Reminds me of the layout of my favourite pizzabox machines - just standing up:)
o_O Oh, the nostalgia!
Yes... it is the return of the fabled "pizza box" Mac, isn't it? Of course, the critics didn't want it to still have a display to drive up the price point, though.
I personally will wait for the first rev. IBM's 90nm process is still too flaky for me to trust the "first generation" of the "third generation" system
I write Mac programs for a living, and I'm very aware of the issues.
Same here.
I know that you need to load Classic, but Classic is part of the OS.
That kind of depends on what you consider "part" of the OS. Apple no longer ships a OS 9 install as part of the default installation of OS X, so for a fraction of users (usually switchers) they can't run the original "Missile" app.
My point is that Apple is taking the right approach; they sandbox old backwards-compatibility junk in a virtual machine and don't let it impact the rest of the system.
That's true, but my understanding was that Microsoft bought out Virtual PC for that very reason. Just before the buyout, Connectix released a Windows hosted version of VPC that does the very sandboxing that Classic is supposed to do. Microsoft is expected to include part of the code base in a future server product to allow Win95/98 emulation, but not as a full-fledged UI participant.
IMHO, while technically impressive, the sandboxing that Apple did for Classic isn't really long term viable. To try to co-exist with the OS X native environment, the OS 9 environment sacrificed 100% compatibility with old software. The VPC style of sandboxing can get closer to 100% by better isolating the virtual machine from the real one.
I fully expect Apple to "finish" the sandboxing in a future version of the OS, so as to reduce the UI confusions between Aqua and Platinum. Already, there are some freeware emulation packages on the 'Net (like Basilisk and vMac) that can do a more accurate job with 68k era apps than Classic. (Sadly, they usually require Apple copyrighted ROMs, which limit their real world deployment potential.)
I stopped using a Flouride rinse my dentist sold me because of it. Seems kinda scary. Please someone rebut this..
This isn't a rebuttal per se, but you could start here...
Flouride is one of those chemicals that has developed a mythical aura of "evil" surrounding it, even worse than Aspartame. The dark comedy "Dr. Strangelove" even made it a key plot point, having a crazy military officer blame flouridation on a Commuinst plot.
The issue with chemicals like these is not that they are lethal in high doses; everything is lethal when taken excessively. It's a matter simply of dosage. The typical amount of flouride added to drinking supplies is just too small to cause the effects observed in lab rats.
If Apple can make a Missile Command clone from 1984 run perfectly on their modern OS X which shares absolutely zilch with the original Mac system
If you are thinking of the same old QuickDraw demo I am, that's no longer strictly true. The original game ran on 68k, which is no longer emulated by OS X; you have to load in the Classic OS 9 layer to play it.
That said, you could take the original source and recompile it to run native, except the original source was written in Pascal, and Apple has deprecated support for that language. To make the game in such a way that the same code base runs on 128K's and iMacs, you need to do a modern code cleanup job that converts the code to C as well as making it "Carbon" compliant. Since all it takes to make the code non-compliant is to include the various "Init" toolbox calls at the start of the app, you have to use pre-processing for 68k compiles.
Sadly, the Missile Command game is no longer the backwards compatibily benchmark it once was...
I meant that you would surely double-check/ trace through the code before you compiled.
You might be meaning "integrated" where you are saying "compiled." Even if the final integration step involves compiling via a master project, you'd still need a test bed or "scaffolding" to compile your code against before submission. Otherwise, you are flying blind and may as well be programming towards the old batch cards systems of yesteryear. (Then again, the project I'm working on now involves separate shared libraries or code modules, rather than something so monolithic.)
I'm wondering what the appeal is in creating yet another football or basketball game.
One reason: Stats.
Most of the "annual" release sports titles are games that have seasons, like football and baseball. Hardcore sports fans want to be able to play as the exact same team as the team that plays on TV. With the support of the Internet in recent years, the games can be patched to provide updates to cover mid-season trading.
