>Learn to use a 3 button mouse, since most mac users use 3 button mice instead of the standard one.
Maybe most Slashdot reading Mac users do. But from what I've seen almost all mac users stick with the single button standard mouse.
I've never owned a PC and have used Macs from the Centris and SEs using system 6. I've worked in Design shops, publishers, a software firm and an Apple dealer that are Mac based and without exception they use an Apple mouse.
So out of the thousands of Macs that I've seen in use over the past 14 years or so I can cite 2 examples of non standard mouse usage:
1. A design firm ditching an old Apple style 'hockey puck' mouse for the newer Apple optical ones. Always struck me as a strange move since most of them used Wacom tablets most of the time.
2. My best friend who I persuaded to switch from PC to Mac two years ago bought a 2 button scroll wheel mouse to ease his transition.
1. True, and anoying. Mac OS 9 windows could be dragged/moved by their border which was useful, more so than being able to resize since its a more common opperation. But Mac OS X doesn't allow resize and only offers drag by border in metal windows.
2. Yes their is. Switch on full keyboard access in System Preferences, then one of the F keys will highlight the menu bar for keyboard access if the standard keyboard shortcuts are not enough.
This feature was only added in Mac OS X and in my opinion doesn't work as nicely as similar options in Linux and Windows which have always had this feature. But Mac OS was used a GUI from the beginning it had no migration from CLI.
3. Change occasionally to not quite always. This is a hang over from having two main APIs to code apps using. Its super easy to have mnemonics in Cocoa apps but not so simple in Carbon so I think the problem is routed there. You should always be able to use full keyboard access to work around this though. Some common dialog button mnemonics:
Enter/Return = OK or default (throbbing) button Escape/cmd+. = Cancel D = Don't Save
That covers 90% of the dialog buttons you're likely to come use in Mac OS.
4. One of the fundamental design phylosophies behind the Mac GUI is that all of an application's features should be available via the mouse using only a single button using menu items, icons or drag and drop manipulation.
Unfortunately in the Windows work many useful features are only available in context menus. Not so on the Mac, context menus are a convenience but aren't essential.
Also the Option key (alt) has always been used to modify the effect of common options slightly. Its used all over the place. Go through the Finder menus and press the option key and look at all the items change. Close Window becomes Close All Windows, Get Info becomes Show Info Inspector when the option key is held.
These are common things for old time Mac users but are not obvious to new users, but there is a general consistency so you pick these things up in time.
5. Apple's scripting architecture is Wonderful but if you don't like the AppleScript language you don't have to use it. It uses OSA so you can plug-in new scripting languages in much the same way you can on Windows.
Its also worth noting that shell scripts can send apple events and apple scripts (not necessarily written using AppleScript) can run shell scripts.
No, Steve Jobs nor Johnathon Ive shouldn't. Good design tends to come from having a small number of well defined constraints. Laws of physics may or may not be on that list.
I shall cite example from another well known and exceptional British designer, James Dyson:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3046791.stm
How long before we see computers with no cables what so ever. Monitors, keyboards and other such things 'connected' by quantum coupling?
Our so called laws of physics are based on test and observation, a far cry from mathematical proofs. The discovery of something new could cause us to turn our ideas of how the universe works on its head and in turn make extraordinary things posible.
If we worried about such things we wouldn't have computers that are thin as most monitors, waterfalls where water seemingly flows uphill, submarines that fly through water with no external moving parts, mugs where the inside is the outside, or suspended glass staircases.
I bet the French government will back Virgin just 'cause Apple's DRM wasn't programmed in French or something.
But they did localise iTMS for the French, Mac OS has been available in French almost forever. Apple loves the place so much that their major European show is in Paris.
Shame Steve can't speak French, that would be the clincher;)
I always like to think that if ever Apple did take a nose dive and look like it was about to go under that it would be rebel enough to release Mac OS X in its entirity into Open Source and GPL it all.
Think about the effect that would have on the industry.
I have exactly the opposite problem. Samba included as part of Mac OS X does a pretty good job of serving to Windows machines. But the network browsing interface on Mac needs a lot of work still. I can't connect to my Windows share.
Funny how Macs can pretend to be a Windows Server better than they can pretend to be a Windows Client.
I have several letters from the TV licensing that say otherwise.
Also our courts put the burden of proof on TV licensing. If he got fined it was because they brought a detector around and found him recieving a signal.
