The point was that Apple is very close to actually bringing this into practice in a well-thought out way. And that's great that BeOS did, but Be's market share makes Apple's piddly share look like Everest.
In other words, bringing the idea from the intellectuals to the masses.
I've been thinking about a similar database-like file system idea, and realized that iTunes is actually an incredibly good idea for a file browser. (If you haven't seen iTunes, you should, you're really missing out)
Instead of refining your display based on a combination of Genre, Artist, and Album (for the unfamiliar, you can pick 1-all in each category), use Application, type, and label.Of course, I'm envisioning n user-defined labels (think genre), not the 8 that standard Mac OS uses (although those would be a good starting point). Then, once you're refined your selection, you can sort/search by size, name, (any) date, permissions... anything.
Since they really already have the engine, it wouldn't seem to be too hard for Apple to do this, they'd just need to do a bit of tweaking. Then it wouldn't matter what underlying filesystem you have.
Hmm... let's see. For most people in college, they should have a T-something line, and I can get 1Meg/s (would that be Meg-Hertz?) easy... so 700 Megs would take me what, ten to fifteen minutes? Don't have to be much of a fan there.
However, I would like to point out that despite how easy it is to fill up a hard drive, I mostly use it as a screening mechanism for seeing the real thing. If I think a movie kicks ass on my computer, I'm sure it will rock when it fills my field of vision. It makes the $9 seem worth so much more when you realize how many other crappy movies there are out there.
One last thing: You're not going to impress a girl taking her to a movie on your 17" with your cube speakers, even if you do have a subwoofer.
Media companies are generally conservative, and are not going to jump to MS's new standard, even if it is MS and if it is twice the quality (or whatever whiz-bang other features it has). People don't upgrade their DVD players like they do their PCs, they aren't designed that way. DVD players play movies: 10 years from now, it's still going to take you 2 hours to watch a 2 hour movie, there really is no reason for upgrading. If you're a media company, and want to sell the most movies you can, you're going to want your movie to work in the widest number of players possible - if you're releasing software and (ignoring development costs) want to make the most money possible, you're not going to require Windows XP just because it has the newest features.
Since you're using iTunes, let me recommend the VBR feature (select custom as the bitrate, I chose 128 as the minimum, and "Best" quality). Sure you take a fair hit in performance (I went from 4x (160 kpbs) to 2.5x on my G3-350), but it seemed worth it to me because I figured I'd only be doing it once (I've got about 140 disks in my collection), and disk space & quality are forever.
I've also got dual drives, and only ripped the songs I'd actually listen to, both of which I'd say halved my time, because I could preview the disk I wasn't ripping and decide which tracks I wanted. And iTunes remembers your settings, so I could preview a queue of disks, and then go off to do other things, and then whenever I walked by my computer and had a disc sticking out, just replace and insert.
Now that we've covered stories about the effort to put linux on the Dreamcast and Playstation 2, how long will it be before the Mac OS runs on the GameCube - it's just an enhanced G3 that I'm running right now.
If anyone is forming a project, let me know by responding to this comment.
Physical ability is independent (mostly) of mental ability, so you meet all sorts of people. Even Golf and Tennis (which I would say are stereotypically white-color sports) you get to meet those from the business side of the company.
Another advantage I've seen is that it gives me another avenue to meet females, as some of my teammates invariably bring their girlfriends, who often bring friends to keep them company. Of course, I still fall on my face talking to them, but it's easier if they're already impressed with my athletic skill; it's still the rare girl that is impressed with coding skill.
I know I'm posting late, but let me add my tale of woe to any others who also read slashdot a few days late...
I shipped my computer (Mac 4400 - actually, I wasn't that sorry to see that POS go) UPS Ground coming home for the summer over my sophmore year of college. Fortunately, I didn't really need my computer much that summer, but I sure would have if was at school. Cracked the motherboard, but managed not to damage anything else. The box looked pretty similar to the author's box, but I didn't think anything of it 'cause it was the original box with like 3" of hard foam padding. I actually had insured it for about 1.5x what it was worth, and they amazingly where fairly straightforward about paying for it too. Went to a computer shop, got them to say "yes, it's fuxord" and then even kept the hard drive, which would have been the only thing they could have salvaged for any real cash.
Aftermath: Bought a Mac B&W G3, and have carried it on board the plane with me whenever I fly. The handles come in real handy, I attached a strap form an old soccer bag and it works like a large purse. Plus, started up several conversations with people about my "luggable". Bought a cheap 17" for use at home, and now that I'm out of school, I've got both monitors (I actually drove the last time, so I strapped my comptuer and monitor in my passenger seat) set up side-by-side. Scary thing is I've only gotten stopped once by security, but I haven't flown with it in almost a year.
