Coming from a Mac background I worked in a Windows NT shop for a week and the techs couldn't figure out why my machine was broken every morning. It turns out that some network task was trying to back up my work at midnight every night. It couldn't cope with the spaces I put in file and directory names.
The real bug there, and in MOSX, is that the system doesn't warn you if the name is going to be a problem. If you try to embed a colon in a Mac OS 9 file name, you get a warning.
I have no idea why Final Cut Pro takes so long. My trancoder takes up to a couple of minutes on a 350 Mhz G4, depending on output settings. It's based on an algorithm from Tim Monroe at Apple. I'm transcoding in a separate thread on an SP machine.
There is no need to convert every frame. I step through the movie with GetNextInterestingTime() and convert only the key frames. The destination codec can fill in the diff frames. This is fairly fast and the quality is as good as whatever the destination codec supports.
Bandwidth is a consideration, but then it always is for movies. The server could cache a few popular movies. Then bandwidth would be three times the original movie when the first user downloaded the movie, uploaded it to the server and DLed the transcode. Subsequent viewers would use about the same bandwidth as for downloading the original.
You're right about the no-save attribute in this case but that's not all that common. I've been able to save most movies I DL.
What do most Linux users have for codecs? I could really simplify my code if it's just Sorenson -> whatever.
Here's a thought. Why not set up a transcoder on SourceForge? Then a the Linux users could just ship movies that they can't view to one address and get them back in a form that they can use.
I'll contribute the transcoder code if someone will take on the mechanics of setting up the site.
If you actually bought the 10.1 (X.i) disks, either the $130 new version or the $20 upgrade version, you should have a Dev tools CD. It's no different than what's on Apple's web site though.
HFS+ is the fastest MOSX file format right now. With all those installs you may have fragmented one of the directory trees, either the catalog tree or the extents tree,especially if you went for the one partition setup. Installing CodeWarrior can also trash your catalog files.
Try downloading the time limited demo of SpeedDisk from Symantec's site. If it doesn't make your G3 run faster, you aren't out anything. TechTools and a few others can also fix this problem but, IIRC, they don't have free demos.
Yesterday my computers asked me if they could DL patches for the two MOSX security holes reported here recently. IIRC, Win 98 used to do the same thing. So why were all those NT and Win2K machines unpatched? If MS has the patches months before the worms appear in the wild, why haven't the machines already patched themselves?
There are two parts to the answer. The first is that any competent Java/C++ programmer can learn ObjC in a day. Those who have made this transition never want to go back. The second is that once the ObjC frameworks are complete, Java support can be added using Apple's open source Java/ObjC bridge.
I own my own business and can use anything I want. So when I came time to buy general office software I tried everything I could get my hands on to see what felt right, looked good on the screen, seemed reasonably bug free and was easy to use.
I think I'm pretty typical in that features I don't use every day were still important because having a feature I never use costs me nothing but not having a feature that I might need once in a blue moon is a PITA.
I happened to try Star Office first but it was anything but intuitive. It also seemed too much like a commercial for itself. Then I tried MS Office and it was clear that Star Office was a knock-off. I decided that if the best Sun could do was copy something in a sort of bizarre way, that was good reason to buy the original.
My choices came down to MS Office on Windows or MS Office on MacOS. I chose the latter mostly because documents are easier to read on screen. These were by far the most expensive packages but that's not a big consideration when you think about how much time you spend using them.
I think a FreeBSD for newbies book is a great idea but, lets face it, the number of Darwin newbies struggling to gain some *nix skills dwarfs the number of FreeBSD users in the same boat. Most Darwin newbies are trying to make do with FreeBSD docs, since the Darwin Docs are so far behind. For the most part this works since Darwin and FreeBSD are so close but where Darwin is different it's very different and newbies especially shouldn't be asked to just hack it out for themselves.
The online sites, like Darwinfo.org, are aimed at more experienced users and are often very slow. Maybe that's because they are overloaded.
But then he came out with that whack analogy between commercial software and slaveholding. This may take the all time record for stupidest statement on/.
What's scary is he seems to believe it. It's as if at some level he thought Intuit would track him down and lynch him for switching to GnuCash.
How can anyone take him seriously after that remark? Both the Open Source and Free Software movements have so many articulate advocates. Surely/. could have found someone better.
I think you are making my point with "almost", "generally" and "practical."
I think interface can be made to work but fairly frequently at a the cost of introducing complexity with inner classes that is worse, in terms of code maintainability, than the problems with MI. I think the problems with MI are daunting in theory but trivial in practice.
I know about the dreaded diamond inheritance tree, bane of students and compiler writers, but I have never met it in the wild.
