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Slashback: Alternatives, Ads, Apple

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what's-wrong-with-my-venn-diagram dept.

Slashback tonight with word on what you can use instead of JPEG, the return of AdCritic.com as payware, NCR vs. Handspring, and more. Read on for the details.

Prepare the JPEG bonfire. Moderator writes: "Here is an open alternative to the JPEG file format. I tried posting it in the JPEG patent article but it got buried under all the comments about "THEY CAN'T DO THIS!" and stuff."

This project is called DjVuLibre and encompasses "a set of compression technologies, a file format, and a software platform for the delivery over the Web of digital documents, scanned documents, and high resolution images."

I hope the judge has a big "WITHOUT MERIT" stamp. theodp writes "A U.S. District Court has issued a summary judgement in the patent infringement lawsuit filed against Palm and Handspring by NCR, dismissing NCR's suit as having no merit. Praising the decision, Handspring's CEO said 'Settlement of this case was never an option,' while Palm's CEO remarked 'We refuse to succumb to intimidation by companies that use charges of patent infringement to bully others.' One of the NCR patents in question was for 'a portable terminal small enough to fit in the user's hand,' and the complaint went on to claim that NCR's researchers, 'recognized an unsatisfied need for a portable, handheld device which would allow the user to information such as appointments, to-do lists, and addresses, and execute financial and shopping transactions by connecting to networks using an interface module.'"

This is sure to bring out the AdCritic critics. thebus writes: "The good news. AdCritic is Alive! The bad news. You gotta pay!"

An annual subscription for $69.95 looks like something worth paying for if you're in the advertising industry, but it would be nice to get a less expensive "interested viewer" option as well. Oh well.

Oh Steve, ya big tease! Maïdjeurtam writes: "In this Yahoo finance article, Reuters asked Apple's CEO Steve Jobs about the possible abandonment by Apple of Motorola and IBM's processors (PowerPC G3's & G4's), and the possibility of Intel processor-equipped Macs. Steve Jobs didn't exclude the possibility. He noticed that, during the year 2002, Apple had to finish the OS X transition and, this done, there would be a lot of amazing possibilities, which he finds exciting."

Most of the content of this article was covered in yesterday's coverage of Jobs' keynote, and the bit at the end about other processors may be only a throwaway line, but it certainly is intriguing.

8 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A jpeg replacement by bedessen · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm thinking about using png exclusively. If the content is good enough, I'm sure many IE users would make the effort to swtich.
    Why would they need to switch? IE has supported png since version 4.

    Okay, so some features aren't implemented right and there are still a few gotchas, most notably alpha channel support. Surprisingly, IE for the Mac has perfect alpha channel rendering, yet it remains broken on the Windows version.
  2. Send in the Clones by mumkin · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Apple had its flirtation with allowing its OS to run on other people's hardware. They killed it off. I'm still using an old PowerComputing clone that I bought back in '95, running OS X on it just fine thank you. Sure, it's been through a lot of upgrades, but until I bought an iBook last month Apple hadn't seen a dime from me for hardware since I bought my old Centris 610 a decade ago.

    They killed off their licensing arrangement with the clone makers because Apple makes its money from hardware. It's very hard to imagine that they could sell Wintel users enough copies of OS X to make up for the lost hardware sales they'd get from "switchers" who no longer had to buy an entire new machine. Would it rock if I could run OS X on a tricked out custom-built PC at half the price of an apple box? Sure! Would Apple profit from my doing so? I don't think so.

    I suspect that The Steve was just suggesting Apple might switch to IBM's Power 4 as the next gen architecture, not that they'll start dropping Athlons into iMacs.

  3. Re:OSX on x86 by doorbot.com · · Score: 4, Interesting

    right now Apple uses Open Firmware, which is an open standard for booting

    Ask a Sun engineer if you want a more accurate response, but as I recall, Macs (including my own) using Open Firmware, which is a stripped down version of the true "open firmware" known as OpenBoot. This is, of course, used by recent Sun machines and is very nice. I wish my Mac had the same OBP as my Sun.

    For example, I managed to damage my video card on my Ultra 30. Yes, it was stupid and I regret it. However, I didn't know exactly what was wrong with it at the time. I connected a serial cable to the Sun, fired it up without the keyboard and was able to get into the OpenBoot prompt. From there, I ran the built in diagnostics which basically told me what an idiot I was and how much damage I'd done to the card (doh!).

    Now, granted, I have yet to try this with my Mac but I'm 95% sure it won't work.

  4. OS X on Intel? Maybe! by Slur · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IT is not out of the question for Apple to make their own computers utilizing Intel processors. They would only support the OEM hardware, avoiding the pitfalls of Windows, which must support zillions of configurations.

    The most challenging hurdle I can see is dealing with big versus little-endian issues.

    --
    -- thinkyhead software and media
  5. Apple should consider buying the Alpha technology by Tjp($)pjT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is scheduled to be retired by HP/Compaq/Digital glom after the next two generations are out. The architecture has lots of headroom and Apple could own it outright. It has been 64 bit from the start and is very flexible. And the Apple^H^H^H^H^HAlpha architecture equivalent of AltiVec (MVI) is quite suave.

    --
    - Tjp

    I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!

  6. best commercial ever by jcsehak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    VW's "Milky Way" (last one on the page). Like the best silent films, they manage to tell a wonderful story with no words, except this is all in the space of a minute. The music chosen gives further meaning to the video, and vice versa. The fact that it's an advertisement is almost an afterthought. Which, ironically, makes you want to buy one even more. I consider it to be one of the finest short films ever made. If more commercials were like this, I'd pay for that adcritic subscription. Especially if they offered a way to get broadcast-quality copies of these commercials.

    --

    c-hack.com |
  7. Motorola and PowerPC processors by tristan-b · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The funny thing is, Apple hasn't been using PowerPC processors in most macs for some time now. That's right. If you open up your brand new G4 tower, that piece of silicon won't have the PowerPC label. In fact, no processor made by Motorola is made under the PowerPC name. Due to a bit of a hiccup with IBM over licensing the name, they're all merely "PowerPC Compliant" processors. Seems we won't see a PowerPC G5 coming from them after all.

  8. Re:Time to ditch image files altogether by Monkeyman334 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On my web design site we don't let designers upload designs with images because we want users to be able to use designs without an image editor. People that couldn't break from the images started some pretty interesting alternatives.

    Face (IE Only)

    Blueish (Ascii pron, all browsers)

    Some Impressive CSS Design

    2176lines (in emacs, crashes NS4)

    C64 (all browsers)

    And the list goes on, here's an ascii solution to flash while I'm at it. The web would be just fine without images and flash.