Go to Byte magazine and check out John Udel's columns dealing with NNTP groupware. You may think you want something less complex than/. , but even slashdot isnt mail or newsreader based (sadly). If you want pple to post to a mailserver or use a client like that, definately read John Udel or his books. Sorry no link but i'll put one here from a search on Byte
I think i was the first to accidentally hit the link. So the guy who posted it is very probably poster number 42 and my first thinking about this was in post number 213 But we've been all too busy to even call him an agrravating Frog yet (his site is in France) #8~)
The code is here in PDF format for the page and JAVAscript which is causing all this trouble. Sorry but PDF the only way i could get to make this readable in original format without being interpreted as HTML and continuing the problem
The code is here in PDF format for the page and JAVAscript which is causing all this trouble. Sorry but PDF the only way i could get to make this readable in original format without being interpreted as HTML and continuing the problem
On Win2k (work) MSIE5.5 ALL scripting, Active X an dcookies set to PROMPT (jscript, cookies)or DISABLE (active X, any other scripting, Java)
that page ran a REDIRECT in my browser window, sending me back to/. 's post confirmation screen w/ all the correct URLs.and I naively presumed your couldnt do a Jscript REDIRECT with my security settings
so maybe its NOT just a slashdot bug BUT also a real bad SECURITY BREACH, MAYBE IN THE ECMA SCRIPT MODEL ?? as its in in M$ and a whole lot else
has anyone contacted the author or poseted the explanation here yet?
okay, nice demo (NOT), but (i was dumb enough to click the *retry* link no tthe *more info* link - too much coffe i presume) but the target site picked up my ID and posted under my name comment #42
cost me a karma point, and rightly too, bu tthat oughtaa be on -1 at leastmodded down to 0 since I got caught out
How about running a deeply iterative Mandelbrot set render on a postscript printer engine? This has also been done. Some code here but not sure this would do the trick - i havent the time to look at it in detail. First link the guy who did this on LaserWriter IINTX, which had a '30 processor when Apple's best computer had only '020s !!
I dont know about executing this as a virsu like program, but maybe you could just embed it in an innoscent looking document market SecrE7$Ov_cMDrtACO'S_gIRL.PS.GZ and watch as Ghostscript dies or hangs in a multiday caluclation #8-)
wasn't it Jeff Raskin who wrote the Book of Macintosh, defining in great detail ho whe wanted at $1000 computer assistant for "everyman"? That was before S Jobs got involved in the Mac project. As far as I have heard / read, Raskin was immensely detailed in describing and documenting the USER ENVIRONMENT in terms of what ppl wanted to ACTUALLY DO with a machine. The elegance and simplicity of the early Macs was certainly a result of his thinking, the less that cheap prices and deficient hware Jobs' doing (allegedly)
Now nearly a generation since the Apple computer was introduced, ppl now have a collective experience with computing, but prolly not much greater understanding of computing per se. The vast energies which are expended in learing and interpreting interfaces as a result of cheap imitations like M$ Win are a sad fact of the interim.
But with MacOS X is life any clearer, deficiencies or successes in the interface or no? The real question (I want to ask) is whether it is even still possible to look at computers from a "top down" approach based on what someone with NO experience might want to do achieve with the machine.
That might be like finding "virgin" engineers for a reverse engineering project. But this may be worth doing. Whilst I do guess there is a evolution in human cognitive capacity, I consider the idea of the amount of training reqd to even OPERATE a computer effectively and safely these days to be a burden on a society that needs to look beyond the PROCESS and discover the more direct actions and results.
The original idea to make powerful machines available and accessible to untrained ppl was a truly liberating concept. Even though/. readers prolly couch this in terms of standards wars, OS wars, technological supremacies and deficiencies. I hope ppl dont loose sight of the original argument.XEROX Star and Apple Lisa (then by semi derivative languages the Mac) had their UIs based on SMALLTALK, a key aspect of which was that the programming language for the interface itself was trialled and tested for comprehension (syntax and semantics) with 4yr old children. Could we say the same today?
Have we really advanced? If not, all the "eye candy" in the world will rot our teeth (sic, we have no *BITE* any longer) and our minds and leave behind a generation of aspirant technologists as well as workaday "users" disenchanted if not thoroughly disillusioned.
"You know nothing about graphics, apparently. 3D cards have absolutely nothing to do with professional 3D graphics. Professional 3D graphics use raytracing renderers, which deliver the best quality you can get but are very slow. "
Erm PIXAR, which managed to do quite well whilst S Jobs was distracted with NeXT, developed hardware for RADIOSITY rendering, i.e. *not* RayTracing. Radiosity is based on environment variables like luminosity and proximity to orther colours,as opposed to photon path estimation. Okay you still want specular highlights and to ray trace for that.
Im not aware of any radiosity hardware other than that which PIXAR built. They also created a nice language, RenderMan. But I am quite sure that *not all* pro graphics hardware i sbased on raytracing.
In any case do you need RayTracing to do Photoshop? Hell this argument wasnt even delineated as 3d / 2d or whatever.
"It should also be noted that the average useful life of a Mac is four years (and personally, most of the Macs I've seen tend to last seven). The average useful life of a PC is only two. "
Im still using plenty of old intel hware. And I can always put Linux on my Pentium Pros:) - which chips really rock. Apparently th echief architect for Intel P Pro also worked on a chip to do ADA - with stuff like Object Persistance in Silicon, and all sorts of RISC stuff that Intel won't admit to anymore. They had real nice on chip caches too.
