My first ever mouse was for my Sinclair Spectrum (Timex) back in 84ish and not surprisingly it only worked with a couple of art programs. It also was impossible to draw with because one of the rollers would stop going at certain angles leaving horizontal or vertical lines instead of the lovely curve you were trying for.
Mice were pretty dull affairs apart from a brief stint with an Amiga optical one that required a special mousemat that was alas prone to scratching and subsequent accuracy problems.
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer was my fave for a while mostly because I could get my whole hand on it rather than a few digits but then the Logitech Dual Optical took over (now on my PowerBook G4) then the MX500 (no rubbing your thumb as it moves) took pride of place on desktop machine.
I briefly experimented with wireless mice but they weren't fast enough for gaming - and that Wacom Graphire with tablet + mouse was awful.
There were rumours that Apple were going to be coming out with some sort of squigy mouse that could be programmed for all sorts of squeezes and taps but alas that was some time back. Anything is better than the one buttoned puck that shipped with the iMac.
There again even that puck is better than the IBM 'nipple' or a touchpad...
I guess this means we're not being left behind again. I've got my black one right here and I'm pretty sure red is available - both since their UK launch.
I haven't felt this honoured since Silent Hill 3 turned up... or when we got the English version of Shenmue II.
"between a single-processor Dell 2.53GHz Pentium® 4 -- the Dell Precision Workstation 340 -- and the fastest Macintosh then available -- a 1GHz dual-processor G4. "
The graphs then go on to show a "Dell P4 3.06Ghz" versus a "Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz" without a mention as to why. Have the test been re-run by Adobe on new hardware? Double-typos?
When you can't get something as simple as the CPU speeds right it doesn't inspire much confidence in any of the other figures.;-)
Oh, and one more thing. Apple's WWDC developer conference has been moved back to June.
The WWDC info page states "Get an in-depth look at the future of the Mac platform and a preview release of the next major version of Mac OS X, codenamed "Panther" "
Maybe we'll see exactly what direction they are taking the hardware in at that event...
Apple has clearly stated it believes in a laptop future. There is also no way they can drop current Mac application compatibility.
Current speculation in the Mac community is the use of the IBM PowerPC 970 processor which should debut soon at 1.8Ghz. IBM have clearly stated it will support AltiVec instructions - previously only implemented by Motorola with IBM having no plans to use this technology themselves. Couple this with the rumours that some Apple OEM partners claim to have seen PPC970 based motherboard designs...
And then we have Dvorak who goes out on his own to claim a switch to Intel Itanium with a PowerPC inside for backwards compatibility. Quite how the hardware and OS would cope with two totally different processors is quite beyond me but surely the important question is how this would fit with a laptop.
The Itanium processor is not available in laptop form. It's current form requring around 100W vs the PowerPC 7455 (G4 processor used in PowerBooks) mere 20W range and you'll see that just isn't happening. Put both in the same box as Dvorak suggest? The heat and power consumption alone would make it impossible.
This isn't just limited to software but in fact to all consumer goods.
Consumers these days are swayed by a combination of price and how "new" something is. Quality and service have long since been forgotten by too many people.
At the moment there are still companies out there that really try to create well refined quality products but because they'll never sell as many you have to pay the extra. (Maglight, Apple, Mercedes...)
The problem is somewhat amplified with software in that it won't wear out over time so instead they slap a new user interface and a bunch of features on every 18 months and expect you to pay again or they'll be out of business.
This doesn't really apply to free software which has it's own set of problems in that users often don't know what they are missing with gradual incremental versions.
A combination of free software with regular automatic updates would perhaps be a great start.
"Thomas Midgely adds lead to gasoline to stop power-draining knocking."
As if burning fuel wasn't bad enough already add a toxic metal to it to really juice things up. It's already banned in many countries including the USA and UK.
This site has further commentary and also covers his discovery of Freons that later helped damage the ozone layer including how his final invention killed him.
Surely the whole idea of such an article is to choose the inventions with the benefit of hindsight.
Did you actually read the article? These are kids and old games. Nobody mentioned unreleased state-of-the-art 3D games.
I doubt very much that VMWare is capable of utilising SMP and if you want to run old games you'd be hosting Windows 98 not Windows 2000 of which you could expect better performance.
