I am the technical lead at a school district with about 400 iBook G4 1.2ghz laptops deployed as a one to one program in our middle school. We have a self-servicing agreement and do our own repairs to ensure good uptime. This is the second year of the program. Last school year (2005-20060, we had 90 or so motherboard (applespeak == logic boards) fail. This year (2006-2007) so far 195 logic board failures. This is a huge problem in terms of support and uptime. Glad to know it is not merely student abuse that is responsible. Many, at least half of our failures are "dark screen with startup tone" or "no tone, no screen, fans blasting". But plainly this is a major issue for Apple as a company, especially in their education sector where hundreds of thousands of iBooks are issued to students. I'm a true blue Apple fan, but this is some heartily deserved egg in the face.
Good question and I'm also looking for answers. I have PowerBook G3 Pismos and iBook G3 12" laptops. I've made stripped down 'picture frames' and mounted them in frames for the wall. I'd really like to build an installation with a mount for grids of say 1x4 or 2x2. Or do a tabletop piece that's 3 panels mounted vertically a closed top. Fitting their logic board, dc board, inverter, assorted bits inside. Extremely cool if able to link the DC power together to have one power cable. But I can't imagine how to get 4 laptop (or even 2) displays running synchronously with a remote command or stream. I'm curious if Quartz Composer could have time snyc hooks embedded in it. The hardware has 8mb of video ram, can run a minimal 10.4 build, 256mb ram and set the energy and display preferences for consistency. I could do 4 14 inch panels or 4 or more 12" ibook screens. This platform doesn't support the Quartz extreme effects but it works fine for Quartz engine which is how all screensavers for OS X are displayed. Animated textThinking out loud, maybe it would fly issuing a shell command to run the screensaver
and building a quartz runtime that say displayed animated text or a slideshow of images. I think they are screensavers that run quicktime files. Or mount the internal microphones (they're on 18 inch cables) in an interesting way and feed the with reaction to audio would be fun too. Apple Documentation on Quartz Composer. I'm not much of a programmer, but someone please take a look into it.
And for the poster about the projector, I've got one too, but this is a different purpose. 1024x768 laptop screens are far brighter and crisper, installable, tangible.
Amen! Bolo was a favorite game back in school and still a great strategy game played today. Bolo was designed and never quite finished by Stuart Cheshire of Rendezvous/ZeroConf fame. Released before the TCP stack matured on MacOS, and never updated since 1995. Still a great game, runs in black and white on classic macs or color, easily networked up to 16 players via PhoneNet (well, sometimes you get netsplits after 8 or 10).
One thing I love about the Mac platform is this game was compiled for 680x0, runs in powerpc emulation, and in os x via classic, over the airport, across the world. It still works!
I remember:
- ladmo and indy bot
- spiking pillboxes
- designing maps
- wasting entire lunch breaks and afternoons
- 5 trees to build a boat
- pillboxes have longer range than you, fire faster and take more damage. go out and capture them all.
- collecting your teams pillboxes and breaking alliance. hehehe.
- desperately waiting for your builder to parachute back in.
Alright, that website told a nice story but it isn't true. The logo was designed at Regis McKenna Inc., a Silicon Valley business consulting firm that then also had a graphics design house internal. They did much of the work for Apple Computer business and marketing strategy, esp for introduction of Lisa and The Macintosh.
The six-color logo was inspired by a series of print posters make for Ford Motor company, think late seventies design.
How do I know this, I used to work MIS there and we had piles of old Macs, including lots of the really early models. Alas, they no longer do consulting to Apple, nor do they use Macintoshes anymore. Held out until 1998 though, so don't bag on them too much.
Also, I suggest that Slashdot users look into the background of the politicians whose actions we write about as well as the other pundits and talking heads we hear about. The concern is over money and interpretations of our Civil Rights, so issues are politically charged. Let's find out what the slant is before making a cynical assumption, although in this case, likely a justified one.
