because "appliances" like macs can boot up a lot faster due to limited hardware support and stricter guidelines. when it supports any arbitrary and millions of pieces of hardware like the x86 world, that would be something. it's not a general purpose os, it is written specifically for mac hardware, down to the motherboard and auxiliary chips. it cannot be done nearly as easily or well on the "pc" world.
What the crack are you smoking? There's nothing magical about Macs or PCs that makes booting any different, other than technology chosen for implementation. You can install any hardware you want on a Mac if you can get (or write) a driver or kernel extension for it. It's just as "general-purpose" in architecture as Windows -- I mean, you can download, compile and install the basic OS on your i386 clone hardware for free!
Yeah, the difference between supporting 5,000 HDD controllers or 50 HDD controllers WOULD make a big difference in boot times if the computer was probing and identifying hardware by going through that list from scratch on every boot, but that's not how it works.
The reasons Mac hardware starts faster is because it actually uses modern hardware configuration techniques, rather than relying on decades-old BIOS technologies. Why is Windows still virtualizing a limited number of hardware interrupts? Intel had the technology to get rid of them over a decade ago, but the PC still goes through this whole elaborate song and dance between the BIOS and the OS every time the system boots. And it goes through a painfully outdated "hunt-and-peck" style hard disk boot process (and more virtualization to be able to access large drives, and more virtualization on the disk itself to make up for deficiencies in the partitioning capabilities of drives from 1983).
I'm saying that our traditional antipathy towards science has become outright hostility in recent years, as evidenced by the push for religious instruction in the science classroom. The current movement against traditional science instruction is not something new, it has been building up since the early 1980s.
Back when we were fighting the godless Commies, we recognized the need for science education and we pushed hard for students to excel and the curriculum to be solid. Now we just want science classes to reinforce what we already believe.
I don't see how you can not think Intelligent Design is ontopic. The topic is science in the United States, it seems quite obvious that issues like "do we teach kids actual science in science class, or religion?" would be pretty high on the list of ontopic subjects. If our students are kept in the dark about biology, how can we expect to compete in biotech?
Why spend money on a Mac version, when you can just tell Mac users to buy your Windows version and emulate it at full speed.
Because developers who are interested in cross-platform sales already make Mac versions -- they know they'll lose customers if their app no longer has Aqua effects and built-in spell checking and other things Mac users expect.
Developers who don't do crossplatform, well, some of them will say "great, now I don't have to worry about it since they have VMware!", while others will say "great, now I can do cross-platform a lot easier!" I think in the end, more software will be developed for the Mac because the number of small developers who are curious will be much greater than the number of large companies that are trying to shave money from the budget.
And keep in mind the Mac, as it is now, is a niche market anyways. Companies don't need an excuse to stop developing for it if, they either find that they are making a lot of money from it or they go after the 90%+ that are running Windows.
Re:Not gonna change a goddamned thing.
on
PCs Posted No Trespass
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· Score: 4, Insightful
No, but it does have an effect on the company's assets and any business it conducts with companies in the USA. Spyware is usually for advertising of some sort -- advertising to customers in the USA isn't very effective if you can only advertise foreign companies with no offices in the USA, and your own company can never conduct contracts or maintain assets in the USA.
Remember the good old days when applications stored all of their configuration data in a file like SETTINGS.CFG? You could zip the entire application directory up, unzip it on another machine, and it would run just fine. An uninstall was as simple as erase *.*, cd.., rmdir foocalc.
Yeah, it's called Mac OS X:P
Of course, the configuration stuff is in ~/library/appname, since it is multiuser.
But that really is one of the main reasons I switched a year and a half ago. On a reinstall of XP, which of course requires reinstalling every app and searching through the registry, app/program files/windows directory, and everywhere else in hopes of finding config data, I realized this was bullshit. I should be able to copy my apps from one system to another and not lose my config data or have to jump through hoops to keep it. I should be able to remove a program by deleting it's directory. I should be able to safely backup and restore user configuration data regardless of what underlying OS version I'm working on -- the user configuration and the OS version-specific/hardware-specific configuration should be separate.
Just a follow-up note to anyone interested, the BIN files load perfectly in Photoshop CS2 (they will be too large for earlier versions of Photoshop) once you type in the dimensions and channels. They do take 2.37GB of memory just for basic pixel data, so be warned! My scratch disk went to 10GB just from opening the file.