"If I want to use a video card in a Mac, I plug it in and it works. Ditto for projectors, input devices, et cetera, even when made by many different companies. You can't do that in any other OS I know. "
finally M$ is catching up with their hugely diverse hware base. This was inevitable given their model. Instead of actually developing a nice consistent OS + hware from the start they are totally based on getting the larges number of OS licenses out of the door and into use. Sadly one of the "upshots" of their dominance is that with all the $$$ they mint out of everyone they can at least get stuff to work with their driver models under Win2k. I have it on a Thinkpad and was well impressed to have all sorts of kit work without a long days installation.
My only observation is that I was thinking *graphics hardware* (specifically in photo realistic mind scene creation as well workaday photoshop / layout stuff
But you do not mention what *graphics* subsystems you have installed on these machines
Surely an appropriate benchmark would be goraud shaded polygons per second or something?And you dont way what kind o fcompiler you are using? HP has awesomely optimised compilers for the multiissuance in their PA Risc. In fact Itanium IA64 woul dprolly no tbe off the ground without their compiler technology. It has very similar origins (from top o fmy memory only) in academia to the VLIW (very long instruction word) concepts behind Transmeta's Crusoe.In 1993(maybe 94) I was at a multimedia conference in London checking out SGI's Reality Engine (1st edition thereof). I had if I remember correctly, up to 4 processing units - on each card in the substem:) with like 64mb texture memory, 64mb vram 63mb z buffer per processor Sounds as if I'm on crack. Oh yes, it was close to £1mln if you wanted one:) which gives me the retrospective idea that is PROCESSORS HAD TRUE VALUE - THEN THINK ABOUT THIS. - - - - if i had started tosave my salary then, all of it reinvested to but a Reality Machine, could my meager earnings have caught up with Moore's Law and say a 25-40k Octane today in terms of value. Is it just maths or is any economy based on such caluclations totally messed up??:')
Sorry, I deserve a "Redundant" point off my karma for that.
I meant to preview the post as a reply below, then added a bit, though it wasnt quite a reply anymore and subbed at root. Only when I refreshed the story did i see I had accidentally subbed twice. Sorry again, because it wasnt proly worth a root post reading again, and I overkilled that RealTech link. I should like to learn a stack more about SIMD issuance tho' and just how much Altivec can affect the sware architecture of OSX.
'cause you seem bored to see my post I get the impression you think the argument is moot, and like im missing some valid point which would make the post null . ..? This prolly seems over earnest, but I am trying very hard to find out everythign I can about this OS for critical use in my company as well as some development work, and I just dont want to feel that buying hware to run this alpha code is a illconsidered move. Hence my zealotism (sic) Have a good one.
Sort of in reverse order, and see below reply also
"DisplayTeX ?? WTF is that? First you gotta get printers to use TeX, then you can worry about getting designers to use it. I wouldn't bother my head tho' -- printers aren't going to change from Adobe Postscript and designers will follow what the printers want to standardize on.
Given that TeX rasters even a hundred pages in quite accetable time now on your average workstation, you could just pipe the raster into a RIPless printer.
Of course we'd need a better way of replacing the Computer Modern faces in TeX with PS variants to satisfy designers. But hey , with processors under Moore's Law, could someone interpret PS level one into MetaFont. Even Adobe Multi Master fonts are *way* less complex than Knuth's creations. So if you could handle the loss of control which is really what TeX is about, then ssurely that is at leats theoreticalyl possible.
What PS or rather now PDF does much better is handle complex graphics in a way thta can be interpreted (pre-flighted) for trapping and separations. But that mainly matters at the high end. This hardly matters in visual prrofing, only for imposition anyway.
The problem with color is it is NOT just colour. Forget even the hware for a moment. Colour is *perspectival*. Like when PIXAR figured you could cut the render times for photorealism by using Radiosity wherin e.g. you map a white wall next to a red wall with a scene indirect white light as somehow pink, based on proximity and environment rather than tracing every photon (ray tracing). It depends where you are looking from. Just about every color maping scheme is based on a COLOUR SPACE. e.g. CIE lab Color Appearance Model, wherin RGB + Gamma has to be mapped according to space tolerances and other translations. All this before you get to ICC profiling which is "just" trying to match up input and output devices with a common calibration technique.
The real reason I put in the invention "Display TeX" is because Knuth gave that away. PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE. Which is how Adobe use some of his work now. Bet they wouldnt if TeX was under GNU. So being public domain, and even allowing the fact that color plus fonts plus raster plus user display environment woul dbe *non trivial", it would be nice to think for a moment that this MEANS OF COMMUNIATION - PRINT could be harnessed without tolls from companies wishing to sell you every tool in your box with a prohibitive expense to choose or even Think Different about your work and its process.
I ought to sign off. Thanks for your above reply. Bye for now
Apparently Adobe Indesign uses a few of Knuth's algorithms for layout, hyphenation and spacing in unusual gutter, margin and shaped text boxes.
Donald Knuth who wrote TeX to try to recreate the hand setting control of the Linotype machines which set hist frist books is a ace at algorithms and apparently Adobe could just not match or improve on his work.
Read Digital Typography if you get the chance, its a facinating and beautiful look at type in language. But nevertheless he was into mathematical descriptions of type, as opposed to the relatively simple vector format of Adobe postscript fonts. Because TeX is basically a Turing complete language to write text to bitmaps, and e.g. renders a complete document looking at the whole structure for assessing every element, I doubt you could easily use TeX as a base for a display language because it is not geared towards display primatives, widgets et.c. which would need their own interface within TeX exposed to the OS. Sun Micro rewrote a Postscript interpretor and extended PS into a windowing system - NeWS (which I think is how Jobs got the capitalisation for NeXT Computer!?) so i guess these things are possible. If you ever look at Art of Computing the type is to drool over, never mind the math and CS !
