Re:How are the PS2's A/V capabilities "Just enough
on
First Review of Halo
·
· Score: 1
The PS2 A/V outputs are better than "Just Enough"
Chalk it up to poor word choice, then. We're still off-topic here. I meant only to imply you get the most important features from the fully-loaded consumer players. My DVD player (also made by Sony) has outputs for Dolby 5.1, and digital audio, and extra outs for something like four audio sources, and on and on and on.
One last note - have you forgotten that Panasonic (at least I think it was Panasonic) is coming out with a DVD playing version of the Gamecube?
I had, in fact, not heard of this. Maybe because the story ran on slashdot. That's cool nonetheless, but when did another electronics company get rights to Nintendo's design?
And independent review panel of my peers decided my comment was:
Moderation Totals: Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Total=4.
Careful you don't jinx yourself, you were down to 3 when I replied.
My POINT was, get off your soapbox. The XBox is not Microsoft, it is produced by microsoft. Maybe if you had a different bone to pick, like the antitrust lawsuit, your comments would seem more timely, but Microsoft means jack to the gaming world unless they debut a console that GAMERS appreciate.
Besides, Microsoft is a software monopoly. There is no problem with (and indeed, the economy BENEFITS from) a company reaching out to several different markets.
You don't want one, cool. I bet a lot of others do.
I can't tell if this is begging, sarcasm, funny, or insightful.
Correct answer: none of the above.
No, nevermind, it's amazingly insightful, groundbreaking, even, when you say:
M$ is making money off this.
(Micro$oft! It's a dollar sign, get it?! hahaha!)
Yet another example of an inane, microsoft-bashing post that has become the cream of slashdot and the shit of the internet. Let's make this a defense of microsoft post, okay?
1. This console is extraordinarily well-equipped.
We're talking GORGEOUS graphics, huge polygon counts, simple development - pretty much all the things that the PS2 wasn't. But this isn't competing with the PS2, more like the GameCube. So:
2. The GameCube has no (repeat: NO) DVD support.
This may not be a huge issue for some, who can readily shell out $300 for a consumer model DVD player or what-have-you. Okay, so they're probably cheaper than that, but the point is: the GameCube is not selling as a consumer device. And why should it? Nintendo's never needed to make extra money with flashy add-ons that no one really uses (need I say, Sega CD? "I can play music CD's on my TV now!").
Except, the PS2's DVD support and audio capabilities are in the "just enough" range so that technophiles can be satisfied, and gamers (and kids) get their top-of-the-line console.
So what's up, Nintendo? Another proprietary format for your games? Marginally stronger graphics capabilities?
XBox has DVD support, it's got plenty of money behind it, it's got loads of developers supporting it. Technologically, maybe it's not groundbreaking - if anything, it's on par with the cube - but as a commodity, as a consumer item, this thing rules. And Microsoft will sell a million units, you watch.
This problem only came to light today, and they have a fix out the same day.
Took the words out of my mouth. I concede that this is more severe than a security bug since an otherwise benevolent installer inadvertantly destroyed real data because of a poorly-written shell script.
But the fast turn-around by Apple at least minimized their collateral damage. Had this not turned up within hours, and a fix not been available within a couple more, it could have been a serious problem. But give Apple credit for fixing a problem like this quickly.
iTunes 2 was rushed to market because the iPod requires it. QA slipped, and didn't test this on enough configurations to realize the error before publishing it. But the work that went into iTunes finally brings some features that I've been waiting for to this product (who ever heard of shipping an audio player without an equalizer?) - don't let this cloud the hard work the apple engineers put into iTunes.
That means (at least without further hacking) it can't be used as a transfer medium between the G3 and work and the iMac kept hidden in your darkest closet, which is sort of a shame considering that it has all the right things built in to be even better than the several portable firewire drives on the market.
Apple has said explicitly that you could use this 5GB (yes, FIVE gigabyte, not ten) as a storage medium. Presumably the storage of MP3s would be restricted to interfacing with only one unique copy of iTunes. But that's no problem, just zip up (or use the excellent DropStuff, free utility from Aladdin for windows and mac) those MP3s and transfer the files that way. Sure, you won't compress them much, but you can route that silly protection.
