Once the original supply of elite clones was "used up", they enlisted normal people into the stormtrooper corps. The clones were a big one-time order that took years to create, and presumably cost more than just paying some guy to stand guard duty.
Of course, they were still spectacularly bad shots, but that can be somewhat explained by saying they had cheaper, mass produced government contract weapons that weren't as accurate. The rebels tended to use fewer, more precise and powerful weapons, while the empire relied on sheer numbers. Kind of like comparing an AK-47 to an M-16/M-4 in the skill required to effectively use and maintain the weapon on a daily basis.
They had a widely used product. Wonderful, it hasn't been for almost 10 years. The only new ground Quark has broken since 1997 or so is in finding revolutionary and cutting-edge ways to antagonize their own customers and abuse a near-monopoly.
I wish somebody would just take this company out back and shoot it so we can get everyone on InDesign already.
apt-get isn't supposed to be used to install software? That's news to me.
The entire reason all these package managers are being discussed is because they were being touted as so incredibly powerful and much more useful than the pitiful toy.app or.pkg installation methods used on the Mac. For the sysadmin, that may be true, but for the desktop user (which is what the whole freaking Mac OS on x86 thread is about!) it's a joke that nobody on the Linux side of things even seems capable of seeing.
I thought that was funny mostly because "tech-speak" on TV shows and movies is almost always completely made up "What you need to do is segfault your RAM and reverse the polarity to reboot your SCSI, mom. Duh." *cue laugh track*
It was nice to have a tech joke that literally 99% of the people watching didn't even know had just happened.
Completely correct analogy. They're caught up in dozens of pointless rewrites of everything, nothing actually gets accomplished, the hardware and software are just getting more complex without actually improving, and they're losing sight of the core simplicity and "it just works" aspect that made them so successful in the first place.
Microsoft, to their credit, soldiers on, getting slowly better, version after version, as they always do. Palm had a huge lead, and squandered it on stupid stuff like splitting up into different companies and trying to sell the OS to clone manufacturers (sound familiar?).
I HOPE and PRAY that the embracing of linux on Palm will have the same effect that embracing UNIX had on Apple -- finally building in the robust multitasking and hardware management that have long been needed while letting more resources be spent on the actual user side of things
I quake in terror for the day when i have to use a Pocket PC device daily -- a horribly mangled UI designed for a regular computer and just shrink-rayed down to an unusable abbreviation of an interface. *shiver*
"one way compatible instruction sets" means they sprinkled magic CPU pixie dust on early PowerPCs, which meant the PowerPC601 could run 68020 code if it closed its eyes and wished hard enough!
It was called "one-way" because if the PPC wished too hard, for too long, it would stay a 68020 forever! So Apple started writing software that would emulate the 68020 temporarily when the PPC was at risk.
When the Mac OS was all PPC native code (8.1? 8.5?), the one-way compatibility was turned off and all the PPC chips had to grow up for ever and ever.
It's certainly a deliberate decision, and no doubt many customers have read about the G5 and its technical prowess, but that's all technical information to make people feel confident about buying a system based on what they really care about -- the Mac OS, and all the iLife apps. Buying a Mac isn't generally a technical decision (except for those of us who love the UNIX underneath).
It would be far more likley that a computer user (Mac or PC) could accurately identify their graphics chip manufacturer than their CPU manufacturer these days.
There is nothing inherently incorrect about beginning a sentence with the word "but". Such rules provide nice shortcut excuses for 7th grade English teachers, but they have no basis in grammar.
It was no worse than any typical major OS version upgrade in terms of user software compatibility. You had to download updates, check versions when installing, and sometimes say goodbye to old games.
the processor is the only thing that makes a Mac a Mac and not a pc
I would bet good money that not 10% of people who buy Macs have ANY idea what kind of processor is in the system -- in fact, the majority of them probably think it has "Intel Inside", since "that's what computers use, right?".
Whether you call it an "upgrade" or a change is semantics. The PPC and 680x0 had different instruction sets and required completely different programming at the system level -- that Apple built 680x0 system-level software emulation (and later on-the-fly dynamic recompilation) and made it completely transparent to the end-user was a pretty significant feat.
