Don't you knock the wonder that is the Commodore 1541 disk drive! It had its own cpu and you could hack the drive to do all kinds of nasty things with the drive heads. I had a program that actually PLAYED MUSIC using the drive heads! It played a nice little rendition of "Daisy" while presumably whacking yhour drive heads out of alignment.
Um Ok. With a modern pre built and installed x86 machine the procedure is:
1. You bring it home. 2. You turn it on. (ok so i'll skip the you unpack and plug it in stage) 3. It just fucking works.
The fact that you are building and installing your computer is a matter of CHOICE. You want the cheap prices you want the absolute component choice, you want to run a different OS etc. These are choices and you don't have to do it. Most people by a computer which is prebuilt. I usually build my own computer, but with my last upgrade I purchased a build to spec computer and had it shipped assembled. Sure I still swapped in my extra hardware and installed the OS myself, but that was my choice. I did however choose to save the time spent installing the cpu, motherboard and basic component seeing as the cost of the system built was the same as the cost of the parts. If you are a user who wants that level of choice and is going to be irritated by the lack of such in the Mac Mini I would suggest avoiding it. If you understand exactly what you are getting and can accept the components Apple put in you are likely to enjoy it more. After the "oh wow it just works" factor goes away pretty quick, however the "i can't run this game for shit on a Radeon 9200" factor may set in somewhat later and have you complaining. The Mac Mini is not the end all and be all of computers, it is a nice closed box which is the cheapest way to run OSX. It also has the lowest grade hardware of any Mac (well ok so slightly faster than the eMac if you get the 1.42GHz. I intend on picking one up, but I sure don't intend on running a Doom 3 port on it if one ever comes out.
Yeah they got it right. So right it flew only one test orbital flight and unmanned at that. Ok so that's related to economics BUT you can't really judge a launch vehicle's performance and call it "right" if it never really got a chance to do its job.
"I mean, if you illegally download longhorn (or whatever is called) and it destroys your machine (which is pretty probable) can you go to MS and tell them to fix it?!"
Well, if you LEGALLY download a Longhorn beta (say from MSDN) and it destroys your machine you STILL can't go to MS and tell them to fix it.
Dammit! It's NOT Xbox it was supposed to be xBoX but then they changed it to XboX for that nifty "2 capital X factor" but then marketing said that "X" shouldn't be overemphasised as while Gen X might like it Gen Y might not, in which case it was briefly called the XboY or the YboX, the first smacked of Nintendo and the second sounded like too many extra chromosomes - SO it was switched to xBOx until someone noticed that it made the console look like it might smell bad - finally it was changed to a non-ASCII symbol and referred to as "the console formally known as Xbox(XboX, xBOx, XBOX, YboX, XboY).
Considering they seem like they want to be a viable commercial company - going with a proven technology seems like a good bet. The R&D to develop something like a space elevator is HUGE. What happens if you just can't make it work? It might sound simple enough on paper, but the engineering challenges are extreme.
Um, on launch the space shuttle is pretty much a big rocket. That's what the big fuel tank and boosters are for. Rocketing it into space.
The Shuttle's innovation was in the landing stage and the reuse of the rocket boosters and shuttle vehicle itself. This also allowed for large payloads such as science labs that could be carried in the vehicle and returned to Earth. In the case of Apollo or Soyuz style vehicles, only the small crew compartment is returned.
The Tivo processor is an IBM PowerPC 403GCX. And yes it is a low power chip for embedded systems so it's not blazingly fast. I am not sure of the actual CPU speed used. BTW, IBM lists the part as costing $1.90.
If you're using a TV card with a hardware encoder - than that IS a chip designed just for encoding. The recording is just writing that realtime stream to your hard disk. Your CPU is NOT doing the encoding and really doesn't matter that much so long your machine can handle streaming the data to disk. The TIVO itself is a box that bundles off the shelf mpeg encoder and decoder, modem chip and a PowerPC 403GCX CPU. The operating system is based on Linux. I don't know why you haven't had good luck encoding. I have been able to encode on the fly without frame drops on a p3 850 with good visual quality.
"We've evolved past the point where you needed to know how to configure autoexec.bat, config.sys and QEMM to get a DOS-based game to run properly"
Yep remember that well. Luckily I only had to deal with it for awhile. I remember pc gamers bitching about how hard it was to fit the mouse and cdrom driver in memory and still have enough free RAM (out of the 640k) to run the game. Until about 1994 I was laughing at them and popping autobooting disks into my Amiga.
DOS was a horrible, terrible situation to be a gamer in and as much as anyone may find a reason to hate DirectX - the revolution in PC gaming came about because of DirectX.
The price for the niceties being that as a proprietary system, DirectX benefits nobody but Windows users. Which is just how Microsoft likes it.
Anyone remember Galactica 1980? When they reached Earth? Anyone remember great plots such as this?
"While Troy and Dillon try to stop the renegade Xavier from altering Earth's history, The Galactica children find themselves at a baseball camp for underprivileged children."