In many ways, software can be accurately compared to art. If you don't see it, try focusing more on the process than the product. Essentially, both attract highly trained professionals to train (code/learn a routine) for a task (product/performance) that few can do. While you can say that about many things, few match at so many levels.
The point I'm trying to express is free software is essentially equivalent to street performances - you can pay if you want, and some are doing it to showcase their skills to be hired for more prestigious jobs. There are also the large-scale productions that require hundreds and large bankrolls - I'm sure you can see where I'm going. What this means is that there is a future both for closed source and open source software to co-exist, and neither is likely to wipe the other out. I'm sure you can see that some people will only go to opera performances, while others would prefer to walk around and check out the street scene.
Software is often as subjective as art, some people like windows, some macs, some like OSs they make themselves. Try convincing someone that some piece of software (take a game) is the best software on earth. You may find those who agree with you, but also those who think you've been staring at the monitor too long. And one last note: artists have been arguing for centuries that all art should be free for the public to enjoy, subsidized by the government. Perhaps we should try.
I don't know about you, but I'm looking at a big, ugly iPod that costs about $100 more. Maybe this is useful if you can't live with less than your 1000 favorite songs instantly available and don't want to buy two iPods (which would still be cheaper and smaller).
Not only shadows, but the reflections. Notice that the keyboard and cigarettes both reflect the ambient lighting but the (presumably somewhat) metallic "iWalk" reflects nothing. It also doesn't even seem to have the same light source (lower right) as the others (lower left).
Well this week we've had revolutionary discoveries with new magnetic solids, and now magnetic liquids. Does this mean that they'll discover a magnetic gas next? It would certainly help in those awkward situations where you just can't hold your fart anymore.
Would you switch to Mac OS X? What if it was free? What if it even ran on your box? Why not?
All the reasons you can think of for not switching to Mac are the reasons people can give for not switching to Linux. And there are even more than that, because Mac has a lot of software that windows users would be very familiar with. To switch over, you would have to re-learn the Mac interface, the Mac way of doing things, the locations of system files on Macs and what they do. There is no "bin" or "pub" directory on classic Macs. You can't pipe outputs from applications. To close an application, you click on the upper left hand corner, and that doesn't always close the application (some apps don't close until you tell them to). A lot of your hardware won't be supported because no one has written a driver for it. And most of all, Mac OS is not written with a user like you in mind. I'm not trying to knock Linux, it's just not dumb enough for the average user (ya' know, the one who serves you your fries) - something MS does rather well.
Ok, maybe not flying ones, and it might not apply to cars, but this would finally give mag-lev trains the lift they need. Light, flexible, and since it's transparent you could make as much of the train out of it as you needed. The only barrier would cost, and since (from the spotty detail in the article) it would seem to be easily manufactured that would not be much of an issue either.
Of course, going off with this (and depending on how magnetic it turns out to be), we could have magnetic skating rinks (and you thought ice was low friction!), beds with air as a cusion instead of springs, car bumpers that could repulse in the event of a collision, or attract to enable "convoying" on freeways. I'm just going off because magnetics seems to be one area that science has not advanced in as much as other areas, our greatest (sarcasm here) use of magnetics is for those perpetual motion machines you see alongside the inspirational posters.
I did the same thing, except my message was "Hey, it's [me]" - but my friend did one better. It was absolutely amazing and got me a few times, and she didn't have any problems with messages from people who didn't get it (unless they were really dumb). It went something like this:
H-hello (sounding like she had just woken up - being in college not unbelievable)
(pause for just enough time to say "hey, what's up?")
I'm kinda pissed off by all the people who patent stupid things (one click shopping) and who want to own "generic" domain names (radio.biz). While I am a little more demanding than the US legal system, I do have something they might approve of. What about essentially a link site for contested domains (let's say computer.biz) that would be paid for by anyone who wanted to be listed there. Then off of there they could tree down (dell.computer.biz, intel.computer.biz, hp.computer.biz) sort of like how the internet is designed (or it would seem). It's already split into a tree when it separated out into.com,.gov,.org (or the equivalents for other countries), why not just continue the process? While this model may not be practical for the existing.com, for new high level domains it may solve things without funneling a ton of money into lawyers.;)
And then someone on Slashdot reams MS for their application's bloated memory usage.
