" ALL formats are completely arbitrary to someone who has no idea what you are trying to communicate"
That is totally not true. Radio, the Great Grandfather of the iformation age can be EASILY decoded and played with absolutely no idea how it originated. People have picked up radio in their hearing aids, cavity fillings, and blenders (Speaking of this, an old college friend has a scupture made of metal that picks up a local radio station when it's raining outside) TV formats are really basic because of the limited resources available to transmit and receive it until recently.
Compare this with something live Voice over IP, which has a somewhat arbitrary formatting. Combine this with 1) not knowing the bit depth 2) Not knowing the Base encoding 3) Not knowing the byte order and 4) Not knowing if the signal is encrypted, I think it's suffice to say such a commication would take a LONG time to decipher.
Compare this to, radio. If voice Radio communication is as basic of a device as it is here, then we will IMMEDIATELY have something to work with. TV with some basic reasoning would also yield results quite quickly, since the very inventor of TV (who worked independantly of RCA...It's a good story....)was watching RCA test broadcasts on his TV. We have a starting point. Some morsecode optical transmission is signifcantly more advanced than both TV and Radio and would be significantly more difficult to decipher, anyone trying to phone us probabally wouldn't use it.
"I suppose what I want to know is: Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?"
Where there is already a govt sanctioned monolopy that offeres a comparable service that is proven to work and is affordable, why would any competitor come to YOUR town and set up shop. No guaranteed customers. Which is probabally why it's first appearing in a "small town" where in the article it mentions that the cable company wouldn't hookup a line to his business for just one subscriber....
"With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."
While it is ALWAYS nice to have alternative ways of getting subscriber based TV (read: Cable), this really doesn't impress me as a comsumer. In my area, we have digital cable. I have 180 channels including 10 HBO channels and 10 Showtime channels. Also, built right into the cable box is a cable modem. Granted DSL has guarantted speed while cable is shared speed, it's as fast (if not faster)as normal home DSL connections most of the time.
What I want to know is what compression they are using? To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time), but feasible (you should watch Quicktime streams on a 100BaseT connection sitting on Internet2, which lets you cheat your way through parts of the internet).
"They believe a technologically advanced race might be more likely to communicate using pulsed laser beams rather than radio.
"
So, are they sayingis that "advanced races" use a high tech version of morse code. This raises a problem. This implies that the signal is in some unknown Base (binary being base 2) and is encoded in some unknown format for transmission, possibly encrypted by default.
So, lets assume for the sake of arguement that we do find pulsating light that shows some form of pattern, there is pretty much no chance we would have any idea what it's saying and we would have no ability to respond. At least with basic radio signals, like TV and Radio, you can easily reverse enginner the signal...assuming thats not encrypted too (I remeber watching a discovery show where the kid who invented the TV was watching RCA's transmissions to see how far along they were, before he went public). Thus we would have a better chance of being able to respond to them, if it's a local (100 Light years) species.
"Netinfo is not the only way to administrate OS X remotley"
I neither implied nor said it was. I merely said that the command line was unneccisary (although technically this is not all togethor true, in the case of a complete hosed system where one would boot into single user mode, you would need the command line.
"I seem to remeber Apple using telnet for remote admin on MOSX but in the apache screenshot it says SSH. Have they switched?? "
Netinfo is used for remote administration, not ssh nor telnet. Having access to the command line to do any form of remote admin is totally unneccissry in MacOS X. Now invisible ssh connections could be how Netinfo connects to the remote server....
"The exec were wrong. No argument. But to ignore the political pressure is ALSO WRONG."
Political pressuse is NOT gone, it's just being dealt with in a different way. Take the ISS, for example, Nasa is going to do a amazing amount of space walks to get that thing up to specs (iirc 100) in a very short period of time. Nasa is also persueing a very agressive stance on launching (similiar to the state of the shuttle program in 1985). They also are willing to scrap missions over the most simple of things. That's the difference. Nasa's unwillingness to concern itself with such matters in Jan 1986 resulted in the Challenger exploding. Back then, Reagan wanted to promote the "Star Wars" program and the US's "Space might", today Clinton wants to promote the co-operation of several states for a peacful space program. Both are political agenda's, both require a very agressive Space Program. Except today, Nasa gets less money for more missions and does NOT loose people in space. Because they care now. To blame pressure on the repeated mistakes made by Nasa officials in the mid 80's is unreasonable, they made thier choices. Fortunately, today they don't make those choices anymore. They already lost one Shuttle, I doubt they want that to happen again.
