> *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at
> this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
The same AC also says that there are "36400 FreeBSD users", "7000 users of OpenBSD", "1400 NetBSD users", and "700 users of BSD/OS", for a total of 45,500. Of course the *BSD_is_dead'ers have been saying that for a while. Hm, no mention of OS X, which is based on FreeBSD, and therefore is a *BSD.
In the last three weeks alone, the number of OS X users has shot up by 150,000! That's the number of new iMacs preordered, the first computers to be shipped from the factory with OS X (*BSD) as the default OS. They (and the new OS X running G4's) began shipping this past Monday. Check it out: http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0201/28.imac.p hp.
The ongoing success of OS X, coupled with the frequent upgrades to the other BSD versions I've seen posted on Slashdot (including the one that started this thread), conclusively proves that *BSD is *NOT* dead, far from it. *BSD is alive, growing, thriving, full of vitality and hope for a bright future! Thanks in large part to Apple, *BSD can be enjoyed, not only by hobbyists, but by schoolchildren, scientists, parents, professionals in graphics, 3D, and film. Even by lawyers!;)
Beyond time, beyond terror, beyond death, Mothra:
Your heart can reach...Life!
Heck, Mothra could have told you all about the evil of "American film producers" 40 years ago (that's who Nelson wanted to sell her fairy priestesses to). The evidence of her long grudge against them was mostly covered up in the American releases of her movies, but in the original Japanese versions (especially of "Mothra" and "Godzilla vs. the Seamonster"), it is quite evident.
Now it seems the nasty sharks of the MPAA (membership includes Warner Brothers) are at it again. That's a really bad idea. Mothra is in Japan right now. She has her wind powers back and even a stinger (still trying to wrap my brain around the Goddess of Peace sporting a stinger). She's annoyed enough over the whole thing about "Mothra 3" not being released in the states. Unless the MPAA (and the RIAA and Microsoft, etc.) want to deal with an angry category 5 hurricane, they might want to take this opportunity to mend their ways.;)
Oh, and Tristar has managed to anger not only Mothra, but Godzilla and King Ghidora as well. Frankly, I'm surprised that the chunk of asteroid that hit the Pennsylvanian corn field didn't hit Tristar's offices -- King Ghidora is not very forgiving. Good thing the Strongest Foe had a hankering for some pop corn.;) They can still make ammends: release "Mothra 3" and "Godzilla x Megaguiras" to DVD now, put out a special DVD collector's version of the original "Mothra" this May on the 40th anniversary of its US release, and put GMK out in the theaters either this summer, or in December. And quit the greedy shark routine. (Might want to also talk to parent company Sony about putting an OS in their PCs that Godzilla won't stomp people on sight for using.;)
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
> Of course no self-respecting programmer would ever code in
> applscript, not even to see what it was like. Why anyone would like to
> code like this when they can use more cryptic languages like perl or
> haskall is beyond me.
>
> The scary thing is I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not at this
> point.
Well, in case you are not being sarcastic, and for the benefit of those who seriously believe the above quote: AppleScript is not a programming language for serious applications. It is a macro language, for everybody to use. The thing that AppleScript does (and what computers were designed for) is to automate repetitive tasks. It isn't just for coding either. You can push the old record button, and record your actions as AppleScript. You can then use the recorded script as the start of your own script, customizing it easily, because it is easy to understand. AppleScript is there so graphics professionals, video professionals, scientists, etc. can automate their work and make their jobs easier and more productive.
Apple has released AppleScript Studio for OS X, which allows one to create real applications with the Aqua GUI in AppleScript. While this is nice for entering data for and controlling your AppleScript, you are still not going to see a lot of software on the store shelves written in AppleScript. AppleScript Studio is to AppleScript what Perl/Tk is to Perl.
Though it would be nice if we had a Cocoa/Perl wrapper thingie to let us write Perl apps for Aqua.
> Question: is it _being_ a monopoly that is bad for consumers?
Of course not. It is possible (at least in an ideal world) to have a company become a monopoly because it has the best quality products for a fair price and it always treats the customers fairly. Once this fictional company got to be a monopoly, they always try extra hard to make sure they are giving everybody a fair shake, constantly innovating, keeping those customers and their employies happy, etc. I don't see our fictional company getting into any antitrust trouble.
Microsoft's deal is that it got its monopoly by being a bully, it is keeping its monopoly by being a meanie, and it is using that monopoly to get itself more monopolies so it can have more people to bully and be mean to. To Microsoft, competition is not a fair game between friendly rivals. It is a brutal conquest, a war whose victims litter the landscape, and in which Microsoft cheats any chance it can get. Microsoft has raised prices, tossed quality, service, and real innovation in the dumpster, and in general, has made a bloody illegal nuisance of itself. It has committed crimes, and it looks like it will never pay for them. Microsoft thinks it is above the law. The problem is not an overbearing government, but one that chickened out at the end.
Microsoft can escape the law, but can it escape justice? Even if the dissenting states loose, there are still civil suits that can be brought based on the guilty verdict. Like say, the one Netscape just filed.;)
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
"Mosura", 1961
First of all, I was in error in my earlier post when I said that AOL/TW was only a member of the MPAA. http://www.riaa.org/About-Members-1.cfm shows several subsidiaries of AOL/TW that are members of the RIAA as well.
HanzoSan writes:
> I dont think the entire company is going to focus on saving the less
> profitable content department at the expense of the highly profitable
> services department.
>
> Even Microsoft knows services are more profitable.
Well that would make more sense, but that is not today's business philosophy: Content is king, and services exist only to wring more profit out of the content. That is why AOL/TW is primarily a conglomerate of content delivery services surrounding a core of content (http://www.aoltimewarner.com/about/index.html). That is why Microsoft is getting into services. That is why the MPAA and RIAA sharks and Microsoft go on and on about their stupid IP "rights". That is what is driving this whole, idiotic, "I have content, bow down and pay, pay, pay!" movement.
You'd think they could just generate content (say a movie), sell it, and then just generate more content. But no, the greedy sharks have to keep generating profit on the same content, every time you view it, for as long as you view it, every place you view it, etc. So they need Digital Rights Management to totally control when and how and where you view something, so that you can pay for it all. DRM is their tollbooth.
> AOL the services ISP company divisions [snip]
But the AOL division isn't about the ISP. AOL was always about selling access to their online content, long before the merger with TW.
The only interest AOL/TW would have in Red Hat would be producing their own tightly controlled OS to deliver their content with no dependence on Microsoft. There are two problems with that:
1) Open Source is not very conducive to tight control.
2) Microsoft now has a patent on a DRM OS. They'd still have to pay a license fee to MS to make their own DRM OS.
Oh, and if anybody thinks they are going to share their DRM technology with the rest of the Linux world: think again.
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have got to pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, "We need you today!"
Yeah, xbox was always intended to be a home Millenium/.Net terminal. The game console thing was all they could get developer support for initially, but now that it is out there, they can build it into whatever they want. Ultimately, they might just subsidize the cost of the hardware upgrades into the.Net subscription prices, since services seem to be more important to them than selling anything of value. It won't stop with just entertainment. Expect to see Microsoft Works.Net, Microsoft Money.Net, etc. on the XBox, with both programs and data stored on Microsoft's servers.