Not to mention, the PowerPC processor is the only edge Macs have left on PC hardware. If Apple goes x86 the Mac will simply be an overpriced PC running a pretty gui on top of BSD.
Whatever. When Ferarri bulds a car with an automatic transmission, it's just an overpriced Taurus with a pretty body kit, right?
After all, what kind of crazy computer USER would buy a computer based on the USER interface? Everybody knows your decision should be based on whether the system is little-endian or big-endian!
Though it should be pointed out that Apple has already changed processor architecture once, and made it completely transparent to the end-user. Plus, they had very good success providing relatively seamless emulation/virtualization of OS9 on OSX when it came out.
VMX has been a huge center of performance, and it helped bridge the big megahertz gap Apple faced the past few years. But combine the extra gigahertz you get from Intel with the capabilities of Core Image, and they should certainly be able to keep their real-time multimedia prowess.
Predicting the future ain't what it used to be
on
Apple to Use Intel Chips?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Well, I suppose since Dvorak predicted it every year since 1988, he might well be right sooner or later. I guess that would be about the third or fourth thing he's gotten right in all that time.
Just wanted to respond solely to say, I understand and agree with everything you say.
I don't intend to slight sincere Christians (only those CS Lewis referred to as believing in "Christianity and water", who believe that showing up in church and saying Amen on a weekly basis gives them salvation free of any deeper commitment).
My initial comment about Buddhists being more "moral" in day-to-day life has to do precisely with the dichotomy between the two beliefs' nature of man -- are we inherently unable to atone for the gravity of our sins and dependent on the Mercy of God, or had we better start atoning now, because we've got a long way to go and are condemned to however many lifetimes it takes?
This is bullshit, period. Buddhism doesn't "require" anything, except taking a hands off approach to everything in the hopes that things will turn out just fine.
Wow, even more from some Christian speaking on a religion they know nothing about! What a surprise. Do you get all your comparative religion information from the back of cereal boxes?
Buddhism requires right action, it requires that you live every moment of your life aware that every action you commit, every choice you make, reflects on you and either brings you closer to or further from enlightenment. That is, in many ways, similar to Christianity (in that, if you TRULY believe in God, you would treat others as creations of God, and you would live each day to bring yourself closer to his will through right action).
The difference being, no matter how contrite he is, no matter how TRULY regretful and sorry he is for the evils he causes, a Buddhist will not reach enlightenment until such time as he has actually balanced out his bad acts.
I have no doubt that the genuine deathbed conversion of a Christian would be a painful experience -- TRULY understanding and comprehending the magnitude of how you have offended the Lord would be horrific. Accepting His mercy at still forgiving you, even after your offenses, would be an amazing experience, humbling and painful. But it wouldn't do a hell of a lot of good for all the poor souls you have harmed, and the world will still be left with plenty of pain from your acts.
A Buddhist understands that if he commits an evil against another -- be he man or beast, or even the world itself -- then he will have to atone for it. Not in regret, not in personal suffering, but in action. He will have to MAKE UP FOR the evil he causes, be it in this lifetime or the next.
What it sounds like you're saying is that you can never, not even on your death bed, change your mind. From your point of view, you can't reach "enlightenment" unless you're a perfect individual your whole life. Well, since no one is perfect, I guess you're screwed.
No, on your death bed you can't "change your mind". If you hurt people, changing your mind doesn't unhurt them. If you poison the water, changing your mind and being contrite doesn't purify it, no matter how much you mean it.
Enlightenment doesn't require perfection, it requires recognizing that your actions affect the world and the lives around you, and for the pains you cause you must cause an equal amount of healing. You can be as truly regretful and sorry as you want, but until you get off your ass and do some good in the world, you're going to be stuck.
I ran into this alot in the election cycle. people equating Bush with Islamic fundamentalists because of his wearing his faith out in the open.
Is that what you tell yourself? Few people care about wearing faith out in the open. What we care about is trying to amend the constitution and alter the very fundamental functioning of our government in order to conform to specific religious beliefs (which are, ironically enough, not even accurate when compared to the Bible, but since when do most Christians actually read the Bible?).