Since there is a move towards making some computers more like books in readability (M$ Reader) and IBM now have 200dpi LCDs, surely its worth occasionally *thinking* about how the most attractive printed books are reproduced. That's why I put that in there. Extreme wishful thinking.
I suppose I didnt quite convey just the right amount of sarcasm in my post. I worked my life with ads, including selling and buying them and im acutely aware of the fact I should not feel hard done by if I am a little mislead. I may be an unusual case. I work with a medium I actually dislike in many discrete aspects. I emphasise the word *discrete* becaus eI dont want anyone thinking I'm just whinging here.
there is a widening cynicysm concerning consumer issues in much of the western world as far as I can see (US, Europe certainly. When you say that I should certianly wake up if I am shocked that APPls ads are misleading, you'd be right. It is a personal failing that I prolly give clients work much more scrutiny than I do ads I am reading in relation to possible personal purchases. Running my own business, there are fewer opportunities for ppl to sell me something I dont need or am not quite knowledgable about. so my edge remains.
But equally schocking was how I read implied in what you said the idea that WE SHOULDNOT BE OUTRAGED AT MISLEADING ADS. Im not saying you said exactly that. But it read as close. And I for one should feel indignant if anyone were to say a person should just get smart for being suckered by a misleading ad FOR A HIGHLY COMPLEX PIECE OF EQUIPMENT
This is simply because I believe that all companies should have a clera social responsibility towards the public in the presentation of such products. Given the vastly increasing proportion of the economy consumed in computing and telecoms, two o fth emost sophisticated businesses anywhere, I think there should eb a whole new level of thinking about these issues. Sorry, no solutions actually spring to mind. Only the thought that ppl should start to think about these things
$268bln of so each yr is spenton ads around the world, giving advertisers an immense influence. most every media you will ever read is influenced by the presence or absense of advertising. Whether a company acn make a misstatement or not in such a powerful way IS A SOCIAL ISSUE. Even if it is not - in my mind strangely - a criminal one because of th edamage which such action can do to the consumer and the economy
I am not so sure your truth is in fact "in the middle". You seem to have contracdicted yourself by asking "how often do you have to do tons of single precision FPU calculations with an AltiVec optimized application?" just as you earlier pointed out that a large part of the MacOS is going to be optimised for "Altivec". I should like to know further whether there is in fact scope to efficiently optimise such a wide range of procedures with SIMD issues. I do not think for a moment that efficiency is equiv to just issuing 2 instructions with each cycle.
I never thought fo ra moment to "shout "there are almost no apps that take advantage of it anyway!"", and appreciate that Adobe et.al. will recompile and optimise their code. (this time round, they will have to do this properly otherwise be left with apps running unprotected w/ no multitasking in the "BlueBox" compat mode, unlike the PPC changeover that left some co's dragging their heels to write PPC native code) In that article I suppose the point is that benchmarking Altivec optimisations is likely to be extremely hard. And will this kind of improvement swing the data hard up to the non - altivec deviation? If so it will have to be a large %ge improvement to succeed.Finally, I think the whole point is that - prolly Jobs "salesmanship" and ad agenency gloss aside - I TOO SHOULD LIKE a cleanly packaged balanced computer w/ nice casing. But notmaybe this one, not just yet anyway. No I take that last bit back. I still want one, but if APPLE just relies on an ephemeral mix of qqualities to pursue a business strategy aimed at a moving target of demnding perfoemance users and continues to fudge the definitions of what it is as a company, then it will have some painful times ahead once again.
I used to use macs exclusively, for design / layout / everything. First the quality of the supporting media (e.g. Smackworld ecause of their obvious habit of getting high before attempting any review - and its competitor Crackuser likewise) sucked, then the sheer droning of designers in general justifying themselves with an identity linked to the presumed - and for a while confirmed - superiority of their machines, this last bit made me want to suffer Windoze more than stick around with crappy overpriced hardware.
This article which i linked to already is a indictment of Apple's complacency. It also suppports why you are right, that building an intel box may be better, but does not confirm your thought that IRIX on MIPS is equally worth eschewing. SGI is all about custom graphics hardware, backplanes bandwidth and the like. Most of their stuff, even from a few yrs ago, will just cream a G4, no matter how pretty the latter might be.
What this screams out to me is that Apple is yet again delusioned in thinking its core markets are designers and graphic pros. If RealWorld Tech is right in their analysis, it is precisely the same as APPLs desired target market WHO SHOULD IN FACT CONSIDER ANOTHER COMPUTER. Can no one whip Color Sync and get good font handling. Will RealDesigners one day finally use DisplayTeX?
You are also right in finally saying that unless you are "image conscious" - i.e. want an iMac (stupid name for anything that) you may be out of the running for APPL these days. If the high end of their desired market will hit on Intel or another arch altogether and they ream ppl on price, they HAVE to offer something really exceptional in their hardware. Underlying tech aside, there is no OS I should rather use. (especially if they reverted to ver 6.1:) Regarding your comment about networking performance, I should only hope that BSD internal actually does show some performance. But I have no evidence to support any other thinking re that.