On Jan 28 1986 Nasa lauched in conditions that no reasonable person would and it resulted in the death of all those aboard Challenger. You live in Titusville, you remeber how cold it was that mourning? I do, I was standing on the shore of the Indian River, my father took me out of school that day, so i could watch the first civilian go into space. He almost didn't because he knew it was unreasonable to launch the Shuttle that mourning. Everybody did.
Btw, the origional poster was not the person who refered to Bush.
"if Bush were making a shuttle flight with a civilian passenger.....there was no 'launch fever' , it was raw political pressure."
Quiz time: Who was president in 1986, when the Shuttle bew up?
a. Bush b. Reagan c. Who care's I'm not an American or d. The Troll who posted this note.
That's right kiddies, it's B. Reagan. (not Bush).
Quiz time: How how often was a Space shuttle being launched in 1985?
a. What's a shuttle? b. about once a month c. who cares i'm not an american or d. fuck you troll
That's right about once a month. Look, troll you say it was political pressure, well that political pressure affected the previous year's activities of Nasa, they were using both Shuttle pads with Shuttles on Both of them at the same time for launches that were only weeks apart. (I remeber going out to Playlinda beach, riding right past this, yes I was a local) This along with a full load of unmanned rockets going off. They were making a LOT of mistakes a very LONG time. Maybe Reagan told them to, maybe he didn't. The fact still remains the Challenger should NOT have been launched that day and everybody knew it.
That was a political and managerial fuckup of biblical proportions--"screw the freezing temperatures and the unknowns, we want that ship up there when Gipper gives his State of the Union address."
I was standing on the Indian River right across from Kennedy Space Center, you can clearly see both of the lauch pads and the VAB from there, on Jan 28, 1986. I can tell you this, everyone around thought the flight would be canceled. It was just too cold, there was ice hanging on the orange trees all over Central Florida (they water the tress to insulate them). My mother, who was at work at the time, said when she saw the shuttle go up, a co-worker put the flag at half-staff before it blew up. It didn't "look" right.
My point, only an utter idiot would have launched that shuttle on that day. Record freezing temps combined with the face they had pushed thier flight schedule to insane levels with two shuttles on 29a+b at the same time just lead straight to diaster.
The difference between the Nasa of then and the Nasa of now, is that Nasa now has common sense, the Nasa of then didn't. But, keep in mind that Nasa beleives there is a significant chance they will loose someone building the ISS, so it's not over yet.
"This is the real threat to Linux--Mac OS X for x86. Suddenly, you have an OS that does everything Linux does and can even run Linux binaries...."
Well, who cares if it runs Linux apps? They are usually open source anyways, they can be recompiled. What isn't open source, can be bought today for MacOS, and will be available by fall for OS X. On top of this, the personality of Linux (and Windows apps for that matter) don't appeal to Apple's customers. Too hard to use and feel to cludgy.
"A deal with Insignia Solutions to license Virtual PC code and create Red Box (an environment in which Windows apps can run). "
What developer would EVER code for Mac native apps if a Mac could transparently run Windows apps? What does this offer a customer that Windows doesn't offer natively? Apple's customer base is NOT interested in running Window's applications, generally speaking. They are too cludgy. Even MS Office on Mac "feels" better to a MacOS than Office 2k on a PC. Microsoft KNOWS what their Mac using customers want...that's why IE for MacOS had many usability features before it did for PC. Print preview, tabbed searches, easy to manage favorites (much easier than in IE 5.5 on WIndows), you can set it to ask to accept/refuse cookies on a site basis (great when you want to go to nytimes and slashdot, but dont want any other cookies...it REMEMBERS it too)...just to name a few.
Even if these reasons didn't matter, MacOS X won't exist on x86 commody hardware for the two following reasons: 1. OpenFirmware blows BIOS out of the water and 2. IRQ's are a great source of pain. Mac customers don't want to know or see or even deal with anything resembling IRQ's. When I first of IRQ's my first thought was "you gotta be kidding me?"....
What do you think of Stallman's distinction between "Free" software and "Open Source" and his appearant refusal to deal with anyone who wants to discuss Open Sourcing their application until they speak in his language on these issues?
What is the exact relationship between the Darwin Kernel and the FreeBSD kernel? How much FreeBSD code is in Darwin and how much Darwin code is in FreeBSD?
"As a final note, I think it's pretty sad that you do not wish to think about your home computer. To expect everything to work and not know what your computer does and why it does it is just ignorance, and no one should desire that."