Oh, and home PC makers? I'd go hunting for a new OS now, because Microsoft obviously intends to replace you.
There are two flaws that will stand in the way of Microsoft's Millenium (thousand year rule). One is broadband: it is so ready that some news sites are starting to urge people to stay with dialup.
The other is Microsoft's ignorance of the gaming console industry. Xbox has to succeed there first. If the lack of reliability doesn't get them, switching to new hardware in less than a year or two will kill them. Sega was going great with Genesis. Instead of switching consoles, they put out hardware addons to let Genesis owners play Saturn games and still keep their Genesis games. Then after we had switched to 32x, they dropped it and introduced Saturn (which wasn't compatible with 32x or Genesis games). That left the people most likely to convert to Saturn sitting there mad because they had been snowed into spending money they might have spent on Saturn on 32x, and left out in the cold. I didn't forgive them until the Dreamcast, and they dumped that too! If Microsoft wants to put HomeStation into homes with xbox within two years of people spending $300 on xbox, they are going to have to be fully xbox compatible, and free!
What happens when you embrace and extend Godzilla? Nuclear heartburn!
See "Godzilla 2000" for details.
> How could there be 'Sources familiar with the situation' when they
> are basically saying there is no 'situation' and they have not discussed
> a deal?
Basically, the CNet article is a rumor. They could not get representatives of AOL/TW, Red Hat, or even Microsoft to comment one way or the other. So their sources must be external to any company involved.
Anyway, you and I would count as "sources familiar with the situation", since we've both read about it and posted our opinions on Slashdot.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
"Mosura", 1961
> Time Warner however, is dangerous, isnt Time Warner a part of the
> RIAA? Their influence in Linux is what would worry me.
They (the Warner part) are a member of that barrel of sharks called the MPAA (see http://www.mpaa.org/about/), and as such, are part of all the digital rights idiocy that has been going on. That puts them in the dangerous to evil category, as far as Slashdot is concerned. I'm not that fond of Red Hat personally, but as a major Linux distributor, I think that being bought out by a major content conglomerate would be a "bad" thing. AOL/TW has their uses as a foil to Microsoft's.Net, but I wouldn't get too friendly with them: they might just bite.
Despite the silly incedent with a part of IBM supporting putting DRM into harddrives, overall I think they'd be a better choice for a buyer. IBM has already done the evil empire thing, to the point of playing footsie with Nazi Germany. They got slapped down hard for it, and have had a chance to learn from their experiences. While I wouldn't trust the new IBM 100%, they are by far a kinder, gentler, wiser company now. Having their own distribution would benefit them with the ability to take Linux to the point where they could use it for everything they do. Having the IBM brand on Linux would further legitimize it. Both could benefit.
"What do you think Mothra would do?" - Moll, "Mosura" 1996
> AOL/Time-Warner already owns pretty much all sources of media so
> this could be a way for them to really compete with the leviathan that
> is Microsoft.
That's the problem: AOL/TW is a leviathan itself. I'm not certain whether it is as evil as Microsoft or not, but being a Mothra devotee, I have come to be wary of the greedy sharks known as "American film producers" (Mothra's most ancient foes). AOL/TW certainly does have shark genes in their conglomerate. It would do no good to be so worried about a tiger shark that one doesn't notice the great white sneaking up until it is too late.
Besides, I doubt that AOL is that interested in putting out AOL/TW/RH Linux as their exclusive platform, because Red Hat is not the only Microsoft competitor that AOL is making friendly overtures towards. AOL is releasing a client for OS X, and is now providing (under the Netscape name) the default portal for Macs. AOL has also been talking to Sony about AOL for the Playstation 2.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
"Mosura", 1961
> I agree that keyboarding is one area where windows is in fact better.
> Hopefully Apple will integrate this into os 10.2...
Just because you don't know about them, doesn't mean that they aren't there. The "Mac OS 9 Bible" lists three pages of keyboard shortcuts (pages 92-94) for the Finder alone. Looking in the Apple Help for 10.1.2 (searching for "keyboard shortcuts") reveals lots of entries on keyboard shortcuts. If anything, the Mac has as many keyboard shortcuts or more than Windows!
Some of my favorites:
Cmd-z Undo
Cmd-x Cut
Cmd-c Copy
Cmd-v Paste
Cmd-a Select All
Cmd-f Find
Cmd-g Find Again
Cmd-s Save
Cmd-o Open
Cmd-w Close window
Cmd-q Quit application
In Finder Only:
Cmd-e Eject drive whose icon is highlighted (have a catcher's mit handy, some Zip drives take this too literally;)
Apple also took Scotty to heart. Both OS 9 and OS X (at least X.1.*) have voice shortcuts known as "Speakable Items". See the Speech icon in the System Preferences in OS X, or the control panel in OS 9, for further details. And yes, you can make your own "Speakable Items" with Apple Script.;)
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp!;)
> It's because of companies such as Microsoft that the US economy is
> doing as well as it is.
In case you have forgotten recent history, and have no idea of the current shape of the US (and world) economy: we are in a recession. In the summer of 2000, things were great. In the fall of 2000, Apple (who was doing so fantastic that Wall Street people were going to upgrade it from dramatic recovery to outstanding growth) called out a serious earnings warning. The warning was due in part to a blunder or two, and part to Microsoft dumping all their Apple stock on the market, but it was a sign of things to come. The industry laughed and proclaimed the death of Apple. The laughter didn't last long as one by one, the PC makers called out their own earnings warnings, sending the industry into a downward spiral. The dot.com mess certainly didn't help. The conflict and uncertainity of the US Presidential election later in 2000 spread the IT problems to the rest of the economy, as people lost faith in their leadership. By spring of 2001, the recession was here. The terrorist attacks in 9/11 sent things spiraling further downward worldwide.
> So many people hate MS and want them to die out of business but this
> destruction would only harm our economy.
No it wouldn't. Apple, the one desktop computer maker that does not use Windows as its OS, quickly recovered, and was making profits in the millions by the next quarter after their stumble. They have not laid off thousands of workers, they have opened 27 new stores. It's the Windows based PC makers that were and are suffering the most. If Microsoft disappeared tomorrow, the PC makers would simply hunt up another OS, the software makers would port to that OS, and life would go on. The PC makers would be free to better differentiate their products. The absence of Microsoft's much-abused monopoly would bring real competition, which would bring some healthy fresh air to the industry.
After all, the PC industry can't get too much more unhealthy than it is now -- with Microsoft.
> Notice how it's always the 'immature' LUSERS (Linux Users) that diss
> the all superior *BSD over Linux.
Oh, grow up. I'm sick of all the infighting between OS's here. *BSD hates Linux, Linux hates *BSD and absolutely can't stand Apple (due in part to some silly prejudice over mouse buttons), etc. This is Microsoft's way, it should NOT be our way. *BSD (including OS X), Linux, etc. should be as siblings, united against a common, and deadly foe: Microsoft. Some sibling rivalry is healthy, but it should be with a sense of fun and fair play, not cruelly calling the users of another OS "LUSERS".