Note that in product demos of the beast, the iPod shows up as a FIREWIRE DISK ON THE DESKTOP. I see no problems with transferring MP3s, just be a little craftier. Sheesh. Hardly any hacking required.
...and when they've faltered, they've made up for it in spades with programs like an excellent trade-in opportunity for owners of the ill-fated 5300- and 190-series powerbooks, or defective power adaptors. I had one of these beasts fail on me and I've got to say, the Apple rep I talked to was just amazing. I got a free adaptor, I got about $500 off a new Wallstreet PB, and traded THAT in again for a new iBook.
The iBooks are spectacular. They are thin, light, and the benefits provided by the PowerBook G4 (speed, screen size) pale in comparison to the fact that the iBook won't scorch your lap(!) - and besides, the speed hit is minimal even under OS X, especially now that 10.1 is out. For $1199, you get an extremely respectable G3 machine with all the bells and whistles appreciated by myself and other Apple fans that have kept us coming back again and again.
I'm concerned about the vast information available to authorities ALREADY at the local level without tapping the ridiculous amount of potentially derogatory or negatively influential information available to federal agencies.
This issue comes up again and again when police officers are asked to consider criminal records when taking actions for otherwise minor infractions. This scares me on Orwellian levels. How can anyone expect fair treatment from authorities when now the federal government can be expected to constantly track their movements? What kind of information do local authorities really need to be able to tap in to? Racial profiling was bad, eh? Try criminal profiling. The answer isn't "if you aren't doing anything wrong you've got nothing to worry about." The probative value of having a federally-endorsed NATIONAL database of citizens including all types of unspecified information is FAR outweighed by the potential negative impact on the common citizen. Filing "suspicions" of criminal involvement in a database that you have no right to view is pretty fuckin scary, if you ask me.
Quick point: We don't pump crude oil into our aircraft. It's refined, and Thermo applies there too.
yeah but we don't pump crude oil into much of anything except a refinery. so the issue becomes exactly HOW much energy must be spent in the manufacture of hydrogen...
unfortunately, it looks like the open-source initiative will never get off the ground. From WebMD:
Mono typically lasts several weeks to a month, progressing into its final stages within two to three weeks of contraction.
Damn. Well, it'll be a cool month at that.
quick question, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction for the appropriate statutes or definitions:
a while ago, i had constructed a parody website of a private institution's webpage. the webpage itself was probably illegal, in that the majority of the data on the website could be construed as violating copyright laws. that aside (and maybe that's a big "that aside" to assume, but still, this is the focus of my question):
the private institution learned about the existence of the page via a screenshot from one of my ill-remembered ex-friends, and immediately sought to gain access to the page. being that the page itself was available on the web, i think that this doesn't cross the line for freely available information - after all, that was the idea, for people to access the page freely. except, it wasn't.
i had password protected the site itself long ago, in a series of password challenges and perl includes after a successful entry. of course, the files themselves could still be viewed if you guessed the source file correctly. this is what they attempted to do.
over the course of several hours (an entire day) they randomly guessed at filenames in the directory containing the site, but were unsuccessful. the attempts are comical. i actually posted the logs of the "hack" on my website here, but figured i should take them down as other actions were pending against me for the site itself.
the point is, their actions probably weren't criminal, but they were intentional, malicious, and, ultimately, unsuccessful. could the fact that they did so allow action against them on my behalf?
There definately is something to that; that DSL companies as a whole aren't doing much to try to keep their customers.
Well, of course not. DSL is not a retail business, they do not benefit from strong customer satisfaction or repeat business. Their primary (and really, only) duty is to the investors and stockholders.
I experienced this during my DSL trial by fire with NorthPoint. The ISP was VERY quick to sell me a circuit but by the time it was installed, I was already looking to get out of the contract. Horrible support, ridiculous hold times, outages everywhere. A virtual nightmare.
There's just no real way to compete in a market where someone else owns your infrastructure, and wins the race by breaking your legs - although, I should qualify, several court rulings since Northpoint bit the dust have compelled the telcos to allow competitors free use of their copper.
My point was, as a DSL reseller, you have no duty to the customers, hence they are expendable. There will always be more customers, or so goes the (actually very practical) saying - investment capital brought you here, investment capital is your first priority. End of story.