In seriousness, I've tried boosting my disk cache (now 20M) and it doesn't seem to affect anything. Granted what you say would seem to make sense, but how about this: since application loading time is often the slowest, why not pre-load your frequently used apps after the system is done loading. Windows already keeps track of what apps you've been using, Mac tracks the last 10, and it would seem pretty simple to implent on other platforms. Now this memory wouldn't be reserved, (so if you haven't used Office in a year and then it needs 400M to start up, it would just write over the pre-loaded apps) it would be in an in between state, maybe a dedicated area of memory like a prefetch cache that changes as apps are actually loaded until all memory is used. Another way of doing this is to not have applications completely release their memory when they quit. It'd still be available, just the OS would prefer not to write over it again.
Ok, I was half asleep when my Prof said this (so it may not be exact); but he's not the kind to BS, and he actually has the connections to these kind of people. He said it was something like:
Hey Mike, this is a test. Call me if you get this.
Yeah, the name is probably wrong and he might have been asking for a fax, but it just sounds so Engineer-like that I believe it.
One, kids are incredibly resourceful, and even if they block (or restrict) all the porn in this country, they will find stuff elsewhere. Then again, there's also the people that post anonymously on the free web page providers that will never be able to be tracked and it's a good idea, but not totally practical. I even used to find porn on AOL (haven't tried recently), which probably has the reputation of the most locked-down system as far as what they say you can post, and how much they police (again, I haven't looked in years, so it's probably different now, but the point is the same).
Second, while I think that child porn is just wrong, the laws against it are to protect the children. And, as morally wrong as I think it is, computer-generated porn is not harming children. Yes, I know that it puts the wrong idea is some people's head; but then again, so theoretically do video games, and people have shown pretty good restraint from enacting what they see in games.
Slashdot Mirror
That wasn't the point.
The point was that Apple is very close to actually bringing this into practice in a well-thought out way. And that's great that BeOS did, but Be's market share makes Apple's piddly share look like Everest.
In other words, bringing the idea from the intellectuals to the masses.
I've been thinking about a similar database-like file system idea, and realized that iTunes is actually an incredibly good idea for a file browser. (If you haven't seen iTunes, you should, you're really missing out)
Instead of refining your display based on a combination of Genre, Artist, and Album (for the unfamiliar, you can pick 1-all in each category), use Application, type, and label.Of course, I'm envisioning n user-defined labels (think genre), not the 8 that standard Mac OS uses (although those would be a good starting point). Then, once you're refined your selection, you can sort/search by size, name, (any) date, permissions... anything.
Since they really already have the engine, it wouldn't seem to be too hard for Apple to do this, they'd just need to do a bit of tweaking. Then it wouldn't matter what underlying filesystem you have.
Hmm... maybe it's just me, but in my high school science class, the equation went something like:
2H + 0 = H20
But then again, humans have never had problems breathing on alien planets in Star Trek!
Hmm... let's see. For most people in college, they should have a T-something line, and I can get 1Meg/s (would that be Meg-Hertz?) easy... so 700 Megs would take me what, ten to fifteen minutes? Don't have to be much of a fan there.
However, I would like to point out that despite how easy it is to fill up a hard drive, I mostly use it as a screening mechanism for seeing the real thing. If I think a movie kicks ass on my computer, I'm sure it will rock when it fills my field of vision. It makes the $9 seem worth so much more when you realize how many other crappy movies there are out there.
One last thing: You're not going to impress a girl taking her to a movie on your 17" with your cube speakers, even if you do have a subwoofer.
Media companies are generally conservative, and are not going to jump to MS's new standard, even if it is MS and if it is twice the quality (or whatever whiz-bang other features it has). People don't upgrade their DVD players like they do their PCs, they aren't designed that way. DVD players play movies: 10 years from now, it's still going to take you 2 hours to watch a 2 hour movie, there really is no reason for upgrading. If you're a media company, and want to sell the most movies you can, you're going to want your movie to work in the widest number of players possible - if you're releasing software and (ignoring development costs) want to make the most money possible, you're not going to require Windows XP just because it has the newest features.
Since you're using iTunes, let me recommend the VBR feature (select custom as the bitrate, I chose 128 as the minimum, and "Best" quality). Sure you take a fair hit in performance (I went from 4x (160 kpbs) to 2.5x on my G3-350), but it seemed worth it to me because I figured I'd only be doing it once (I've got about 140 disks in my collection), and disk space & quality are forever.