People really just want to use mixins and for that MI is more straightforward than using interface.
So I categorize languages like this:
Support for Mixins
Forwarding -- best
MI -- good
Interface -- acceptable
None -- not acceptable
It was really the last line that motivated my rejection of D.
BTW I do think the C++ committee made a mistake. They should have just banned diamond inheritance outright rather than making arcane rules for it. If you see it, it means your design is flawed.
I'm not interested in a statically bound language without multiple inheritance. Experience shows that it just leads to abortions like MFC. Every language needs either MI like C++ or forwarding like ObjC.
The APSL says:
"(c)You must make Source Code of all Your Deployed Modifications publicly available under the terms of this License, including the license grants set forth in Section 3 below, for as long as you Deploy the Covered Code or twelve (12) months from the date of initial Deployment, whichever is longer. You should preferably distribute the Source Code of Your Deployed Modifications electronically (e.g. download from a web site); and
(d)if You Deploy Covered Code in object code, executable form only, You must include a prominent notice, in the code itself as well as in related documentation, stating that Source Code of the Covered Code is available under the terms of this License with information on how and where to obtain such Source Code"
The GPL says:
"3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)"
This is from the guy who thought the 128k Mac was too open. Does anybody here remember Rankin's baby, the Cannon Cat? When it was released, IIRC, he was widely interviewed and stated strongly that he had had to compromise on the Mac because Jobs wanted a mouse and the ability to load programs.
Jeff knew that people were just buying Macs to run MacWrite and that they needed it in ROM. His design lost the mouse an put lots of extra keys on the keyboard so the user could could bold, underline, etc. without removing his hands from the keyboard.
The printer was built in and it did have a floppy but you could only use it to save and exchange documents that could be read by other Cats.
It was annouced with a big advertizing campaign and Cannon probably sold 5 of the things.
You can loose money by underestimating the intellegence of the public.
Are you really upset because there is no brushed aluminum viewer for Linux? Many sites go to great lenghts to avoid it. If you want to be cross platform, just use the Java viewer in your pages.
Sample code is here: http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/qtjava/qtjtut orial/Module2.html
I am impressed with the way Real supports *nix for seven CPUs. Many companies who claim Linux support really only support i86. Apple took the easy way by relying on Java as their x-platform solution. But to say there is "no player" is extreme when they post the code for a Java player.
OS X will be saved by its lack of security on HFS+ and ease of install. Ambclams has a good point about maintenence but, having used OSX for a week, I think I know how the typical user is going to address the issue. It's going to take them about 2 minutes to figure out that they can log in as root and configure the system the way they want using the GUI. Of course they can do things that will totally screw their system that way but Mac users have always been able to do that. They are used to it.
The saving grace of pre-X Macs was that you could do a clean install of the system and not loose any work. The cost of expermentation was low. With OSX the cost hasn't increased much because you can always reboot under 9, grab all your data files, and reinstall X. Eventually users will learn what does and doesn't work by messing around with the system. That's the way macs have always worked.
Bad news first. If Quest (formerly US West) says your line isn't good enough yet for DSL, fastq won't sell you service.
I must be one of the few people in the west who are happy with DSL. I went with fastq, a Quest DSL reseller, because their rate was the same as the Quest rate for bundled DSL/ISP service and they gave me a better price on the router. Quest was insisting that I buy the router from them. fastq's approach was "Use any router you want. We have some deals." I liked that approach better from the get go.
Things started bad when Quest didn't have my connection hooked up by the promised date. Fastq handled the hassle and didn't charge me till the connection was ready. They also supplied loaner filters till the ones from Quest came in the mail.
The service is reliable and there is almost 24/7 phone support (no support Sunday after 2:00 pm). I have connected with Linux, MacOS 9, MacOS X and Windows. I've never had a problem. I also bought a hub and plugged in my wife's machine and my Intel box. Everything just worked.
How about a monolithic install? The fact is that most people buy a Wintel box with Office pre-installed and never buy another application. The only exception are the gamers. What folks want is a CD that they can pop in their computer that will install an OS and an office suite. They would absolutely LOVE an upgrade CD that would update both the OS and the apps while leaving their documents in place. In fact, there could be specialized CDs for people who want to edit home movies or publish a newsletter. J. Random User would be in heaven. No decisions to make after he leaves the store. I don't mean this in an arrogant sense either. Some folks want to mess with their cars and keep them on at the peak of performance. Others just want a Honda Accord that will get them to their destination reliablyand that's fine.
