I'll try to answer as many questions as best I can:
The usb.org article only claims "120-240Mbps". It's not clear where the ign.com article came up with 480Mbps.
I may be mistaken, but I think that the pressrelease might be out of date. The figure of 480Mb/s was mentioned in an article linked off of slashdot a few weeks ago.
Even if USB2 runs at 480Mbps, the Firewire folks aren't exactly standing still. Any raw bandwidth advantage of USB2 is sure to be short-lived at best.
Yes. As they mentioned, a new firewire running at 800Mb/s is just around the corner. There is also plans for a 1600Mb/s firewire in the not too distant future.
Another useful Firewire feature that USB doesn't seem to have is providing power through the same connector used for communications. Again, I may have missed it.
USB supplys power at the moment. As far as I know, this is the case with USB 2.0 too.
I don't remember how many devices USB supports, but I suspect it's less than Firewire.
USB can handle up to 128 devices, Firewire can handle 64. Of course, no one will ever need 128 devices and 64 will be beyond most peoples' needs anyway. I would be supprised if _anyone_ needed more than the 16 provided by wide (I think) SCSI, and the great thing about USB and Firewire, is that they are hotplugable, so if you need to plug in an extra device, you can just unplug one of the unneccessary ones. The main difference between the way that USB works and firewire works, is that Firewire is daisy chained, and USB uses hubs. a subtle, but important difference.
I know that USB-based host-to-host networking exists, but it's not clear to me whether it's really as well suited to that task as Firewire. In particular, I wonder how much asymmetry between hosts and devices (a la initiators and targets in SCSI) is built into the protocol, and how round-trip latency compares to other technologies.
USB is not peer to peer like firewire. It is designed so the computer handles the traffic. This is more consistent with USB's original use for connecting perifirals. With 800Mb/s firewire comming soon, there have been suggestions of using firewire instead of ethernet as it would be faster than gigabit ethernet, and much easier to set up, and keep going.
> A little utility that helps out with error codes and gives some possible solutions.
I'm a mac advocate, but you shouldn't have to get a program to understand what is wrong with your computer. It is just silly, and a step that shouldn't be required. Granted, most people who use macs don't need to know much more than the program that they are using crashed (and probably couldn't do much more), but for those who are interested, the information would be very useful.
I find it interesting that people continue to spout this "firewire isn't used because apple sux" stuff, a comment like the one I am replying to, replys and says that they are completely clueless. The replyers are never contradicted. Does this mean the anti-apple people don't actually read any of the replys to their messages, do they purposely continue to spout mis-information, or are there sufficiently enough clueless people who don't read other's comments, to provide an ongoing missinformation fest?
>If you look at it carefully, 2000 is not the beginning of a new millennium, but merely the last year of one.
YES!
I think of 1999 as the "penultimate year of the millenium" rather than "last year of the millenium." Not only is it correct, but it also sounds cooler.
> Windows 9x and NT can boot off any device connected to it as well. I boot NT off a Castlewood Orb and 98 off a Zip.
The most fun that I have had in a while was booting my 5 year old mac off of a ram disk... try that under windows... oh, all it took was copying the system folder accross... it took about 5 seconds to boot... almost as fast as my MacPlus... Makes me drool for the G4 with 2GB of ram... (I almost wouldn't need a hard disk.... heh)
I was under the impression that the motherboard needed to have a different BIOS to be able to support booting off of non-HD/floppy devices; that it had nothing to do with the OS. I doubt that my 486 with win95 could boot off of a CD-ROM, the BIOS boot sequence mentioned "A: then C:" or vice versa... no mention of E: I also remembered when we reinstalled win95 one time, it screwed up LILO, as it changed the boot sector. on the mac (at least as far as I know) this isn't an issue as all you need is a system folder on any particular disk... of course linuxppc people would know if this is true or not.
"revelant" is a perfectly fine word... say "revelant" five times to your self, then try to convince yourself that it is meant to be "relevant"... it just don't work...
(sorry for the slightly off topic comment;) (bad grammar intended)
It's called a duopoly. I agree, but it's best when there are many small groups whose products succeed and fail on their own merits and flaws. I think (at least for the rational-minded slashdotters) what's wrong with microsoft (and many other propriatry computer companies) is that they use the success of one product to make others successful.