Unless they are interested in very targetted ip's or other easily sorted packets, it'll be huge and costly.
Yeah, but i think you've hit on it pretty directly. The idea is not to simultaneously eavesdrop on EVERYTHING flowing through that cable. Passive detection of anything even remotely interesting would be a logistics nightmare.
Americans like to get paranoid at the possibility that they will be targeted, but it is far far more likely that once said agencies have a convincing lead(s), they will direct ALL of their capability towards monitoring it/them. The possibility of it affecting an American citizen is practically ZERO. But I know I feel at least somewhat safer with the capability to monitor specified traffic.
Consider: you have a rogue nation directing terrorist actions on American soil via the internet. Fine. An investigation reveals a thousand possible sources for the intrusion - you monitor as many as possible and let the agency sift through the result. Anything interesting turns up? Cool. If not, well, at least that's an extra avenue of investigation.
People seem to forget that the vast majority of government is closely supervised by oversight agencies, and that they deal with legitimate national security issues. Paranoia among citizens is pretty silly.
why the FUCK must everyone insist on political correctness in linux-related stories? the fact that microsoft exists and that people choose to use their products is NOT reason to just blindly post inflamatory criticisms of their methods. if i want to use some in-house graphing program that produces graphs identical to the ones displayed by MS Excel, should i avoid treading linux waters with my statistical analyses simply because i'm afraid of bullshit backlash? give me a break.
did i read this article correctly? now we have high school students complaining they're not being used to their full potential?
hey, i'm sure you're intelligent and all, but give me a break, a company needs to be practical. you're fooling yourself if you think you'll be working on the most interesting projects and that your input will be respected in any way whatsoever. You've been alive for fewer years than many of the employees have spent years of experience - and maybe only in that company.
i'm all for young geeks. but you need to be realistic.
Running on intel hardware? No, sir. I don't need to even begin to get into how their own hardware sales (currently the lifeblood of the company in many ways) would plummet should consumers realize the bottom line had just been tipped to your average bargain basement PC show and sale convention. (Though, now that I think about it, especially with AMD or Transmeta, restricting OSX to a specific x86 architecture would be quite fascinating.)
No, much of the drive to be cross-compatible with x86 hardware and x86 executables is so the famed "RedBox" (ala "Yellow Box" for cocoa development/nextstep compatibility and "Blue Box" for carbon development/macOS compatibility) can make its mainstay as a 3rd-party solution. Apple has long left huge marketing doors open for its third parties such as USB, which even most PC enthusiasts have to agree couldn't have been stimulated nearly as much as Apple managed to stimulate the market for USB products. FireWire is another good example, and they're poised to let Red Box be king of their cross-compatibility solution - in grand Apple style, farmed out to a third party (probably Connectix, of Virtual PC fame). Whoever gets the bid, it'll be the biggest showstopper in town without a little old-fashioned Apple R&D beforehand, the fruits of which we are surely seeing in these OSXonIntel.com
sites.
No discussion of Apple strategy would be complete without at least giving lip service to its at times seemingly-deranged, but generally über-inspired CEO, Steve Jobs. Steve has, in many ways, been responsible for the total rebirth of Apple. Granted, a lot of what happened after he got there was set in motion long before he made his entrance. But the simple fact is, he knows what he thinks is cool. That's the problem with Apple's business strategy, they make products THEY think are cool and leave it to the consumers with similar tastes (or, really, a lack of options) to buy them up. Jobs slashed R&D, and what do you get? A flop on cube sales.
In many ways OSX will be their nest egg, and it simply doesn't make ANY sense to ANYone who knows ANYthinga bout Apple to blindly assume that they'd pursue this as part of a smart, business-oriented endgame. But then Apple's actions to date haven't warranted such an assumption, anyway.
Any longtime friends of mine from military school knows the pressures of the environment at a military academy can sure be the downfall of many a gifted student. The military has a long history of being pigheaded and openly disenfranchising the majority of its more intellectual members through redundancy and procedure.