BTW, Microsoft is not our foe because it is a monopoly. It is our foe because of its predatory business practices, cruelty to its own users, and its breaking of the law. I want to see its monopoly destroyed to remove its power to do more harm to the PC industry. I do not want to see it destroyed, but rather become a kinder company with fair business practices and better products. Something like IBM's "Peace, Love, Linux!".
> It's kinda funny, considering they say that because they feel scared,
> alone, uncertain of their future and most of all, very insecure.
While you are at it, learn some compassion! It is very sad to see someone who thinks it is funny to see others scared and insecure (whether true or not).
"Heart can reach where hand cannot. Climb over any wall..."
Mothra (via Moll) "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
> Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all
> practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
>
> Fact: *BSD is dead
Silly "*BSD is dead" troll! The hopes of all your kind were permanently dashed on January 7, 2002. On that day, Apple made BSD-based OS X the default OS on all of its computers. The battle to break up Microsoft's monopoly has begun, and BSD is leading the way!!!
Crawl back into your hole, silly troll. With a new version of FreeBSD, and OS X on all Macs sold, *BSD lives! Not even a miracle can kill it.
Beyond time, beyond terror, beyond death, Mothra:
Your heart can reach...Life!
> All the same, have you ever seen Godzilla 2000? There are a lot of
> Macs in that movie
That's because Toho *loves* their Macs, and Godzilla and Mothra are Apple's biggest fans. You might also enjoy the following all Apple kaiju roundup:
"Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla 2": MechaGodzilla is designed by GForce using a huge amount of Macs.
"Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla": Miki, a telepath usually associated with Godzilla, is given a mission by Mothra's Cosmos to protect Godzilla from the humans so that Godzilla can save the Earth (and his son) from SpaceGodzilla. Miki views the coming of SpaceGodzilla on a Mac.
"Godzilla vs. Destroyer": The grandson of Dr. Yemane (from the first Godzilla movie in 1954) proudly displays a poster with a big Apple logo in his dorm room.
"Rebirth of Mothra": No Macs here, Apple is in deep trouble (December 14, 1996). What's a Mac-loving, heroic, wonder-working deity to do, when all she has left is a charred apple sapling (which appears several times in the movie, watch for it) in a bleak, scorched landscape? Simple. Resurrect it (and the surrounding 8,000 acres of ex-forest). The little sapling puts out leaves, and before you know it, is a whopping big tree on a grassy hill with flowers and an even bigger moth landing in the valley below. Days later, Apple makes a surprise announcement: Steve Jobs is coming back. Taiki's quote is telling: "Nobody is gonna die, mister. Mothra's gonna come and save us!"
"Rebirth of Mothra 2" (12/13/1997): The Mac is back, with Mothra's little avatar Fairy perched on top! Mothra herself shows the future: transforming into Aqua Mothra and shooting little light blue X's at her foe.
Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora, and Baragon are currently starring in a movie in Japan (see www.godzilla.co.jp for more details). I don't know if Macs are in it, but the director was sure bragging about all he could do with his Mac this time around. (If you ever want to see Godzilla and Mothra in the US theatres again, write Tristar!)
> How do I know all of this? Well, remembering all the iMacs involved,
> I watched in yesterday in celebration of the probable new iMacs. And I
> don't even have one. So yes, I'm sad...
No you are not. I did the same thing last night, watching "Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla 2". BTW, I'm posting this on a Snow iMac (one of the original snow ones) named "Fairy".;) A Bandai Rainbow Mothra is perched on top, with pictures of Mothra and Godzilla on the wall and my entire kaiju eiga (Japanese monster movies) collection next to my iMac desk.
> Oh joy!
>
> So now we can get back to stealing from the artists!?
>
> What a wonderful discovery!
No discovery. Artists have been stolen from all along by the recording industry. Hardly anything you pay for a CD goes to the actual artist. It goes to a bunch of greedy exploiters that call themselves the RIAA. Now they want to make the artists to work for a paycheck so all their IP belongs to the record label they work for.
To make matters worse, they want to restrict what law abiding people can do with their overpriced CD by selling broken ones (only their broken ones still don't do what they want)! As far as we know, these Universal CD's only play on Windows PCs with their crappy software, or on (some?) Windows PCs with DVD drives. If you want to play the songs using Windows Media Player on a PC without a DVD drive, you are out of luck. (Has anyone even tried to use Universal's player on a Windows XP PC? Does XP even let you run it?) If you want to use the XBox's feature to rip songs and play them as you game (or even just play the idiot CD's) you are out of luck. (Why Microsoft, patenter of the all-wonderful DRM OS and all around monopoly-abusing juggernaut, isn't screaming bloody murder here, I'll never know.) If you have any non-Microsoft OS, computer, or game console, you are seriously out of luck.
No, I don't trade mp3's. I'm not into mass-piracy, or even the "information should be free" movement. But I am also not into paying $20 (or whatever they are now) for broken CD's, especially when the money goes to greedy sharks and not to the artists. On the other hand, I happily paid $60 (and waited months to get) the two disc "Mothra 3" soundtrack, partly because it is the only way, without a US distributor, to reward Toho for one of their best Mothra movies, and because I have had so much fun translating the label and writing English lyrics to the instrumental pieces.
"They bind our hearts: 'Let's sell them again and again!'"
From the fairies' song "Infant Girl" in the Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961).
> We must be careful not to lump all of the things under the Microsoft
>.NET umbrella together. For a moment, replace ".NET" with "Win32"
> and re-examine what you are saying, and what Microsoft is going on
> about.
>
> For you see, ".NET" is really just a programming platform. Take
> everything that Windows can do, then wrap it in an object-oriented
> system, then subtract all the things that suck about Java. That is what
>.NET means to me.
That's nice. I just wish.NET was only an innocent little programming platform that Microsoft was making to empower its developers and customers. Problem is, Microsoft is not a happy bunch of programmers making neat things. Microsoft is a bunch of shrewd and greedy marketers, who won't rest until every device with a chip in it has a Microsoft tax on it, and everone who uses any such device, gets a monthly bill payable to Microsoft. To make matters worse, they have broken the law, have not been punished, and now think they can get away with anything. The very name "Hailstorm" should tell you that their intentions are no where near benign. A hailstorm is when storm clouds pelt you and your belongings with lots of little balls of ice in a way that is painful and can cause extensive (and expensive) damage.
Wide as the.Net umbrella is,.Net is only part of an overall strategy to control the entire industry. To understand what that strategy is, we have to look at all the pieces. In addition to.Net/Hailstorm/Passport we have the XBox, a cheap home.Net terminal currently masquerading as a game console because that was all Microsoft could persuade its developers to develop for. We have MS's recent Digital Rights Management patent (which calls for a total lock down and license check for every file, with needed licenses purchased quietly without informing the user). This in combination with getting a law passed requiring a DRM OS for every device (one was in the works recently) could spell serious trouble for all other operating systems. Toss in a similar lockdown on applications and drivers, with Microsoft in charge of certification, and even Open Source in general is in trouble.