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Coming from a Mac background I worked in a Windows NT shop for a week and the techs couldn't figure out why my machine was broken every morning. It turns out that some network task was trying to back up my work at midnight every night. It couldn't cope with the spaces I put in file and directory names.
The real bug there, and in MOSX, is that the system doesn't warn you if the name is going to be a problem. If you try to embed a colon in a Mac OS 9 file name, you get a warning.
I have no idea why Final Cut Pro takes so long. My trancoder takes up to a couple of minutes on a 350 Mhz G4, depending on output settings. It's based on an algorithm from Tim Monroe at Apple. I'm transcoding in a separate thread on an SP machine.
There is no need to convert every frame. I step through the movie with GetNextInterestingTime() and convert only the key frames. The destination codec can fill in the diff frames. This is fairly fast and the quality is as good as whatever the destination codec supports.
Bandwidth is a consideration, but then it always is for movies. The server could cache a few popular movies. Then bandwidth would be three times the original movie when the first user downloaded the movie, uploaded it to the server and DLed the transcode. Subsequent viewers would use about the same bandwidth as for downloading the original.
You're right about the no-save attribute in this case but that's not all that common. I've been able to save most movies I DL.
What do most Linux users have for codecs? I could really simplify my code if it's just Sorenson -> whatever.
Here's a thought. Why not set up a transcoder on SourceForge? Then a the Linux users could just ship movies that they can't view to one address and get them back in a form that they can use.
I'll contribute the transcoder code if someone will take on the mechanics of setting up the site.
If you actually bought the 10.1 (X.i) disks, either the $130 new version or the $20 upgrade version, you should have a Dev tools CD. It's no different than what's on Apple's web site though.
HFS+ is the fastest MOSX file format right now. With all those installs you may have fragmented one of the directory trees, either the catalog tree or the extents tree,especially if you went for the one partition setup. Installing CodeWarrior can also trash your catalog files.
Try downloading the time limited demo of SpeedDisk from Symantec's site. If it doesn't make your G3 run faster, you aren't out anything. TechTools and a few others can also fix this problem but, IIRC, they don't have free demos.
I'm not having any trouble with OmniWeb.
Yesterday my computers asked me if they could DL patches for the two MOSX security holes reported here recently. IIRC, Win 98 used to do the same thing. So why were all those NT and Win2K machines unpatched? If MS has the patches months before the worms appear in the wild, why haven't the machines already patched themselves?
There are two parts to the answer. The first is that any competent Java/C++ programmer can learn ObjC in a day. Those who have made this transition never want to go back. The second is that once the ObjC frameworks are complete, Java support can be added using Apple's open source Java/ObjC bridge.
I own my own business and can use anything I want. So when I came time to buy general office software I tried everything I could get my hands on to see what felt right, looked good on the screen, seemed reasonably bug free and was easy to use.
I think I'm pretty typical in that features I don't use every day were still important because having a feature I never use costs me nothing but not having a feature that I might need once in a blue moon is a PITA.
I happened to try Star Office first but it was anything but intuitive. It also seemed too much like a commercial for itself. Then I tried MS Office and it was clear that Star Office was a knock-off. I decided that if the best Sun could do was copy something in a sort of bizarre way, that was good reason to buy the original.
My choices came down to MS Office on Windows or MS Office on MacOS. I chose the latter mostly because documents are easier to read on screen. These were by far the most expensive packages but that's not a big consideration when you think about how much time you spend using them.
This interview just scratches the surface. Let's see if we can get Jordan to answer questions on /. I'm sure that would be much more interesting.
I think a FreeBSD for newbies book is a great idea but, lets face it, the number of Darwin newbies struggling to gain some *nix skills dwarfs the number of FreeBSD users in the same boat. Most Darwin newbies are trying to make do with FreeBSD docs, since the Darwin Docs are so far behind. For the most part this works since Darwin and FreeBSD are so close but where Darwin is different it's very different and newbies especially shouldn't be asked to just hack it out for themselves.
The online sites, like Darwinfo.org, are aimed at more experienced users and are often very slow. Maybe that's because they are overloaded.
But then he came out with that whack analogy between commercial software and slaveholding. This may take the all time record for stupidest statement on /.
/. could have found someone better.
What's scary is he seems to believe it. It's as if at some level he thought Intuit would track him down and lynch him for switching to GnuCash.
How can anyone take him seriously after that remark? Both the Open Source and Free Software movements have so many articulate advocates. Surely
I think you are making my point with "almost", "generally" and "practical."
I think interface can be made to work but fairly frequently at a the cost of introducing complexity with inner classes that is worse, in terms of code maintainability, than the problems with MI. I think the problems with MI are daunting in theory but trivial in practice.