If APPL should do anything its what they should have done a long while ago - focus on making smart low form factor expadables (pizza boxen like the PowerMac 6100) for business users, and big ugly beasts for designers w/ like 12 PCI slots, preferable 64bit. I miss the build quality of the older tower Macs. They felt so good to have deskside. I want this feeling back - not shiny G4 shells - and I am prepared to pay for it
Do read that artic le its a sad and timely remider that maybe,just maybe APPL is still a difficult case we should be wary of.
as it happens you may be wrong regards "network oriented tasks and graphics". I used to use macs exclusively, for design / layout / everything. First the quality of the supporting media (e.g. Smackworld ecause of their obvious habit of getting high before atempting any review - and its competitor Crackuser likewise) sucked, then the sheer droning of designers in general justifying themselves with an identity linked to the presumed - an dfor a while confirmed - superiority of their machines, this last bit made me want to suffer Windoze more than stick around with crappy overpriced hardware.
This article which i linked to already is a indictment of Apple's complacency. It also suppports why you ar eright, about building an intel box may be better, but does not confirm your thought that IRIX on MIPS is equally worth eschewing. SGI is all about custom graphics hardware, backplanes bandwidth and the like. Much of their stuff will just cream a G4, no matter how pretty the latter might be.
What this screams to me is that Apple is yet again delusioned in thinking its core markets are designers and graphic pros. If RealWorld Tech is right in their analysis, it is precisely the same as APPLs desired target market WHO SHOULD IN FACT CONSIDRE ANOTHER COMPUTER. Can no one whip Color Sync and get good font handling. Will RealDesigners one day finally use DisplayTeX?
You are also right in finally saying that unless you are "image conscious" - i.e. want an iMac (stupid name for anything that) you may be out of the running for APPL these days. If the high end of their desired market will hit on Intel or another arch altogether and they ream ppl on price, they HAVE to offer something really exceptional in their hardware. Underlying tech aside, there is no OS I should rather use. (especially if they reverted to ver 6.1:) Regards your comment about networking performance, I should only hope that BSD internal actually does show some performance. But I have no evidence to support any other thinking re that.
Do read that artic le its a sad and timely remider that maybe,just maybe APPL is still a difficult case we should be wary of.
Im feeling pretty bummed out that Apple could be so misleading with their advertising.
Looks like they are over using a whole bunch of ppls goodwill to remember them as an idealistic company so not to question the assertions they make. I should welcome myself to reality or something.
the only agencies i can think of capable of filling 200o fields on your average joe are credit rating agencies, e.g. Equifax, who hold just everyone by the balls. I read here a while back someone who had quit the UK for work in US,and couldnt get that company to give over even basic details of his history enough to open a bank account. Left him on friends' couches for 4 months - and that even afetr he was a lead programmer for them in the UK!I worry more often about CORPS being conduits for private informationthan governments - the profit motive giving off a stench of bent morals and aggressive instincts with much greater frequency
but what about data typing - can you think of 2000 items about yourself that are generoic enough to apply to every citizen? Maybe this means Medical histories, all previous addresses, whoever you ever banked with or worked for . . . the list goes on.
Here in the UK i would be most concerned about the incresing access of executive bodies - civil service and law enforcement access to statutorily collected information. The problem is it gives an INCENTIVE for some people to search for personal histories matching criminal types or social agitatorsrecently in London there was a Reclaim the Streets protest which quickly became a riot, apparently agitated by a small contingent. But regardless of your interest in these things, even curiosity, "involvement" would place you under the auspices of the Prevention of Terrorism Act - Read imprisonment without charge (like Mitnick), wire tap without warrant (tho the UK already has rights to tap ANY DATA CALL - so fsuk VOIP thanks) and to continue to do so for a LONG timemoreover i recently heard a lot about Telcos handing over unrelated calling patterns and destinations for the criminal inestigation of parties who could not be proven to be even related to crime - again without warrant or orderthe problems here were NOT with the fact that a database could exist, but embedded in the social management of legislative / executive body responsibilities - i.e. the arbitray and undefined passing of authority to organisations without direct accountability and without publicly visible organisational structures If Tacitus said that the proliferation of laws indicated a corrupt state, we must all, everywhere, look hard at the excuses technology has given our "elected representatives" (in quotes because who we elect too often passes off to appointees, monopolistic cronies, whoever) to pass ever more complicated bills supposedly to DEAL with the complex innovations.
the last few series I watched had defaulted into a well oiled routine something out of a sitcom, not a sci fi series, even less one that had as good a start as M + S did
I fess upo here - totally missed nearly all the early series until a few re runs, then thought "cool" as the sarcasm and wit filled my heart in an altogether new way, with help from Suspicion.
But now all I get is some laughs- hell even the "serious" episode just make me laugh and switch off
Sorry guys but keep on like thi sand the Files ends up as a Cosby Show stand in for young children aired in the a.m.
doomsaying mode off
the point of /. reporting this article
on
The Roots Of BSD
·
· Score: 1
is surely not that it enlightens anyone or introduces new perspectives or insights
this story relates to the editorialization of technology reporting, completely ignoring all the facts and events and private cultures which is exactly what/. is supposed to be about
hell, salon should be damned pleased that the story here was posted, given that no doubt a fair few threads here will actually TRY to introduce th edetails that a real good piece of reporting could have originally covered
so somehow this is an honor system - and i just curse the nth beer cut in and took away my BSD memories:(Berkeley used to offer tapes of Joy's OS (sic) for $1000 to interested institutions and allowed unlimited distribution therefrom, probably giving REDHAT, the dumasses their path to $$ (sorry, packaging model) oh, something like (im wrong here, 5 yrs?) before Linus thought of using GNU.