That Rep. Howard Berman is supporting legislation to further the RIAA's defense against alleged Fair Use violations is not surprising given that his district, 26th Congressional, is in Los Angeles. http://www.house.gov/berman/district.htm In fact, it even includes N. Hollywood. A reminder, Hollywood is not only famous for the film industry, but also for its music industry. This is where the biggies like Capitol Records are located, his district is one of the places the influential people working in the industry live, and it would not be too much of a stretch to assume they are lobbying for his support. Perhaps being a Democrat, many may have even supported his campaign and now he feels obliged to look after the interests of his constituents. Such is politics. Unfortunately, he's on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, and he's the ranking Dem. His suggestions may carry some weight in the committee, but it wouldn't likely proceed beyond there to a floor vote.
Additionally, his background is as a lawyer and a beauracrat, not an expert in technology and the internet. Hopefully they will call for some good testimony if this proposal isn't just smoke.
Slashdot Mirror
I am the technical lead at a school district with about 400 iBook G4 1.2ghz laptops deployed as a one to one program in our middle school. We have a self-servicing agreement and do our own repairs to ensure good uptime. This is the second year of the program. Last school year (2005-20060, we had 90 or so motherboard (applespeak == logic boards) fail. This year (2006-2007) so far 195 logic board failures. This is a huge problem in terms of support and uptime. Glad to know it is not merely student abuse that is responsible. Many, at least half of our failures are "dark screen with startup tone" or "no tone, no screen, fans blasting". But plainly this is a major issue for Apple as a company, especially in their education sector where hundreds of thousands of iBooks are issued to students. I'm a true blue Apple fan, but this is some heartily deserved egg in the face.
Amen! Bolo was a favorite game back in school and still a great strategy game played today. Bolo was designed and never quite finished by Stuart Cheshire of Rendezvous/ZeroConf fame. Released before the TCP stack matured on MacOS, and never updated since 1995. Still a great game, runs in black and white on classic macs or color, easily networked up to 16 players via PhoneNet (well, sometimes you get netsplits after 8 or 10). One thing I love about the Mac platform is this game was compiled for 680x0, runs in powerpc emulation, and in os x via classic, over the airport, across the world. It still works! I remember: - ladmo and indy bot - spiking pillboxes - designing maps - wasting entire lunch breaks and afternoons - 5 trees to build a boat - pillboxes have longer range than you, fire faster and take more damage. go out and capture them all. - collecting your teams pillboxes and breaking alliance. hehehe. - desperately waiting for your builder to parachute back in.
Alright, that website told a nice story but it isn't true. The logo was designed at Regis McKenna Inc., a Silicon Valley business consulting firm that then also had a graphics design house internal. They did much of the work for Apple Computer business and marketing strategy, esp for introduction of Lisa and The Macintosh.
The six-color logo was inspired by a series of print posters make for Ford Motor company, think late seventies design.
How do I know this, I used to work MIS there and we had piles of old Macs, including lots of the really early models. Alas, they no longer do consulting to Apple, nor do they use Macintoshes anymore. Held out until 1998 though, so don't bag on them too much.
Also, I suggest that Slashdot users look into the background of the politicians whose actions we write about as well as the other pundits and talking heads we hear about. The concern is over money and interpretations of our Civil Rights, so issues are politically charged. Let's find out what the slant is before making a cynical assumption, although in this case, likely a justified one.
That Rep. Howard Berman is supporting legislation to further the RIAA's defense against alleged Fair Use violations is not surprising given that his district, 26th Congressional, is in Los Angeles. http://www.house.gov/berman/district.htm In fact, it even includes N. Hollywood. A reminder, Hollywood is not only famous for the film industry, but also for its music industry. This is where the biggies like Capitol Records are located, his district is one of the places the influential people working in the industry live, and it would not be too much of a stretch to assume they are lobbying for his support. Perhaps being a Democrat, many may have even supported his campaign and now he feels obliged to look after the interests of his constituents. Such is politics. Unfortunately, he's on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, and he's the ranking Dem. His suggestions may carry some weight in the committee, but it wouldn't likely proceed beyond there to a floor vote.
Additionally, his background is as a lawyer and a beauracrat, not an expert in technology and the internet. Hopefully they will call for some good testimony if this proposal isn't just smoke.