The max memory Photoshop CS2 can address is 3GB, so even on my 6GB image editing system it is pretty swap-disk intensive. Reminds me of doing print work back in 1993:)
Photoshop CS2 can work with files up to 300k x 300k now! It's great, but of course few file formats support that size. Raw files, TIFF, and the new PSB (Photoshop large document format) do, thanks for mentioning it though since I looked it up in the help file -- I worried for a minute that it might not open a raw file of that size.
3 more hours until the file is finished downloading for me, I'll post here to let folks know if it works:)
Has anyone downloaded the "big" (non-tiled) raw dataset yet to comment on whether it is accessible through normal image-editing software? Photoshop (and presumably the Gimp) can open raw image data, but whether this particular file woks (and what settings it requires) don't seem to be mentioned anywhere.
I'd love to wallpaper my office with this image (I have a large 40"x50" version of an earlier 20k x 20k image currently) and would like to do all my adjustments on the original 500m file, then tile it to my own needs.
Well, the Nanos are brand-new, so they won't be changing. That's one of the few things you can be sure of, so if that was the size/weight you need, then there isn't much that will affect your decision.
But the big iPods will probably be getting SOME change, and by the time you get to the store whatever new models are out will be available, so you can still buy it today:)
They did the same thing with digital music players that they did with desktop computers -- made them attractive to, and usable for, people who aren't interested in technology for technology's sake. Making a device that does one thing very well is much harder than making a device that kinda does 20 things acceptably.
No, Apple has been pretty ruthless about cutting back on models when they introduce new ones. They seem very much locked into the current 3-model iPod lineup, and offering two sizes of each model. That's not really very much, especially since there is a clear and unmistakable size/weight difference between each model -- every customer is likely to have a very specific preference depending on what activities they're using the iPod for.
Other companies tend to make 3 or 4 or more models that are all the same size and just have different features, and that's where things get confusing for people who don't know the technical specs. Look at the Palm/PDA market as a first-time buyer and try to figure out why some models are $99 while others are $599.
I had my first gold card when I was 16. I don't know why people think credit cards are an age verification -- banks aren't exactly shy about handing them out to anyone with a checking account.
No we weren't, the UN never appointed us to enforce them and it never authorized us to do it on our own discretion.
Just because someone gets the death penalty in a capital murder trial doesn't mean anyone off the street has the right to walk up and shoot the convict in the head. It certainly doesn't give a prison guard the right to kill him some random day because he thinks the appeals are taking too long.
You're confusing several things -- the citizens of Washington DC don't have a Governor or voting representatives in Congress to vote for, but they are taxed anyways (by the Congress, which is not elected by them, so the citizens of DC have no way to vote them out!). So they have "taxation without representation", one of the primary gripes that began our revolution. President Clinton gained many popularity points in DC by having the presidential limousines get DC plates that read "taxation without representation".
The citizens of DC DO vote for the president, and even have a non-voting member of congress (just in case you thought normal members of congress were too effective!). And of course they vote for all their local authorities. They just have basically no input whatsoever into the federal legislature.
The reason the USA is not a democracy is because we're primarily a Republic, but with Constitutional restrictions. So we're either a Constitutional Republic or a Constitutional Democratic Republic. But really no place on earth is a real democracy, so we just use the term to describe pretty much any country where regular elections take place.
Whenever there is a governmental mistake, or failure to accurately foresee the future, accusations start flying. The media Queen of hearts shouts at everyone, "Off with their heads". No wonder there's an exodus of senior staff.
But that's not what happens -- the media doesn't scapegoat invisible public service employees who've been dutifully showing up doing their job every day for 30 years. Those employees make it through scandals in administration after administration, because everyone knows the agency will not function without them -- ocassionally one may be scapegoated internally, but they don't have any "sex appeal" to the media.
This recent wave IS very different, because it is one of the first times that these guys do seem to be resigning in large numbers -- not because of "media pressure" (the media doesn't even know who these guys are), but because of inept cronies being put in place above them, and then the cronies not being smart enough to realize the career professionals should be running the show.
That's exactly what is happening with the CIA right now, where guys who have happily served both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades are suddenly being dictated to on how to perform their jobs by people who are barely qualified to operate the paper shredder.