Ultimately, if all goes Microsoft's way, this amounts to the average home user having an Xbox (whose EULA is going to ultimately make the CueCat's look positively permissive). If you want to play a game, you pay. If you want to play a song, you pay. If you want to run an application, you pay. Microsoft owns. You pay, and pay, and pay. For businesses: substitute XP PC's for Xboxes and pay far more. For developers: pay lots for the tools, you don't want to know what you pay for the servers, and keep on paying. If you want to run another OS, too bad, there aren't any legal ones. If you want to write your own stuff, it's not going to run on Microsoft's stuff without MS say so, and written with MS tools (and much paying).
As for the poor smuck and his quarter million lines of code: he better change the name and quick. If he doesn't, the best he can hope for out of a trademark lawsuit is a settlement to change the name and the license if Microsoft wants his quarter million lines of code, or an order to bury it if they don't want it.
> I can surely write my own Passport-esque system and expose my web
> services just as passport does. Then you can use my system instead of
> Microsoft's.
Better yet, support either Sun's Liberty Alliance or Novell's ZENworks Up. They have a much better chance of unseating MS than you do alone.
Even better yet, think up something new and useful that MS hasn't thought of and spent years working on. Then you can beat them to market and really add something good to OpenSource, instead of just being a copy cat.
Homage to Rodan, most noble Samarai of the Sky, on the occasion of his 45th birthday today!
> I think that the US backed out of the Dimitry case in order to defend
> the DMCA which would in all likelyhood not have withstood supreme
> court scrutiny.
You may be right. Usually the reason laws don't withstand supreme court scrutiny is because they are unconstitutional. The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land; any law that violates it has no right to exist. It is not the place of the Department of Justice to defend possibly unconstitutional laws from the Supreme Court just because special interest groups like them (BSA, RIAA, MPAA).
> I think this was a wise move because the DMCA is a powerfull tool to
> protect our national intellectual property
1) It isn't "our national intellectual property", it's Adobe's property, and Adobe has dropped the charges and asked for the man's release.
2) It doesn't matter how powerful a tool it is. Our national Constitution is far more important. You know, the document that waxes eloquent on freedom of speech and the press?
> in countries such as Russia
> and China where there is no respect for US law.
What?!? Do you mean the US doesn't actually rule the world? That other countries get to have their own governments? Imagine that!
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
> Huh. Here I thought Unix was not just AN old microcomputer
> operating system, but THE old microcomputer operating system.
By microcomputer, I mean the old, slow, tiny computers that were sold for use in the home. The Timex Sinclair 1000, Commodore 64, Apple IIe, etc. were on the low end of the scale, with the PC jr., early PCs, and early Macs on the high end of the scale. These computers ran proprietary operating systems, were designed for one user at a time, and to run one program at a time. These computers were limited to only using physical memory (2K - 640K), rarely had hard drives (or even floppies) on the low end, and graphical user interfaces were very rare, and usually on the high end (ie. Mac, although GEOS was available for the Commodore 64 as I recall). That Apple could take an OS with these roots and do all the things that Mac OS 9 can do is absolutely phenomenal!
Unix, on the other hand, was developed by Bell Labs - for mainframes! It quickly became a multi-user, multi-tasking, networking OS for the mainframes and minicomputers of big business and the universities: powerful, but no great looker. It got a GUI thanks to MIT's Project Athena; which I did think looked great at the time. Now, the X Window GUI looks like an ugly duckling compared to Aqua's beautiful swan. X did have one neat feature: you could run a program on a Cray (for the number crunching) and have it display on a SGI (for the graphics and GUI).
The PC didn't have the horsepower or the capabilities to run Unix until the 386 era (this was also when Windows 3.0 showed up). SCO and a few others made some PC versions of Unix, but they were expensive, came with a shelf of manuals (not entirely a bad thing - you needed them!), and failed to make a big splash. It took a Finnish college student's pet project (he was bored with Minix - another Unix variant - working all the time) to change all that. Linux had a slow start, but once it hit critical mass, it made a big splash. Microsoft thought Unix was safely on the way out, and Windows' reign secure, when here came this upstart to challenge it! Linux hasn't made the desktop world yet (a shame because it is far prettier and easier to use than any Unix that preceeded it - pretty much the pinacle of what has been done with X). On the other hand, Linux is leading the charge against Microsoft on the server side. Linux, like Unix, is very portable, and runs on anything from watches to IBM's mainframes (its IBM's new best buddy), including the Mac.
OS X combines the power of Unix and the ahead-of-its-time technology from NeXT with a beautiful user interface only Apple could make. Its various APIs, Java run time, and available emulators let it run pretty much any application out there.
> But then, I don't think that old == bad, either.
I don't either. After all, OS X's Unix parentage is decades old. But it is the royal heritage of the mighty supercomputers of old, not the rich cousin to Timex Sinclair doorstops.;)
> Maya is in the process of being ported to OSX, but AFAIK, isn't quite
> complete yet.
Well, you better go run and tell Alias|Wavefront that they have been shipping an incomplete OS X product since September 19th! (http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/WhoWeAre/press_r eleases/maya/mayaosxships/index.shtml)
> One application you should've mentioned and didn't is Electric Image
> [electricimage.com], which has been used by ILM and others, and
> started its life out on Macs.
Um, that's because Electric Image is a company, not a 3D program. They make Amorphium, which I did mention, and Universe, which I didn't. Universe is probably what you are talking about. According to the link you gave, version 4 of Universe is fully native in OS X.
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp!;)
Re:Doesn't work this way
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
WildBeast wrote:
> Al Qaeda members aren't supposed to know what the other members
> are doing. Their own mission is revealed to them at the last moment.
That is exactly right. Bin Laden himself said that none of the 9/11 groups (except the leader) knew the others existed or what they were doing. They didn't know what they themselves were doing until they were getting on the plane.
> This guy is probably not even a member of Al Qaeda, he's just a crazy
> guy who's probably too dumb to even be a terrorist.
Oh, he's a terrorist alright, and if Walker is saying what he has been reported to say (attack yesterday), then he is one too. When one of these people have been captured and can do nothing else to support their cause, they use their mouths in one last terrorist attack: spreading wild (but at least remotely believable) rumors to terrify their enemies. After all, the real business of terrorists is not high body counts, but *TERROR*.
Afroze's claims are false, but Microsoft's all consuming greed was leading them to engage in terror marketing (those "buy more or be audited" postcards) prior to 9/11. Greed, terror, and cruelty are all three heads of one terrible monster.
Wisdom overcomes greed.
Courage sends terror running.
Compassion, the greatest power, conquers cruelty.
> There are already numerous OSX applications available in open or
> closed source form.
And it also runs most OS 9 applications, and Java 2 Swing applications.
> I still have to run Windows 2000 to use some commercial application
> and I could not get rid of it.
Virtual PC is releasing its OS X version, so you can run that app in the Windows 2000 emulator. You can also get a Linux emulator, or install Linux for PPC on a separate partition.
> You always have to buy a new Macintosh to use Apple's OSX.