Right now, I'm stitting at our lab G4. Right next to me is an SGI indy, Right next to that is an Octane, behind me is an O2, in the room next to me are several O2's and an 1Ghz Athalon running RedHat. Day in, day out, I deal with bash, perl, nawk, and monitoring jobs (most of which are iteration scripts, so they can be stopped on error without loosing work).
The last thing I want to do when I got home is teach my fiancee who to launch and use the assorted Linux aps. The last thing I want to do when I go home is worry about what net services are running (by default), so that I don't have some l337 5cr1p7 k1dd13 jumping on my home LAN and Hax0r1ng my machine to do God knows what. The last thing I want to do when I go home is use those shitty open source Linux apps, whose usability are easily questioned. Last thing I want to do if read how to get X-Windows to be hardware acclerated. I don't want to figure out how to get 3-D graphics working. I don't want to figureout how to use that Gnome Panel . I don't want to figure out how to add something to the gnome menu. I don't care. It should work on install. If it doesn't, it's NOT my fault.
MacOS X lets me USE my computer with large uptimes and not have the pain on figuring anything out. Brickwall, lets me configure ipfw with the greatest of east. Sharity lets me mount Windows volumes. IE lets me browse the web. All my desktop apps work including Photoshop (which is infinitely better than GIMP). The user interface is not something to be challenged or tamed. It just works.
I do care how my machine works, I just don't want to know how to make it work because the installer is shit, because no thought was put into useability testing (as with the problem with Linux). My Mac is NOT a toy its something to get work done, my PC is a toy, its something to make work.
As far as you comment on my versions I installed, well simply answered I didn't remeber the versions exactly. I use IRIX 6.5 (which is where the 6.5 number came from, although I could have swore I got an RedHat 6.5 ISO and not a 6.2...) and I installed Mandrake 7.1 (which is where Redhat 7.1 came from, although right after I clicked submit I knew that was wrong).
"A sound posting to be sure, but I have to take issue with the versions of Redhat you installed. 6.5 and 7.1? I thought they jumped from 6.2 to 7.0 and haven't release a 7.1 yet. Perhaps I missed a press release... "
You didn't miss a release. This is called typing without thinking....I installed 7.0
Couple years ago, before I sold my Performa 6116CD and bought my Rev C iMac, I tried installing MKLinux to see if I could breath new life into it. I found out, in a word, no. I could not breath new life into it. I didn't have the time to learn how to "properly" set up "linux". Then I tried LinuxPPC 2K on my iMac, just to see if that progressed. Nope, couldn't do that either. Then, 5 months ago, I built a x86 based PC to use as an additional web browser (MacOS X PB running NATD sharing PPP). I downloaded BeOS R5, Mandrake 7.1, RedHat 6.5, RedHat 7.1. I couldn't get any of the Linux distribs to what i consider a useable state. All supported hardware. I could get BeOS to a useable state in a matter of minutes.
Point of the story. I wanted Linux to work. I wanted to try it. I'm not uneducated. I work on IRIX 6.5 all day at work (3 years now). I just don't want to think about my home computer. Linux made me think significantly more than MacOS X (which by the way, the ONLY thing I set up was PPP, the rest "just worked").
So, I would expect MacOS users to choose MacOS X over Linux any day. I will buy a G4 to get the most out of MacOS X, even if it is more expensive than a PC. At least with a Mac I wont have to struggle to work with my computer, the computer will work for me.
With all due respect, reason has no place in the software industry analysis. Amiga failed, despite it's superiority. MacOS never really gained for than a small continual base of customers. Be couldn't even GIVE BeOS away. AppleWorks is $99, Office is $300 (at a the lowest). Linux ships with every application known to mankind, yet can't get a large enough base in the User Space for ID to make a profite selling Q3A.
There is NO room for reason in how one looks at the Microsoft probelm. WIth that said, I would do what Larry Ellison reccomends. Don't split up Microsoft and instead not allow them to EVER purchase a SINGLE piece of technology, company, patent, software code, from anyone else and force them to develop it in house. Let them have their "right to innovate" and watch them fall on their face.
"why os x does it w/o skipping (and os 9 does not) is not b/c it is unix. it is b/c it is preemptive multitasking. you have the priority of the mp3 player set high (whether you know it or not) and the ripper/encoders set low."
Err...Sorry the mp3 player and ecoder is the same application. Running at the same priority as IE. No, its called multi-threading, something Win9X doesnt come close to supporting and Win2000 pretends to.