yep, Joy wrote a whole deal of that OS, and the only thing that really shocks me about this brilliant man is how he got beholden to a company that would never show anything to anyone if they could help it - and then he cashed out early, and never spoke
Joy is crucial to our understanding of open_source_like OSS *because* he was an idealist, completely unlike the "leadership" of Linus - who comes across as a quiet home boy pragmatist (dammit mod me down for that comment, but wasnt Joy's argument against technolgies the swan song of a true idealist?? and so you see the real difference trying to show out)
Slashdot Mirror
Go to Byte magazine and check out John Udel's columns dealing with NNTP groupware. You may think you want something less complex than /. , but even slashdot isnt mail or newsreader based (sadly). If you want pple to post to a mailserver or use a client like that, definately read John Udel or his books. Sorry no link but i'll put one here from a search on Byte
I think i was the first to accidentally hit the link. So the guy who posted it is very probably poster number 42 and my first thinking about this was in post number 213 But we've been all too busy to even call him an agrravating Frog yet (his site is in France) #8~)
yeah, sadly im not alone o fthe reader's in this story, and it seems very few but the early suckers got modded down (a few points for ma already :(
but i figured i'd take a look at the problemThe bug code is here
off for coffeeThe code is here in PDF format AND NOW HTML as well. Formatting not very nice tho'.
Any comments on the code? Ive not had time
The code is here in PDF format for the page and JAVAscript which is causing all this trouble. Sorry but PDF the only way i could get to make this readable in original format without being interpreted as HTML and continuing the problem
Happy reading!The code is here in PDF format for the page and JAVAscript which is causing all this trouble. Sorry but PDF the only way i could get to make this readable in original format without being interpreted as HTML and continuing the problem
Happy reading!I hit the link off Post #42, which seems to be the first in this story
A quick look at the posters BIO shows hew posted 3 similar comments within 10 minutes of eachother into different storiessince the script or whatever on the linked site causes a direct post back to the originating story, I figure this is the guy
dunno what to do about it. I COULD BE WRONG - PLEASE DONT WITCHUNT. But it seems likely?Can you mod down all those stupid "auto posts" without killing everyone's Karma? Pretty please?
On Win2k (work) MSIE5.5 ALL scripting, Active X an dcookies set to PROMPT (jscript, cookies)or DISABLE (active X, any other scripting, Java)
that page ran a REDIRECT in my browser window, sending me back toso maybe its NOT just a slashdot bug BUT also a real bad SECURITY BREACH, MAYBE IN THE ECMA SCRIPT MODEL ?? as its in in M$ and a whole lot else
has anyone contacted the author or poseted the explanation here yet?*not* redundant yet
okay, nice demo (NOT), but (i was dumb enough to click the *retry* link no tthe *more info* link - too much coffe i presume) but the target site picked up my ID and posted under my name comment #42
cost me a karma point, and rightly too, bu tthat oughtaa be on -1 at leastmodded down to 0 since I got caught outHow about running a deeply iterative Mandelbrot set render on a postscript printer engine? This has also been done. Some code here but not sure this would do the trick - i havent the time to look at it in detail. First link the guy who did this on LaserWriter IINTX, which had a '30 processor when Apple's best computer had only '020s !!
I dont know about executing this as a virsu like program, but maybe you could just embed it in an innoscent looking document market SecrE7$Ov_cMDrtACO'S_gIRL.PS.GZ and watch as Ghostscript dies or hangs in a multiday caluclation #8-)Postscript httpd already done!>
wasn't it Jeff Raskin who wrote the Book of Macintosh, defining in great detail ho whe wanted at $1000 computer assistant for "everyman"? That was before S Jobs got involved in the Mac project. As far as I have heard / read, Raskin was immensely detailed in describing and documenting the USER ENVIRONMENT in terms of what ppl wanted to ACTUALLY DO with a machine. The elegance and simplicity of the early Macs was certainly a result of his thinking, the less that cheap prices and deficient hware Jobs' doing (allegedly)
Now nearly a generation since the Apple computer was introduced, ppl now have a collective experience with computing, but prolly not much greater understanding of computing per se. The vast energies which are expended in learing and interpreting interfaces as a result of cheap imitations like M$ Win are a sad fact of the interim.But with MacOS X is life any clearer, deficiencies or successes in the interface or no? The real question (I want to ask) is whether it is even still possible to look at computers from a "top down" approach based on what someone with NO experience might want to do achieve with the machine.
That might be like finding "virgin" engineers for a reverse engineering project. But this may be worth doing. Whilst I do guess there is a evolution in human cognitive capacity, I consider the idea of the amount of training reqd to even OPERATE a computer effectively and safely these days to be a burden on a society that needs to look beyond the PROCESS and discover the more direct actions and results.
The original idea to make powerful machines available and accessible to untrained ppl was a truly liberating concept. Even thoughHave we really advanced? If not, all the "eye candy" in the world will rot our teeth (sic, we have no *BITE* any longer) and our minds and leave behind a generation of aspirant technologists as well as workaday "users" disenchanted if not thoroughly disillusioned.
"You know nothing about graphics, apparently. 3D cards have absolutely nothing to do with professional 3D graphics. Professional 3D graphics use raytracing renderers, which deliver the best quality you can get but are very slow. "
Erm PIXAR, which managed to do quite well whilst S Jobs was distracted with NeXT, developed hardware for RADIOSITY rendering, i.e. *not* RayTracing. Radiosity is based on environment variables like luminosity and proximity to orther colours,as opposed to photon path estimation. Okay you still want specular highlights and to ray trace for that.
Im not aware of any radiosity hardware other than that which PIXAR built. They also created a nice language, RenderMan. But I am quite sure that *not all* pro graphics hardware i sbased on raytracing.
In any case do you need RayTracing to do Photoshop? Hell this argument wasnt even delineated as 3d / 2d or whatever.
