"Personally, I hate text messaging because of the clunky input method. The idea that perhaps there is a better way to enter text into a phone is intrigueing."
There is. (Though, having owned both, I prefer the older 6800. I don't use the bluetooth or camera enough to make up for the worse keyboard.)
A 5 MB PDF about Lego posted to Slashdot? No points for guessing the outcome. All four mirrors listed on the linked page are down; one appears to have pulled the file altogether. Anyone got it anywhere else? The models of the ships from 2001 look really cool.
Ah yes, I *want* to spend my day thinking "hmm... is it worth 2 cents to me to read this article? Here's one over here for just a penny..." You should read this: the best article about micropayments ever written, and another one just in case. The problem with micropayments is *not* the technology. It's that nobody wants them. Period. (OK, maybe not "nobody." But, say, 99%+ of the world. Close enough.)
Orlando is hot most of the year. Who the hell wants to sit outside and surf? (It's also worth noting that this only covered a few blocks around a park on the edge of town--not even all of downtown, let alone the whole city, let along the whole Orlando area.) Cities should put wireless into libraries and other public places, and businesses should do the same if they so desire. But outside? Other than making Skype calls from a PDA, who needs it?
The important thing to know is this was *not* citywide access. It wasn't even all of downtown. It wasn't even substantial chunk of downtown. It was just a few blocks around Lake Eola. I used it a few times but a) I am not downtown much and b) don't have much desire to sit outside and surf. (Daytime: hot and humid. Nighttime: beggars and drunks.) If they would scrap this whole program but put good wireless in every library, that would be much more useful.
Everyone's bitching about the Flash...
on
The Onion in 2056
·
· Score: 1
...and missing out on some hysterical geek content.
"We Need A Fourth Law Of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Ah yes... nothing I hate more than companies glomming onto a closely related technical term as their name... just as bad as Gigabyte motherboards or a jewelry company called "999 Fine."
Quick note: If you look at the linked page, you'll see there were 17 $100M movies in the 1970s, 44 in the 80s, and 51 in just the first half of the 1990s. Yes, part of that has to do with rising ticket prices, but that's not the whole story.
In the 1970s/1980s, there was nothing else like Star Wars. It was like nothing that had come before. No previous movie had such effects. No other movie had been so successful, had been such a phenomenon. No other movie had so much merchandise or spawned so many cool toys. Movies that grossed a hundred million dollars did not come out every day. (By the way, I keep seeing comments in Slashdot that say "If those movies defined your childhood, you're a LOSER!" but they don't understand--I started kindergarten in 1977 and finished sixth grade in 1984. The Star Wars movies were released from 1977 to 1983. *Everyone* like Star Wars. It was always there. Everyone had the costumes and action figures. It didn't define my childhood, but it was a big part of it, and I've got a lot of happy memories playing with Star Wars toys, alone and with friends.)
Fast-forward a couple decades. We're totally saturated in big movies. We have several hundred-million-dollar-plus movies every summer and a never-ending series of fast-food tie-ins. George has shown us the way and *everything* is merchandised to the hilt. The world that the new Star Wars movies play in is very different from the world that the first movies played it. It's *not* just that we're all 20 years older now.
I still go because I like to see them as soon as possible--I mean, not opening night, but I don't want to wait six months--but I'm going less and less. This is all because of asshole customers who won't turn off their cell phones and bring crying babies to R-rated movies at 10pm. I went to a movie last year and this guy a few seats away--I'm not exaggerating--had his phone ring about 15 times and answered about 10 times. Seriously.
The theaters are comfortable, sound and picture is nice, it's close, they play films I like, and if I wait two weeks I can use the discount tickets they sell at work. Everything is fine except for inconsiderate assholes. Yes, I could go find an usher who might do something but then I'm missing part of the movie. Sucks either way.
Not just that, but 13-26 year olds who have *proven* that they'd rather steal stuff than buy it... but surely they'll want to pay for *your* product, right? Idiots.
"...showing it to run on a (supposedly) P1 with 128 MB while playing 6 video files simultaneously. I always got a good laugh out of that..."
Don't laugh, the original BeOS could indeed do just that. I had the original R3/Intel, March 1998, on a P75 that did everything advertised and more. There was a "bug" in the early versions (R3 & 4, IIRC) where if you had 'caps lock' engaged while launching movies it would play them as fast as possible without dropping frames. That meant I could run five movies at the same time at faster than 1x on a P150 with 48 MB RAM.