"You're actually ripping the tracks from the CD and encoding those to MP3. Unless you're talking about encrypting the information on the CD, but I doubt you're doing that."
Ripping is the act of copying the aiff files from the CD to the harddrive. Encoding is the act of converting from aiff to mp3 (or any format your heart wants). I encode from CD's. I don't rip first.
You see Macs dont have IRQ conflicts. You don't have to tinker with a BIOS (a large enough % of PC upgrades require BIOS tinkers because of IRQs). Mac users WONT tolerate such a think. Which is why if Apple were to go to x86, the chipsets and processor would have to be different.
"You're burning (encoding is the wrong word) a CD while playing mp3s."
I said encoding, i meant encoding. My iMac (266 Mhz) can encode a CD (TO MP3, not a CD BURNER), play mp3s and web browse at the same time. MacOS X, Welcome to the wonderful world of Unix.
Like if I encode a MP3 on my single processor computer, it will chew up all the processor time and make other programs running deadly slow (on my windows 2000 machine)
Not to troll, but maybe you should choose another platform if you have this problem. My 266MHz iMac can encode a CD, while playing mp3s, and web browsing...with out a skip. I'm running the supposedly slow MacOS X PB.
Slashdot Mirror
That is totally not true. Radio, the Great Grandfather of the iformation age can be EASILY decoded and played with absolutely no idea how it originated. People have picked up radio in their hearing aids, cavity fillings, and blenders (Speaking of this, an old college friend has a scupture made of metal that picks up a local radio station when it's raining outside) TV formats are really basic because of the limited resources available to transmit and receive it until recently.
Compare this with something live Voice over IP, which has a somewhat arbitrary formatting. Combine this with 1) not knowing the bit depth 2) Not knowing the Base encoding 3) Not knowing the byte order and 4) Not knowing if the signal is encrypted, I think it's suffice to say such a commication would take a LONG time to decipher.
Compare this to, radio. If voice Radio communication is as basic of a device as it is here, then we will IMMEDIATELY have something to work with. TV with some basic reasoning would also yield results quite quickly, since the very inventor of TV (who worked independantly of RCA...It's a good story....)was watching RCA test broadcasts on his TV. We have a starting point. Some morsecode optical transmission is signifcantly more advanced than both TV and Radio and would be significantly more difficult to decipher, anyone trying to phone us probabally wouldn't use it.
Where there is already a govt sanctioned monolopy that offeres a comparable service that is proven to work and is affordable, why would any competitor come to YOUR town and set up shop. No guaranteed customers. Which is probabally why it's first appearing in a "small town" where in the article it mentions that the cable company wouldn't hookup a line to his business for just one subscriber....
While it is ALWAYS nice to have alternative ways of getting subscriber based TV (read: Cable), this really doesn't impress me as a comsumer. In my area, we have digital cable. I have 180 channels including 10 HBO channels and 10 Showtime channels. Also, built right into the cable box is a cable modem. Granted DSL has guarantted speed while cable is shared speed, it's as fast (if not faster)as normal home DSL connections most of the time.
What I want to know is what compression they are using? To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time), but feasible (you should watch Quicktime streams on a 100BaseT connection sitting on Internet2, which lets you cheat your way through parts of the internet).
"They believe a technologically advanced race might be more likely to communicate using pulsed laser beams rather than radio. "
So, are they sayingis that "advanced races" use a high tech version of morse code. This raises a problem. This implies that the signal is in some unknown Base (binary being base 2) and is encoded in some unknown format for transmission, possibly encrypted by default.
So, lets assume for the sake of arguement that we do find pulsating light that shows some form of pattern, there is pretty much no chance we would have any idea what it's saying and we would have no ability to respond. At least with basic radio signals, like TV and Radio, you can easily reverse enginner the signal...assuming thats not encrypted too (I remeber watching a discovery show where the kid who invented the TV was watching RCA's transmissions to see how far along they were, before he went public). Thus we would have a better chance of being able to respond to them, if it's a local (100 Light years) species.
I neither implied nor said it was. I merely said that the command line was unneccisary (although technically this is not all togethor true, in the case of a complete hosed system where one would boot into single user mode, you would need the command line.
Netinfo is used for remote administration, not ssh nor telnet. Having access to the command line to do any form of remote admin is totally unneccissry in MacOS X. Now invisible ssh connections could be how Netinfo connects to the remote server....
Good Lord, giving a phone number on Slashdot is just plain mean, noone will be able to hear it....