Warning: stereotypical dumb jock joke follows
The market for these kinds games are usually dominated by types too dumb to realize that the statistical content is acually a very small part of the overall product. If they were smart, like us geeks, they'd insist on cheaper product treating the new stats as an expansion set, rather than repurchasing the same game year-over-year.
But then again, many geeks play pay-per-month MMORPGs, which I think is exploiting the same kind of stupidity, but that's just me. The truly smart sports fans (jock/geek dual-class) are those who play games like Fantasy Baseball and what not...
Shareware was one of those things that silly kids with DOS machines on BBSs did.
And you obviously knew yet another Internet.
Shareware's been demonized on the Wintel platform, and Open Source dominated the Unix space. But the Mac platform actually was able to maintain a healthy and viable shareware market until the rise of OS X. While companies like Ambrosia Software and Freeverse are still around, it just hasn't been the same since the politics of the other two major platforms started to overshadow the Mac culture...
Are you KIDDING? The government flipped its lid when those gay people got married (due to religious reasons) - imagine what would happen if that game was released in the US?
Huh? That's a non-sequitur. The gay marriage issue deals with changing contract law. (Especially since marriage is so stupidly intertwined with America's tax laws!) The issue we're discussing here is more about free speech. Besides, it wasn't the "government" that was upset; it was the Conservative right wing. Despite Bush The Second being in the White House, there are more than enough Liberals and Moderates in the American government to keep Conservative doctine from dominating the body politic.
Games and media featuring homosexual content aren't banned here... it's almost become trendy. Or did you happen to forget about stuff like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy? Or to continue my Japanese example, bishounen and yaoi. Those are part of the reason teenage girls are more likely to buy manga instead of our domestic "superhero" comics, by my understanding. I remember the stink made by some Final Fantasy fans who were disturbed that VII had a gay brothel in it, but you didn't see the game get pulled off of shelves because of it...
For the record, I don't think government should be in the business of dictating what marriage is (or taxing based on it!); that's more of a cultural or religious issue. I personally would remove any and all marriage laws from the books.
I don't think many Americans would like it if an Arabian company released software in the US that showed Jesus shooting up heroin and shitting on a prostitute.
Except that such a thing isn't illegal in the US, yet... It might get slapped with some kind of "parental advisory" label, but it would still be legal to display or sell in the States. Some Japanese anime and video games contains such content...
Governments who ban the "discussion" of dissent are really shooting themselves in the foot. If for no other reason, how would you properly repatriate Kashmir or Taiwan if your foreign policy just "assumes" they already are? Military might is expensive to maintain in the long term...
Oh, you mean like the current Apple supporters never got over hating Real?
Funny, I thought everybody hated Real. Real didn't single out Mac users out for suffering; Windows users had to cope with the hard-to-find "free" player and to deal with the "spyware" attributes of the player... In some ways, Real's poor support for the Mac OS was a blessing, since we didn't have to deal with same intensity of cutting edge "marketing" that Real was infamous for.
My beef with the Linux/Open Source community and the reason for my initial rant was that I've been observing a deterioration of culture among Mac users online, as they have been having to compete with the culture of Open Source advocates.
Among other things, I've been noticing a virtual jihad declared on the Mac shareware market. I've been seeing too many jabs at shareware developers and unwarranted criticism on sites like MacUpdate. I've been a long time supporter (read: I pay my fees!) of shareware; it's literally been the only thing that kept the Mac OS viable during the OS 7/8/9 era. To see garage developers condemned for not releasing their efforts and work for "free" (as in beer) sickens me; it's a complete misapplication of the "free software" (as in liberty) ethos.
I've posted this on another site, but my feelings on this issue stand... especially with regards to accusations of Apple being "closed" technologically...
[BEGIN QUOTE]
I Want Apple To License The DRM, BUT what Real is doing is tantamount to slander.