It also came with a demo app which was a cube (or sphere, or book, or drop) that you could put videos on--the cube would spin, a different movie would play on each face, and each face got scaled, distorted, *and shaded* individually, all on that same P150. It really was amazing.
As I said elsewhere, the G5 has four separate thermostat-controlled temperature zones. If the CPU zone needs more air, it'll spin those fans faster. If you ever boot one up in target disk mode you'll hear how fast all those fans can spin. It comes down to this: if the modder turns this Mac on, and the CPU-zone fans aren't spinning at maximum speed, the CPUs are getting enough air. Period.
Well, anonymous uninformed poster, the G5 has four separate thermostat-controlled temperature zones. If the CPU zone needs more air, it'll spin those fans faster. If you ever boot one up in target disk mode (oh, wait, you obviously don't have one) you'll hear how fast all those fans can spin. It comes down to this: if the modder turns this Mac on, and the CPU-zone fans aren't spinning at maximum speed, the CPUs are getting enough air. Period. Nothing for an AC to worry about.
"... Microsoft is also considering... seeking rights from copyright holders to give subscribers a new, Microsoft-formatted version of any song they've purchased from the iTunes store so those songs can be played on devices other than an iPod."
I'm very curious to know how many people download music from the iTMS that don't own a portable player at all.... and even more curious to know how many people download music from the iTMS and own a non-Apple music player. Is it just me, or is this a solution looking for a problem?
Agree 10000%. I have two drives, one of which I didn't want indexed originally. I found some tips online of how to force a manual index and some of the drive is good, some isn't. What's worse, the Finder's search box BLOWS. Just for fun, I opened a window on the new drive and was LOOKING AT all my 'star wars' files. I typed 'star' into the text oval in the top-right corner, set to search THIS WINDOW, and it came up with no matches. Next time I boot that box into Tiger I'll make a movie of the process. It's laughable.
Apple really needs to open this up some in two ways: behind the scenes, by giving you a really clear view of what is indexed, what isn't, and so on, and on the front end--most of us are pretty smart and CAN understand "complex" queries like "(email or xls) and (mom or dad not sis)" We've gotten to the point in computerdom where EVERYTHING needs to have 'beginner' and 'power' settings. I don't CARE if you think you've made The One True App That Always Works Perfectly--you haven't, and even if you had, people with a certain kind of mind are going to want to do things differently than you intended anyway. Do yourself and them a favor: let them.
Where did you get that quote? Note for the math imparired: since it is now the middle of 2005, the end of 2007 is over 2 years away. I forget what I read where, but the impression I got was they'd introduce new HW in mid-2006, have the whole line converted by mid-2007, and have sold their last piece of PPC hardware by the end of 2007. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.h tml says Apple will "transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007." That's 2 1/2 years away.
Remember, folks, Apple has 2 challenges to meet:
1) Convince the world that despite marketing to the contrary, Intel chips are just fine, so please buy Intel Macs once we start making them, and
2) Even though they're switching to Intel in 2006, PowerPC Macs are a) just fine and b) will be supported for quite some time, so please keep buying them in the meantime.
Really, this is a tremendous uphill battle. There are bunches of people who won't buy current hardware if something new is coming out. There are bunches more who won't buy Rev-A hardware. And so on and so on. Apple is fighting a battle on many fronts. It's obvious that Apple isn't doing this traumatic change just for fun--they must have had very strong reasons to make the change. You think Steve woke up one morning and wanted to leave IBM, contradict a decade of marketing, and shake the foundation of the Apple faithful? Strong forces are obviously at work here.
Also remember that OS X has its roots in NEXT, which ran on (IIRC) 68k, PPC, Alpha, and Intel, so they're no strangers to multiple platforms and fat binaries. So new PowerMacs will have a different chip? BFD. 9 out of 10 blindfolded users wouldn't even know. Did you see people jumping up in the middle of the keynote screaming "Hey! Something wrong here! I'll bet he's running this whole damn demo on an Intel chip!"?
No news yet what the architecture will be, but it looks like it won't be an Intel-manufactured PPC--if it were, I don't imagine they'd be talking about translation kits and stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
"Personally, I hate text messaging because of the clunky input method. The idea that perhaps there is a better way to enter text into a phone is intrigueing."
There is. (Though, having owned both, I prefer the older 6800. I don't use the bluetooth or camera enough to make up for the worse keyboard.)