"The Media" isn't pushing out the senior CIA officials, the Bush administration is, the same way they pushed Whitman out of the EPA (I mean, geez, the Republican governor of New Jersey is "too liberal" on the environment? Reality check! That's as crazy as suggesting a quadrupegic veteran isn't patriotic!)
I've transparencies that date from 40 years ago that have been stored absolutely awfully, and they exhibit little degradation. I can pull excellent scans from them if need be and have a print in minutes. And these were slides that were stuffed into a cardboard box and dropped in the drawer of a desk kept in the back of a garage.
Indeed -- 40 years ago consumer film and prints were fine. You can easily find film and prints from the 40s,50s, and some of the 60s that are nearly perfect. And then you see the shit that is left from the 70s and 80s and realize just how much we all "saved" when film got 12 cents cheaper per roll and our prints got doubled free of charge.
And yes, B&W film is pretty much stable, partly because it is (mostly) used by professionals and not consumers, and also because the major problem with color is that it shifts over time since each layer of emulsion reacts at a different rate. Now that we have wonderful consumer C41 B&W films, people will get to see their black and white film die too!
Now, if you WANT archival-quality inkjets, you can buy a printer that uses archival inks, and get matching archival ink and paper. Even then though, you are using unproven technology: You can only hope the vendor's torture-tests accurately simulate the promised 50 years in a photo album or in some cases 200 years in museum conditions. With a chemical process, you pretty much know what to expect.
You're not "trusting" anything -- ink on paper and exposed to light is just as much a chemical process as a cibachrome. Using non-fugitive pigments on acid-free paper has been tested for several thousand years longer than any photographic chemical. Whether it's applied with an inkjet or a paintbrush really doesn't make any difference.
Unfortunately, people who trust photographic prints should realize that pretty much any current consumer process is guaranteed to make a print that will be worthless in ten to twenty years even if kept in a sealed vault. Your original negative film might last another decade past that.
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because "appliances" like macs can boot up a lot faster due to limited hardware support and stricter guidelines. when it supports any arbitrary and millions of pieces of hardware like the x86 world, that would be something. it's not a general purpose os, it is written specifically for mac hardware, down to the motherboard and auxiliary chips. it cannot be done nearly as easily or well on the "pc" world.
What the crack are you smoking? There's nothing magical about Macs or PCs that makes booting any different, other than technology chosen for implementation. You can install any hardware you want on a Mac if you can get (or write) a driver or kernel extension for it. It's just as "general-purpose" in architecture as Windows -- I mean, you can download, compile and install the basic OS on your i386 clone hardware for free!
Yeah, the difference between supporting 5,000 HDD controllers or 50 HDD controllers WOULD make a big difference in boot times if the computer was probing and identifying hardware by going through that list from scratch on every boot, but that's not how it works.
The reasons Mac hardware starts faster is because it actually uses modern hardware configuration techniques, rather than relying on decades-old BIOS technologies. Why is Windows still virtualizing a limited number of hardware interrupts? Intel had the technology to get rid of them over a decade ago, but the PC still goes through this whole elaborate song and dance between the BIOS and the OS every time the system boots. And it goes through a painfully outdated "hunt-and-peck" style hard disk boot process (and more virtualization to be able to access large drives, and more virtualization on the disk itself to make up for deficiencies in the partitioning capabilities of drives from 1983).
If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? I am no longer infected.
I'm saying that our traditional antipathy towards science has become outright hostility in recent years, as evidenced by the push for religious instruction in the science classroom. The current movement against traditional science instruction is not something new, it has been building up since the early 1980s.
Back when we were fighting the godless Commies, we recognized the need for science education and we pushed hard for students to excel and the curriculum to be solid. Now we just want science classes to reinforce what we already believe.
I don't see how you can not think Intelligent Design is ontopic. The topic is science in the United States, it seems quite obvious that issues like "do we teach kids actual science in science class, or religion?" would be pretty high on the list of ontopic subjects. If our students are kept in the dark about biology, how can we expect to compete in biotech?
I know that Consumer Reports has tested this in the past year. Basically anything above 750 or so is just marketing spin on thread count.
Why spend money on a Mac version, when you can just tell Mac users to buy your Windows version and emulate it at full speed.
Because developers who are interested in cross-platform sales already make Mac versions -- they know they'll lose customers if their app no longer has Aqua effects and built-in spell checking and other things Mac users expect.