The iPod works with MP3s, ripped CDs, as well as lossless formats like WAV and AIFF. John Gruber's been acting the "Scott McCloud" role of late with regards to the Mac platform, but he's right on the money about the popular media's misconceptions about Apple's music player. (He's been posting articles on Daring Fireball for the last week on this topic.)
The conspiracy theorist in me is starting to think that the RIAA let Apple "get away" with their more forgiving DRM just so Apple can get battered in the popular press since the Apple modus operandi is to be less promiscuous with their tech than Microsoft is. This way the public will be suckered into backing the more restictive (yet more "free") WMA format.
[END QUOTE]
The only part of the whole "AAC" deal that's Apple/iPod specific is the DRM, which due to industry politics must be proprietary. The codec is not Apple's to license, the file format is no longer under Apple's sole control. (They "released" the QT container format to support the MPEG-4 initiative.) My understanding is that Apple didn't even do the intial research into the DRM, but had it forced upon them by the recording industry.
Apple's "closed" nature is simply a manifestation of their understandable defensiveness in the industry. They once had an "open" platform, the Apple II. They once tried to open the Mac as well, only to be raked over the coals financially. Apple now uses commodity hardware like PCI, DDR memory and even USB. Their current OS is built over a BSD/Open Source core.
What does Apple have to do be considered a valid firm in this industry?!? Admit it people, the hatred you had for Apple during FSF and GNU boycott last millenium never went away, did it?
It's a clever piece of satire. Even so, the paper "defines" the use of "0wn" in the paper for those not L337 aware...
...the costs to penetrate (0wn) systems...
...the misspelling ties into the title of the paper as an inside joke, just like how some of us use "Considered Harmful" to title articles critical of coding practice.
It also has FM radio, plays AAC/MP3/GSM-AMR/WAV and can record from radio or buil-in mic -- works as a voice recorder too.
Do you have any evidence that this player works with AAC or AMR? I can only find specs that mention MP3 on the manufacturer's website.
If so, do you know if it plays MPEG-2 AAC or MPEG-4 AAC? My Xpanium only plays MPEG-2 AAC, so I had to write a short command line tool to remove the QuickTime wrapper from iTunes files and insert ADTS headers for portable playback... Even though I've AppleScripted the processs, it would be much faster if can just just copy the original files over rather than having both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 versions on my hard drive...
...wouldn't you prefer something like [The Radio Shark]?
I hate to break it to you/.'ers, but that thing's been "coming soon" for over a year now. The product even got a dubious honor related to Wired Magazine's "Top 10 Vaporware of 2003."
Wasn't the "gag" for MS naming the.NET language "C#" to refer to the musical note? Since C# doesn't appear to have a "#" operator, why not use musical names or some other rule for naming these other languages? Just tacking "#" after language names shows a lack of imagination and gives MS too much of a marketing leverage over the open source project's future PR. Not to mention confusing all those shell scripters out there? (-;
My post was just a response to people who think games cost twice as much in Australia as in America because their dollar is worth less.
The problem is that many retailers and resellers don't pin their prices to the current "official" exchange rate, but use an inflated number to cover uncertainty and risk. The UK is supposedly the country most worse off due to this phenomenon.
For the record, A$99.95 becomes roughly $70.00US at recent exchange rates, an equivalent to a 40% mark-up from $50 for a typical game for being sold "down under." The Australian price would have to be A$69.95 to be inline with the current exchange rate, if my math is correct.
Games do seem to cost more in Australia, but we have to start getting into factoring average yearly salaries, tarriffs and what not to make sure...
I disagree; it's a matter of point of view. For example, as a USian, if I wanted to expatriate, I wouldn't be able to since my debt is in US Dollars. Very few countries in the world have a favorable exchange rate for me to pay off the debt by earning money overseas.
A more down-to-earth example, I have anime as a major part of my DVD collection. Even assuming the actual media is burned and printed locally, if the Dollar becomes "weaker" against the Yen, the Japanese rights holders will demand larger licensing fees to continue publication of a title on this side of the Pacific.