My high school math teacher of four years (algebra through calculus), Lee Temperton, made his classes fun and exciting simply by taking large chunks of time, his time, to involve himself in students' lives. That's the genius of teaching, the ability to shape other people's thoughts and opinions through the wisdom of your own successes and failures.
There was never a time where Lee (or Colonel T, as we came to call him) would refuse to address an issue, however private, in the highest of urgencies, and that quality is still appreciated by me today.
As far as math and dry theory goes, he could make it seem easy both by illustrating simple examples for proofs as well as exploring the various technological benefits of the advanced graphing calculators.
Above all good teachers prepare you for life and leave lasting impressions - perhaps the best shot at immortality lays in educating the young.
ok, who wants to take bets that jackson wrote his findings of law on Microsoft Word under Microsoft Windows with a Microsoft keyboard using a Microsoft Intellimouse on a Wintel machine?
you don't mean you thought he used Abiword or MacWrite or something, do you?
i love the way people rally behind breaking up microsoft the way people rally against the IMF - here is an organization that has actually done some good for people, helped to propel a movement that revolutionized the world, and we want to seriously hinder its operation?
i'll be the first one laughing when they end up making MORE money from the breakup.
The update to OS 9 (9.0.4) was a long time coming, mostly because of hardware issues, according to various articles at MacOS Rumors. One of the issues was support for new "Mystic" machines, multiprocessor G4 configurations from Apple available possibly as early as this July at MacWorld, according to this article at AppleInsider.
This looks awesome, but I'm worried about system overhead with multiprocessing. If the BSD kernel can offer true SMP support in MacOS X, then I'm all for it, but a multiprocessor G4 seems like a waste under OS 9.0.4.
i just hope to god they have a better streaming media technology than ASF. i've spent years on college campuses where full length bootlegs or pirates of movies are in ASF format (in ungodly length) and suffer from its generally terrible compression loss. it makes sense to have movies which have to be downloaded each view or at least "unlocked" for each view. divx had its shot and didn't make it... i guess they figure if you're not going to pay to have the media on hand you might as well spend all night downloading it! whatever. unless there's some seriously good, high quality low bandwidth reproduction (i mean, why pay money if you have to watch a movie that's grainy or only fits in a postage stamp-sized window?) this has the potential to become old news REALLY fast.
Oh, terrific idea. Down with NASA. Their only field of technological advancement of any importance is space, right? I mean, jeez, they've had thirty whole years to get past the moon and all they can manage to do is launch unsuccessful missions hundreds of thousands of miles further away?
Are our standards just a *bit* high? Space should be a now thing? Get a grip. Tons of people would be happy to tell you that science fiction is an important part of scientific advance, but it's still science fucking fiction. These people are limited by (gasp!) laws of physics and current-day propulsion techniques.
Fucking stupidity. Fucking stupidity everywhere. I hate it.
Slashdot Mirror
They killed the 3000 series!
You bastards!
*whore karma*
The PS2 A/V outputs are better than "Just Enough"
Chalk it up to poor word choice, then. We're still off-topic here. I meant only to imply you get the most important features from the fully-loaded consumer players. My DVD player (also made by Sony) has outputs for Dolby 5.1, and digital audio, and extra outs for something like four audio sources, and on and on and on.
One last note - have you forgotten that Panasonic (at least I think it was Panasonic) is coming out with a DVD playing version of the Gamecube?
I had, in fact, not heard of this. Maybe because the story ran on slashdot. That's cool nonetheless, but when did another electronics company get rights to Nintendo's design?
And independent review panel of my peers decided my comment was:
Moderation Totals: Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Total=4.
Careful you don't jinx yourself, you were down to 3 when I replied.
My POINT was, get off your soapbox. The XBox is not Microsoft, it is produced by microsoft. Maybe if you had a different bone to pick, like the antitrust lawsuit, your comments would seem more timely, but Microsoft means jack to the gaming world unless they debut a console that GAMERS appreciate.
Besides, Microsoft is a software monopoly. There is no problem with (and indeed, the economy BENEFITS from) a company reaching out to several different markets.
You don't want one, cool. I bet a lot of others do.
Aaah, the moon's too bright, I can't see
I can't tell if this is begging, sarcasm, funny, or insightful.
Correct answer: none of the above.