Unless they catch you at it all they can do is warn you of the large fines you could be made to pay if you are caught.
If you use or install television receiving equipment to receive or record television programme services you are required by law to have a valid TV Licence.
The key words here are use or install. For a TV to be considered installed it must be set up to receive broadcasts. So it:
Must be connected to an arial or a cable/sky box
Must be tuned in
If neither of these are true your TV is not installed to receive or record television programme services and you don't need a license.
Do as I did the first time I tried it out. Phrase your letter as a question describing your circumstances and asking if it's true that you don't require a license - it could save you a hundred quid.
You only require a TV license if you recieve and decode broadcasts, not just have the capability.
The thing that irks a lot of us here is that you still need a license (all the money from which goes to the BBC) even if you don't watch any of the BBC channels. If you watch any broadcast channel: independant TV, Sky or cable you need one.
I have a large home cinema system which I use purely for watching videos, DVDs and playing video games. This equipment could be used to watch TV broadcasts but I don't use it for that purpose.
The problem stems from their assumption that if you don't have a TV license registered at your address and you haven't told them you don't need one that you must be guilty of license evasion. So they send you letters warning you of the large fines you could face if caught watching TV unlicensed.
You have to write a letter to them sent to the same address as license applications stating that you don't watch broadcast TV and only use your set for games or watching DVDs. They'll confirm you don't need a license, and then they leave you alone...
For twelve months...
Before you need to tell them *again*
Really they can be a pain in the arse but you don't need a license if you don't watch TV.
Er, the easiest way to get the developer tools is to look in the bundle of CDs that came with your computer, or in your Mac OS X Upgrade box. Pull out the CD labelled "Developer Tools" and install that:P
Seriously beats a couple o' hundred MB download.
Sure if you want to patch XCode up to date to fix various IDE bugs and add a couple of new features then you'll need to get an ADC account. But if all you want is GCC to play around with then you really don't need to bother.
It was originally hoped that Panther would be truly 64-bit after the PPC 970 was announced, but that turned out not to be the case. For an OS to be 64-bit, you need the following: the ability to address more than 4GB of RAM, the ability to use 64-bit integers for "fast math," and support for a 64-bit address space for each process. What is Panther missing?
One may run up to 8GB of RAM in the G5s, which is twice the amount supported by a 32-bit OS. Indeed, the G5 will even support 2GB DIMMs, so if you have an inordinate amount of disposable income you can run your aluminum tower with 16GB of RAM. Panther also provides support for 64-bit integers. However, the virtual address space for processes in Panther is 32-bit, which means that applications still hit the 4GB ceiling. Thus, while Panther breaks the RAM limitations of a 32-bit OS and offers 64-bit integers, it doesn't support 64-bit addresses spaces for the applications.
1. Depends what you mean by make. Apple design their own hardware, their mother boards are all in-house designs that use a fair few custom chips that they also created. They outsource the manufacturing though like almost all the PC makers. Very few PC makers do any hardware design at all and that includes case design.
2. Mac OS X 10.3 is not entirely 64bit. It does support 64 bit addressing so it can access more than 4GB of RAM. It also has 64bit optmisted math libraries. Since 32 bit code runs on the G5 with no performance penalty this will do for a while. People with G5 machines will get the main benefits of the 64bit-ness and the programs will still run on older 32bit systems.
3. 64bit Windows is still in beta. Linux is available on Apple hardware too.
4. I suppect not. It's more likely that Pixar paid the going rate for those machines. Apple has spent the past few years persuing the movie content creation market. The advantage Pixar had was an existing link with Apple to communicate their needs. Apple choose to fulfill those and so obviously they become the preferred platform.
Pixar will use the best tools for the job available at the time. Remember Steve Jobs take stage at an Intel conference when Pixar bought a shed load of Xeons for their render farm in 2003?
5. Don't go out and spec "okay" systems and then compare price. Spec comparable systems and compare price. That means keeping the differences between the two systems to a minimum.:P
Hell my old iMac was much cheaper than that Dual processor Xeon, I used that iMac for years and it was an okay system...
Fact is that the fastest available PC is slower in many respects than the fastest Mac available and the PC costs more. Blame the PC chip manufacturers for putting such a high premium on their newest chips for the price difference.
If you are willing to sacrifice a few MHz on your box the dual proc PC price will drop below that of the Mac. But it will also be slower still.