Exchange rates (and other attributes of free markets) can only operate at ideal "fairness" in a world of complete information transparency. Otherwise, you have to deal with arbitrage effects, by which exchange rates are especially influenced. (That's part of what makes them "interesting...")
No, that's A$99.95... the dude's from Oz. Having a bad exchange rate to the American dollar, as well as being a island nation, tends to drive prices upwards.
Me on my Commodore 64 with my Microbits 300 baud modem (I was the fastest kid on the block. Everyone else had 110 or baudots). It was like
NetHack, but in real life. Learned to get in. Learned to navigate. Learned about these great things called directories...
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
Slashdot Mirror
o_O Oh, the nostalgia!
Yes... it is the return of the fabled "pizza box" Mac, isn't it? Of course, the critics didn't want it to still have a display to drive up the price point, though.
I personally will wait for the first rev. IBM's 90nm process is still too flaky for me to trust the "first generation" of the "third generation" system
Same here.
I know that you need to load Classic, but Classic is part of the OS.
That kind of depends on what you consider "part" of the OS. Apple no longer ships a OS 9 install as part of the default installation of OS X, so for a fraction of users (usually switchers) they can't run the original "Missile" app.
My point is that Apple is taking the right approach; they sandbox old backwards-compatibility junk in a virtual machine and don't let it impact the rest of the system.
That's true, but my understanding was that Microsoft bought out Virtual PC for that very reason. Just before the buyout, Connectix released a Windows hosted version of VPC that does the very sandboxing that Classic is supposed to do. Microsoft is expected to include part of the code base in a future server product to allow Win95/98 emulation, but not as a full-fledged UI participant.
IMHO, while technically impressive, the sandboxing that Apple did for Classic isn't really long term viable. To try to co-exist with the OS X native environment, the OS 9 environment sacrificed 100% compatibility with old software. The VPC style of sandboxing can get closer to 100% by better isolating the virtual machine from the real one.
I fully expect Apple to "finish" the sandboxing in a future version of the OS, so as to reduce the UI confusions between Aqua and Platinum. Already, there are some freeware emulation packages on the 'Net (like Basilisk and vMac) that can do a more accurate job with 68k era apps than Classic. (Sadly, they usually require Apple copyrighted ROMs, which limit their real world deployment potential.)
This isn't a rebuttal per se, but you could start here...
Flouride is one of those chemicals that has developed a mythical aura of "evil" surrounding it, even worse than Aspartame. The dark comedy "Dr. Strangelove" even made it a key plot point, having a crazy military officer blame flouridation on a Commuinst plot.
The issue with chemicals like these is not that they are lethal in high doses; everything is lethal when taken excessively. It's a matter simply of dosage. The typical amount of flouride added to drinking supplies is just too small to cause the effects observed in lab rats.
I dug up a copy of the original source here.
If you are thinking of the same old QuickDraw demo I am, that's no longer strictly true. The original game ran on 68k, which is no longer emulated by OS X; you have to load in the Classic OS 9 layer to play it.
That said, you could take the original source and recompile it to run native, except the original source was written in Pascal, and Apple has deprecated support for that language. To make the game in such a way that the same code base runs on 128K's and iMacs, you need to do a modern code cleanup job that converts the code to C as well as making it "Carbon" compliant. Since all it takes to make the code non-compliant is to include the various "Init" toolbox calls at the start of the app, you have to use pre-processing for 68k compiles.
Sadly, the Missile Command game is no longer the backwards compatibily benchmark it once was...
Oh, and whatever you do... don't bow down your head! You can't afford it!
You might be meaning "integrated" where you are saying "compiled." Even if the final integration step involves compiling via a master project, you'd still need a test bed or "scaffolding" to compile your code against before submission. Otherwise, you are flying blind and may as well be programming towards the old batch cards systems of yesteryear. (Then again, the project I'm working on now involves separate shared libraries or code modules, rather than something so monolithic.)