Developers who don't do crossplatform, well, some of them will say "great, now I don't have to worry about it since they have VMware!", while others will say "great, now I can do cross-platform a lot easier!" I think in the end, more software will be developed for the Mac because the number of small developers who are curious will be much greater than the number of large companies that are trying to shave money from the budget.
And keep in mind the Mac, as it is now, is a niche market anyways. Companies don't need an excuse to stop developing for it if, they either find that they are making a lot of money from it or they go after the 90%+ that are running Windows.
No, but it does have an effect on the company's assets and any business it conducts with companies in the USA. Spyware is usually for advertising of some sort -- advertising to customers in the USA isn't very effective if you can only advertise foreign companies with no offices in the USA, and your own company can never conduct contracts or maintain assets in the USA.
Thanks for the clarification!
Remember the good old days when applications stored all of their configuration data in a file like SETTINGS.CFG? You could zip the entire application directory up, unzip it on another machine, and it would run just fine. An uninstall was as simple as erase *.*, cd .., rmdir foocalc.
:P
:)
Yeah, it's called Mac OS X
Of course, the configuration stuff is in ~/library/appname, since it is multiuser.
But that really is one of the main reasons I switched a year and a half ago. On a reinstall of XP, which of course requires reinstalling every app and searching through the registry, app/program files/windows directory, and everywhere else in hopes of finding config data, I realized this was bullshit. I should be able to copy my apps from one system to another and not lose my config data or have to jump through hoops to keep it. I should be able to remove a program by deleting it's directory. I should be able to safely backup and restore user configuration data regardless of what underlying OS version I'm working on -- the user configuration and the OS version-specific/hardware-specific configuration should be separate.
And now I can
It's not English text that spread like a virus, it's code.
But isn't the very exploit we're discussing a case of plain english text being interpreted by some browsers as HTML markup?
Just a follow-up note to anyone interested, the BIN files load perfectly in Photoshop CS2 (they will be too large for earlier versions of Photoshop) once you type in the dimensions and channels. They do take 2.37GB of memory just for basic pixel data, so be warned! My scratch disk went to 10GB just from opening the file.
:)
The max memory Photoshop CS2 can address is 3GB, so even on my 6GB image editing system it is pretty swap-disk intensive. Reminds me of doing print work back in 1993
Photoshop CS2 can work with files up to 300k x 300k now! It's great, but of course few file formats support that size. Raw files, TIFF, and the new PSB (Photoshop large document format) do, thanks for mentioning it though since I looked it up in the help file -- I worried for a minute that it might not open a raw file of that size.
:)
3 more hours until the file is finished downloading for me, I'll post here to let folks know if it works
Has anyone downloaded the "big" (non-tiled) raw dataset yet to comment on whether it is accessible through normal image-editing software? Photoshop (and presumably the Gimp) can open raw image data, but whether this particular file woks (and what settings it requires) don't seem to be mentioned anywhere.
I'd love to wallpaper my office with this image (I have a large 40"x50" version of an earlier 20k x 20k image currently) and would like to do all my adjustments on the original 500m file, then tile it to my own needs.
LOL, great catch. Thank god for journalists and japanese-english translators. They provide endless amusement :)
I hope if I ever get a "death sentence", it only lasts for a year and I get 30 billion dollars in the bank. That's the kind of death I could get into.
The 1990's called -- they want "Apple is Dying" back.
Well, the Nanos are brand-new, so they won't be changing. That's one of the few things you can be sure of, so if that was the size/weight you need, then there isn't much that will affect your decision.
:)
But the big iPods will probably be getting SOME change, and by the time you get to the store whatever new models are out will be available, so you can still buy it today
They did the same thing with digital music players that they did with desktop computers -- made them attractive to, and usable for, people who aren't interested in technology for technology's sake. Making a device that does one thing very well is much harder than making a device that kinda does 20 things acceptably.
No, Apple has been pretty ruthless about cutting back on models when they introduce new ones. They seem very much locked into the current 3-model iPod lineup, and offering two sizes of each model. That's not really very much, especially since there is a clear and unmistakable size/weight difference between each model -- every customer is likely to have a very specific preference depending on what activities they're using the iPod for.
Other companies tend to make 3 or 4 or more models that are all the same size and just have different features, and that's where things get confusing for people who don't know the technical specs. Look at the Palm/PDA market as a first-time buyer and try to figure out why some models are $99 while others are $599.