No, nevermind, it's amazingly insightful, groundbreaking, even, when you say:
M$ is making money off this.
(Micro$oft! It's a dollar sign, get it?! hahaha!)
Yet another example of an inane, microsoft-bashing post that has become the cream of slashdot and the shit of the internet. Let's make this a defense of microsoft post, okay?
1. This console is extraordinarily well-equipped.
We're talking GORGEOUS graphics, huge polygon counts, simple development - pretty much all the things that the PS2 wasn't. But this isn't competing with the PS2, more like the GameCube. So:
2. The GameCube has no (repeat: NO) DVD support.
This may not be a huge issue for some, who can readily shell out $300 for a consumer model DVD player or what-have-you. Okay, so they're probably cheaper than that, but the point is: the GameCube is not selling as a consumer device. And why should it? Nintendo's never needed to make extra money with flashy add-ons that no one really uses (need I say, Sega CD? "I can play music CD's on my TV now!").
Except, the PS2's DVD support and audio capabilities are in the "just enough" range so that technophiles can be satisfied, and gamers (and kids) get their top-of-the-line console.
So what's up, Nintendo? Another proprietary format for your games? Marginally stronger graphics capabilities?
XBox has DVD support, it's got plenty of money behind it, it's got loads of developers supporting it. Technologically, maybe it's not groundbreaking - if anything, it's on par with the cube - but as a commodity, as a consumer item, this thing rules. And Microsoft will sell a million units, you watch.
This problem only came to light today, and they have a fix out the same day.
Took the words out of my mouth. I concede that this is more severe than a security bug since an otherwise benevolent installer inadvertantly destroyed real data because of a poorly-written shell script.
But the fast turn-around by Apple at least minimized their collateral damage. Had this not turned up within hours, and a fix not been available within a couple more, it could have been a serious problem. But give Apple credit for fixing a problem like this quickly.
iTunes 2 was rushed to market because the iPod requires it. QA slipped, and didn't test this on enough configurations to realize the error before publishing it. But the work that went into iTunes finally brings some features that I've been waiting for to this product (who ever heard of shipping an audio player without an equalizer?) - don't let this cloud the hard work the apple engineers put into iTunes.
That means (at least without further hacking) it can't be used as a transfer medium between the G3 and work and the iMac kept hidden in your darkest closet, which is sort of a shame considering that it has all the right things built in to be even better than the several portable firewire drives on the market.
Apple has said explicitly that you could use this 5GB (yes, FIVE gigabyte, not ten) as a storage medium. Presumably the storage of MP3s would be restricted to interfacing with only one unique copy of iTunes. But that's no problem, just zip up (or use the excellent DropStuff, free utility from Aladdin for windows and mac) those MP3s and transfer the files that way. Sure, you won't compress them much, but you can route that silly protection.
Note that in product demos of the beast, the iPod shows up as a FIREWIRE DISK ON THE DESKTOP. I see no problems with transferring MP3s, just be a little craftier. Sheesh. Hardly any hacking required.
...and when they've faltered, they've made up for it in spades with programs like an excellent trade-in opportunity for owners of the ill-fated 5300- and 190-series powerbooks, or defective power adaptors. I had one of these beasts fail on me and I've got to say, the Apple rep I talked to was just amazing. I got a free adaptor, I got about $500 off a new Wallstreet PB, and traded THAT in again for a new iBook.
The iBooks are spectacular. They are thin, light, and the benefits provided by the PowerBook G4 (speed, screen size) pale in comparison to the fact that the iBook won't scorch your lap(!) - and besides, the speed hit is minimal even under OS X, especially now that 10.1 is out. For $1199, you get an extremely respectable G3 machine with all the bells and whistles appreciated by myself and other Apple fans that have kept us coming back again and again.
I'm concerned about the vast information available to authorities ALREADY at the local level without tapping the ridiculous amount of potentially derogatory or negatively influential information available to federal agencies.