And remember if you are inclined to run a non-free OS on the PC especially as a server then the Mac costs much less.
The loaders out of Alien were actually modelled on a real thing: the hardiman exoskeleton. It was designed by General Electric and I don't think they ever got it working completely.
There is a limited amount they can actually do since MS is not based here. Most of their options involve syphoning money from them in one form or another. The EU can't do what the US courts should have done in breaking MS up or some other stiffer penalty. The best we can do is hit them with a bill so large it actually makes them feel it or stop them from selling their software in Europe (which isn't going to happen)
I think a fair number of them did used to work for Apple of a fashion. When Apple disolved Claris (a wholey owned subsidary of Apple) some of the people from there moved on to MS.
You sir are a troll, and yet some how still get modded up to +4 insightful.
These issues have been covered to death here on slashdot and other places as they arose. In short:
The DHCP issue: DHCP is inherently insecure, it's just a convenience. Apple's auto-discovery of DHCP server is a convenience feature to allow new boxes to be added to a network with minimal configuration. To exploit this your network would already need to be compromised. Which means you've got bigger problems.
The other issues have been local exploits only, buffer overruns being used to elevate priviledges to a machine you must already have access to. Useful techniques, but you've got to get in first.
The last real security flaw to worry about with Mac OS X that I know of was with SSH.
The only thing wrong with the original quote was the use of the word secure as an absolute. There is no such thing. The addition of a relative term and a reference is needed such as far more secure out of the box than Windows XP.
Last year I retired my Quadra 610 (10 years old) which was serving MP3s, acting as a bridge between my AppleTalk and Ethernet networks to share my old Apple laser printer. The hard disc was beginning to sound a little tired in it.
I also replaced an old early PowerMac (8 years old) which was my Internet gateway with an ADSL router box.
My original Bondie Blue iMac is still running fine with the latest OS 10.3 and Safari browser. It's slow but useable.
A couple of years ago when I worked at an repair centre I fixed one guy's Mac Classic which was over 10 years old at that time. The hard disc was the only thing that was wrong with it. So I just plugged in a new SCSI drive and it worked. He should have just got a newer machine.
Not true. Patching doesn't always require a reboot. Any system service could be updated and it's process restarted individually instead of taking down the entire system. Unfortunately Apple's updates tend to want to reboot the entire machine. I suspect further effort could be made to improve the software updater so that machine reboots were not required as often. All but very core stuff could be suspended while a updated process is swapped out for a newer one.
The only software Apple should be replacing on a Microsoft (or any other OS) install is previously installed Apple software.
I'd say that most PC iPod owners used Music Match because it came with their iPod.
Now if a user had installed Music Match software, then bought the iPod for PC from Apple and later an iTunes install walked over it then you would have a right to bitch.
Is this what happens I don't have a spare PC to test?
But if you installed Music Match as the player for PC iPod because that's what Apple gave you and downloading the new iTunes software for your iPod disabled the old version of the syncing software it used then as long as they warn you (which Apple do) then how is this a problem?
Lets not forget what happened to Bungi after it's acquisition by M$, the games already in production got behind, especial on the ports, and nothing big has happened since then.
In the case of Bungie and Halo it wasn't that the ports got behind. Halo's primary platform was the Mac, work on the PC version was also ongoing but not as far along. When MS bought Bungie effectively all development work stopped on the PC and Mac and they ported it to X-Box and finished development there.
So much was planned for the original that didn't make it because they had a major platform shift mid-development
At the time Bungie had a big following and there were a number of web sites tracking everything Marathon and Halo. Jason and others at Bungie would occassionally throw in a tid-bit as to what was happening.
Then it was sprung on the community that MS had bought Bungie
Unfortunately we'll never get the game Halo was supposed to be, we just got the cut down, rushed X-Box port
"But the advent of radiocarbon dating showed decisively that Stonehenge was much older than Mycenae. Indeed, the idea of making carvings in stone springs from a long tradition."
Right, carbon dating rocks eh? Using what carbon? Carbon dating can only date things which had sufficient carbon 14 content and is based on its radio active decay to carbon 12. It only works on things that were once living (I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure these rocks weren't) and even then it can produce hideously inaccurate results.
As for the scanning. The markings could be anything. Because of the extent of errosion there is no way you can tell if these were done shortly after construction or years afterwards.
iTunes can play any audio media type that QuickTime can because that's what it uses. QuickTime has an extensible plug-in architecture that is well documented so go write an OGG plug-in. I'm pretty sure an OGG plug-in for QuickTime on the Mac exists already.