The fact is that people often blame whatever app/OS they are using at the time of the crash for it's reason.
I've used plenty of Windows NT/2K/XP machines in my time and it's a long time since I saw a blue screen. The last few blue screens I did see were dodgy nvidia beta drivers and dodgy VIA USB chipset hardware.
If you've ever looked at the source for drivers you'll know just how buggy hardware often is with the drivers full of workarounds.
I was not suggesting everybodys Windows machines are stable and the fact is that Windows and Linux exhibit quite different behaviour on the same hardware. Let's also not overlook the fact that the Slashdot readership almost certainly includes it's fair share of overclockers and home-constructed boxes.
I knew I'd get a flaming from the usual pro-linux crowd who are unable to accept the fact that Windows 2K/XP are very capable operating systems.
Microsoft's behaviour and business practices are however, another matter.
I assure you that old games should not be able to crash Windows XP.
If it is crashing then it's either bad drivers or a hardware problem. If you are using the default Windows XP drivers then it's almost certainly hardware related in which case Linux would be just as unstable.
Why not set the machine to dual-boot or try out one of the many CD-based Linux distro's to see how they get on for now without all the associated hassle if they have to revert back.
If they are happy with Linux and still wish to use Windows for the odd game then take a look at VMWare - yes it's more outlay but it will keep them happy for those games/apps they really want.
This is also happening here in Europe now that the EU have provided a standard called EOBD for all newly-developed cars which is actually the OBD-2 system which has been available for some time.
This months issue of Elektor Electronics has full details on the interface, with next months issue presenting a do-it-yourself EOBD diagnosis adapter. They also do an OBD-2 to RS232 adapter for those geeks wanting to play using their laptop in true "The Fast 'n The Furious" style.
Right, the people who made his DVD writer will have paid licencing fees to read/write to DVD discs, decode CSS etc.
Sure, if he's just writing files to it then thats pretty much the end of it.
iDVD however is a DVD authoring package and as such does MPEG encoding, Dolby Digital encoding etc. There is a seperate licence fee for this by the manufacturer of the software.
Seems you missed my line;..drives (which will have just the standard drive licences, not those associated with DVD encoding etc)...
i.e. All drive manufacturers will pay the fees relating to raw reading/writing of DVD's, CSS, etc.
What they won't be doing is paying the MPEG/Dolby Digital encoding fees etc. These will be paid by people producing software that actually does this. i.e. DVD Studio Pro, Roxio Toast...
Apple admittedly pulled a fast one by saying they'd pay the encoding fees on machine shipped with the Superdrive and that their free iDVD software shipped to everybody would only work on those said drives, but that's what they did.
The fact is that any software or hardware utilizing DVD technologies has to pay a licence fee.
I clearly recall a discussion recently where it was revealed that Apple do not pay any such recording licence fees on iDVD but instead on the SuperDrive in order to keep costs down.
By allowing people to distribute hacks to let their software work on other drives (which will have just the standard drive licences, not those associated with DVD encoding etc) Apple will loose their position with the DVD licencing authority and end up having to pay such licences for every copy of iDVD.
Yes, perhaps they should have done this but the fact is the software itself is free. Windows doesn't even come with DVD playback let alone authoring and I don't recall anything similar in a Linux distro.
Apple do offer DVD Studio Pro for $1000 that is fully licenced and will work with any mac-compatible DVD-R drive or alternatively pick up a copy of Roxio Toast 5 Titanium for $100.
As somebody who has setup IIS on a large number of boxes varying from banks, lawyers and hosting services I can quite clearly say YES.
On all these boxes we leave only.asp and.asa ISAPI applications loaded, nothing else, and certainly no FrontPage extensions.
Result? I've had to patch the servers TWICE in the last 18 months or so.
The basic difference is not that IIS or Linux is less secure than the other, it's the approach.
Microsoft's approach is "make it easy over security" where anyone can run IIS. I don't think anyone can deny that setting up Apache is more difficult than hitting the play button in IIS Admin.
The result? They go off, learn about Apache switching on only what they want and maybe learning a few important things along the way.
The IIS Lockdown Tool is a start and is included with Windows.NET, the default being everything disabled. There is hope yet.
