.