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you debug before you compile? Don't you need to compile first before you can step through the code?
One reason: Stats.
Most of the "annual" release sports titles are games that have seasons, like football and baseball. Hardcore sports fans want to be able to play as the exact same team as the team that plays on TV. With the support of the Internet in recent years, the games can be patched to provide updates to cover mid-season trading.
Warning: stereotypical dumb jock joke follows
The market for these kinds games are usually dominated by types too dumb to realize that the statistical content is acually a very small part of the overall product. If they were smart, like us geeks, they'd insist on cheaper product treating the new stats as an expansion set, rather than repurchasing the same game year-over-year.
But then again, many geeks play pay-per-month MMORPGs, which I think is exploiting the same kind of stupidity, but that's just me. The truly smart sports fans (jock/geek dual-class) are those who play games like Fantasy Baseball and what not...
And you obviously knew yet another Internet.
Shareware's been demonized on the Wintel platform, and Open Source dominated the Unix space. But the Mac platform actually was able to maintain a healthy and viable shareware market until the rise of OS X. While companies like Ambrosia Software and Freeverse are still around, it just hasn't been the same since the politics of the other two major platforms started to overshadow the Mac culture...
Huh? That's a non-sequitur. The gay marriage issue deals with changing contract law. (Especially since marriage is so stupidly intertwined with America's tax laws!) The issue we're discussing here is more about free speech. Besides, it wasn't the "government" that was upset; it was the Conservative right wing. Despite Bush The Second being in the White House, there are more than enough Liberals and Moderates in the American government to keep Conservative doctine from dominating the body politic.
Games and media featuring homosexual content aren't banned here... it's almost become trendy. Or did you happen to forget about stuff like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy? Or to continue my Japanese example, bishounen and yaoi. Those are part of the reason teenage girls are more likely to buy manga instead of our domestic "superhero" comics, by my understanding. I remember the stink made by some Final Fantasy fans who were disturbed that VII had a gay brothel in it, but you didn't see the game get pulled off of shelves because of it...
For the record, I don't think government should be in the business of dictating what marriage is (or taxing based on it!); that's more of a cultural or religious issue. I personally would remove any and all marriage laws from the books.
Except that such a thing isn't illegal in the US, yet... It might get slapped with some kind of "parental advisory" label, but it would still be legal to display or sell in the States. Some Japanese anime and video games contains such content...
Governments who ban the "discussion" of dissent are really shooting themselves in the foot. If for no other reason, how would you properly repatriate Kashmir or Taiwan if your foreign policy just "assumes" they already are? Military might is expensive to maintain in the long term...
Funny, I thought everybody hated Real. Real didn't single out Mac users out for suffering; Windows users had to cope with the hard-to-find "free" player and to deal with the "spyware" attributes of the player... In some ways, Real's poor support for the Mac OS was a blessing, since we didn't have to deal with same intensity of cutting edge "marketing" that Real was infamous for.
My beef with the Linux/Open Source community and the reason for my initial rant was that I've been observing a deterioration of culture among Mac users online, as they have been having to compete with the culture of Open Source advocates.
Among other things, I've been noticing a virtual jihad declared on the Mac shareware market. I've been seeing too many jabs at shareware developers and unwarranted criticism on sites like MacUpdate. I've been a long time supporter (read: I pay my fees!) of shareware; it's literally been the only thing that kept the Mac OS viable during the OS 7/8/9 era. To see garage developers condemned for not releasing their efforts and work for "free" (as in beer) sickens me; it's a complete misapplication of the "free software" (as in liberty) ethos.
[BEGIN QUOTE]
I Want Apple To License The DRM, BUT what Real is doing is tantamount to slander.
The iPod works with MP3s, ripped CDs, as well as lossless formats like WAV and AIFF. John Gruber's been acting the "Scott McCloud" role of late with regards to the Mac platform, but he's right on the money about the popular media's misconceptions about Apple's music player. (He's been posting articles on Daring Fireball for the last week on this topic.)