I know about the dreaded diamond inheritance tree, bane of students and compiler writers, but I have never met it in the wild.
People really just want to use mixins and for that MI is more straightforward than using interface.
So I categorize languages like this:
Support for Mixins
Forwarding -- best
MI -- good
Interface -- acceptable
None -- not acceptable
It was really the last line that motivated my rejection of D.
BTW I do think the C++ committee made a mistake. They should have just banned diamond inheritance outright rather than making arcane rules for it. If you see it, it means your design is flawed.
I'm not interested in a statically bound language without multiple inheritance. Experience shows that it just leads to abortions like MFC. Every language needs either MI like C++ or forwarding like ObjC.
Wait a minute. If the DoD owns it, it can't be licensed at all. It's PD, as is all software developed by the United States.
Whether the DoD owns it is a different question. That depends on the contract between this guy's employer and the DoD.
The APSL says:
"(c)You must make Source Code of all Your Deployed Modifications publicly available under the terms of this License, including the license grants set forth in Section 3 below, for as long as you Deploy the Covered Code or twelve (12) months from the date of initial Deployment, whichever is longer. You should preferably distribute the Source Code of Your Deployed Modifications electronically (e.g. download from a web site); and
(d)if You Deploy Covered Code in object code, executable form only, You must include a prominent notice, in the code itself as well as in related documentation, stating that Source Code of the Covered Code is available under the terms of this License with information on how and where to obtain such Source Code"
The GPL says:
"3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)"
Could someone please explain the difference?
This is from the guy who thought the 128k Mac was too open. Does anybody here remember Rankin's baby, the Cannon Cat? When it was released, IIRC, he was widely interviewed and stated strongly that he had had to compromise on the Mac because Jobs wanted a mouse and the ability to load programs. Jeff knew that people were just buying Macs to run MacWrite and that they needed it in ROM. His design lost the mouse an put lots of extra keys on the keyboard so the user could could bold, underline, etc. without removing his hands from the keyboard. The printer was built in and it did have a floppy but you could only use it to save and exchange documents that could be read by other Cats. It was annouced with a big advertizing campaign and Cannon probably sold 5 of the things. You can loose money by underestimating the intellegence of the public.
Sample code is here: http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/qtjava/qtjtut orial/Module2.html
I am impressed with the way Real supports *nix for seven CPUs. Many companies who claim Linux support really only support i86. Apple took the easy way by relying on Java as their x-platform solution. But to say there is "no player" is extreme when they post the code for a Java player.
OS X will be saved by its lack of security on HFS+ and ease of install. Ambclams has a good point about maintenence but, having used OSX for a week, I think I know how the typical user is going to address the issue. It's going to take them about 2 minutes to figure out that they can log in as root and configure the system the way they want using the GUI. Of course they can do things that will totally screw their system that way but Mac users have always been able to do that. They are used to it.
The saving grace of pre-X Macs was that you could do a clean install of the system and not loose any work. The cost of expermentation was low. With OSX the cost hasn't increased much because you can always reboot under 9, grab all your data files, and reinstall X. Eventually users will learn what does and doesn't work by messing around with the system. That's the way macs have always worked.
Bad news first. If Quest (formerly US West) says your line isn't good enough yet for DSL, fastq won't sell you service. I must be one of the few people in the west who are happy with DSL. I went with fastq, a Quest DSL reseller, because their rate was the same as the Quest rate for bundled DSL/ISP service and they gave me a better price on the router. Quest was insisting that I buy the router from them. fastq's approach was "Use any router you want. We have some deals." I liked that approach better from the get go. Things started bad when Quest didn't have my connection hooked up by the promised date. Fastq handled the hassle and didn't charge me till the connection was ready. They also supplied loaner filters till the ones from Quest came in the mail. The service is reliable and there is almost 24/7 phone support (no support Sunday after 2:00 pm). I have connected with Linux, MacOS 9, MacOS X and Windows. I've never had a problem. I also bought a hub and plugged in my wife's machine and my Intel box. Everything just worked.
How about a monolithic install? The fact is that most people buy a Wintel box with Office pre-installed and never buy another application. The only exception are the gamers. What folks want is a CD that they can pop in their computer that will install an OS and an office suite. They would absolutely LOVE an upgrade CD that would update both the OS and the apps while leaving their documents in place. In fact, there could be specialized CDs for people who want to edit home movies or publish a newsletter. J. Random User would be in heaven. No decisions to make after he leaves the store. I don't mean this in an arrogant sense either. Some folks want to mess with their cars and keep them on at the peak of performance. Others just want a Honda Accord that will get them to their destination reliablyand that's fine.