Are generalizations always wrong?
Like others are saying, data often seems to be a couple years old. These hotels near my house were finished a year or two ago.
A 5 MB PDF about Lego posted to Slashdot? No points for guessing the outcome. All four mirrors listed on the linked page are down; one appears to have pulled the file altogether. Anyone got it anywhere else? The models of the ships from 2001 look really cool.
It's GNU/Lego, dammit!
...and says "Bartender! Help! I've lost an electron!"
The bartender says "Are you sure?"
And the hydrogen atom says "I'm positive!"
Ah yes, I *want* to spend my day thinking "hmm... is it worth 2 cents to me to read this article? Here's one over here for just a penny..." You should read this: the best article about micropayments ever written, and another one just in case. The problem with micropayments is *not* the technology. It's that nobody wants them. Period. (OK, maybe not "nobody." But, say, 99%+ of the world. Close enough.)
Orlando is hot most of the year. Who the hell wants to sit outside and surf? (It's also worth noting that this only covered a few blocks around a park on the edge of town--not even all of downtown, let alone the whole city, let along the whole Orlando area.) Cities should put wireless into libraries and other public places, and businesses should do the same if they so desire. But outside? Other than making Skype calls from a PDA, who needs it?
The important thing to know is this was *not* citywide access. It wasn't even all of downtown. It wasn't even substantial chunk of downtown. It was just a few blocks around Lake Eola. I used it a few times but a) I am not downtown much and b) don't have much desire to sit outside and surf. (Daytime: hot and humid. Nighttime: beggars and drunks.) If they would scrap this whole program but put good wireless in every library, that would be much more useful.
...and missing out on some hysterical geek content.
"We Need A Fourth Law Of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Ah yes... nothing I hate more than companies glomming onto a closely related technical term as their name... just as bad as Gigabyte motherboards or a jewelry company called "999 Fine."
Quick note: If you look at the linked page, you'll see there were 17 $100M movies in the 1970s, 44 in the 80s, and 51 in just the first half of the 1990s. Yes, part of that has to do with rising ticket prices, but that's not the whole story.
In the 1970s/1980s, there was nothing else like Star Wars. It was like nothing that had come before. No previous movie had such effects. No other movie had been so successful, had been such a phenomenon. No other movie had so much merchandise or spawned so many cool toys. Movies that grossed a hundred million dollars did not come out every day. (By the way, I keep seeing comments in Slashdot that say "If those movies defined your childhood, you're a LOSER!" but they don't understand--I started kindergarten in 1977 and finished sixth grade in 1984. The Star Wars movies were released from 1977 to 1983. *Everyone* like Star Wars. It was always there. Everyone had the costumes and action figures. It didn't define my childhood, but it was a big part of it, and I've got a lot of happy memories playing with Star Wars toys, alone and with friends.)
Fast-forward a couple decades. We're totally saturated in big movies. We have several hundred-million-dollar-plus movies every summer and a never-ending series of fast-food tie-ins. George has shown us the way and *everything* is merchandised to the hilt. The world that the new Star Wars movies play in is very different from the world that the first movies played it. It's *not* just that we're all 20 years older now.
I still go because I like to see them as soon as possible--I mean, not opening night, but I don't want to wait six months--but I'm going less and less. This is all because of asshole customers who won't turn off their cell phones and bring crying babies to R-rated movies at 10pm. I went to a movie last year and this guy a few seats away--I'm not exaggerating--had his phone ring about 15 times and answered about 10 times. Seriously.
The theaters are comfortable, sound and picture is nice, it's close, they play films I like, and if I wait two weeks I can use the discount tickets they sell at work. Everything is fine except for inconsiderate assholes. Yes, I could go find an usher who might do something but then I'm missing part of the movie. Sucks either way.
Not just that, but 13-26 year olds who have *proven* that they'd rather steal stuff than buy it... but surely they'll want to pay for *your* product, right? Idiots.
...that whole pigeon thing was a joke? I can't believe it. Maybe this filing just a way to divert our attention?
Must've lured some people away from Apple.
"...showing it to run on a (supposedly) P1 with 128 MB while playing 6 video files simultaneously. I always got a good laugh out of that..."
Don't laugh, the original BeOS could indeed do just that. I had the original R3/Intel, March 1998, on a P75 that did everything advertised and more. There was a "bug" in the early versions (R3 & 4, IIRC) where if you had 'caps lock' engaged while launching movies it would play them as fast as possible without dropping frames. That meant I could run five movies at the same time at faster than 1x on a P150 with 48 MB RAM.