The only thing you won't be able to do is use iTunes to import to OGG. But you shouldn't have to rip everything again.
Slashdot Mirror
>Learn to use a 3 button mouse, since most mac users use 3 button mice instead of the standard one.
Maybe most Slashdot reading Mac users do. But from what I've seen almost all mac users stick with the single button standard mouse.
I've never owned a PC and have used Macs from the Centris and SEs using system 6. I've worked in Design shops, publishers, a software firm and an Apple dealer that are Mac based and without exception they use an Apple mouse.
So out of the thousands of Macs that I've seen in use over the past 14 years or so I can cite 2 examples of non standard mouse usage:
1. A design firm ditching an old Apple style 'hockey puck' mouse for the newer Apple optical ones. Always struck me as a strange move since most of them used Wacom tablets most of the time.
2. My best friend who I persuaded to switch from PC to Mac two years ago bought a 2 button scroll wheel mouse to ease his transition.
A quick response to your points:
1. True, and anoying. Mac OS 9 windows could be dragged/moved by their border which was useful, more so than being able to resize since its a more common opperation. But Mac OS X doesn't allow resize and only offers drag by border in metal windows.
2. Yes their is. Switch on full keyboard access in System Preferences, then one of the F keys will highlight the menu bar for keyboard access if the standard keyboard shortcuts are not enough.
This feature was only added in Mac OS X and in my opinion doesn't work as nicely as similar options in Linux and Windows which have always had this feature. But Mac OS was used a GUI from the beginning it had no migration from CLI.
3. Change occasionally to not quite always. This is a hang over from having two main APIs to code apps using. Its super easy to have mnemonics in Cocoa apps but not so simple in Carbon so I think the problem is routed there. You should always be able to use full keyboard access to work around this though. Some common dialog button mnemonics:
Enter/Return = OK or default (throbbing) button
Escape/cmd+. = Cancel
D = Don't Save
That covers 90% of the dialog buttons you're likely to come use in Mac OS.
4. One of the fundamental design phylosophies behind the Mac GUI is that all of an application's features should be available via the mouse using only a single button using menu items, icons or drag and drop manipulation.
Unfortunately in the Windows work many useful features are only available in context menus. Not so on the Mac, context menus are a convenience but aren't essential.
Also the Option key (alt) has always been used to modify the effect of common options slightly. Its used all over the place. Go through the Finder menus and press the option key and look at all the items change. Close Window becomes Close All Windows, Get Info becomes Show Info Inspector when the option key is held.
These are common things for old time Mac users but are not obvious to new users, but there is a general consistency so you pick these things up in time.
5. Apple's scripting architecture is Wonderful but if you don't like the AppleScript language you don't have to use it. It uses OSA so you can plug-in new scripting languages in much the same way you can on Windows.
Its also worth noting that shell scripts can send apple events and apple scripts (not necessarily written using AppleScript) can run shell scripts.
No, Steve Jobs nor Johnathon Ive shouldn't. Good design tends to come from having a small number of well defined constraints. Laws of physics may or may not be on that list.
p oo ky.jsp
I shall cite example from another well known and exceptional British designer, James Dyson:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3046791.stm
How long before we see computers with no cables what so ever. Monitors, keyboards and other such things 'connected' by quantum coupling?
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/quantum/s
Our so called laws of physics are based on test and observation, a far cry from mathematical proofs. The discovery of something new could cause us to turn our ideas of how the universe works on its head and in turn make extraordinary things posible.
If we worried about such things we wouldn't have computers that are thin as most monitors, waterfalls where water seemingly flows uphill, submarines that fly through water with no external moving parts, mugs where the inside is the outside, or suspended glass staircases.
My life experience is richer from these things.
...and I miss-read the title. Where are these other attractive women in CS?
But they did localise iTMS for the French, Mac OS has been available in French almost forever. Apple loves the place so much that their major European show is in Paris.
Shame Steve can't speak French, that would be the clincher ;)
You forgot the ugly duckling of the bunch: Darwin. Unfortunately it only becomes a swan in Mac OS X.
I always like to think that if ever Apple did take a nose dive and look like it was about to go under that it would be rebel enough to release Mac OS X in its entirity into Open Source and GPL it all.