I've also got dual drives, and only ripped the songs I'd actually listen to, both of which I'd say halved my time, because I could preview the disk I wasn't ripping and decide which tracks I wanted. And iTunes remembers your settings, so I could preview a queue of disks, and then go off to do other things, and then whenever I walked by my computer and had a disc sticking out, just replace and insert.
Now that we've covered stories about the effort to put linux on the Dreamcast and Playstation 2, how long will it be before the Mac OS runs on the GameCube - it's just an enhanced G3 that I'm running right now.
If anyone is forming a project, let me know by responding to this comment.
For windows to just go away! (Hey, they're equally likely to happen)
Actually, it's pretty much any sport.
Physical ability is independent (mostly) of mental ability, so you meet all sorts of people. Even Golf and Tennis (which I would say are stereotypically white-color sports) you get to meet those from the business side of the company.
Another advantage I've seen is that it gives me another avenue to meet females, as some of my teammates invariably bring their girlfriends, who often bring friends to keep them company. Of course, I still fall on my face talking to them, but it's easier if they're already impressed with my athletic skill; it's still the rare girl that is impressed with coding skill.
I know I'm posting late, but let me add my tale of woe to any others who also read slashdot a few days late...
I shipped my computer (Mac 4400 - actually, I wasn't that sorry to see that POS go) UPS Ground coming home for the summer over my sophmore year of college. Fortunately, I didn't really need my computer much that summer, but I sure would have if was at school. Cracked the motherboard, but managed not to damage anything else. The box looked pretty similar to the author's box, but I didn't think anything of it 'cause it was the original box with like 3" of hard foam padding. I actually had insured it for about 1.5x what it was worth, and they amazingly where fairly straightforward about paying for it too. Went to a computer shop, got them to say "yes, it's fuxord" and then even kept the hard drive, which would have been the only thing they could have salvaged for any real cash.
Aftermath: Bought a Mac B&W G3, and have carried it on board the plane with me whenever I fly. The handles come in real handy, I attached a strap form an old soccer bag and it works like a large purse. Plus, started up several conversations with people about my "luggable". Bought a cheap 17" for use at home, and now that I'm out of school, I've got both monitors (I actually drove the last time, so I strapped my comptuer and monitor in my passenger seat) set up side-by-side. Scary thing is I've only gotten stopped once by security, but I haven't flown with it in almost a year.
In many ways, software can be accurately compared to art. If you don't see it, try focusing more on the process than the product. Essentially, both attract highly trained professionals to train (code/learn a routine) for a task (product/performance) that few can do. While you can say that about many things, few match at so many levels.
The point I'm trying to express is free software is essentially equivalent to street performances - you can pay if you want, and some are doing it to showcase their skills to be hired for more prestigious jobs. There are also the large-scale productions that require hundreds and large bankrolls - I'm sure you can see where I'm going. What this means is that there is a future both for closed source and open source software to co-exist, and neither is likely to wipe the other out. I'm sure you can see that some people will only go to opera performances, while others would prefer to walk around and check out the street scene.
Software is often as subjective as art, some people like windows, some macs, some like OSs they make themselves. Try convincing someone that some piece of software (take a game) is the best software on earth. You may find those who agree with you, but also those who think you've been staring at the monitor too long. And one last note: artists have been arguing for centuries that all art should be free for the public to enjoy, subsidized by the government. Perhaps we should try.
iPod ($400) + 40 gig drive ($100) + CDRW ($100) - Firewire ($100) - Portability ("Priceless").
I don't know about you, but I'm looking at a big, ugly iPod that costs about $100 more. Maybe this is useful if you can't live with less than your 1000 favorite songs instantly available and don't want to buy two iPods (which would still be cheaper and smaller).
Your arguments make you sound unsmart.
Actually, what is the antonym of idiot anyway?
Not only shadows, but the reflections. Notice that the keyboard and cigarettes both reflect the ambient lighting but the (presumably somewhat) metallic "iWalk" reflects nothing. It also doesn't even seem to have the same light source (lower right) as the others (lower left).
A better rumor is here: Apple's iCrate.
Well this week we've had revolutionary discoveries with new magnetic solids, and now magnetic liquids. Does this mean that they'll discover a magnetic gas next? It would certainly help in those awkward situations where you just can't hold your fart anymore.
Would you switch to Mac OS X? What if it was free? What if it even ran on your box? Why not?