Believe all you like, just don't remove our separation of powers, separation of church and state, legalize discrimnation, or outlaw the teaching of science. THOSE are behaviors that draw comparisons to other religious fundamentalists.
I can see how Buddhism is attractive to you--it doesn't ever ask you to change.
Wow, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you must be both an American and a Christian, to have such a completely twisted and wholly inaccurate view of Buddhism.
Take a few trips around Asia and tell us again how Buddhism doesn't require any change. No, it doesn't use morality as a bludgeon as the way some religions do, but belief in Buddhism requires you to live a much more "moral" life than Judeo-Christian religions do.
There are no last-minute contritions in Buddhism, no deathbed conversions. You either live a good, moral life, or you don't. Saying 12 Hail Marys doesn't mean anything if your actions are no good.
You know, that "liberal" group that conservatives love to hate, because they go out of their way to defend the rights guaranteed by the Constitution?
If I had a nickle for every time I've heard the ACLU called "commie pinko liberal", I could just about buy that new car I've been looking at. I have yet to have anyone explain to me how defending rights that people fought and died for is anti-american.
Oh, what the heck: they were also wildly pro-separation of church and state.
Most of the founding fathers were deists, and the early settlers of the nation were folks who didn't agree with official church doctrine back home. Neither of those groups wanted people making a NEW official doctrine. Jefferson would be shitting his pants and cursing like a sailor if he saw the kind of faux-religious devotion so much of Washington is trying to cram down our throats on a daily basis. If you aren't a protestant christian (preferably Baptist) you might as well resign yourself to your tax dollars going to support that church's goals anyway.
If I see my neighbor continuously beating his wife and his wife is incapable of getting away from him and I've tried other measures, I'm gonna go over and kick his ass and make sure he never goes near her again.
Of course if he hasn't beaten his wife in a few years, and you just decide one night that you're going to go over and burn his house down to the ground with his family still inside, it might not seem so noble.
Yeah, Hussein was a sadistic bastard and a lousy leader who did some atrocious things in the past. Nobody is sorry to see him gone. The Iragis are better off today than they were 5 years ago. None of that justifies unilaterally invading a soveriegn nation that presents no immediate threat to anyone.
While that all could be written off as simply bad foreign policy, the fact that we pulled military and intelligence resources off of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to accomplish it makes it especially galling. Where is Osama? The guy who planned an attack on american soil that slaughtered thousands of civilians? Why were we taking satellites off of Tora Bora and putting them on Baghdad? Why were we pulling the CIA & Special Forces teams out of Afghanistan so that they could go to Iraq and target facilities there? Hussein wasn't going anywhere, and he wasn't doing anything that demanded our immediate attention.
No matter how successful Iraq turns out to be, when Osama carries off another attack on American soil, there are going to be a lot of people asking "why the hell didn't we catch this guy the first time around?"
Isn't half the attraction to OS X for geeks how its not that much different from Linux or BSD from the console?
For a lot of us, the attraction of OS X is that it is -- finally -- a unix that doesn't suck.
Apple has done an amazing job in a few short years of replacing the stupid, archaic, and ridiculously fragmented parts of unix that have festered on it like a cancer for decades.
There are a lot of geeks who are perfectly capable of using unix (and do so on a daily basis) but f*cking hate it because there are 32 separete launch daemons, 47 different configuration file formats, and 376 different GUI permutations, all of which are mutually incompatible except for the token attempts by folks like the LSB, which everyone ignores.
The truth is that Apple is filling the role now that USC Berkeley filled years ago -- stepping back, evaluating what is there, keeping the good and replacing the bad. Unix had been in dire need of a benevolent dictator for years.
They fall into all the "bad" categories of people (white, gun owning, religious, militant, and probably a few others) that the liberals would like to demonize.
YOU do realize that those people were all crazy liberals, right? The conservatives were called "Tories".
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Once the original supply of elite clones was "used up", they enlisted normal people into the stormtrooper corps. The clones were a big one-time order that took years to create, and presumably cost more than just paying some guy to stand guard duty.