If anyone really thinks that a buffer overflow in an obsolete server extension (that no competent sys admin would have loaded) is really more serious than a bug that kills X-Windows boxes just by setting large fonts on a web page then they have got their head so far stuck up their arse I doubt they'll ever get out.
I think it's time I found a replacement for Slashdot, the news is getting so biased it's nothing more than glorified Linux-love.
What's more worrying is the number of open-source programmers I'm speaking to who are also looking for something more neutral.
I tried posting as a news story but despite covering practically every serious Microsoft security hole there is Slashdot doesn't feel fit to mention a serious X-Windows/Mozilla DoS that only requires a web page to have a very large font set.
The result can be a terminated XFree86 or a frozen box with you reaching for the reset button. Full details at The Register.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a specific interface between web server and code. This interface relies on a "shelling" style system.
PHP does not use CGI neither does ASP. By your own statement you state "A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine..." oblivious to the fact that neither ASP, PHP or any of the modern decent languages comply with these "rules".
Both environments utilise intstructions within the HTML code that are recognised and subsequently executed by interpreters often loaded in the web server application space.
They DO NOT rely on environment variables, command lines and input/output files all of which are part of the CGI standard. CGI is quite rightly on it's last legs because shelling out to executables is both a security risk and processor intensive.
Perhaps you should be more careful what you are basing your ignorant comments on.
Slashdot Mirror
This wasn't a case of Apple *excluding* Windows.
If you've ever used the iTunes music store you'll know it's completely integrated with their iTunes software.
Which is Mac only.
And takes time to rewrite for Windows.
My first ever mouse was for my Sinclair Spectrum (Timex) back in 84ish and not surprisingly it only worked with a couple of art programs. It also was impossible to draw with because one of the rollers would stop going at certain angles leaving horizontal or vertical lines instead of the lovely curve you were trying for.
Mice were pretty dull affairs apart from a brief stint with an Amiga optical one that required a special mousemat that was alas prone to scratching and subsequent accuracy problems.
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer was my fave for a while mostly because I could get my whole hand on it rather than a few digits but then the Logitech Dual Optical took over (now on my PowerBook G4) then the MX500 (no rubbing your thumb as it moves) took pride of place on desktop machine.
I briefly experimented with wireless mice but they weren't fast enough for gaming - and that Wacom Graphire with tablet + mouse was awful.
There were rumours that Apple were going to be coming out with some sort of squigy mouse that could be programmed for all sorts of squeezes and taps but alas that was some time back. Anything is better than the one buttoned puck that shipped with the iMac.
There again even that puck is better than the IBM 'nipple' or a touchpad...
I live on a small island where news is scarce so I can understand the reporting of people's opinions as "news".
/. doesn't need to revert to this to fill the front page - if it does then I guess the IT economy really is in a bad state.
Normally news breaks followed by days of opinions and counter opinions until something else happens - be it on local radio or paper.
Surely
I guess this means we're not being left behind again. I've got my black one right here and I'm pretty sure red is available - both since their UK launch.
I haven't felt this honoured since Silent Hill 3 turned up... or when we got the English version of Shenmue II.
Yay, go UK!
The opening part of that page states;
;-)
"between a single-processor Dell 2.53GHz Pentium® 4 -- the Dell Precision Workstation 340 -- and the fastest Macintosh then available -- a 1GHz dual-processor G4. "
The graphs then go on to show a "Dell P4 3.06Ghz" versus a "Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz" without a mention as to why. Have the test been re-run by Adobe on new hardware? Double-typos?
When you can't get something as simple as the CPU speeds right it doesn't inspire much confidence in any of the other figures.
Oh, and one more thing. Apple's WWDC developer conference has been moved back to June.
The WWDC info page states "Get an in-depth look at the future of the Mac platform and a preview release of the next major version of Mac OS X, codenamed "Panther" "
Maybe we'll see exactly what direction they are taking the hardware in at that event...
Apple has clearly stated it believes in a laptop future. There is also no way they can drop current Mac application compatibility.
Current speculation in the Mac community is the use of the IBM PowerPC 970 processor which should debut soon at 1.8Ghz. IBM have clearly stated it will support AltiVec instructions - previously only implemented by Motorola with IBM having no plans to use this technology themselves. Couple this with the rumours that some Apple OEM partners claim to have seen PPC970 based motherboard designs...