Well, I'd have to buy a new PC to run Windows XP, or a new PC to run Linux (my old Linux box doesn't do fun things like USB). Taking home an OS box with a manual and a disk don't do a whole lot of good if you don't own any or new enough hardware to run it on. Joe Sixpack usually buys hardware + OS, and if he ever considers getting an OS upgrade, he either finds a smart friend or family member, or takes his computer in to the nice(?) folks at CompUSA to take care of that highly technical operation for him. Remember, a lot of Joe Sixpacks have trouble with simple drag and drop operations (like my boss, the owner of a tech company), and probably dump everything on their desktop.
> You want to develop an application for OSX? You'll never see it
> running on Intel platform or whatever, because Apple won't port
> Cocoa to other platofrm than Apple's Mac.
Well, you could develop it in Java and have it run everywhere Java runs (in theory, that works out in fact nicely with the PC Java apps I've tried under OS X). Or you could go for a compatiblity library like Qt, and run your program in OS X, Windows, and Linux. Go into CompUSA, and compare the Mac section to the PC section. There are a lot of titles in common. For instance, The Sims now seems to run under Windows, OS 9, OS X, and Linux (in a Mandrake box I think).
> I think Apple must port its entire OSX product into Intel platform.
> Apple will lose money from its reduced hardware sales, but once OSX
> for x86 reaches a critical mass of user base, then it can ship OSX to
> the major PC providers like Dell or Compaq.
Yeah, like that would work. Which of the three: Apple, Dell, and Compaq, are not in bad shape due to the collapse of the PC market? Apple. Which one is the only one not shipping on an Intel platform? Apple. Sounds to me like Apple is the one doing something right, hardware platform-wise.
> Apple is losing a best chance of conquering the Intel user base,
> surfacing themselves as a major competitor against Microsoft. But it
> rather chose to live with Microsoft and keep their realms separate.
The December 3rd Time ad did not sound like Apple was keeping their realm separate from Microsoft. Apple was directly comparing themselves to Microsoft, in no uncertain terms. The Intel PC market is crumbling. PC's themselves show no innovation that would compel a user to buy a new one. Microsoft is perched above the PC makers like a great big tick, sucking them dry. That is Microsoft's powerbase, the base of their core monopoly that they extend to everything they do. Any vender that walks into this situation in good financial health, with an innovative software/hardware combination that compels people to buy will grab marketshare with every sale. That is all Apple has to do, and come this spring, will they ever have the software and hardware! As the economic recovery gains steam, Apple will be able to sell more, while all the PC side has is more icky beige boxes with more ugly Windows XP (with that nasty tick staring at you the whole time you use it - yuck!). HP/Compaq merges, and CompUSA stares at all that blank shelf space wondering if (gasp) they will have to use it to expand the Apple section. Meanwhile at 27+ Apple stores, bouncy employees show happy mall shoppers what fun new things their Macs can do. That old PC base caves in on one side, and the nasty old tick goes splat (yuck!). If they are smart, the remainder of the PC market catches a clue and has a hasty conference with software developers and those Linux folks, tossing Windows altogether.
Hopefully, when the dust settles, OS X, Linux, and other OS's are competing happily, finding new ways to work together, and generally living happily every after. Billy Bob Gates is off in a corner whining "Waaa, I wanna rule the world!". (Maybe the DoJ may finally decide that since he doesn't have any power anymore, they will feel safe enough fining him for being an illegal monopoly meanie.;)
Why, oh why, did you choose *that* day to make *that* posting? Five years ago, on December 14th, 1996, Mothra Leo resurrected a charred dead sapling, and made to grow into a mighty Apple tree. Did you not see Friday afternoon, the sun displaying a bite like that of the Apple logo? Did you not hear Godzilla's mighty roar echoing over Japan? Or the crack of the egg heralding Mothra's rebirth? Or the meteor showers that accompanied Ghidrah's return (yeah, he promised Mothra to behave this time, but can she really get him to give up Windows for the Mac)?
> *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic
> circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD
> keeps losing market share but why?
The OS X boxed version, which is based on BSD, outsold the Windows 2000 upgrade for its first two months out, and placed number 8 out of the 10 top selling PC (not Mac specific) business software packages for those months (March and April 2001). OS X has been shipping on every Mac sold since last May. Decline? Hardly. And you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until 2002, when OS X gets to run on 1.6 ghz G5's with gigabit firewire!
> The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come
> back from the grave.
Mac OS: gave its last gasp circa 1995-1996 when Apple did its impression of a burnt cinder. Apple and its beloved OS are quite fine now, thanks to timely intervention by Mothra and Steve Jobs. See above comment on OS X, Mac OS's remarkable child (sired by *BSD).
UNIX: as a whole presumed finished (again back in 1995-1996), when the NT steamroller came to town promising to erradicate that old outdated OS. Linux, the *BSDs, and OS X have changed all that.
OS/2: supposed to be dead. Doesn't seem to care, though.
NeXT: died, I think, in the 80's or early 90's (wasn't paying that much attention to it at the time -- silly me). IP was sold to Apple, and parts (such as Cocoa, kernal, etc.) used in OS X. User groups for the old system have simply switched over to OS X, with some grumbling.
> As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed
> OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death
> shround over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone;
"Lightning shines on wavey beach, and all clouds are made right:
Happiness appears!"
From "Infant Girl" song in "Mosura" (1961 - japanese version only) - my translation
> And what will Apple do about it?
>
> What's their market share again? Maybe 5% in a good sales month?
What did Apple do about the plan to include copy protection in hard drives? They opposed it, and together with several other companies, put a stop to it.
What did Apple do about the Microsoft settlement plan to dump $1 billion in MS software and reconditioned hardware on our poor school systems? Jobs and Apple screamed 'bloody murder!", and the judge in the case is at least listening. This is the first time in five years that Jobs has personally and forcefully spoke out against Microsoft.
Apple's influence does not match its marketshare. Microsoft is usually too busy copying them for that to be true. Apple's size is also very temporary. At one time, they had 40% of the market. They are getting set up to retake that marketshare. They are one of the only desktop computer makers to be firmly in the black, and hiring instead of doing massive layoffs. Given their 26 stores, OS X, and the new hardware coming out possibly as soon as next month, they will finally be ready. The December 3rd Time ad, "The only thing we have a monopoly on is complements", was a gauntlet tossed directly at Microsoft. 2002 is going to be a *very* interesting year for Apple. And remember, any increase in Apple's marketshare, whittles away at Microsoft's core monopoly: Windows. Without that monopoly, Microsoft has no power and no teeth.
Apple does have a concern about this issue. Not only does this hurt QuickTime, but also iDVD, DVD Pro, and Apple's superdrive. Do you think they will not care about the Mac's DVD authoring capablilities? Do you think Apple will like using Microsoft's formats instead of their own?
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have got to pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, "We need you today!"
The heroic, wonder-working deity returns, in TWO days!
> I will NEVER go back to relying on Macs for paying work, to
> unreliable, to hard to maintain, crash to much, and they are way slow
> compared to modern PC hardware.
Never, ever, say "NEVER".;) I'm sure the PCs of today are faster than the Macs of yesteryear. Wait a month or two, and Macs are going to totally leapfrog Itanium into the next generation. While Intel is still scratching its head wondering how to sell a 800 mhz high end chip in a gigahertz world, Apple is going to be putting G5 gigahertz screamers in CompUSA for anyone to buy.