Of course, they were still spectacularly bad shots, but that can be somewhat explained by saying they had cheaper, mass produced government contract weapons that weren't as accurate. The rebels tended to use fewer, more precise and powerful weapons, while the empire relied on sheer numbers. Kind of like comparing an AK-47 to an M-16/M-4 in the skill required to effectively use and maintain the weapon on a daily basis.
They had a wonderful product
They had a widely used product. Wonderful, it hasn't been for almost 10 years. The only new ground Quark has broken since 1997 or so is in finding revolutionary and cutting-edge ways to antagonize their own customers and abuse a near-monopoly.
I wish somebody would just take this company out back and shoot it so we can get everyone on InDesign already.
That's not what apt-get is supposed to do.
.app or .pkg installation methods used on the Mac. For the sysadmin, that may be true, but for the desktop user (which is what the whole freaking Mac OS on x86 thread is about!) it's a joke that nobody on the Linux side of things even seems capable of seeing.
apt-get isn't supposed to be used to install software? That's news to me.
The entire reason all these package managers are being discussed is because they were being touted as so incredibly powerful and much more useful than the pitiful toy
I thought that was funny mostly because "tech-speak" on TV shows and movies is almost always completely made up "What you need to do is segfault your RAM and reverse the polarity to reboot your SCSI, mom. Duh." *cue laugh track*
It was nice to have a tech joke that literally 99% of the people watching didn't even know had just happened.
Completely correct analogy. They're caught up in dozens of pointless rewrites of everything, nothing actually gets accomplished, the hardware and software are just getting more complex without actually improving, and they're losing sight of the core simplicity and "it just works" aspect that made them so successful in the first place.
Microsoft, to their credit, soldiers on, getting slowly better, version after version, as they always do. Palm had a huge lead, and squandered it on stupid stuff like splitting up into different companies and trying to sell the OS to clone manufacturers (sound familiar?).
I HOPE and PRAY that the embracing of linux on Palm will have the same effect that embracing UNIX had on Apple -- finally building in the robust multitasking and hardware management that have long been needed while letting more resources be spent on the actual user side of things
I quake in terror for the day when i have to use a Pocket PC device daily -- a horribly mangled UI designed for a regular computer and just shrink-rayed down to an unusable abbreviation of an interface. *shiver*
Indeed -- my head was spinning for a few minutes there. :)
"one way compatible instruction sets" means they sprinkled magic CPU pixie dust on early PowerPCs, which meant the PowerPC601 could run 68020 code if it closed its eyes and wished hard enough!
It was called "one-way" because if the PPC wished too hard, for too long, it would stay a 68020 forever! So Apple started writing software that would emulate the 68020 temporarily when the PPC was at risk.
When the Mac OS was all PPC native code (8.1? 8.5?), the one-way compatibility was turned off and all the PPC chips had to grow up for ever and ever.
The End.
It's certainly a deliberate decision, and no doubt many customers have read about the G5 and its technical prowess, but that's all technical information to make people feel confident about buying a system based on what they really care about -- the Mac OS, and all the iLife apps. Buying a Mac isn't generally a technical decision (except for those of us who love the UNIX underneath).
It would be far more likley that a computer user (Mac or PC) could accurately identify their graphics chip manufacturer than their CPU manufacturer these days.
There is nothing inherently incorrect about beginning a sentence with the word "but". Such rules provide nice shortcut excuses for 7th grade English teachers, but they have no basis in grammar.
No, it wasn't COMPLETELY transparent.
It was no worse than any typical major OS version upgrade in terms of user software compatibility. You had to download updates, check versions when installing, and sometimes say goodbye to old games.
the processor is the only thing that makes a Mac a Mac and not a pc
I would bet good money that not 10% of people who buy Macs have ANY idea what kind of processor is in the system -- in fact, the majority of them probably think it has "Intel Inside", since "that's what computers use, right?".
Whether you call it an "upgrade" or a change is semantics. The PPC and 680x0 had different instruction sets and required completely different programming at the system level -- that Apple built 680x0 system-level software emulation (and later on-the-fly dynamic recompilation) and made it completely transparent to the end-user was a pretty significant feat.