"It should also be noted that the average useful life of a Mac is four years (and personally, most of the Macs I've seen tend to last seven). The average useful life of a PC is only two. "
Im still using plenty of old intel hware. And I can always put Linux on my Pentium Pros :) - which chips really rock. Apparently th echief architect for Intel P Pro also worked on a chip to do ADA - with stuff like Object Persistance in Silicon, and all sorts of RISC stuff that Intel won't admit to anymore. They had real nice on chip caches too.
"If I want to use a video card in a Mac, I plug it in and it works. Ditto for projectors, input devices, et cetera, even when made by many different companies. You can't do that in any other OS I know. "
finally M$ is catching up with their hugely diverse hware base. This was inevitable given their model. Instead of actually developing a nice consistent OS + hware from the start they are totally based on getting the larges number of OS licenses out of the door and into use. Sadly one of the "upshots" of their dominance is that with all the $$$ they mint out of everyone they can at least get stuff to work with their driver models under Win2k. I have it on a Thinkpad and was well impressed to have all sorts of kit work without a long days installation.
My only observation is that I was thinking *graphics hardware* (specifically in photo realistic mind scene creation as well workaday photoshop / layout stuff
But you do not mention what *graphics* subsystems you have installed on these machines
Surely an appropriate benchmark would be goraud shaded polygons per second or something?And you dont way what kind o fcompiler you are using? HP has awesomely optimised compilers for the multiissuance in their PA Risc. In fact Itanium IA64 woul dprolly no tbe off the ground without their compiler technology. It has very similar origins (from top o fmy memory only) in academia to the VLIW (very long instruction word) concepts behind Transmeta's Crusoe.In 1993(maybe 94) I was at a multimedia conference in London checking out SGI's Reality Engine (1st edition thereof). I had if I remember correctly, up to 4 processing units - on each card in the substemSorry, I deserve a "Redundant" point off my karma for that.
I meant to preview the post as a reply below, then added a bit, though it wasnt quite a reply anymore and subbed at root. Only when I refreshed the story did i see I had accidentally subbed twice. Sorry again, because it wasnt proly worth a root post reading again, and I overkilled that RealTech link. I should like to learn a stack more about SIMD issuance tho' and just how much Altivec can affect the sware architecture of OSX.
'cause you seem bored to see my post I get the impression you think the argument is moot, and like im missing some valid point which would make the post null . . .? This prolly seems over earnest, but I am trying very hard to find out everythign I can about this OS for critical use in my company as well as some development work, and I just dont want to feel that buying hware to run this alpha code is a illconsidered move. Hence my zealotism (sic) Have a good one.
Sort of in reverse order, and see below reply also
"DisplayTeX ?? WTF is that? First you gotta get printers to use TeX, then you can worry about getting designers to use it. I wouldn't bother my head tho' -- printers aren't going to change from Adobe Postscript and designers will follow what the printers want to standardize on.
Given that TeX rasters even a hundred pages in quite accetable time now on your average workstation, you could just pipe the raster into a RIPless printer.
Of course we'd need a better way of replacing the Computer Modern faces in TeX with PS variants to satisfy designers. But hey , with processors under Moore's Law, could someone interpret PS level one into MetaFont. Even Adobe Multi Master fonts are *way* less complex than Knuth's creations. So if you could handle the loss of control which is really what TeX is about, then ssurely that is at leats theoreticalyl possible.
What PS or rather now PDF does much better is handle complex graphics in a way thta can be interpreted (pre-flighted) for trapping and separations. But that mainly matters at the high end. This hardly matters in visual prrofing, only for imposition anyway.
The problem with color is it is NOT just colour. Forget even the hware for a moment. Colour is *perspectival*. Like when PIXAR figured you could cut the render times for photorealism by using Radiosity wherin e.g. you map a white wall next to a red wall with a scene indirect white light as somehow pink, based on proximity and environment rather than tracing every photon (ray tracing). It depends where you are looking from. Just about every color maping scheme is based on a COLOUR SPACE. e.g. CIE lab Color Appearance Model, wherin RGB + Gamma has to be mapped according to space tolerances and other translations. All this before you get to ICC profiling which is "just" trying to match up input and output devices with a common calibration technique.
The real reason I put in the invention "Display TeX" is because Knuth gave that away. PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE. Which is how Adobe use some of his work now. Bet they wouldnt if TeX was under GNU. So being public domain, and even allowing the fact that color plus fonts plus raster plus user display environment woul dbe *non trivial", it would be nice to think for a moment that this MEANS OF COMMUNIATION - PRINT could be harnessed without tolls from companies wishing to sell you every tool in your box with a prohibitive expense to choose or even Think Different about your work and its process.
I ought to sign off. Thanks for your above reply. Bye for now
No, not really, just a pipe dream play idea.
Apparently Adobe Indesign uses a few of Knuth's algorithms for layout, hyphenation and spacing in unusual gutter, margin and shaped text boxes.
Donald Knuth who wrote TeX to try to recreate the hand setting control of the Linotype machines which set hist frist books is a ace at algorithms and apparently Adobe could just not match or improve on his work.
Read Digital Typography if you get the chance, its a facinating and beautiful look at type in language. But nevertheless he was into mathematical descriptions of type, as opposed to the relatively simple vector format of Adobe postscript fonts. Because TeX is basically a Turing complete language to write text to bitmaps, and e.g. renders a complete document looking at the whole structure for assessing every element, I doubt you could easily use TeX as a base for a display language because it is not geared towards display primatives, widgets et.c. which would need their own interface within TeX exposed to the OS. Sun Micro rewrote a Postscript interpretor and extended PS into a windowing system - NeWS (which I think is how Jobs got the capitalisation for NeXT Computer!?) so i guess these things are possible. If you ever look at Art of Computing the type is to drool over, never mind the math and CS !