All the reasons you can think of for not switching to Mac are the reasons people can give for not switching to Linux. And there are even more than that, because Mac has a lot of software that windows users would be very familiar with. To switch over, you would have to re-learn the Mac interface, the Mac way of doing things, the locations of system files on Macs and what they do. There is no "bin" or "pub" directory on classic Macs. You can't pipe outputs from applications. To close an application, you click on the upper left hand corner, and that doesn't always close the application (some apps don't close until you tell them to). A lot of your hardware won't be supported because no one has written a driver for it. And most of all, Mac OS is not written with a user like you in mind. I'm not trying to knock Linux, it's just not dumb enough for the average user (ya' know, the one who serves you your fries) - something MS does rather well.
On the ironic note, today's Dictionary.com word of the day is Serendipity : The faculty or phenomenon of making fortunate accidental discoveries
Ok, maybe not flying ones, and it might not apply to cars, but this would finally give mag-lev trains the lift they need. Light, flexible, and since it's transparent you could make as much of the train out of it as you needed. The only barrier would cost, and since (from the spotty detail in the article) it would seem to be easily manufactured that would not be much of an issue either.
Of course, going off with this (and depending on how magnetic it turns out to be), we could have magnetic skating rinks (and you thought ice was low friction!), beds with air as a cusion instead of springs, car bumpers that could repulse in the event of a collision, or attract to enable "convoying" on freeways. I'm just going off because magnetics seems to be one area that science has not advanced in as much as other areas, our greatest (sarcasm here) use of magnetics is for those perpetual motion machines you see alongside the inspirational posters.
I did the same thing, except my message was "Hey, it's [me]" - but my friend did one better. It was absolutely amazing and got me a few times, and she didn't have any problems with messages from people who didn't get it (unless they were really dumb). It went something like this:
H-hello (sounding like she had just woken up - being in college not unbelievable)
(pause for just enough time to say "hey, what's up?")
W-what (still sleepy)
(pause for enough time to repeat greeting)
Wha.. Who is this?
(pause for a little bit longer)
Gotcha! <Beeeeep>
I'm kinda pissed off by all the people who patent stupid things (one click shopping) and who want to own "generic" domain names (radio.biz). While I am a little more demanding than the US legal system, I do have something they might approve of. What about essentially a link site for contested domains (let's say computer.biz) that would be paid for by anyone who wanted to be listed there. Then off of there they could tree down (dell.computer.biz, intel.computer.biz, hp.computer.biz) sort of like how the internet is designed (or it would seem). It's already split into a tree when it separated out into .com, .gov, .org (or the equivalents for other countries), why not just continue the process? While this model may not be practical for the existing .com, for new high level domains it may solve things without funneling a ton of money into lawyers. ;)
And then someone on Slashdot reams MS for their application's bloated memory usage.
In seriousness, I've tried boosting my disk cache (now 20M) and it doesn't seem to affect anything. Granted what you say would seem to make sense, but how about this: since application loading time is often the slowest, why not pre-load your frequently used apps after the system is done loading. Windows already keeps track of what apps you've been using, Mac tracks the last 10, and it would seem pretty simple to implent on other platforms. Now this memory wouldn't be reserved, (so if you haven't used Office in a year and then it needs 400M to start up, it would just write over the pre-loaded apps) it would be in an in between state, maybe a dedicated area of memory like a prefetch cache that changes as apps are actually loaded until all memory is used. Another way of doing this is to not have applications completely release their memory when they quit. It'd still be available, just the OS would prefer not to write over it again.
Taco would be almost as correct to say "it uses an advanced form of fusion"
Ok, I was half asleep when my Prof said this (so it may not be exact); but he's not the kind to BS, and he actually has the connections to these kind of people. He said it was something like:
Hey Mike, this is a test. Call me if you get this.
Yeah, the name is probably wrong and he might have been asking for a fax, but it just sounds so Engineer-like that I believe it.
One, kids are incredibly resourceful, and even if they block (or restrict) all the porn in this country, they will find stuff elsewhere. Then again, there's also the people that post anonymously on the free web page providers that will never be able to be tracked and it's a good idea, but not totally practical. I even used to find porn on AOL (haven't tried recently), which probably has the reputation of the most locked-down system as far as what they say you can post, and how much they police (again, I haven't looked in years, so it's probably different now, but the point is the same).
Second, while I think that child porn is just wrong, the laws against it are to protect the children. And, as morally wrong as I think it is, computer-generated porn is not harming children. Yes, I know that it puts the wrong idea is some people's head; but then again, so theoretically do video games, and people have shown pretty good restraint from enacting what they see in games.