Political pressuse is NOT gone, it's just being dealt with in a different way. Take the ISS, for example, Nasa is going to do a amazing amount of space walks to get that thing up to specs (iirc 100) in a very short period of time. Nasa is also persueing a very agressive stance on launching (similiar to the state of the shuttle program in 1985). They also are willing to scrap missions over the most simple of things. That's the difference. Nasa's unwillingness to concern itself with such matters in Jan 1986 resulted in the Challenger exploding. Back then, Reagan wanted to promote the "Star Wars" program and the US's "Space might", today Clinton wants to promote the co-operation of several states for a peacful space program. Both are political agenda's, both require a very agressive Space Program. Except today, Nasa gets less money for more missions and does NOT loose people in space. Because they care now. To blame pressure on the repeated mistakes made by Nasa officials in the mid 80's is unreasonable, they made thier choices. Fortunately, today they don't make those choices anymore. They already lost one Shuttle, I doubt they want that to happen again.
On Jan 28 1986 Nasa lauched in conditions that no reasonable person would and it resulted in the death of all those aboard Challenger. You live in Titusville, you remeber how cold it was that mourning? I do, I was standing on the shore of the Indian River, my father took me out of school that day, so i could watch the first civilian go into space. He almost didn't because he knew it was unreasonable to launch the Shuttle that mourning. Everybody did.
Btw, the origional poster was not the person who refered to Bush.
Quiz time: Who was president in 1986, when the Shuttle bew up?
a. Bush b. Reagan c. Who care's I'm not an American or d. The Troll who posted this note.
That's right kiddies, it's B. Reagan. (not Bush).
Quiz time: How how often was a Space shuttle being launched in 1985?
a. What's a shuttle? b. about once a month c. who cares i'm not an american or d. fuck you troll
That's right about once a month. Look, troll you say it was political pressure, well that political pressure affected the previous year's activities of Nasa, they were using both Shuttle pads with Shuttles on Both of them at the same time for launches that were only weeks apart. (I remeber going out to Playlinda beach, riding right past this, yes I was a local) This along with a full load of unmanned rockets going off. They were making a LOT of mistakes a very LONG time. Maybe Reagan told them to, maybe he didn't. The fact still remains the Challenger should NOT have been launched that day and everybody knew it.
I was standing on the Indian River right across from Kennedy Space Center, you can clearly see both of the lauch pads and the VAB from there, on Jan 28, 1986. I can tell you this, everyone around thought the flight would be canceled. It was just too cold, there was ice hanging on the orange trees all over Central Florida (they water the tress to insulate them). My mother, who was at work at the time, said when she saw the shuttle go up, a co-worker put the flag at half-staff before it blew up. It didn't "look" right.
My point, only an utter idiot would have launched that shuttle on that day. Record freezing temps combined with the face they had pushed thier flight schedule to insane levels with two shuttles on 29a+b at the same time just lead straight to diaster.
The difference between the Nasa of then and the Nasa of now, is that Nasa now has common sense, the Nasa of then didn't. But, keep in mind that Nasa beleives there is a significant chance they will loose someone building the ISS, so it's not over yet.
Actually, your ATM probabally runs on DR-DOS.
Well, who cares if it runs Linux apps? They are usually open source anyways, they can be recompiled. What isn't open source, can be bought today for MacOS, and will be available by fall for OS X. On top of this, the personality of Linux (and Windows apps for that matter) don't appeal to Apple's customers. Too hard to use and feel to cludgy.
"A deal with Insignia Solutions to license Virtual PC code and create Red Box (an environment in which Windows apps can run). "
What developer would EVER code for Mac native apps if a Mac could transparently run Windows apps? What does this offer a customer that Windows doesn't offer natively? Apple's customer base is NOT interested in running Window's applications, generally speaking. They are too cludgy. Even MS Office on Mac "feels" better to a MacOS than Office 2k on a PC. Microsoft KNOWS what their Mac using customers want...that's why IE for MacOS had many usability features before it did for PC. Print preview, tabbed searches, easy to manage favorites (much easier than in IE 5.5 on WIndows), you can set it to ask to accept/refuse cookies on a site basis (great when you want to go to nytimes and slashdot, but dont want any other cookies...it REMEMBERS it too)...just to name a few.
Even if these reasons didn't matter, MacOS X won't exist on x86 commody hardware for the two following reasons: 1. OpenFirmware blows BIOS out of the water and 2. IRQ's are a great source of pain. Mac customers don't want to know or see or even deal with anything resembling IRQ's. When I first of IRQ's my first thought was "you gotta be kidding me?"....