I had my first gold card when I was 16. I don't know why people think credit cards are an age verification -- banks aren't exactly shy about handing them out to anyone with a checking account.
The US was inforcing UN sancations.
No we weren't, the UN never appointed us to enforce them and it never authorized us to do it on our own discretion.
Just because someone gets the death penalty in a capital murder trial doesn't mean anyone off the street has the right to walk up and shoot the convict in the head. It certainly doesn't give a prison guard the right to kill him some random day because he thinks the appeals are taking too long.
You're confusing several things -- the citizens of Washington DC don't have a Governor or voting representatives in Congress to vote for, but they are taxed anyways (by the Congress, which is not elected by them, so the citizens of DC have no way to vote them out!). So they have "taxation without representation", one of the primary gripes that began our revolution. President Clinton gained many popularity points in DC by having the presidential limousines get DC plates that read "taxation without representation".
The citizens of DC DO vote for the president, and even have a non-voting member of congress (just in case you thought normal members of congress were too effective!). And of course they vote for all their local authorities. They just have basically no input whatsoever into the federal legislature.
The reason the USA is not a democracy is because we're primarily a Republic, but with Constitutional restrictions. So we're either a Constitutional Republic or a Constitutional Democratic Republic. But really no place on earth is a real democracy, so we just use the term to describe pretty much any country where regular elections take place.
Whenever there is a governmental mistake, or failure to accurately foresee the future, accusations start flying. The media Queen of hearts shouts at everyone, "Off with their heads". No wonder there's an exodus of senior staff.
But that's not what happens -- the media doesn't scapegoat invisible public service employees who've been dutifully showing up doing their job every day for 30 years. Those employees make it through scandals in administration after administration, because everyone knows the agency will not function without them -- ocassionally one may be scapegoated internally, but they don't have any "sex appeal" to the media.
This recent wave IS very different, because it is one of the first times that these guys do seem to be resigning in large numbers -- not because of "media pressure" (the media doesn't even know who these guys are), but because of inept cronies being put in place above them, and then the cronies not being smart enough to realize the career professionals should be running the show.
That's exactly what is happening with the CIA right now, where guys who have happily served both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades are suddenly being dictated to on how to perform their jobs by people who are barely qualified to operate the paper shredder.
"The Media" isn't pushing out the senior CIA officials, the Bush administration is, the same way they pushed Whitman out of the EPA (I mean, geez, the Republican governor of New Jersey is "too liberal" on the environment? Reality check! That's as crazy as suggesting a quadrupegic veteran isn't patriotic!)
I've transparencies that date from 40 years ago that have been stored absolutely awfully, and they exhibit little degradation. I can pull excellent scans from them if need be and have a print in minutes. And these were slides that were stuffed into a cardboard box and dropped in the drawer of a desk kept in the back of a garage.
Indeed -- 40 years ago consumer film and prints were fine. You can easily find film and prints from the 40s,50s, and some of the 60s that are nearly perfect. And then you see the shit that is left from the 70s and 80s and realize just how much we all "saved" when film got 12 cents cheaper per roll and our prints got doubled free of charge.
And yes, B&W film is pretty much stable, partly because it is (mostly) used by professionals and not consumers, and also because the major problem with color is that it shifts over time since each layer of emulsion reacts at a different rate. Now that we have wonderful consumer C41 B&W films, people will get to see their black and white film die too!
Now, if you WANT archival-quality inkjets, you can buy a printer that uses archival inks, and get matching archival ink and paper. Even then though, you are using unproven technology: You can only hope the vendor's torture-tests accurately simulate the promised 50 years in a photo album or in some cases 200 years in museum conditions. With a chemical process, you pretty much know what to expect.
You're not "trusting" anything -- ink on paper and exposed to light is just as much a chemical process as a cibachrome. Using non-fugitive pigments on acid-free paper has been tested for several thousand years longer than any photographic chemical. Whether it's applied with an inkjet or a paintbrush really doesn't make any difference.
Unfortunately, people who trust photographic prints should realize that pretty much any current consumer process is guaranteed to make a print that will be worthless in ten to twenty years even if kept in a sealed vault. Your original negative film might last another decade past that.
Indeed, and peanut butter belongs on the top half of the sandwich, the way God intended. Anything else should be a felony.