And then we have Dvorak who goes out on his own to claim a switch to Intel Itanium with a PowerPC inside for backwards compatibility. Quite how the hardware and OS would cope with two totally different processors is quite beyond me but surely the important question is how this would fit with a laptop.
The Itanium processor is not available in laptop form. It's current form requring around 100W vs the PowerPC 7455 (G4 processor used in PowerBooks) mere 20W range and you'll see that just isn't happening. Put both in the same box as Dvorak suggest? The heat and power consumption alone would make it impossible.
Like anything is accurately portrayed in the movies.
Car's don't blow up with a single gunshot and rarely in a crash and you can't throw away the laws of physics when having a fight or shooting weaponry.
They're movies, get over it. I doubt any doctors or lawyers find their roles portrayed particularly accurate either.
This isn't just limited to software but in fact to all consumer goods.
Consumers these days are swayed by a combination of price and how "new" something is. Quality and service have long since been forgotten by too many people.
At the moment there are still companies out there that really try to create well refined quality products but because they'll never sell as many you have to pay the extra. (Maglight, Apple, Mercedes...)
The problem is somewhat amplified with software in that it won't wear out over time so instead they slap a new user interface and a bunch of features on every 18 months and expect you to pay again or they'll be out of business.
This doesn't really apply to free software which has it's own set of problems in that users often don't know what they are missing with gradual incremental versions.
A combination of free software with regular automatic updates would perhaps be a great start.
"Thomas Midgely adds lead to gasoline to stop power-draining knocking."
As if burning fuel wasn't bad enough already add a toxic metal to it to really juice things up. It's already banned in many countries including the USA and UK.
This site has further commentary and also covers his discovery of Freons that later helped damage the ozone layer including how his final invention killed him.
Surely the whole idea of such an article is to choose the inventions with the benefit of hindsight.
Did you actually read the article? These are kids and old games. Nobody mentioned unreleased state-of-the-art 3D games.
I doubt very much that VMWare is capable of utilising SMP and if you want to run old games you'd be hosting Windows 98 not Windows 2000 of which you could expect better performance.
I said *should not be able to*
The fact is that people often blame whatever app/OS they are using at the time of the crash for it's reason.
I've used plenty of Windows NT/2K/XP machines in my time and it's a long time since I saw a blue screen. The last few blue screens I did see were dodgy nvidia beta drivers and dodgy VIA USB chipset hardware.
If you've ever looked at the source for drivers you'll know just how buggy hardware often is with the drivers full of workarounds.
I was not suggesting everybodys Windows machines are stable and the fact is that Windows and Linux exhibit quite different behaviour on the same hardware. Let's also not overlook the fact that the Slashdot readership almost certainly includes it's fair share of overclockers and home-constructed boxes.
I knew I'd get a flaming from the usual pro-linux crowd who are unable to accept the fact that Windows 2K/XP are very capable operating systems.
Microsoft's behaviour and business practices are however, another matter.
I assure you that old games should not be able to crash Windows XP.
If it is crashing then it's either bad drivers or a hardware problem. If you are using the default Windows XP drivers then it's almost certainly hardware related in which case Linux would be just as unstable.
Why not set the machine to dual-boot or try out one of the many CD-based Linux distro's to see how they get on for now without all the associated hassle if they have to revert back.
If they are happy with Linux and still wish to use Windows for the odd game then take a look at VMWare - yes it's more outlay but it will keep them happy for those games/apps they really want.
[)amien
This is also happening here in Europe now that the EU have provided a standard called EOBD for all newly-developed cars which is actually the OBD-2 system which has been available for some time.
This months issue of Elektor Electronics has full details on the interface, with next months issue presenting a do-it-yourself EOBD diagnosis adapter. They also do an OBD-2 to RS232 adapter for those geeks wanting to play using their laptop in true "The Fast 'n The Furious" style.
Once again it is assumed that nothing happened outside the USA.
Believe it or not there were, and still are, plenty of BBS's out here.
Before you say "well add it" - the site requires USA area codes...
Sigh.
Right, the people who made his DVD writer will have paid licencing fees to read/write to DVD discs, decode CSS etc.