Only on slashdot does a link to a humor post from alt.religion.kibology get modded as "Insightful". Funny, yes. Insightful? Did you read the link? Moonbase Alpha? Cancellation of the shuttle program by Jimmy Carter?
Hahahahahhahaa! Whew! Yeah that's one way to put it. Come on it had a gay, goth, romulan cloned Picard! So you can either herald it as one of the greatest bad movies of all time or you state that it should have never been made.
I see no middle ground here.
You get up and go! You do it! Woot! Great, works for you and I'm happy it does. This doesn't mean that for the average user setting up a Linux desktop is easier than Windows or a Mac. I've used all three and each has its merits. Sure you can run games (including some Windows games via Wine or Cedega) but it is just silly to imply that doing so is as easy as running them on Windows. The issues with video card drivers (ATI in particular) under Linux can be pretty serious.
I really don't think your argument about Photoshop is relevant. Adobe DID make a UNIX version at one time. I guess lack of demand killed it. Windows is a given because of the numbers and Mac is too because despite the small installed base a large proportion of users in certain industries (i.e. print and video) use Macs.
Maybe it will change and maybe there will be a Photoshop for Linux some day when the market demands it. The fact is most users place the function of the computer over aspects such as security or whether the OS is written crappily.
Well. Try more like $500. The 6800GT is around $400. And you are right in Doom 3 this is no surprise as the Nvidia cards take the lead. Now on Half Life 2 ATI takes the lead. Seriously though, both of this rounds chips are excellent and much, much faster than the last set of cards. The high end ones do take a load of power and run very hot.
I used to do this when I was a graphic designer. When I was drawing using pen or pencil rather than photoshop I would get the urge to undo when I made a mistake. Real life needs an undo badly but don't worry, I hear it's slated for Reality 2.0 (TM).
I used to do this when I was coding heavily at work. I would be stuck on some programming problem and then have it come to me in my sleep. Dream the answer, wake up and go implement it at work. Pretty neat actually - except for the fact that it wasn't the most restful sleep.
I think the point was that this is the first Mac where you don't HAVE to get the one button mouse with the system. So if you want one you get one - or if you prefer more buttons you get a different mouse.
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I've tried. My coworkers have tried. None of the schools here want them.
I have an Xbox. I have a PC. Let's look at the games I've played over 2004:
Rise of Nations
City of Heroes
Rome: Total War
Half Life 2
Doom 3
Pirates!
Battlefield Vietnam
Battle for Middle Earth
Hmmm. These seem to be PC games. And what have I been playing on the Xox?
Robotron. Original. Emulated. Can't beat having two joysticks to play it the way it was meant to play!
Don't you knock the wonder that is the Commodore 1541 disk drive! It had its own cpu and you could hack the drive to do all kinds of nasty things with the drive heads.
I had a program that actually PLAYED MUSIC using the drive heads! It played a nice little rendition of "Daisy" while presumably whacking yhour drive heads out of alignment.
I've got 4 Strawberry iMacs ranging 233-333MHz (much less than 10 years old) currently being useful in our company storage room.
Um Ok. With a modern pre built and installed x86 machine the procedure is:
1. You bring it home.
2. You turn it on. (ok so i'll skip the you unpack and plug it in stage)
3. It just fucking works.
The fact that you are building and installing your computer is a matter of CHOICE. You want the cheap prices you want the absolute component choice, you want to run a different OS etc. These are choices and you don't have to do it. Most people by a computer which is prebuilt.
I usually build my own computer, but with my last upgrade I purchased a build to spec computer and had it shipped assembled. Sure I still swapped in my extra hardware and installed the OS myself, but that was my choice. I did however choose to save the time spent installing the cpu, motherboard and basic component seeing as the cost of the system built was the same as the cost of the parts.
If you are a user who wants that level of choice and is going to be irritated by the lack of such in the Mac Mini I would suggest avoiding it. If you understand exactly what you are getting and can accept the components Apple put in you are likely to enjoy it more.
After the "oh wow it just works" factor goes away pretty quick, however the "i can't run this game for shit on a Radeon 9200" factor may set in somewhat later and have you complaining.
The Mac Mini is not the end all and be all of computers, it is a nice closed box which is the cheapest way to run OSX. It also has the lowest grade hardware of any Mac (well ok so slightly faster than the eMac if you get the 1.42GHz. I intend on picking one up, but I sure don't intend on running a Doom 3 port on it if one ever comes out.
Yeah they got it right. So right it flew only one test orbital flight and unmanned at that.
Ok so that's related to economics BUT you can't really judge a launch vehicle's performance and call it "right" if it never really got a chance to do its job.
Well, if you LEGALLY download a Longhorn beta (say from MSDN) and it destroys your machine you STILL can't go to MS and tell them to fix it.
Dammit! It's NOT Xbox it was supposed to be xBoX but then they changed it to XboX for that nifty "2 capital X factor" but then marketing said that "X" shouldn't be overemphasised as while Gen X might like it Gen Y might not, in which case it was briefly called the XboY or the YboX, the first smacked of Nintendo and the second sounded like too many extra chromosomes - SO it was switched to xBOx until someone noticed that it made the console look like it might smell bad - finally it was changed to a non-ASCII symbol and referred to as "the console formally known as Xbox(XboX, xBOx, XBOX, YboX, XboY).