I have used OS 9 enough to know you are right about the "crash to much". Most of the problems I've seen were either caused by a driver conflict I was able to fix, my screwing up something in an install that I was able to back out of and have the Mac work just fine, or most commonly, the programs would crash, and because the operating system is an old design, it would bring the whole Mac down. I have not had any of these problems happen in OS X, which I installed last March. OS X is based on real Unix (what Windows NT wanted to grow up to be, but never made it), not an old microcomputer operating system. All the 2D (especially Photoshop) and 3D graphics programs I've tried run great either natively, or in Classic mode (which is like a little OS 9 environment just for them). If an OS 9 program crashes now, it may take down any others that were running in Classic mode, but the OS X programs are untouched. Simply restart Classic (while you continue to work in your OS X programs) and when it is going again, restart your apps and keep on working.
As for unreliable, well I haven't used my Macs as hard as someone with a deadline to meet would, but I haven't needed any repairs with any of them.
> make mine... whatever goes fast and is stable...
Ooooh, Dual 1.6 Ghz G5 with OS X! Yum! Wanna buy me one next month?;)
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected an apple tree.
In just 4 days, she will return to see its fruit:
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
> None of the programs they tested have Mac versions, though Maya and
> (I think) 3D Studio Max are developing Linux versions.
Read the article! Only 3D Studio Max and Truespace were mentioned as not running on Macs. Maya and Lightwave I believe have been made OS X native. And there are a whole host of less expensive programs: Bryce, Carrara, Poser, Amapi, Amorphium, pay versions of Strata Studio, etc. There are also two free 3D programs for the Mac: Strata Studio Base, and the OS X alpha of Blender!
Slashdot Mirror
Yet another AC writes:
p hp.
;)
> *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at
> this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
The same AC also says that there are "36400 FreeBSD users", "7000 users of OpenBSD", "1400 NetBSD users", and "700 users of BSD/OS", for a total of 45,500. Of course the *BSD_is_dead'ers have been saying that for a while. Hm, no mention of OS X, which is based on FreeBSD, and therefore is a *BSD.
In the last three weeks alone, the number of OS X users has shot up by 150,000! That's the number of new iMacs preordered, the first computers to be shipped from the factory with OS X (*BSD) as the default OS. They (and the new OS X running G4's) began shipping this past Monday. Check it out: http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0201/28.imac.
The ongoing success of OS X, coupled with the frequent upgrades to the other BSD versions I've seen posted on Slashdot (including the one that started this thread), conclusively proves that *BSD is *NOT* dead, far from it. *BSD is alive, growing, thriving, full of vitality and hope for a bright future! Thanks in large part to Apple, *BSD can be enjoyed, not only by hobbyists, but by schoolchildren, scientists, parents, professionals in graphics, 3D, and film. Even by lawyers!
Beyond time, beyond terror, beyond death, Mothra:
Your heart can reach...Life!
cscx wrote:
...that the movie studios are evil.
;)
;) They can still make ammends: release "Mothra 3" and "Godzilla x Megaguiras" to DVD now, put out a special DVD collector's version of the original "Mothra" this May on the 40th anniversary of its US release, and put GMK out in the theaters either this summer, or in December. And quit the greedy shark routine. (Might want to also talk to parent company Sony about putting an OS in their PCs that Godzilla won't stomp people on sight for using. ;)
>
Heck, Mothra could have told you all about the evil of "American film producers" 40 years ago (that's who Nelson wanted to sell her fairy priestesses to). The evidence of her long grudge against them was mostly covered up in the American releases of her movies, but in the original Japanese versions (especially of "Mothra" and "Godzilla vs. the Seamonster"), it is quite evident.
Now it seems the nasty sharks of the MPAA (membership includes Warner Brothers) are at it again. That's a really bad idea. Mothra is in Japan right now. She has her wind powers back and even a stinger (still trying to wrap my brain around the Goddess of Peace sporting a stinger). She's annoyed enough over the whole thing about "Mothra 3" not being released in the states. Unless the MPAA (and the RIAA and Microsoft, etc.) want to deal with an angry category 5 hurricane, they might want to take this opportunity to mend their ways.
Oh, and Tristar has managed to anger not only Mothra, but Godzilla and King Ghidora as well. Frankly, I'm surprised that the chunk of asteroid that hit the Pennsylvanian corn field didn't hit Tristar's offices -- King Ghidora is not very forgiving. Good thing the Strongest Foe had a hankering for some pop corn.
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
nzhavok wrote:
> Of course no self-respecting programmer would ever code in
> applscript, not even to see what it was like. Why anyone would like to
> code like this when they can use more cryptic languages like perl or
> haskall is beyond me.
>
> The scary thing is I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not at this
> point.
Well, in case you are not being sarcastic, and for the benefit of those who seriously believe the above quote: AppleScript is not a programming language for serious applications. It is a macro language, for everybody to use. The thing that AppleScript does (and what computers were designed for) is to automate repetitive tasks. It isn't just for coding either. You can push the old record button, and record your actions as AppleScript. You can then use the recorded script as the start of your own script, customizing it easily, because it is easy to understand. AppleScript is there so graphics professionals, video professionals, scientists, etc. can automate their work and make their jobs easier and more productive.
Apple has released AppleScript Studio for OS X, which allows one to create real applications with the Aqua GUI in AppleScript. While this is nice for entering data for and controlling your AppleScript, you are still not going to see a lot of software on the store shelves written in AppleScript. AppleScript Studio is to AppleScript what Perl/Tk is to Perl.
Though it would be nice if we had a Cocoa/Perl wrapper thingie to let us write Perl apps for Aqua.
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
jazman_777 wrote:
;)
> Question: is it _being_ a monopoly that is bad for consumers?
Of course not. It is possible (at least in an ideal world) to have a company become a monopoly because it has the best quality products for a fair price and it always treats the customers fairly. Once this fictional company got to be a monopoly, they always try extra hard to make sure they are giving everybody a fair shake, constantly innovating, keeping those customers and their employies happy, etc. I don't see our fictional company getting into any antitrust trouble.
Microsoft's deal is that it got its monopoly by being a bully, it is keeping its monopoly by being a meanie, and it is using that monopoly to get itself more monopolies so it can have more people to bully and be mean to. To Microsoft, competition is not a fair game between friendly rivals. It is a brutal conquest, a war whose victims litter the landscape, and in which Microsoft cheats any chance it can get. Microsoft has raised prices, tossed quality, service, and real innovation in the dumpster, and in general, has made a bloody illegal nuisance of itself. It has committed crimes, and it looks like it will never pay for them. Microsoft thinks it is above the law. The problem is not an overbearing government, but one that chickened out at the end.
Microsoft can escape the law, but can it escape justice? Even if the dissenting states loose, there are still civil suits that can be brought based on the guilty verdict. Like say, the one Netscape just filed.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
"Mosura", 1961
First of all, I was in error in my earlier post when I said that AOL/TW was only a member of the MPAA. http://www.riaa.org/About-Members-1.cfm shows several subsidiaries of AOL/TW that are members of the RIAA as well.