3 reasons: 1) very few people have heard of vqf (I, personally, only heard of it about 8 months ago) 2) MP3 has had a huge head-start, and there are many more songs, and many more players for MP3 than for VQF (this is partially because of VQF being closed) also, MP3 doesn't sound that unCD qualityesque. 3)MP3 sounds better than vqf. (similar issue to why apple marketed the ppc750 as the G3 rather than its real name;)
That said and done, I recently argued with a friend that the reason why MP3 will beat VQF is that MP3 is (relatively) open. I had actually forgotten about VQF at the time that I wrote the previous comment.
I was using an iMac keyboard a week ago or so, and I was impressed how smooth it was. I have to say that I prefer it as it takes less pressure to type than these "proper" keyboards. (I am using a "proper" keyboard, and I have had to backspace about 8 times this paragraph anyway;) On the iMac keyboard, I found that I could type about 30% faster as it took less effort. I guess it is good for some, bad for others. The problem that I have with the iMac keyboard is the fact that they don't have a "full" keyboard. I don't have a problem with the size of the keys personally, but the lack of a forward delete key is annoying. colin
I should have clarified that: apple doesn't consider linux a threat because linux and the MacOS are aimed a different markets. Now that OSX server is out, this might cause a clash, but I think OSX server is aimed to compete with NT. Using the "enemy of my enemy" method (and the fact that linux and NT have not been too cosy of late) I would think that anything that would help linux would be pushed.
Sorry, but that is just silly. Why would multimedia playback ability suddenly make linux a competitor? A few months back apple had a story on its website about how some people used linux on apple hardware instead of the MacOS because they were worried about stability. (this was pre MacOS X server) This was on Apple's website! I have never seen any indecation that apple considers linux a competitor. If anything, quicktime support for linux would make linux a competitor for windows (less reason for a dual boot system.) I doubt that apple would shy away from making microsoft squirm. finally, the first program that mpeg-4 was going to be supported by was quicktime as the mpeg standards group decided that quicktime is the best multimedia program available(if I remember correctly.) also, does anyone have any independent information about the quality:size:speed ratios for mpeg1 compared to sorenson and other formats. I heard that sorenson had better quality:size than mpeg1, but I have no actual information to support or refute that claim. Idealy it would be cool if the sorenson codec were opened up, but apple does not look to be allowing that in the near future.
The open source model does not work every where. Correct me if I am wrong, but Netscape communicator recieved much less support than it expected. I remember reading somewhere (it might have been in the halloween documents... there goes my credibility:) but it mentioned that if a project is already fairly developed, then there won't be as much support of it. I doubt that, even if MacOS 10 were opened up completely, that it would get a fraction as much support as linux. I believe this for 2 reasons: 1) the attitude towards all things apple is generally quite negative in the open source society, well at least in the slashdot arena (this would mean that many programmers that believe in the open source model already would be less likely to suport it); and 2) the mac crowd is generally much less technical than the pc crowd. (This would mean that there would be fewer experienced programmers that would be willing to devote their spare time to working on it). That said, I think it would be a good thing for apple to do *if* it worked. I just don't think it would because of the reasons above.
Sure I prefer Linux over almost any other OS, but the fact that they provide quicktime for windows 4.x, means it covers most people on the internet. last time I checked, linux (and all the unix operating systems combined) comprises less than 5% of the desktop operating systems (well actually I havn't checked recently, but I do not recall hearing any significantly different figures in the last 6 months or so). I find the incentive to open up QT4 to a wider audience to be quite pointless in itself (no I do not wish to be flamed.) I do support quicktime for other platforms (besides win32 and MacOS) but I find the argument that it would reach more people quite silly. the issue is that it would need to reach *significantly* more people(if you wanted to rely on the "it will reach more people" argument, they might as well make Micro-bee, Solaris, DOS, and NewtonOS versions (yes this is going a bit far, but it was just for emphasis.)) I think that another argument like "good will" or "investment in the future" should be persued. To be as unoriginal as I can be, I shall declare, as many many others have done before, Linux is not yet ready for everyday use by stupid people. The question that might be worth asking is might not be: will (stupid) people not use quicktime because it isn't available for every operating system under the sun? but rather: will (stupid) people not use OSs other than Win4.x or MacOS7.x+ because it does not have quicktime. which is more likely?