Splunge!
Considering they seem like they want to be a viable commercial company - going with a proven technology seems like a good bet.
The R&D to develop something like a space elevator is HUGE. What happens if you just can't make it work? It might sound simple enough on paper, but the engineering challenges are extreme.
Um, on launch the space shuttle is pretty much a big rocket. That's what the big fuel tank and boosters are for. Rocketing it into space.
The Shuttle's innovation was in the landing stage and the reuse of the rocket boosters and shuttle vehicle itself. This also allowed for large payloads such as science labs that could be carried in the vehicle and returned to Earth. In the case of Apollo or Soyuz style vehicles, only the small crew compartment is returned.
Ahar! Me recklessness knows no boundaries! Preview? Missing end tag? Ahar! I know not of these things!
Ahar! Piracy has been defeated! The boats have all been sunk and Davey Jones locker has been secured for Bollywood! You'll walk the plank!
What is it that makes me think that maybe, just maybe a few illegitimate downloads will still occur after this system goes up?
The Tivo processor is an IBM PowerPC 403GCX. And yes it is a low power chip for embedded systems so it's not blazingly fast. I am not sure of the actual CPU speed used.
BTW, IBM lists the part as costing $1.90.
If you're using a TV card with a hardware encoder - than that IS a chip designed just for encoding. The recording is just writing that realtime stream to your hard disk. Your CPU is NOT doing the encoding and really doesn't matter that much so long your machine can handle streaming the data to disk.
The TIVO itself is a box that bundles off the shelf mpeg encoder and decoder, modem chip and a PowerPC 403GCX CPU. The operating system is based on Linux.
I don't know why you haven't had good luck encoding. I have been able to encode on the fly without frame drops on a p3 850 with good visual quality.
Yep remember that well. Luckily I only had to deal with it for awhile. I remember pc gamers bitching about how hard it was to fit the mouse and cdrom driver in memory and still have enough free RAM (out of the 640k) to run the game. Until about 1994 I was laughing at them and popping autobooting disks into my Amiga.
DOS was a horrible, terrible situation to be a gamer in and as much as anyone may find a reason to hate DirectX - the revolution in PC gaming came about because of DirectX.
The price for the niceties being that as a proprietary system, DirectX benefits nobody but Windows users. Which is just how Microsoft likes it.
You forgot_to_put_the_hsf_back_on!!?!?!?
Shame on you!
Try that with a P4 and you're goose will be quite cooked, monsieur!
"While Troy and Dillon try to stop the renegade Xavier from altering Earth's history, The Galactica children find themselves at a baseball camp for underprivileged children."
Only on slashdot does a link to a humor post from alt.religion.kibology get modded as "Insightful".
Funny, yes. Insightful?
Did you read the link? Moonbase Alpha? Cancellation of the shuttle program by Jimmy Carter?
Hahahahahhahaa! Whew! Yeah that's one way to put it. Come on it had a gay, goth, romulan cloned Picard! So you can either herald it as one of the greatest bad movies of all time or you state that it should have never been made.
I see no middle ground here.
You get up and go! You do it! Woot!
Great, works for you and I'm happy it does.
This doesn't mean that for the average user setting up a Linux desktop is easier than Windows or a Mac.
I've used all three and each has its merits. Sure you can run games (including some Windows games via Wine or Cedega) but it is just silly to imply that doing so is as easy as running them on Windows. The issues with video card drivers (ATI in particular) under Linux can be pretty serious.
I really don't think your argument about Photoshop is relevant. Adobe DID make a UNIX version at one time. I guess lack of demand killed it. Windows is a given because of the numbers and Mac is too because despite the small installed base a large proportion of users in certain industries (i.e. print and video) use Macs.
Maybe it will change and maybe there will be a Photoshop for Linux some day when the market demands it. The fact is most users place the function of the computer over aspects such as security or whether the OS is written crappily.
Well. Try more like $500. The 6800GT is around $400.
And you are right in Doom 3 this is no surprise as the Nvidia cards take the lead. Now on Half Life 2 ATI takes the lead.
Seriously though, both of this rounds chips are excellent and much, much faster than the last set of cards. The high end ones do take a load of power and run very hot.
I used to do this when I was a graphic designer. When I was drawing using pen or pencil rather than photoshop I would get the urge to undo when I made a mistake.
Real life needs an undo badly but don't worry, I hear it's slated for Reality 2.0 (TM).
I used to do this when I was coding heavily at work. I would be stuck on some programming problem and then have it come to me in my sleep. Dream the answer, wake up and go implement it at work.
Pretty neat actually - except for the fact that it wasn't the most restful sleep.
How about "if the low end Macs came with a decent video card I'd buy one!"
I keed, I keed.
I think the point was that this is the first Mac where you don't HAVE to get the one button mouse with the system. So if you want one you get one - or if you prefer more buttons you get a different mouse.