HanzoSan writes:
> I dont think the entire company is going to focus on saving the less
> profitable content department at the expense of the highly profitable
> services department.
>
> Even Microsoft knows services are more profitable.
Well that would make more sense, but that is not today's business philosophy: Content is king, and services exist only to wring more profit out of the content. That is why AOL/TW is primarily a conglomerate of content delivery services surrounding a core of content (http://www.aoltimewarner.com/about/index.html). That is why Microsoft is getting into services. That is why the MPAA and RIAA sharks and Microsoft go on and on about their stupid IP "rights". That is what is driving this whole, idiotic, "I have content, bow down and pay, pay, pay!" movement.
You'd think they could just generate content (say a movie), sell it, and then just generate more content. But no, the greedy sharks have to keep generating profit on the same content, every time you view it, for as long as you view it, every place you view it, etc. So they need Digital Rights Management to totally control when and how and where you view something, so that you can pay for it all. DRM is their tollbooth.
> AOL the services ISP company divisions [snip]
But the AOL division isn't about the ISP. AOL was always about selling access to their online content, long before the merger with TW.
The only interest AOL/TW would have in Red Hat would be producing their own tightly controlled OS to deliver their content with no dependence on Microsoft. There are two problems with that:
1) Open Source is not very conducive to tight control.
2) Microsoft now has a patent on a DRM OS. They'd still have to pay a license fee to MS to make their own DRM OS.
Oh, and if anybody thinks they are going to share their DRM technology with the rest of the Linux world: think again.
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have got to pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, "We need you today!"
Yeah, xbox was always intended to be a home Millenium/.Net terminal. The game console thing was all they could get developer support for initially, but now that it is out there, they can build it into whatever they want. Ultimately, they might just subsidize the cost of the hardware upgrades into the .Net subscription prices, since services seem to be more important to them than selling anything of value. It won't stop with just entertainment. Expect to see Microsoft Works.Net, Microsoft Money.Net, etc. on the XBox, with both programs and data stored on Microsoft's servers.
Oh, and home PC makers? I'd go hunting for a new OS now, because Microsoft obviously intends to replace you.
There are two flaws that will stand in the way of Microsoft's Millenium (thousand year rule). One is broadband: it is so ready that some news sites are starting to urge people to stay with dialup.
The other is Microsoft's ignorance of the gaming console industry. Xbox has to succeed there first. If the lack of reliability doesn't get them, switching to new hardware in less than a year or two will kill them. Sega was going great with Genesis. Instead of switching consoles, they put out hardware addons to let Genesis owners play Saturn games and still keep their Genesis games. Then after we had switched to 32x, they dropped it and introduced Saturn (which wasn't compatible with 32x or Genesis games). That left the people most likely to convert to Saturn sitting there mad because they had been snowed into spending money they might have spent on Saturn on 32x, and left out in the cold. I didn't forgive them until the Dreamcast, and they dumped that too! If Microsoft wants to put HomeStation into homes with xbox within two years of people spending $300 on xbox, they are going to have to be fully xbox compatible, and free!
What happens when you embrace and extend Godzilla? Nuclear heartburn!
See "Godzilla 2000" for details.
gignoux writes:
> How could there be 'Sources familiar with the situation' when they
> are basically saying there is no 'situation' and they have not discussed
> a deal?
Basically, the CNet article is a rumor. They could not get representatives of AOL/TW, Red Hat, or even Microsoft to comment one way or the other. So their sources must be external to any company involved.
Anyway, you and I would count as "sources familiar with the situation", since we've both read about it and posted our opinions on Slashdot.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
"Mosura", 1961
HanzoSan writes:
.Net, but I wouldn't get too friendly with them: they might just bite.
> Time Warner however, is dangerous, isnt Time Warner a part of the
> RIAA? Their influence in Linux is what would worry me.
They (the Warner part) are a member of that barrel of sharks called the MPAA (see http://www.mpaa.org/about/), and as such, are part of all the digital rights idiocy that has been going on. That puts them in the dangerous to evil category, as far as Slashdot is concerned. I'm not that fond of Red Hat personally, but as a major Linux distributor, I think that being bought out by a major content conglomerate would be a "bad" thing. AOL/TW has their uses as a foil to Microsoft's
Despite the silly incedent with a part of IBM supporting putting DRM into harddrives, overall I think they'd be a better choice for a buyer. IBM has already done the evil empire thing, to the point of playing footsie with Nazi Germany. They got slapped down hard for it, and have had a chance to learn from their experiences. While I wouldn't trust the new IBM 100%, they are by far a kinder, gentler, wiser company now. Having their own distribution would benefit them with the ability to take Linux to the point where they could use it for everything they do. Having the IBM brand on Linux would further legitimize it. Both could benefit.
"What do you think Mothra would do?" - Moll, "Mosura" 1996
TgrMan wrote:
> AOL/Time-Warner already owns pretty much all sources of media so
> this could be a way for them to really compete with the leviathan that
> is Microsoft.
That's the problem: AOL/TW is a leviathan itself. I'm not certain whether it is as evil as Microsoft or not, but being a Mothra devotee, I have come to be wary of the greedy sharks known as "American film producers" (Mothra's most ancient foes). AOL/TW certainly does have shark genes in their conglomerate. It would do no good to be so worried about a tiger shark that one doesn't notice the great white sneaking up until it is too late.
Besides, I doubt that AOL is that interested in putting out AOL/TW/RH Linux as their exclusive platform, because Red Hat is not the only Microsoft competitor that AOL is making friendly overtures towards. AOL is releasing a client for OS X, and is now providing (under the Netscape name) the default portal for Macs. AOL has also been talking to Sony about AOL for the Playstation 2.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
"Mosura", 1961
AtaruMoroboshi wrote:
;)
;)
;)
> I agree that keyboarding is one area where windows is in fact better.
> Hopefully Apple will integrate this into os 10.2...
Just because you don't know about them, doesn't mean that they aren't there. The "Mac OS 9 Bible" lists three pages of keyboard shortcuts (pages 92-94) for the Finder alone. Looking in the Apple Help for 10.1.2 (searching for "keyboard shortcuts") reveals lots of entries on keyboard shortcuts. If anything, the Mac has as many keyboard shortcuts or more than Windows!
Some of my favorites:
Cmd-z Undo
Cmd-x Cut
Cmd-c Copy
Cmd-v Paste
Cmd-a Select All
Cmd-f Find
Cmd-g Find Again
Cmd-s Save
Cmd-o Open
Cmd-w Close window
Cmd-q Quit application
In Finder Only:
Cmd-e Eject drive whose icon is highlighted (have a catcher's mit handy, some Zip drives take this too literally
Apple also took Scotty to heart. Both OS 9 and OS X (at least X.1.*) have voice shortcuts known as "Speakable Items". See the Speech icon in the System Preferences in OS X, or the control panel in OS 9, for further details. And yes, you can make your own "Speakable Items" with Apple Script.
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp!
mooshoo wrote:
> It's because of companies such as Microsoft that the US economy is
> doing as well as it is.