As far as the MP3 format goes, I though people use it because it is the best compression algorithm available for music rather than it is an open technology. I have also been under the impression that the Fraunhofer Institute has not always been as free with the MP3 format as it could be.
Anyway, after that rather long rant, I *do* believe that apple should develop Quicktime for linux, and unix operating systems, I just believe that many of the arguments raised were not based on reality, just ideology. In essence, I believe in your cause, just not your reasons.
>No, the current Australian government aren't likely to be nazis.
You obviously arn't familiar with the current Aussi government. One of their acts in their first term was to overrule a high-court decision that gave landrights to aboriginies. Many of their other acts have also been somewhat nazi. hmmm... flame..... colin
I always thought that there was 2 continents there (north AND south america and maybe even central.) Its bad enough for a cocky country to pretend that it is an entire continent (australia anyone?) but to presume that you are 2 (or 3) continents is beyond reproach:)
"First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth"
I would be VERY supprised if the moon could EVER support enough people to take even a small amount of population pressure off of the earth. I think that the only solution to our population expantion problem is what china is doing at the moment (I personally believe that they are being a tad conservative). I believe that if we need to go to the moon (or another planet) for the sole reason that we have too many people, then it will be too late.
iCab is an Essential for HTML editing, as it finds all of the HTML errors in one's page. Also it reloads the page one are working on as soon as one saves it. Because it is very standards compliant, I use only iCab to test my web pages. (also it is fun to say that the web page is optimised for a browser which no one has heard of.)
Slashdot Mirror
ooops, that should be 127 devices for USB, and 63 for Firewire.
I'll try to answer as many questions as best I can:
The usb.org article only claims "120-240Mbps". It's not clear where the ign.com article came up with 480Mbps.
I may be mistaken, but I think that the pressrelease might be out of date. The figure of 480Mb/s was mentioned in an article linked off of slashdot a few weeks ago.
Even if USB2 runs at 480Mbps, the Firewire folks aren't exactly standing still. Any raw bandwidth advantage of USB2 is sure to be short-lived at best.
Yes. As they mentioned, a new firewire running at 800Mb/s is just around the corner. There is also plans for a 1600Mb/s firewire in the not too distant future.
Another useful Firewire feature that USB doesn't seem to have is providing power through the same connector used for communications. Again, I may have missed it.
USB supplys power at the moment. As far as I know, this is the case with USB 2.0 too.
I don't remember how many devices USB supports, but I suspect it's less than Firewire.
USB can handle up to 128 devices, Firewire can handle 64. Of course, no one will ever need 128 devices and 64 will be beyond most peoples' needs anyway. I would be supprised if _anyone_ needed more than the 16 provided by wide (I think) SCSI, and the great thing about USB and Firewire, is that they are hotplugable, so if you need to plug in an extra device, you can just unplug one of the unneccessary ones.
The main difference between the way that USB works and firewire works, is that Firewire is daisy chained, and USB uses hubs. a subtle, but important difference.
I know that USB-based host-to-host networking exists, but it's not clear to me whether it's really as well suited to that task as Firewire. In particular, I wonder how much asymmetry between hosts and devices (a la initiators and targets in SCSI) is built into the protocol, and how round-trip latency compares to other technologies.
USB is not peer to peer like firewire. It is designed so the computer handles the traffic. This is more consistent with USB's original use for connecting perifirals. With 800Mb/s firewire comming soon, there have been suggestions of using firewire instead of ethernet as it would be faster than gigabit ethernet, and much easier to set up, and keep going.
Oh dear. Don't I feal stupid now ;) maybe I should have done some research before posting.
How many web sites do you that sells fish? (even spanish ones)
> A little utility that helps out with error codes and gives some possible solutions.
I'm a mac advocate, but you shouldn't have to get a program to understand what is wrong with your computer. It is just silly, and a step that shouldn't be required.