Think about the effect that would have on the industry.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
I have exactly the opposite problem. Samba included as part of Mac OS X does a pretty good job of serving to Windows machines. But the network browsing interface on Mac needs a lot of work still. I can't connect to my Windows share.
Funny how Macs can pretend to be a Windows Server better than they can pretend to be a Windows Client.
I have several letters from the TV licensing that say otherwise.
Also our courts put the burden of proof on TV licensing. If he got fined it was because they brought a detector around and found him recieving a signal.
Unless they catch you at it all they can do is warn you of the large fines you could be made to pay if you are caught.
From the TV Licensing web site: The key words here are use or install. For a TV to be considered installed it must be set up to receive broadcasts. So it:If neither of these are true your TV is not installed to receive or record television programme services and you don't need a license.
Do as I did the first time I tried it out. Phrase your letter as a question describing your circumstances and asking if it's true that you don't require a license - it could save you a hundred quid.
Actually not true.
You only require a TV license if you recieve and decode broadcasts, not just have the capability.
The thing that irks a lot of us here is that you still need a license (all the money from which goes to the BBC) even if you don't watch any of the BBC channels. If you watch any broadcast channel: independant TV, Sky or cable you need one.
I have a large home cinema system which I use purely for watching videos, DVDs and playing video games. This equipment could be used to watch TV broadcasts but I don't use it for that purpose.
The problem stems from their assumption that if you don't have a TV license registered at your address and you haven't told them you don't need one that you must be guilty of license evasion. So they send you letters warning you of the large fines you could face if caught watching TV unlicensed.
You have to write a letter to them sent to the same address as license applications stating that you don't watch broadcast TV and only use your set for games or watching DVDs. They'll confirm you don't need a license, and then they leave you alone...
For twelve months...
Before you need to tell them *again*
Really they can be a pain in the arse but you don't need a license if you don't watch TV.
Er, the easiest way to get the developer tools is to look in the bundle of CDs that came with your computer, or in your Mac OS X Upgrade box. Pull out the CD labelled "Developer Tools" and install that :P
Seriously beats a couple o' hundred MB download.
Sure if you want to patch XCode up to date to fix various IDE bugs and add a couple of new features then you'll need to get an ADC account. But if all you want is GCC to play around with then you really don't need to bother.
NeXTSTEP 0.8 was released on 12th October 1988. Version 1.0 was released 18 September 1989.
The first version to be labeled Mac OS X was Mac OS X Server 1.0 which was release on 16th March 1999.
Aqua first appeared in DP3: 14th February 2000 and there it was first recognisable at a glance as the same OS that we use today.
So Mac OS X could also be 4, 5, 14 or 15 years old depending on how you want to look at it.
Mac OS X 10.3 only supports a 32 bit virtual address space per process although it can address more than 4GB RAM in total.
1. Depends what you mean by make. Apple design their own hardware, their mother boards are all in-house designs that use a fair few custom chips that they also created. They outsource the manufacturing though like almost all the PC makers. Very few PC makers do any hardware design at all and that includes case design.
:P
2. Mac OS X 10.3 is not entirely 64bit. It does support 64 bit addressing so it can access more than 4GB of RAM. It also has 64bit optmisted math libraries. Since 32 bit code runs on the G5 with no performance penalty this will do for a while. People with G5 machines will get the main benefits of the 64bit-ness and the programs will still run on older 32bit systems.
3. 64bit Windows is still in beta. Linux is available on Apple hardware too.
4. I suppect not. It's more likely that Pixar paid the going rate for those machines. Apple has spent the past few years persuing the movie content creation market. The advantage Pixar had was an existing link with Apple to communicate their needs. Apple choose to fulfill those and so obviously they become the preferred platform.
Pixar will use the best tools for the job available at the time. Remember Steve Jobs take stage at an Intel conference when Pixar bought a shed load of Xeons for their render farm in 2003?
5. Don't go out and spec "okay" systems and then compare price. Spec comparable systems and compare price. That means keeping the differences between the two systems to a minimum.
Hell my old iMac was much cheaper than that Dual processor Xeon, I used that iMac for years and it was an okay system...
Fact is that the fastest available PC is slower in many respects than the fastest Mac available and the PC costs more. Blame the PC chip manufacturers for putting such a high premium on their newest chips for the price difference.
If you are willing to sacrifice a few MHz on your box the dual proc PC price will drop below that of the Mac. But it will also be slower still.
