Okay, time for some nitpicking, since I can't sleep and I'm bored.;)
He seems to be pretty confused about computing history, and Apples place in it (although, from what I've heard, this view is probably beaten into Apple employees from day one.)
"When the Macintosh was introduced, it was to be the first personal computer."
Umm, I guess he's never heard of the Vic20? or C64? These predate the Mac by a couple of years, at least.
Well, despite his qualification ("the first truly personal computer" - presumably in terms of user friendliness), he seems to be thinking of the Apple II. It was the first mass-marketed non-hobbyist computer, introduced in 1977.
The VIC-20 came out in 1981, and the Commodore 64 in 1982. They were cheap and relatively powerful, but certainly not as easy to use as a Mac (and given the state of the hardware then, no one would reasonably expect them to be).
But it gets better:
It later became clear that running a few programs side-by-side could be very useful, but this wasn't really true until personal computers had gained enough power and memory for this to be feasible.
Umm, no. Ever hear of the Amiga? The A1000 started with 256K of RAM, and could multitask quite well, thankyouverymuch...
just because Apple couldn't write an OS that could multitask with a quarter meg of RAM and a 68000, don't assume nobody else could...
Oh, be fair. 256K was twice as much as the original Mac had, and Commodore introduced it a year and a half after the Mac debuted. Part of the reason the Amiga could multitask so well was because it had custom chips to support the 68000 CPU. The Mac by comparison had to do all its graphics on the main CPU, so not much power was left over for process management.
Don't get me wrong, the Amiga is a hell of a piece of engineering and I love it, although I never owned one. Remember, too, that Amiga development was tight and focused, but Macintosh was kind of an "underground" project at Apple and almost got axed. It was only after it made a splash that Apple management really got behind its development.
Anyway, this is just intended as a little defense of the Mac development team. They created a very complex and refined OS, and charted some very new territory beyond what they inherited from Lisa and Xerox. Give them some credit, because they absolutely were the inspiration for what came later out of Apple and its competitors.
- MFN
Re:Can someone give 1 good reason to use C++ over
on
Who's Afraid Of C++?
·
· Score: 1
>> And why does the bit-shift operator control output, anyway?
For the same reason the multiplication operator in C will dereference a pointer!;)
Before I comment, I should state that I'm a Mac owner -- although I've used Unix a fair amount and (unfortunately) Windoze pretty extensively.
I was really disheartened to see OpenDoc fail, since it was exactly the kind of multi-vendor open solution that would fit this situation. Sure, if your compound document contained proprietary parts that you didn't have an editor for, you wouldn't be able to modify them. But at least the document wouldn't break because of it.
Better still, OLE was incorporated as a subset of OpenDoc so all those old MS formats could be rolled in. I guess it's just one more example of the Market deciding on a standard that is not technically the best choice.
Maybe someone will create an XML-based format that offers all the advantages of OpenDoc, but I'm not holding my breath.
You're pretty close on the sampling-rate question, but your notions about the ear "smoothing out" a digital audio signal are just not realistic.
If the sampling rate is 2x or higher than the highest frequency in the signal, there will be no "aliasing," or loss of signal information. When you run it through a D/A converter, you get back all of the original signal (plus high-end noise from the sample signal, which is then filtered).
The signal that comes out of the D/A converter is analog - that's the point of the conversion. Even if they invented a "digital" speaker cone, the action of producing the sound waves makes them analog. Your ear never receives anything other than a continuous analog sound wave.
Great! Another overblown production of Herbert's pretentious classic. Maybe now we'll finally see a Hollywood version of the parody, "National Lampoon's 'Doon'" by Ellis Weiner. I read it right after Lynch's movie came out and busted a gut. Just yesterday I finally found a used copy.
They could get Pat Proft to do the screenplay, and have the Zucker brothers direct. Production design by Best Brains. Who could resist the story of Arruckus, Doon, dessert planet... covered with sugar and inhabited by gigantic wild pretzels. The only source in the universe for the mystical substance known as "beer."
The question is, how could they successfully cast the timeless characters... Pall "Mauve Bib" Agamemnides, Duke Lotto, Lady Jazzica, Spilgard, Safire Halfwit, Gurnsey Halvah, Drunken Omaha, the "Revved-Up" Mother George Cynthia Mohairem. And of course Pahdedbrah Emperor Shaddap IV.
I can't wait!
"The Lady Jazzica knew that there was something symbolic in almost everything she did. She looked around the room with satisfaction--and there was something symbolic in that. She adjusted her long flowing dress--something symbolic. She blew her nose--symbolic. Oh, why can't we just live like normal people, she thought."