Not to mention, the PowerPC processor is the only edge Macs have left on PC hardware. If Apple goes x86 the Mac will simply be an overpriced PC running a pretty gui on top of BSD.
Whatever. When Ferarri bulds a car with an automatic transmission, it's just an overpriced Taurus with a pretty body kit, right?
After all, what kind of crazy computer USER would buy a computer based on the USER interface? Everybody knows your decision should be based on whether the system is little-endian or big-endian!
Though it should be pointed out that Apple has already changed processor architecture once, and made it completely transparent to the end-user. Plus, they had very good success providing relatively seamless emulation/virtualization of OS9 on OSX when it came out.
VMX has been a huge center of performance, and it helped bridge the big megahertz gap Apple faced the past few years. But combine the extra gigahertz you get from Intel with the capabilities of Core Image, and they should certainly be able to keep their real-time multimedia prowess.
Well, I suppose since Dvorak predicted it every year since 1988, he might well be right sooner or later. I guess that would be about the third or fourth thing he's gotten right in all that time.
Apple tries to sell an image rather than a product. For those of us who aren't hippies products will win every time.
Oh, no! I better tell Apple, somebody accidentally put a zero-maintenance dual processor Unix workstation in the empty box they sold me!
Just wanted to respond solely to say, I understand and agree with everything you say.
I don't intend to slight sincere Christians (only those CS Lewis referred to as believing in "Christianity and water", who believe that showing up in church and saying Amen on a weekly basis gives them salvation free of any deeper commitment).
My initial comment about Buddhists being more "moral" in day-to-day life has to do precisely with the dichotomy between the two beliefs' nature of man -- are we inherently unable to atone for the gravity of our sins and dependent on the Mercy of God, or had we better start atoning now, because we've got a long way to go and are condemned to however many lifetimes it takes?
A widget forkbomb wouldn't be so hard I don't think.
:)
The question is, how would anyone ever notice?
This is bullshit, period. Buddhism doesn't "require" anything, except taking a hands off approach to everything in the hopes that things will turn out just fine.
Wow, even more from some Christian speaking on a religion they know nothing about! What a surprise. Do you get all your comparative religion information from the back of cereal boxes?
Buddhism requires right action, it requires that you live every moment of your life aware that every action you commit, every choice you make, reflects on you and either brings you closer to or further from enlightenment. That is, in many ways, similar to Christianity (in that, if you TRULY believe in God, you would treat others as creations of God, and you would live each day to bring yourself closer to his will through right action).
The difference being, no matter how contrite he is, no matter how TRULY regretful and sorry he is for the evils he causes, a Buddhist will not reach enlightenment until such time as he has actually balanced out his bad acts.
I have no doubt that the genuine deathbed conversion of a Christian would be a painful experience -- TRULY understanding and comprehending the magnitude of how you have offended the Lord would be horrific. Accepting His mercy at still forgiving you, even after your offenses, would be an amazing experience, humbling and painful. But it wouldn't do a hell of a lot of good for all the poor souls you have harmed, and the world will still be left with plenty of pain from your acts.
A Buddhist understands that if he commits an evil against another -- be he man or beast, or even the world itself -- then he will have to atone for it. Not in regret, not in personal suffering, but in action. He will have to MAKE UP FOR the evil he causes, be it in this lifetime or the next.
What it sounds like you're saying is that you can never, not even on your death bed, change your mind. From your point of view, you can't reach "enlightenment" unless you're a perfect individual your whole life. Well, since no one is perfect, I guess you're screwed.
No, on your death bed you can't "change your mind". If you hurt people, changing your mind doesn't unhurt them. If you poison the water, changing your mind and being contrite doesn't purify it, no matter how much you mean it.
Enlightenment doesn't require perfection, it requires recognizing that your actions affect the world and the lives around you, and for the pains you cause you must cause an equal amount of healing. You can be as truly regretful and sorry as you want, but until you get off your ass and do some good in the world, you're going to be stuck.
I ran into this alot in the election cycle. people equating Bush with Islamic fundamentalists because of his wearing his faith out in the open.