And remember if you are inclined to run a non-free OS on the PC especially as a server then the Mac costs much less.
The loaders out of Alien were actually modelled on a real thing: the hardiman exoskeleton. It was designed by General Electric and I don't think they ever got it working completely.
There is a limited amount they can actually do since MS is not based here. Most of their options involve syphoning money from them in one form or another. The EU can't do what the US courts should have done in breaking MS up or some other stiffer penalty. The best we can do is hit them with a bill so large it actually makes them feel it or stop them from selling their software in Europe (which isn't going to happen)
I think a fair number of them did used to work for Apple of a fashion. When Apple disolved Claris (a wholey owned subsidary of Apple) some of the people from there moved on to MS.
You sir are a troll, and yet some how still get modded up to +4 insightful.
These issues have been covered to death here on slashdot and other places as they arose. In short:
The DHCP issue: DHCP is inherently insecure, it's just a convenience. Apple's auto-discovery of DHCP server is a convenience feature to allow new boxes to be added to a network with minimal configuration. To exploit this your network would already need to be compromised. Which means you've got bigger problems.
The other issues have been local exploits only, buffer overruns being used to elevate priviledges to a machine you must already have access to. Useful techniques, but you've got to get in first.
The last real security flaw to worry about with Mac OS X that I know of was with SSH.
The only thing wrong with the original quote was the use of the word secure as an absolute. There is no such thing. The addition of a relative term and a reference is needed such as far more secure out of the box than Windows XP.
Last year I retired my Quadra 610 (10 years old) which was serving MP3s, acting as a bridge between my AppleTalk and Ethernet networks to share my old Apple laser printer. The hard disc was beginning to sound a little tired in it.
I also replaced an old early PowerMac (8 years old) which was my Internet gateway with an ADSL router box.
My original Bondie Blue iMac is still running fine with the latest OS 10.3 and Safari browser. It's slow but useable.
A couple of years ago when I worked at an repair centre I fixed one guy's Mac Classic which was over 10 years old at that time. The hard disc was the only thing that was wrong with it. So I just plugged in a new SCSI drive and it worked. He should have just got a newer machine.
Not true. Patching doesn't always require a reboot. Any system service could be updated and it's process restarted individually instead of taking down the entire system. Unfortunately Apple's updates tend to want to reboot the entire machine. I suspect further effort could be made to improve the software updater so that machine reboots were not required as often. All but very core stuff could be suspended while a updated process is swapped out for a newer one.
I'd say that most PC iPod owners used Music Match because it came with their iPod.
Now if a user had installed Music Match software, then bought the iPod for PC from Apple and later an iTunes install walked over it then you would have a right to bitch.
Is this what happens I don't have a spare PC to test?
But if you installed Music Match as the player for PC iPod because that's what Apple gave you and downloading the new iTunes software for your iPod disabled the old version of the syncing software it used then as long as they warn you (which Apple do) then how is this a problem?
They are replacing software they installed.
In the case of Bungie and Halo it wasn't that the ports got behind. Halo's primary platform was the Mac, work on the PC version was also ongoing but not as far along. When MS bought Bungie effectively all development work stopped on the PC and Mac and they ported it to X-Box and finished development there.
So much was planned for the original that didn't make it because they had a major platform shift mid-development
At the time Bungie had a big following and there were a number of web sites tracking everything Marathon and Halo. Jason and others at Bungie would occassionally throw in a tid-bit as to what was happening.
Then it was sprung on the community that MS had bought Bungie
Unfortunately we'll never get the game Halo was supposed to be, we just got the cut down, rushed X-Box port
Quite understandably many of us felt shafted
If they told you, it wouldn't be a secret would it ;)
Right, carbon dating rocks eh? Using what carbon? Carbon dating can only date things which had sufficient carbon 14 content and is based on its radio active decay to carbon 12. It only works on things that were once living (I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure these rocks weren't) and even then it can produce hideously inaccurate results.
As for the scanning. The markings could be anything. Because of the extent of errosion there is no way you can tell if these were done shortly after construction or years afterwards.
Nothing but misinformation here.
iTunes can play any audio media type that QuickTime can because that's what it uses. QuickTime has an extensible plug-in architecture that is well documented so go write an OGG plug-in. I'm pretty sure an OGG plug-in for QuickTime on the Mac exists already.
The only thing you won't be able to do is use iTunes to import to OGG. But you shouldn't have to rip everything again.