It also came with a demo app which was a cube (or sphere, or book, or drop) that you could put videos on--the cube would spin, a different movie would play on each face, and each face got scaled, distorted, *and shaded* individually, all on that same P150. It really was amazing.
As I said elsewhere, the G5 has four separate thermostat-controlled temperature zones. If the CPU zone needs more air, it'll spin those fans faster. If you ever boot one up in target disk mode you'll hear how fast all those fans can spin. It comes down to this: if the modder turns this Mac on, and the CPU-zone fans aren't spinning at maximum speed, the CPUs are getting enough air. Period.
Well, anonymous uninformed poster, the G5 has four separate thermostat-controlled temperature zones. If the CPU zone needs more air, it'll spin those fans faster. If you ever boot one up in target disk mode (oh, wait, you obviously don't have one) you'll hear how fast all those fans can spin. It comes down to this: if the modder turns this Mac on, and the CPU-zone fans aren't spinning at maximum speed, the CPUs are getting enough air. Period. Nothing for an AC to worry about.
"... Microsoft is also considering... seeking rights from copyright holders to give subscribers a new, Microsoft-formatted version of any song they've purchased from the iTunes store so those songs can be played on devices other than an iPod."
I'm very curious to know how many people download music from the iTMS that don't own a portable player at all.... and even more curious to know how many people download music from the iTMS and own a non-Apple music player. Is it just me, or is this a solution looking for a problem?
Agree 10000%. I have two drives, one of which I didn't want indexed originally. I found some tips online of how to force a manual index and some of the drive is good, some isn't. What's worse, the Finder's search box BLOWS. Just for fun, I opened a window on the new drive and was LOOKING AT all my 'star wars' files. I typed 'star' into the text oval in the top-right corner, set to search THIS WINDOW, and it came up with no matches. Next time I boot that box into Tiger I'll make a movie of the process. It's laughable.
Apple really needs to open this up some in two ways: behind the scenes, by giving you a really clear view of what is indexed, what isn't, and so on, and on the front end--most of us are pretty smart and CAN understand "complex" queries like "(email or xls) and (mom or dad not sis)" We've gotten to the point in computerdom where EVERYTHING needs to have 'beginner' and 'power' settings. I don't CARE if you think you've made The One True App That Always Works Perfectly--you haven't, and even if you had, people with a certain kind of mind are going to want to do things differently than you intended anyway. Do yourself and them a favor: let them.
Where did you get that quote? Note for the math imparired: since it is now the middle of 2005, the end of 2007 is over 2 years away. I forget what I read where, but the impression I got was they'd introduce new HW in mid-2006, have the whole line converted by mid-2007, and have sold their last piece of PPC hardware by the end of 2007. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.h tml says Apple will "transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007." That's 2 1/2 years away.
Remember, folks, Apple has 2 challenges to meet:
1) Convince the world that despite marketing to the contrary, Intel chips are just fine, so please buy Intel Macs once we start making them, and
2) Even though they're switching to Intel in 2006, PowerPC Macs are a) just fine and b) will be supported for quite some time, so please keep buying them in the meantime.
Really, this is a tremendous uphill battle. There are bunches of people who won't buy current hardware if something new is coming out. There are bunches more who won't buy Rev-A hardware. And so on and so on. Apple is fighting a battle on many fronts. It's obvious that Apple isn't doing this traumatic change just for fun--they must have had very strong reasons to make the change. You think Steve woke up one morning and wanted to leave IBM, contradict a decade of marketing, and shake the foundation of the Apple faithful? Strong forces are obviously at work here.
Also remember that OS X has its roots in NEXT, which ran on (IIRC) 68k, PPC, Alpha, and Intel, so they're no strangers to multiple platforms and fat binaries. So new PowerMacs will have a different chip? BFD. 9 out of 10 blindfolded users wouldn't even know. Did you see people jumping up in the middle of the keynote screaming "Hey! Something wrong here! I'll bet he's running this whole damn demo on an Intel chip!"?
And here it is from the horse's mouth.
No news yet what the architecture will be, but it looks like it won't be an Intel-manufactured PPC--if it were, I don't imagine they'd be talking about translation kits and stuff.
Ack! that'll teach me not to preview. (It's Slashdot's fault, really--it timed out on my preview.) And now, here's the link.