Sure, if he's just writing files to it then thats pretty much the end of it.
iDVD however is a DVD authoring package and as such does MPEG encoding, Dolby Digital encoding etc. There is a seperate licence fee for this by the manufacturer of the software.
It is not an *end user* licencing fee.
Seems you missed my line; ..drives (which will have just the standard drive licences, not those associated with DVD encoding etc)...
i.e. All drive manufacturers will pay the fees relating to raw reading/writing of DVD's, CSS, etc.
What they won't be doing is paying the MPEG/Dolby Digital encoding fees etc. These will be paid by people producing software that actually does this. i.e. DVD Studio Pro, Roxio Toast...
Apple admittedly pulled a fast one by saying they'd pay the encoding fees on machine shipped with the Superdrive and that their free iDVD software shipped to everybody would only work on those said drives, but that's what they did.
[)
No, Windows XP can only play DVD's if third party codecs are installed such as those that come with WinDVD.
[)
The fact is that any software or hardware utilizing DVD technologies has to pay a licence fee.
I clearly recall a discussion recently where it was revealed that Apple do not pay any such recording licence fees on iDVD but instead on the SuperDrive in order to keep costs down.
By allowing people to distribute hacks to let their software work on other drives (which will have just the standard drive licences, not those associated with DVD encoding etc) Apple will loose their position with the DVD licencing authority and end up having to pay such licences for every copy of iDVD.
Yes, perhaps they should have done this but the fact is the software itself is free. Windows doesn't even come with DVD playback let alone authoring and I don't recall anything similar in a Linux distro.
Apple do offer DVD Studio Pro for $1000 that is fully licenced and will work with any mac-compatible DVD-R drive or alternatively pick up a copy of Roxio Toast 5 Titanium for $100.
Not everything in life is free.
Get used to it.
As somebody who has setup IIS on a large number of boxes varying from banks, lawyers and hosting services I can quite clearly say YES.
.asp and .asa ISAPI applications loaded, nothing else, and certainly no FrontPage extensions.
On all these boxes we leave only
Result? I've had to patch the servers TWICE in the last 18 months or so.
The basic difference is not that IIS or Linux is less secure than the other, it's the approach.
Microsoft's approach is "make it easy over security" where anyone can run IIS. I don't think anyone can deny that setting up Apache is more difficult than hitting the play button in IIS Admin.
The result? They go off, learn about Apache switching on only what they want and maybe learning a few important things along the way.
The IIS Lockdown Tool is a start and is included with Windows.NET, the default being everything disabled. There is hope yet.
If anyone really thinks that a buffer overflow in an obsolete server extension (that no competent sys admin would have loaded) is really more serious than a bug that kills X-Windows boxes just by setting large fonts on a web page then they have got their head so far stuck up their arse I doubt they'll ever get out.
I think it's time I found a replacement for Slashdot, the news is getting so biased it's nothing more than glorified Linux-love.
What's more worrying is the number of open-source programmers I'm speaking to who are also looking for something more neutral.
bye
I tried posting as a news story but despite covering practically every serious Microsoft security hole there is Slashdot doesn't feel fit to mention a serious X-Windows/Mozilla DoS that only requires a web page to have a very large font set.
The result can be a terminated XFree86 or a frozen box with you reaching for the reset button. Full details at The Register.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a specific interface between web server and code. This interface relies on a "shelling" style system.
PHP does not use CGI neither does ASP. By your own statement you state "A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine..." oblivious to the fact that neither ASP, PHP or any of the modern decent languages comply with these "rules".
Both environments utilise intstructions within the HTML code that are recognised and subsequently executed by interpreters often loaded in the web server application space.
They DO NOT rely on environment variables, command lines and input/output files all of which are part of the CGI standard. CGI is quite rightly on it's last legs because shelling out to executables is both a security risk and processor intensive.
Perhaps you should be more careful what you are basing your ignorant comments on.
Having never had the math skills to handle 3D graphics, just looking through the documentation for Ogre and it all sounds... well, easy.
Setup a scene, add some objects, add a camera object and point it round with a few simple methods!
Bah, and I've only just got the hang of em.
I hope somebody's going to write some automatic conversion tools because going back to one even a few days later is a hairy experience indeed.