Since there is a move towards making some computers more like books in readability (M$ Reader) and IBM now have 200dpi LCDs, surely its worth occasionally *thinking* about how the most attractive printed books are reproduced. That's why I put that in there. Extreme wishful thinking.
I suppose I didnt quite convey just the right amount of sarcasm in my post. I worked my life with ads, including selling and buying them and im acutely aware of the fact I should not feel hard done by if I am a little mislead. I may be an unusual case. I work with a medium I actually dislike in many discrete aspects. I emphasise the word *discrete* becaus eI dont want anyone thinking I'm just whinging here.
there is a widening cynicysm concerning consumer issues in much of the western world as far as I can see (US, Europe certainly. When you say that I should certianly wake up if I am shocked that APPls ads are misleading, you'd be right. It is a personal failing that I prolly give clients work much more scrutiny than I do ads I am reading in relation to possible personal purchases. Running my own business, there are fewer opportunities for ppl to sell me something I dont need or am not quite knowledgable about. so my edge remains.
But equally schocking was how I read implied in what you said the idea that WE SHOULDNOT BE OUTRAGED AT MISLEADING ADS. Im not saying you said exactly that. But it read as close. And I for one should feel indignant if anyone were to say a person should just get smart for being suckered by a misleading ad FOR A HIGHLY COMPLEX PIECE OF EQUIPMENT
This is simply because I believe that all companies should have a clera social responsibility towards the public in the presentation of such products. Given the vastly increasing proportion of the economy consumed in computing and telecoms, two o fth emost sophisticated businesses anywhere, I think there should eb a whole new level of thinking about these issues. Sorry, no solutions actually spring to mind. Only the thought that ppl should start to think about these things
$268bln of so each yr is spenton ads around the world, giving advertisers an immense influence. most every media you will ever read is influenced by the presence or absense of advertising. Whether a company acn make a misstatement or not in such a powerful way IS A SOCIAL ISSUE. Even if it is not - in my mind strangely - a criminal one because of th edamage which such action can do to the consumer and the economy
I am not so sure your truth is in fact "in the middle". You seem to have contracdicted yourself by asking "how often do you have to do tons of single precision FPU calculations with an AltiVec optimized application?" just as you earlier pointed out that a large part of the MacOS is going to be optimised for "Altivec". I should like to know further whether there is in fact scope to efficiently optimise such a wide range of procedures with SIMD issues. I do not think for a moment that efficiency is equiv to just issuing 2 instructions with each cycle.
I never thought fo ra moment to "shout "there are almost no apps that take advantage of it anyway!"", and appreciate that Adobe et.al. will recompile and optimise their code. (this time round, they will have to do this properly otherwise be left with apps running unprotected w/ no multitasking in the "BlueBox" compat mode, unlike the PPC changeover that left some co's dragging their heels to write PPC native code) In that article I suppose the point is that benchmarking Altivec optimisations is likely to be extremely hard. And will this kind of improvement swing the data hard up to the non - altivec deviation? If so it will have to be a large %ge improvement to succeed.Finally, I think the whole point is that - prolly Jobs "salesmanship" and ad agenency gloss aside - I TOO SHOULD LIKE a cleanly packaged balanced computer w/ nice casing. But notmaybe this one, not just yet anyway. No I take that last bit back. I still want one, but if APPLE just relies on an ephemeral mix of qqualities to pursue a business strategy aimed at a moving target of demnding perfoemance users and continues to fudge the definitions of what it is as a company, then it will have some painful times ahead once again.I used to use macs exclusively, for design / layout / everything. First the quality of the supporting media (e.g. Smackworld ecause of their obvious habit of getting high before attempting any review - and its competitor Crackuser likewise) sucked, then the sheer droning of designers in general justifying themselves with an identity linked to the presumed - and for a while confirmed - superiority of their machines, this last bit made me want to suffer Windoze more than stick around with crappy overpriced hardware.
This article which i linked to already is a indictment of Apple's complacency. It also suppports why you are right, that building an intel box may be better, but does not confirm your thought that IRIX on MIPS is equally worth eschewing. SGI is all about custom graphics hardware, backplanes bandwidth and the like. Most of their stuff, even from a few yrs ago, will just cream a G4, no matter how pretty the latter might be.
What this screams out to me is that Apple is yet again delusioned in thinking its core markets are designers and graphic pros. If RealWorld Tech is right in their analysis, it is precisely the same as APPLs desired target market WHO SHOULD IN FACT CONSIDER ANOTHER COMPUTER. Can no one whip Color Sync and get good font handling. Will RealDesigners one day finally use DisplayTeX?
You are also right in finally saying that unless you are "image conscious" - i.e. want an iMac (stupid name for anything that) you may be out of the running for APPL these days. If the high end of their desired market will hit on Intel or another arch altogether and they ream ppl on price, they HAVE to offer something really exceptional in their hardware. Underlying tech aside, there is no OS I should rather use. (especially if they reverted to ver 6.1 :) Regarding your comment about networking performance, I should only hope that BSD internal actually does show some performance. But I have no evidence to support any other thinking re that.