Granted, most people who use macs don't need to know much more than the program that they are using crashed (and probably couldn't do much more), but for those who are interested, the information would be very useful.
I find it interesting that people continue to spout this "firewire isn't used because apple sux" stuff, a comment like the one I am replying to, replys and says that they are completely clueless. The replyers are never contradicted. Does this mean the anti-apple people don't actually read any of the replys to their messages, do they purposely continue to spout mis-information, or are there sufficiently enough clueless people who don't read other's comments, to provide an ongoing missinformation fest?
enough from me.
>If you look at it carefully, 2000 is not the beginning of a new millennium, but merely the last year of one.
YES!
I think of 1999 as the "penultimate year of the millenium" rather than "last year of the millenium." Not only is it correct, but it also sounds cooler.
"I was there at the dawn of the third age of applekind"
;)
sorry, I couldn't help it
> Windows 9x and NT can boot off any device connected to it as well. I boot NT off a Castlewood Orb and 98 off a Zip.
The most fun that I have had in a while was booting my 5 year old mac off of a ram disk... try that under windows... oh, all it took was copying the system folder accross... it took about 5 seconds to boot... almost as fast as my MacPlus... Makes me drool for the G4 with 2GB of ram... (I almost wouldn't need a hard disk.... heh)
I was under the impression that the motherboard needed to have a different BIOS to be able to support booting off of non-HD/floppy devices; that it had nothing to do with the OS. I doubt that my 486 with win95 could boot off of a CD-ROM, the BIOS boot sequence mentioned "A: then C:" or vice versa... no mention of E:
I also remembered when we reinstalled win95 one time, it screwed up LILO, as it changed the boot sector. on the mac (at least as far as I know) this isn't an issue as all you need is a system folder on any particular disk... of course linuxppc people would know if this is true or not.
sorry about the rant.
"revelant" is a perfectly fine word... say "revelant" five times to your self, then try to convince yourself that it is meant to be "relevant"... it just don't work...
;)
(sorry for the slightly off topic comment
(bad grammar intended)
It's called a duopoly. I agree, but it's best when there are many small groups whose products succeed and fail on their own merits and flaws. I think (at least for the rational-minded slashdotters) what's wrong with microsoft (and many other propriatry computer companies) is that they use the success of one product to make others successful.
3 reasons: ;)
1) very few people have heard of vqf (I, personally, only heard of it about 8 months ago)
2) MP3 has had a huge head-start, and there are many more songs, and many more players for MP3 than for VQF (this is partially because of VQF being closed) also, MP3 doesn't sound that unCD qualityesque.
3)MP3 sounds better than vqf. (similar issue to why apple marketed the ppc750 as the G3 rather than its real name
That said and done, I recently argued with a friend that the reason why MP3 will beat VQF is that MP3 is (relatively) open. I had actually forgotten about VQF at the time that I wrote the previous comment.
I was using an iMac keyboard a week ago or so, and I was impressed how smooth it was. I have to say that I prefer it as it takes less pressure to type than these "proper" keyboards. (I am using a "proper" keyboard, and I have had to backspace about 8 times this paragraph anyway ;) On the iMac keyboard, I found that I could type about 30% faster as it took less effort. I guess it is good for some, bad for others.
The problem that I have with the iMac keyboard is the fact that they don't have a "full" keyboard. I don't have a problem with the size of the keys personally, but the lack of a forward delete key is annoying.
colin
I should have clarified that: apple doesn't consider linux a threat because linux and the MacOS are aimed a different markets. Now that OSX server is out, this might cause a clash, but I think OSX server is aimed to compete with NT. Using the "enemy of my enemy" method (and the fact that linux and NT have not been too cosy of late) I would think that anything that would help linux would be pushed.
