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MacHack Theme Unveiled
Carlos Finque writes "After much consideration, this year's theme of the annual MacHack conference was unveiled today: 'MacHack 18: Unstoppable'. Read the press statement and don't forget to register while you can. Mindful of the inevitability of their own conference and the unstoppability of it all, the committee looked for a suitable symbol for things that keep moving no matter what. It turned out that the committee needed look no further than their own Mac screen. Apple's own busy cursor -- the SPoD or 'Spinning Pizza of Death' -- is the inspiration for this year's MacHack theme element."
I dunno, I can think of so many better things that keep on going and going and going...
:)
:)
Journalists will continue to call Apple "beleagured" and proclaim that the death of Apple is assured. "Do you hear that, Mr. Jobs? That is the sound of inevitability."
Apple will continue to make computers with ridiculously low bus and ram speeds (though we all hope the 970 will fix this
Windows users will continue to blame the occasional failure of interoperability on the stupid Mac users and not the well-known flaws in their OS. Special characters in Word files, anyone?
I wouldn't say that the SPoD sticks around very long anyway, thanks to the joys of an OS with "kill -9"
-- Apple: Where Microsoft wants to go today.
Mindful of the inevitability of their own conference and the unstoppability of it all, the committee looked for a suitable symbol for things that keep moving no matter what. It turned out that the committee needed look no further than their own Mac screen. Apple's own "busy cursor" is the inspiration for this year's MacHack theme element, the SPoD or "Spinning Pizza of Death".
Like Steve Jobs himself...unstoppable! That kinda sounds like a movie trailer to me: "One man. One way. One...desire. In the Year of the Laptop, he runs a grossly underestimated computer company, and the competition wanted to snuff him out. But he had only one chance, and that was to fight back! Blessed with a weapon with supernatural powers: the Spinning Pizza of Death, he brings down hellfire on his enemies and throws the competition into his own house of pain. This summer, Steve Jobs is...Unstoppable."
Help Steve fight the good fight. Help him make his computers better. Go to MacHack!
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
My vote's for Spinning Beach Ball of Death; it lets you slip into happy thoughts about volleyball with the ladies while you're waiting. Then again, for most hackers, maybe pizza reminds us of the happy faces of our friends.
The SPoD doesn't exist. I mean, I've seen something where the cursor pointing thingy all of a sudden tries to hypnotize me, but I've read all about that Borg Marketing Trojan Horsewear that tries to convince you that the colourful XP is stable fast and slickable, by taking over programs and turning the cursor pointing thingy to a hypnotist's wheel. So I immediately hit the Apple-Tab key combo to fight the dark side impulses, and the nausea-inducing spinning assault on my staunch macness just goes away!! After awhile I can switch back to my poor 'beleaguered' program and the Borg attack is gone.
There is no Pizza. It is your multitasking that must bend.
Damn those pesky terrorists
After reading the summary I still have no idea what this article is about. In fact after reading the damn article I still have no idea what this article is about.
Journalists will continue to call Apple "beleagured" and proclaim that the death of Apple is assured.
Apple Computer: On the Brink of Oblivion since 1975!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This term "SPoD" might be a cute inside joke or something for those who require that sort of thing to feel important. But it's clearly a play on "BSoD" for 'blue screen of death' which describes a crashed Windows system, and the MacOS X wait cursor has nothing to do with that. I therefore suggest that we nip this term in the bud before those who don't know any better get the wrong idea and start to think that OS X has serious stability problems.
Talk about a random choice for a theme, by the way. I'll be at MacHack, and I seriously hope that the conference far outshines both the so-called "theme" and the more-than-ugly, less-than-useless web site at machack.com. (To be fair, the web site does look better now, even if it's the same old content.)
I'm not sure that the /. targetted advertising works at all. This article came with an advert for the Intel C compiler, with a tagline 'Targetting This?' and images of Intel CPU logos. Reading a Mac article. Targetting Intel CPUs. Hmm.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Has to be MacJive. a small control panel for OS9 that turns all text onscreen (including the apple menu, et al) into 'jive.'
Seeing a message pop up along the lines of:
"Da Locashun Managa is unable to connect. Sheeit, what it is Mama?"
it just used to make the day tolerable for me.....
(and here is the the obligatory link, works in classic enviroment as long as the control panel is enabled).
http://www.hax.com/MacHack/hacks99.html
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The cursor is a Spinning _Beach Ball_ of Death. I mean c'mon, you would have to be tripping your face off to see a pizza in the glob of color that is Apple's busy cursor.
The system may have been designed with hallucinagens, but your not supposed to actually operate it as such. I guess this is more problems arising from Stev Jobs and the 'lickable' interface, thank god apple toned it down in the latest release.
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Which I still have to use for a variety of legacy programs. It would be so nice if one of those clever hackers figured out how to put OS 9 back into it's box...(like virtual PC does with windows) so that we could keep 9 totally separate and save OS 9 states and not have to boot every time we want to start it again.
It's quite obviously called The Beachball of Rumination
C'mon pudge...get it right, please.
Spinning Pizza of Death should be Spinnin' Pizza O' DEATH!
I could've sworn it was the Spinning Beach Ball of Doom.
Maybe this year they'll have a little beachball spinning on the entrance, just to make sure you know that you're waiting in line.
- Sherman
Uh, I've never thought of it that way but god it's scary now that you mention it...
...I've always called it "The Rainbow Stress Pizza".
-realinvalidname
First of all if you want to parody an Intitialism such as BSoD you want to keep it the same amount of letters. Beachball is actually two words according to Dictionary.com beach ball is the correct spelling. So SBBoD just doesn't work, it looks and sounds stupid.
/. article that unlike the Blue Screen of Death, the cursor doesn't mean an imminent and uncertain end, i.e. a crash.
:)
Next up the Pizza, it in no way looks like any pizza I have seen under any state of mind. So you can just quit it with that. How many blue and purple pizza slices have you seen not counting Japanese Squid Ink Pizza? Even that's more black than either color.
In its most general form the spinning "Beach Ball" or "Pizza" cursor is really just a Disc.
I've been calling it a Spinning Disc of Death for as long as I can remember but someone made a good point in a post to this
So I'd like to maybe switch the D of Death to maybe be the D of Doom, because to most of us having to wait makes it feel more like we're doomed when we're in a hurry more than it makes us feel like we're going to die.
My Spinning Disc of Death will now be known as a Spinning Disc of Doom.
I also like what user jo_ham called it "The Beach Ball of Rumination"
In addition, the colorful cursor isn't one of a kind, it has an older brother that you sometimes see when using Classic or Carbon apps like Mozilla. It is made up of four quarter slices alternating black and white. When you use the term SDoD you cover all the bases...
"True programmers are artists and someday we'll respect programming as self expression and personal effort." - fateswarm
Just use MightyMouse from Unsanity
Some days I feel like Schrodinger's cat.