If APPL should do anything its what they should have done a long while ago - focus on making smart low form factor expadables (pizza boxen like the PowerMac 6100) for business users, and big ugly beasts for designers w/ like 12 PCI slots, preferable 64bit. I miss the build quality of the older tower Macs. They felt so good to have deskside. I want this feeling back - not shiny G4 shells - and I am prepared to pay for it
Do read that artic le its a sad and timely remider that maybe,just maybe APPL is still a difficult case we should be wary of.
as it happens you may be wrong regards "network oriented tasks and graphics". I used to use macs exclusively, for design / layout / everything. First the quality of the supporting media (e.g. Smackworld ecause of their obvious habit of getting high before atempting any review - and its competitor Crackuser likewise) sucked, then the sheer droning of designers in general justifying themselves with an identity linked to the presumed - an dfor a while confirmed - superiority of their machines, this last bit made me want to suffer Windoze more than stick around with crappy overpriced hardware.
This article which i linked to already is a indictment of Apple's complacency. It also suppports why you ar eright, about building an intel box may be better, but does not confirm your thought that IRIX on MIPS is equally worth eschewing. SGI is all about custom graphics hardware, backplanes bandwidth and the like. Much of their stuff will just cream a G4, no matter how pretty the latter might be.
What this screams to me is that Apple is yet again delusioned in thinking its core markets are designers and graphic pros. If RealWorld Tech is right in their analysis, it is precisely the same as APPLs desired target market WHO SHOULD IN FACT CONSIDRE ANOTHER COMPUTER. Can no one whip Color Sync and get good font handling. Will RealDesigners one day finally use DisplayTeX?
You are also right in finally saying that unless you are "image conscious" - i.e. want an iMac (stupid name for anything that) you may be out of the running for APPL these days. If the high end of their desired market will hit on Intel or another arch altogether and they ream ppl on price, they HAVE to offer something really exceptional in their hardware. Underlying tech aside, there is no OS I should rather use. (especially if they reverted to ver 6.1 :) Regards your comment about networking performance, I should only hope that BSD internal actually does show some performance. But I have no evidence to support any other thinking re that.
Do read that artic le its a sad and timely remider that maybe,just maybe APPL is still a difficult case we should be wary of.
I have beeen real close recently to shellingout for a shiny new G4, thinking hard how much I want my hands on OSX.
Then yeasterday I read this analysis of G4 / mot performance and im starting to think all over again.
Im feeling pretty bummed out that Apple could be so misleading with their advertising.
Looks like they are over using a whole bunch of ppls goodwill to remember them as an idealistic company so not to question the assertions they make. I should welcome myself to reality or something.
so where is this data coming from?
the only agencies i can think of capable of filling 200o fields on your average joe are credit rating agencies, e.g. Equifax, who hold just everyone by the balls. I read here a while back someone who had quit the UK for work in US,and couldnt get that company to give over even basic details of his history enough to open a bank account. Left him on friends' couches for 4 months - and that even afetr he was a lead programmer for them in the UK!I worry more often about CORPS being conduits for private informationthan governments - the profit motive giving off a stench of bent morals and aggressive instincts with much greater frequencybut what about data typing - can you think of 2000 items about yourself that are generoic enough to apply to every citizen? Maybe this means Medical histories, all previous addresses, whoever you ever banked with or worked for . . . the list goes on.
Here in the UK i would be most concerned about the incresing access of executive bodies - civil service and law enforcement access to statutorily collected information. The problem is it gives an INCENTIVE for some people to search for personal histories matching criminal types or social agitatorsrecently in London there was a Reclaim the Streets protest which quickly became a riot, apparently agitated by a small contingent. But regardless of your interest in these things, even curiosity, "involvement" would place you under the auspices of the Prevention of Terrorism Act - Read imprisonment without charge (like Mitnick), wire tap without warrant (tho the UK already has rights to tap ANY DATA CALL - so fsuk VOIP thanks) and to continue to do so for a LONG timemoreover i recently heard a lot about Telcos handing over unrelated calling patterns and destinations for the criminal inestigation of parties who could not be proven to be even related to crime - again without warrant or orderthe problems here were NOT with the fact that a database could exist, but embedded in the social management of legislative / executive body responsibilities - i.e. the arbitray and undefined passing of authority to organisations without direct accountability and without publicly visible organisational structures If Tacitus said that the proliferation of laws indicated a corrupt state, we must all, everywhere, look hard at the excuses technology has given our "elected representatives" (in quotes because who we elect too often passes off to appointees, monopolistic cronies, whoever) to pass ever more complicated bills supposedly to DEAL with the complex innovations.the last few series I watched had defaulted into a well oiled routine something out of a sitcom, not a sci fi series, even less one that had as good a start as M + S did
I fess upo here - totally missed nearly all the early series until a few re runs, then thought "cool" as the sarcasm and wit filled my heart in an altogether new way, with help from Suspicion.
But now all I get is some laughs- hell even the "serious" episode just make me laugh and switch offSorry guys but keep on like thi sand the Files ends up as a Cosby Show stand in for young children aired in the a.m.
doomsaying mode off
is surely not that it enlightens anyone or introduces new perspectives or insights
this story relates to the editorialization of technology reporting, completely ignoring all the facts and events and private cultures which is exactly what /. is supposed to be about
hell, salon should be damned pleased that the story here was posted, given that no doubt a fair few threads here will actually TRY to introduce th edetails that a real good piece of reporting could have originally covered
so somehow this is an honor system - and i just curse the nth beer cut in and took away my BSD memoriesyep, Joy wrote a whole deal of that OS, and the only thing that really shocks me about this brilliant man is how he got beholden to a company that would never show anything to anyone if they could help it - and then he cashed out early, and never spoke
Joy is crucial to our understanding of open_source_like OSS *because* he was an idealist, completely unlike the "leadership" of Linus - who comes across as a quiet home boy pragmatist (dammit mod me down for that comment, but wasnt Joy's argument against technolgies the swan song of a true idealist?? and so you see the real difference trying to show out)
all for now, thanks for reading . . .