Sorry, but that is just silly. Why would multimedia playback ability suddenly make linux a competitor? A few months back apple had a story on its website about how some people used linux on apple hardware instead of the MacOS because they were worried about stability. (this was pre MacOS X server) This was on Apple's website! I have never seen any indecation that apple considers linux a competitor. If anything, quicktime support for linux would make linux a competitor for windows (less reason for a dual boot system.) I doubt that apple would shy away from making microsoft squirm.
finally, the first program that mpeg-4 was going to be supported by was quicktime as the mpeg standards group decided that quicktime is the best multimedia program available(if I remember correctly.)
also, does anyone have any independent information about the quality:size:speed ratios for mpeg1 compared to sorenson and other formats. I heard that sorenson had better quality:size than mpeg1, but I have no actual information to support or refute that claim. Idealy it would be cool if the sorenson codec were opened up, but apple does not look to be allowing that in the near future.
The open source model does not work every where. Correct me if I am wrong, but Netscape communicator recieved much less support than it expected. I remember reading somewhere (it might have been in the halloween documents... there goes my credibility :) but it mentioned that if a project is already fairly developed, then there won't be as much support of it. I doubt that, even if MacOS 10 were opened up completely, that it would get a fraction as much support as linux. I believe this for 2 reasons:
1) the attitude towards all things apple is generally quite negative in the open source society, well at least in the slashdot arena (this would mean that many programmers that believe in the open source model already would be less likely to suport it); and
2) the mac crowd is generally much less technical than the pc crowd. (This would mean that there would be fewer experienced programmers that would be willing to devote their spare time to working on it).
That said, I think it would be a good thing for apple to do *if* it worked. I just don't think it would because of the reasons above.
Sure I prefer Linux over almost any other OS, but the fact that they provide quicktime for windows 4.x, means it covers most people on the internet. last time I checked, linux (and all the unix operating systems combined) comprises less than 5% of the desktop operating systems (well actually I havn't checked recently, but I do not recall hearing any significantly different figures in the last 6 months or so). I find the incentive to open up QT4 to a wider audience to be quite pointless in itself (no I do not wish to be flamed.) I do support quicktime for other platforms (besides win32 and MacOS) but I find the argument that it would reach more people quite silly. the issue is that it would need to reach *significantly* more people(if you wanted to rely on the "it will reach more people" argument, they might as well make Micro-bee, Solaris, DOS, and NewtonOS versions (yes this is going a bit far, but it was just for emphasis.)) I think that another argument like "good will" or "investment in the future" should be persued. To be as unoriginal as I can be, I shall declare, as many many others have done before, Linux is not yet ready for everyday use by stupid people. The question that might be worth asking is might not be: will (stupid) people not use quicktime because it isn't available for every operating system under the sun? but rather: will (stupid) people not use OSs other than Win4.x or MacOS7.x+ because it does not have quicktime. which is more likely?
As far as the MP3 format goes, I though people use it because it is the best compression algorithm available for music rather than it is an open technology. I have also been under the impression that the Fraunhofer Institute has not always been as free with the MP3 format as it could be.
Anyway, after that rather long rant, I *do* believe that apple should develop Quicktime for linux, and unix operating systems, I just believe that many of the arguments raised were not based on reality, just ideology. In essence, I believe in your cause, just not your reasons.
>No, the current Australian government aren't likely to be nazis.
You obviously arn't familiar with the current Aussi government. One of their acts in their first term was to overrule a high-court decision that gave landrights to aboriginies. Many of their other acts have also been somewhat nazi.
hmmm... flame.....
colin
I always thought that there was 2 continents there (north AND south america and maybe even central.) Its bad enough for a cocky country to pretend that it is an entire continent (australia anyone?) but to presume that you are 2 (or 3) continents is beyond reproach :)
"First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth"
I would be VERY supprised if the moon could EVER support enough people to take even a small amount of population pressure off of the earth. I think that the only solution to our population expantion problem is what china is doing at the moment (I personally believe that they are being a tad conservative). I believe that if we need to go to the moon (or another planet) for the sole reason that we have too many people, then it will be too late.
iCab is an Essential for HTML editing, as it finds all of the HTML errors in one's page. Also it reloads the page one are working on as soon as one saves it. Because it is very standards compliant, I use only iCab to test my web pages. (also it is fun to say that the web page is optimised for a browser which no one has heard of.)
I heard that the problem was that apple stopped the Sorenson codec from being sold to others. I am not sure of the details though.
NO PII is not RISC, never was. i am not sure about alpha vs ppc RISC wise.