This issue comes up again and again when police officers are asked to consider criminal records when taking actions for otherwise minor infractions. This scares me on Orwellian levels. How can anyone expect fair treatment from authorities when now the federal government can be expected to constantly track their movements? What kind of information do local authorities really need to be able to tap in to? Racial profiling was bad, eh? Try criminal profiling. The answer isn't "if you aren't doing anything wrong you've got nothing to worry about." The probative value of having a federally-endorsed NATIONAL database of citizens including all types of unspecified information is FAR outweighed by the potential negative impact on the common citizen. Filing "suspicions" of criminal involvement in a database that you have no right to view is pretty fuckin scary, if you ask me.
yeah but we don't pump crude oil into much of anything except a refinery. so the issue becomes exactly HOW much energy must be spent in the manufacture of hydrogen...
gee, anyone remember the last time we pumped a lot of hydrogen into an airborne vehicle?
unfortunately, it looks like the open-source initiative will never get off the ground. From WebMD: Mono typically lasts several weeks to a month, progressing into its final stages within two to three weeks of contraction. Damn. Well, it'll be a cool month at that.
quick question, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction for the appropriate statutes or definitions:
a while ago, i had constructed a parody website of a private institution's webpage. the webpage itself was probably illegal, in that the majority of the data on the website could be construed as violating copyright laws. that aside (and maybe that's a big "that aside" to assume, but still, this is the focus of my question):
the private institution learned about the existence of the page via a screenshot from one of my ill-remembered ex-friends, and immediately sought to gain access to the page. being that the page itself was available on the web, i think that this doesn't cross the line for freely available information - after all, that was the idea, for people to access the page freely. except, it wasn't.
i had password protected the site itself long ago, in a series of password challenges and perl includes after a successful entry. of course, the files themselves could still be viewed if you guessed the source file correctly. this is what they attempted to do.
over the course of several hours (an entire day) they randomly guessed at filenames in the directory containing the site, but were unsuccessful. the attempts are comical. i actually posted the logs of the "hack" on my website here, but figured i should take them down as other actions were pending against me for the site itself.
the point is, their actions probably weren't criminal, but they were intentional, malicious, and, ultimately, unsuccessful. could the fact that they did so allow action against them on my behalf?
any info appreciated.
Well, of course not. DSL is not a retail business, they do not benefit from strong customer satisfaction or repeat business. Their primary (and really, only) duty is to the investors and stockholders.
I experienced this during my DSL trial by fire with NorthPoint. The ISP was VERY quick to sell me a circuit but by the time it was installed, I was already looking to get out of the contract. Horrible support, ridiculous hold times, outages everywhere. A virtual nightmare.
There's just no real way to compete in a market where someone else owns your infrastructure, and wins the race by breaking your legs - although, I should qualify, several court rulings since Northpoint bit the dust have compelled the telcos to allow competitors free use of their copper.
My point was, as a DSL reseller, you have no duty to the customers, hence they are expendable. There will always be more customers, or so goes the (actually very practical) saying - investment capital brought you here, investment capital is your first priority. End of story.
Finally, amongst all the other "Stupid Patent Approval" and "Boycott Amazon" stories, we get one that's actually entertaining. Go TiVo.
Yeah, but i think you've hit on it pretty directly. The idea is not to simultaneously eavesdrop on EVERYTHING flowing through that cable. Passive detection of anything even remotely interesting would be a logistics nightmare.
Americans like to get paranoid at the possibility that they will be targeted, but it is far far more likely that once said agencies have a convincing lead(s), they will direct ALL of their capability towards monitoring it/them. The possibility of it affecting an American citizen is practically ZERO. But I know I feel at least somewhat safer with the capability to monitor specified traffic.
Consider: you have a rogue nation directing terrorist actions on American soil via the internet. Fine. An investigation reveals a thousand possible sources for the intrusion - you monitor as many as possible and let the agency sift through the result. Anything interesting turns up? Cool. If not, well, at least that's an extra avenue of investigation.
People seem to forget that the vast majority of government is closely supervised by oversight agencies, and that they deal with legitimate national security issues. Paranoia among citizens is pretty silly.
why the FUCK must everyone insist on political correctness in linux-related stories? the fact that microsoft exists and that people choose to use their products is NOT reason to just blindly post inflamatory criticisms of their methods. if i want to use some in-house graphing program that produces graphs identical to the ones displayed by MS Excel, should i avoid treading linux waters with my statistical analyses simply because i'm afraid of bullshit backlash? give me a break.
hey, i'm sure you're intelligent and all, but give me a break, a company needs to be practical. you're fooling yourself if you think you'll be working on the most interesting projects and that your input will be respected in any way whatsoever. You've been alive for fewer years than many of the employees have spent years of experience - and maybe only in that company.
i'm all for young geeks. but you need to be realistic.