What do you think of Stallman's distinction between "Free" software and "Open Source" and his appearant refusal to deal with anyone who wants to discuss Open Sourcing their application until they speak in his language on these issues?
What is the exact relationship between the Darwin Kernel and the FreeBSD kernel? How much FreeBSD code is in Darwin and how much Darwin code is in FreeBSD?
Right now, I'm stitting at our lab G4. Right next to me is an SGI indy, Right next to that is an Octane, behind me is an O2, in the room next to me are several O2's and an 1Ghz Athalon running RedHat. Day in, day out, I deal with bash, perl, nawk, and monitoring jobs (most of which are iteration scripts, so they can be stopped on error without loosing work).
The last thing I want to do when I got home is teach my fiancee who to launch and use the assorted Linux aps. The last thing I want to do when I go home is worry about what net services are running (by default), so that I don't have some l337 5cr1p7 k1dd13 jumping on my home LAN and Hax0r1ng my machine to do God knows what. The last thing I want to do when I go home is use those shitty open source Linux apps, whose usability are easily questioned. Last thing I want to do if read how to get X-Windows to be hardware acclerated. I don't want to figure out how to get 3-D graphics working. I don't want to figureout how to use that Gnome Panel . I don't want to figure out how to add something to the gnome menu. I don't care. It should work on install. If it doesn't, it's NOT my fault.
MacOS X lets me USE my computer with large uptimes and not have the pain on figuring anything out. Brickwall, lets me configure ipfw with the greatest of east. Sharity lets me mount Windows volumes. IE lets me browse the web. All my desktop apps work including Photoshop (which is infinitely better than GIMP). The user interface is not something to be challenged or tamed. It just works.
I do care how my machine works, I just don't want to know how to make it work because the installer is shit, because no thought was put into useability testing (as with the problem with Linux). My Mac is NOT a toy its something to get work done, my PC is a toy, its something to make work. As far as you comment on my versions I installed, well simply answered I didn't remeber the versions exactly. I use IRIX 6.5 (which is where the 6.5 number came from, although I could have swore I got an RedHat 6.5 ISO and not a 6.2...) and I installed Mandrake 7.1 (which is where Redhat 7.1 came from, although right after I clicked submit I knew that was wrong).
You didn't miss a release. This is called typing without thinking....I installed 7.0
Point of the story. I wanted Linux to work. I wanted to try it. I'm not uneducated. I work on IRIX 6.5 all day at work (3 years now). I just don't want to think about my home computer. Linux made me think significantly more than MacOS X (which by the way, the ONLY thing I set up was PPP, the rest "just worked").
So, I would expect MacOS users to choose MacOS X over Linux any day. I will buy a G4 to get the most out of MacOS X, even if it is more expensive than a PC. At least with a Mac I wont have to struggle to work with my computer, the computer will work for me.
There is NO room for reason in how one looks at the Microsoft probelm. WIth that said, I would do what Larry Ellison reccomends. Don't split up Microsoft and instead not allow them to EVER purchase a SINGLE piece of technology, company, patent, software code, from anyone else and force them to develop it in house. Let them have their "right to innovate" and watch them fall on their face.
Err...Sorry the mp3 player and ecoder is the same application. Running at the same priority as IE. No, its called multi-threading, something Win9X doesnt come close to supporting and Win2000 pretends to.
Ripping is the act of copying the aiff files from the CD to the harddrive. Encoding is the act of converting from aiff to mp3 (or any format your heart wants). I encode from CD's. I don't rip first.
Clones, yes and.....no self respecting mac customer would buy a computer with a BIOS and/or IRQ's, its not elegant.
You see Macs dont have IRQ conflicts. You don't have to tinker with a BIOS (a large enough % of PC upgrades require BIOS tinkers because of IRQs). Mac users WONT tolerate such a think. Which is why if Apple were to go to x86, the chipsets and processor would have to be different.
I said encoding, i meant encoding. My iMac (266 Mhz) can encode a CD (TO MP3, not a CD BURNER), play mp3s and web browse at the same time. MacOS X, Welcome to the wonderful world of Unix.
To what the x86 family? You're kidding me right? IRQ mean anything to you? How about BIOS?
It would have to be a heavily modified x86 chip to remove dependance on IRQ's and the BIOS so they could be replaced with Open Firmware.
Not to troll, but maybe you should choose another platform if you have this problem. My 266MHz iMac can encode a CD, while playing mp3s, and web browsing...with out a skip. I'm running the supposedly slow MacOS X PB.