Slashdot Mirror
He seems to be pretty confused about computing history, and Apples place in it (although, from what I've heard, this view is probably beaten into Apple employees from day one.)
"When the Macintosh was introduced, it was to be the first personal computer."
Umm, I guess he's never heard of the Vic20? or C64? These predate the Mac by a couple of years, at least.
Well, despite his qualification ("the first truly personal computer" - presumably in terms of user friendliness), he seems to be thinking of the Apple II. It was the first mass-marketed non-hobbyist computer, introduced in 1977.
The VIC-20 came out in 1981, and the Commodore 64 in 1982. They were cheap and relatively powerful, but certainly not as easy to use as a Mac (and given the state of the hardware then, no one would reasonably expect them to be).
But it gets better:
It later became clear that running a few programs side-by-side could be very useful, but this wasn't really true until personal computers had gained enough power and memory for this to be feasible.
Umm, no. Ever hear of the Amiga? The A1000 started with 256K of RAM, and could multitask quite well, thankyouverymuch...
just because Apple couldn't write an OS that could multitask with a quarter meg of RAM and a 68000, don't assume nobody else could...
Oh, be fair. 256K was twice as much as the original Mac had, and Commodore introduced it a year and a half after the Mac debuted. Part of the reason the Amiga could multitask so well was because it had custom chips to support the 68000 CPU. The Mac by comparison had to do all its graphics on the main CPU, so not much power was left over for process management.
Don't get me wrong, the Amiga is a hell of a piece of engineering and I love it, although I never owned one. Remember, too, that Amiga development was tight and focused, but Macintosh was kind of an "underground" project at Apple and almost got axed. It was only after it made a splash that Apple management really got behind its development.
Anyway, this is just intended as a little defense of the Mac development team. They created a very complex and refined OS, and charted some very new territory beyond what they inherited from Lisa and Xerox. Give them some credit, because they absolutely were the inspiration for what came later out of Apple and its competitors.
- MFN
>> And why does the bit-shift operator control output, anyway?
;)
For the same reason the multiplication operator in C will dereference a pointer!
- MFN
Before I comment, I should state that I'm a Mac owner -- although I've used Unix a fair amount and (unfortunately) Windoze pretty extensively.
I was really disheartened to see OpenDoc fail, since it was exactly the kind of multi-vendor open solution that would fit this situation. Sure, if your compound document contained proprietary parts that you didn't have an editor for, you wouldn't be able to modify them. But at least the document wouldn't break because of it.
Better still, OLE was incorporated as a subset of OpenDoc so all those old MS formats could be rolled in. I guess it's just one more example of the Market deciding on a standard that is not technically the best choice.
Maybe someone will create an XML-based format that offers all the advantages of OpenDoc, but I'm not holding my breath.
- mfnickster
If the sampling rate is 2x or higher than the highest frequency in the signal, there will be no "aliasing," or loss of signal information. When you run it through a D/A converter, you get back all of the original signal (plus high-end noise from the sample signal, which is then filtered).
The signal that comes out of the D/A converter is analog - that's the point of the conversion. Even if they invented a "digital" speaker cone, the action of producing the sound waves makes them analog. Your ear never receives anything other than a continuous analog sound wave.
Just nitpicking!
- MFN
Great! Another overblown production of Herbert's pretentious classic. Maybe now we'll finally see a Hollywood version of the parody, "National Lampoon's 'Doon'" by Ellis Weiner. I read it right after Lynch's movie came out and busted a gut. Just yesterday I finally found a used copy.
They could get Pat Proft to do the screenplay, and have the Zucker brothers direct. Production design by Best Brains. Who could resist the story of Arruckus, Doon, dessert planet... covered with sugar and inhabited by gigantic wild pretzels. The only source in the universe for the mystical substance known as "beer."
The question is, how could they successfully cast the timeless characters... Pall "Mauve Bib" Agamemnides, Duke Lotto, Lady Jazzica, Spilgard, Safire Halfwit, Gurnsey Halvah, Drunken Omaha, the "Revved-Up" Mother George Cynthia Mohairem. And of course Pahdedbrah Emperor Shaddap IV.
I can't wait!
"The Lady Jazzica knew that there was something symbolic in almost everything she did. She looked around the room with satisfaction--and there was something symbolic in that. She adjusted her long flowing dress--something symbolic. She blew her nose--symbolic. Oh, why can't we just live like normal people, she thought."
- MFN