No, much of the drive to be cross-compatible with x86 hardware and x86 executables is so the famed "RedBox" (ala "Yellow Box" for cocoa development/nextstep compatibility and "Blue Box" for carbon development/macOS compatibility) can make its mainstay as a 3rd-party solution. Apple has long left huge marketing doors open for its third parties such as USB, which even most PC enthusiasts have to agree couldn't have been stimulated nearly as much as Apple managed to stimulate the market for USB products. FireWire is another good example, and they're poised to let Red Box be king of their cross-compatibility solution - in grand Apple style, farmed out to a third party (probably Connectix, of Virtual PC fame). Whoever gets the bid, it'll be the biggest showstopper in town without a little old-fashioned Apple R&D beforehand, the fruits of which we are surely seeing in these OSXonIntel.com sites.
No discussion of Apple strategy would be complete without at least giving lip service to its at times seemingly-deranged, but generally über-inspired CEO, Steve Jobs. Steve has, in many ways, been responsible for the total rebirth of Apple. Granted, a lot of what happened after he got there was set in motion long before he made his entrance. But the simple fact is, he knows what he thinks is cool. That's the problem with Apple's business strategy, they make products THEY think are cool and leave it to the consumers with similar tastes (or, really, a lack of options) to buy them up. Jobs slashed R&D, and what do you get? A flop on cube sales.
In many ways OSX will be their nest egg, and it simply doesn't make ANY sense to ANYone who knows ANYthinga bout Apple to blindly assume that they'd pursue this as part of a smart, business-oriented endgame. But then Apple's actions to date haven't warranted such an assumption, anyway.
Mark
mark@setz.org
My high school math teacher of four years (algebra through calculus), Lee Temperton, made his classes fun and exciting simply by taking large chunks of time, his time, to involve himself in students' lives. That's the genius of teaching, the ability to shape other people's thoughts and opinions through the wisdom of your own successes and failures.
There was never a time where Lee (or Colonel T, as we came to call him) would refuse to address an issue, however private, in the highest of urgencies, and that quality is still appreciated by me today.
As far as math and dry theory goes, he could make it seem easy both by illustrating simple examples for proofs as well as exploring the various technological benefits of the advanced graphing calculators.
Above all good teachers prepare you for life and leave lasting impressions - perhaps the best shot at immortality lays in educating the young.
Godspeed, Colonel T.
you don't mean you thought he used Abiword or MacWrite or something, do you?
i love the way people rally behind breaking up microsoft the way people rally against the IMF - here is an organization that has actually done some good for people, helped to propel a movement that revolutionized the world, and we want to seriously hinder its operation?
i'll be the first one laughing when they end up making MORE money from the breakup.
This looks awesome, but I'm worried about system overhead with multiprocessing. If the BSD kernel can offer true SMP support in MacOS X, then I'm all for it, but a multiprocessor G4 seems like a waste under OS 9.0.4.
i just hope to god they have a better streaming media technology than ASF. i've spent years on college campuses where full length bootlegs or pirates of movies are in ASF format (in ungodly length) and suffer from its generally terrible compression loss. it makes sense to have movies which have to be downloaded each view or at least "unlocked" for each view. divx had its shot and didn't make it... i guess they figure if you're not going to pay to have the media on hand you might as well spend all night downloading it! whatever. unless there's some seriously good, high quality low bandwidth reproduction (i mean, why pay money if you have to watch a movie that's grainy or only fits in a postage stamp-sized window?) this has the potential to become old news REALLY fast.
Excellent post. Appealed to me as a CS major but also extremely succint and appealing to even non-technically minded. Thank you!
Are our standards just a *bit* high? Space should be a now thing? Get a grip. Tons of people would be happy to tell you that science fiction is an important part of scientific advance, but it's still science fucking fiction. These people are limited by (gasp!) laws of physics and current-day propulsion techniques.