The conspiracy theorist in me is starting to think that the RIAA let Apple "get away" with their more forgiving DRM just so Apple can get battered in the popular press since the Apple modus operandi is to be less promiscuous with their tech than Microsoft is. This way the public will be suckered into backing the more restictive (yet more "free") WMA format.
[END QUOTE]
The only part of the whole "AAC" deal that's Apple/iPod specific is the DRM, which due to industry politics must be proprietary. The codec is not Apple's to license, the file format is no longer under Apple's sole control. (They "released" the QT container format to support the MPEG-4 initiative.) My understanding is that Apple didn't even do the intial research into the DRM, but had it forced upon them by the recording industry.
Apple's "closed" nature is simply a manifestation of their understandable defensiveness in the industry. They once had an "open" platform, the Apple II. They once tried to open the Mac as well, only to be raked over the coals financially. Apple now uses commodity hardware like PCI, DDR memory and even USB. Their current OS is built over a BSD/Open Source core.
What does Apple have to do be considered a valid firm in this industry?!? Admit it people, the hatred you had for Apple during FSF and GNU boycott last millenium never went away, did it?
Great, so to get true color fidelity, we all need to switch to polyester film displays?
It's funny. Laugh.
It's a clever piece of satire. Even so, the paper "defines" the use of "0wn" in the paper for those not L337 aware...
Do you have any evidence that this player works with AAC or AMR? I can only find specs that mention MP3 on the manufacturer's website.
If so, do you know if it plays MPEG-2 AAC or MPEG-4 AAC? My Xpanium only plays MPEG-2 AAC, so I had to write a short command line tool to remove the QuickTime wrapper from iTunes files and insert ADTS headers for portable playback... Even though I've AppleScripted the processs, it would be much faster if can just just copy the original files over rather than having both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 versions on my hard drive...
I hate to break it to you /.'ers, but that thing's been "coming soon" for over a year now. The product even got a dubious honor related to Wired Magazine's "Top 10 Vaporware of 2003."
Wasn't the "gag" for MS naming the .NET language "C#" to refer to the musical note? Since C# doesn't appear to have a "#" operator, why not use musical names or some other rule for naming these other languages? Just tacking "#" after language names shows a lack of imagination and gives MS too much of a marketing leverage over the open source project's future PR. Not to mention confusing all those shell scripters out there? (-;
Oh, and you must not forget all about SCO astroturfing... In Japan!
The problem is that many retailers and resellers don't pin their prices to the current "official" exchange rate, but use an inflated number to cover uncertainty and risk. The UK is supposedly the country most worse off due to this phenomenon.
For the record, A$99.95 becomes roughly $70.00US at recent exchange rates, an equivalent to a 40% mark-up from $50 for a typical game for being sold "down under." The Australian price would have to be A$69.95 to be inline with the current exchange rate, if my math is correct.
Games do seem to cost more in Australia, but we have to start getting into factoring average yearly salaries, tarriffs and what not to make sure...
I disagree; it's a matter of point of view. For example, as a USian, if I wanted to expatriate, I wouldn't be able to since my debt is in US Dollars. Very few countries in the world have a favorable exchange rate for me to pay off the debt by earning money overseas.
A more down-to-earth example, I have anime as a major part of my DVD collection. Even assuming the actual media is burned and printed locally, if the Dollar becomes "weaker" against the Yen, the Japanese rights holders will demand larger licensing fees to continue publication of a title on this side of the Pacific.
Exchange rates (and other attributes of free markets) can only operate at ideal "fairness" in a world of complete information transparency. Otherwise, you have to deal with arbitrage effects, by which exchange rates are especially influenced. (That's part of what makes them "interesting...")
No kidding. You know somebody messed things up when naming the animal when the scientific name, of all things, is shorter.
It's Cheirogaleus Medius, BTW.