Is that what you tell yourself? Few people care about wearing faith out in the open. What we care about is trying to amend the constitution and alter the very fundamental functioning of our government in order to conform to specific religious beliefs (which are, ironically enough, not even accurate when compared to the Bible, but since when do most Christians actually read the Bible?).
Believe all you like, just don't remove our separation of powers, separation of church and state, legalize discrimnation, or outlaw the teaching of science. THOSE are behaviors that draw comparisons to other religious fundamentalists.
I can see how Buddhism is attractive to you--it doesn't ever ask you to change.
Wow, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you must be both an American and a Christian, to have such a completely twisted and wholly inaccurate view of Buddhism.
Take a few trips around Asia and tell us again how Buddhism doesn't require any change. No, it doesn't use morality as a bludgeon as the way some religions do, but belief in Buddhism requires you to live a much more "moral" life than Judeo-Christian religions do.
There are no last-minute contritions in Buddhism, no deathbed conversions. You either live a good, moral life, or you don't. Saying 12 Hail Marys doesn't mean anything if your actions are no good.
One example: The ACLU.
You know, that "liberal" group that conservatives love to hate, because they go out of their way to defend the rights guaranteed by the Constitution?
If I had a nickle for every time I've heard the ACLU called "commie pinko liberal", I could just about buy that new car I've been looking at. I have yet to have anyone explain to me how defending rights that people fought and died for is anti-american.
Oh, what the heck: they were also wildly pro-separation of church and state.
Most of the founding fathers were deists, and the early settlers of the nation were folks who didn't agree with official church doctrine back home. Neither of those groups wanted people making a NEW official doctrine. Jefferson would be shitting his pants and cursing like a sailor if he saw the kind of faux-religious devotion so much of Washington is trying to cram down our throats on a daily basis. If you aren't a protestant christian (preferably Baptist) you might as well resign yourself to your tax dollars going to support that church's goals anyway.
If I see my neighbor continuously beating his wife and his wife is incapable of getting away from him and I've tried other measures, I'm gonna go over and kick his ass and make sure he never goes near her again.
Of course if he hasn't beaten his wife in a few years, and you just decide one night that you're going to go over and burn his house down to the ground with his family still inside, it might not seem so noble.
Yeah, Hussein was a sadistic bastard and a lousy leader who did some atrocious things in the past. Nobody is sorry to see him gone. The Iragis are better off today than they were 5 years ago. None of that justifies unilaterally invading a soveriegn nation that presents no immediate threat to anyone.
While that all could be written off as simply bad foreign policy, the fact that we pulled military and intelligence resources off of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to accomplish it makes it especially galling. Where is Osama? The guy who planned an attack on american soil that slaughtered thousands of civilians? Why were we taking satellites off of Tora Bora and putting them on Baghdad? Why were we pulling the CIA & Special Forces teams out of Afghanistan so that they could go to Iraq and target facilities there? Hussein wasn't going anywhere, and he wasn't doing anything that demanded our immediate attention.
No matter how successful Iraq turns out to be, when Osama carries off another attack on American soil, there are going to be a lot of people asking "why the hell didn't we catch this guy the first time around?"
Isn't half the attraction to OS X for geeks how its not that much different from Linux or BSD from the console?
For a lot of us, the attraction of OS X is that it is -- finally -- a unix that doesn't suck.
Apple has done an amazing job in a few short years of replacing the stupid, archaic, and ridiculously fragmented parts of unix that have festered on it like a cancer for decades.
There are a lot of geeks who are perfectly capable of using unix (and do so on a daily basis) but f*cking hate it because there are 32 separete launch daemons, 47 different configuration file formats, and 376 different GUI permutations, all of which are mutually incompatible except for the token attempts by folks like the LSB, which everyone ignores.
The truth is that Apple is filling the role now that USC Berkeley filled years ago -- stepping back, evaluating what is there, keeping the good and replacing the bad. Unix had been in dire need of a benevolent dictator for years.
They fall into all the "bad" categories of people (white, gun owning, religious, militant, and probably a few others) that the liberals would like to demonize.
YOU do realize that those people were all crazy liberals, right? The conservatives were called "Tories".
He's talking about the new Tiger (10.4) interface for printing. It is a HUUUUGE improvement over Panther.