In case you have forgotten recent history, and have no idea of the current shape of the US (and world) economy: we are in a recession. In the summer of 2000, things were great. In the fall of 2000, Apple (who was doing so fantastic that Wall Street people were going to upgrade it from dramatic recovery to outstanding growth) called out a serious earnings warning. The warning was due in part to a blunder or two, and part to Microsoft dumping all their Apple stock on the market, but it was a sign of things to come. The industry laughed and proclaimed the death of Apple. The laughter didn't last long as one by one, the PC makers called out their own earnings warnings, sending the industry into a downward spiral. The dot.com mess certainly didn't help. The conflict and uncertainity of the US Presidential election later in 2000 spread the IT problems to the rest of the economy, as people lost faith in their leadership. By spring of 2001, the recession was here. The terrorist attacks in 9/11 sent things spiraling further downward worldwide.
> So many people hate MS and want them to die out of business but this
> destruction would only harm our economy.
No it wouldn't. Apple, the one desktop computer maker that does not use Windows as its OS, quickly recovered, and was making profits in the millions by the next quarter after their stumble. They have not laid off thousands of workers, they have opened 27 new stores. It's the Windows based PC makers that were and are suffering the most. If Microsoft disappeared tomorrow, the PC makers would simply hunt up another OS, the software makers would port to that OS, and life would go on. The PC makers would be free to better differentiate their products. The absence of Microsoft's much-abused monopoly would bring real competition, which would bring some healthy fresh air to the industry.
After all, the PC industry can't get too much more unhealthy than it is now -- with Microsoft.
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
An Anonymous Coward wrote:
> Notice how it's always the 'immature' LUSERS (Linux Users) that diss
> the all superior *BSD over Linux.
Oh, grow up. I'm sick of all the infighting between OS's here. *BSD hates Linux, Linux hates *BSD and absolutely can't stand Apple (due in part to some silly prejudice over mouse buttons), etc. This is Microsoft's way, it should NOT be our way. *BSD (including OS X), Linux, etc. should be as siblings, united against a common, and deadly foe: Microsoft. Some sibling rivalry is healthy, but it should be with a sense of fun and fair play, not cruelly calling the users of another OS "LUSERS".
BTW, Microsoft is not our foe because it is a monopoly. It is our foe because of its predatory business practices, cruelty to its own users, and its breaking of the law. I want to see its monopoly destroyed to remove its power to do more harm to the PC industry. I do not want to see it destroyed, but rather become a kinder company with fair business practices and better products. Something like IBM's "Peace, Love, Linux!".
> It's kinda funny, considering they say that because they feel scared,
> alone, uncertain of their future and most of all, very insecure.
While you are at it, learn some compassion! It is very sad to see someone who thinks it is funny to see others scared and insecure (whether true or not).
"Heart can reach where hand cannot. Climb over any wall..."
Mothra (via Moll) "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
An AC wrote:
> Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all
> practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
>
> Fact: *BSD is dead
Silly "*BSD is dead" troll! The hopes of all your kind were permanently dashed on January 7, 2002. On that day, Apple made BSD-based OS X the default OS on all of its computers. The battle to break up Microsoft's monopoly has begun, and BSD is leading the way!!!
Crawl back into your hole, silly troll. With a new version of FreeBSD, and OS X on all Macs sold, *BSD lives! Not even a miracle can kill it.
Beyond time, beyond terror, beyond death, Mothra:
Your heart can reach...Life!
The_Messenger wrote:
;) A Bandai Rainbow Mothra is perched on top, with pictures of Mothra and Godzilla on the wall and my entire kaiju eiga (Japanese monster movies) collection next to my iMac desk.
> All the same, have you ever seen Godzilla 2000? There are a lot of
> Macs in that movie
That's because Toho *loves* their Macs, and Godzilla and Mothra are Apple's biggest fans. You might also enjoy the following all Apple kaiju roundup:
"Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla 2": MechaGodzilla is designed by GForce using a huge amount of Macs.
"Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla": Miki, a telepath usually associated with Godzilla, is given a mission by Mothra's Cosmos to protect Godzilla from the humans so that Godzilla can save the Earth (and his son) from SpaceGodzilla. Miki views the coming of SpaceGodzilla on a Mac.
"Godzilla vs. Destroyer": The grandson of Dr. Yemane (from the first Godzilla movie in 1954) proudly displays a poster with a big Apple logo in his dorm room.
"Rebirth of Mothra": No Macs here, Apple is in deep trouble (December 14, 1996). What's a Mac-loving, heroic, wonder-working deity to do, when all she has left is a charred apple sapling (which appears several times in the movie, watch for it) in a bleak, scorched landscape? Simple. Resurrect it (and the surrounding 8,000 acres of ex-forest). The little sapling puts out leaves, and before you know it, is a whopping big tree on a grassy hill with flowers and an even bigger moth landing in the valley below. Days later, Apple makes a surprise announcement: Steve Jobs is coming back. Taiki's quote is telling: "Nobody is gonna die, mister. Mothra's gonna come and save us!"
"Rebirth of Mothra 2" (12/13/1997): The Mac is back, with Mothra's little avatar Fairy perched on top! Mothra herself shows the future: transforming into Aqua Mothra and shooting little light blue X's at her foe.
Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora, and Baragon are currently starring in a movie in Japan (see www.godzilla.co.jp for more details). I don't know if Macs are in it, but the director was sure bragging about all he could do with his Mac this time around. (If you ever want to see Godzilla and Mothra in the US theatres again, write Tristar!)
> How do I know all of this? Well, remembering all the iMacs involved,
> I watched in yesterday in celebration of the probable new iMacs. And I
> don't even have one. So yes, I'm sad...
No you are not. I did the same thing last night, watching "Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla 2". BTW, I'm posting this on a Snow iMac (one of the original snow ones) named "Fairy".
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
An AC wrote:
> Oh joy!
>
> So now we can get back to stealing from the artists!?
>
> What a wonderful discovery!
No discovery. Artists have been stolen from all along by the recording industry. Hardly anything you pay for a CD goes to the actual artist. It goes to a bunch of greedy exploiters that call themselves the RIAA. Now they want to make the artists to work for a paycheck so all their IP belongs to the record label they work for.
To make matters worse, they want to restrict what law abiding people can do with their overpriced CD by selling broken ones (only their broken ones still don't do what they want)! As far as we know, these Universal CD's only play on Windows PCs with their crappy software, or on (some?) Windows PCs with DVD drives. If you want to play the songs using Windows Media Player on a PC without a DVD drive, you are out of luck. (Has anyone even tried to use Universal's player on a Windows XP PC? Does XP even let you run it?) If you want to use the XBox's feature to rip songs and play them as you game (or even just play the idiot CD's) you are out of luck. (Why Microsoft, patenter of the all-wonderful DRM OS and all around monopoly-abusing juggernaut, isn't screaming bloody murder here, I'll never know.) If you have any non-Microsoft OS, computer, or game console, you are seriously out of luck.
No, I don't trade mp3's. I'm not into mass-piracy, or even the "information should be free" movement. But I am also not into paying $20 (or whatever they are now) for broken CD's, especially when the money goes to greedy sharks and not to the artists. On the other hand, I happily paid $60 (and waited months to get) the two disc "Mothra 3" soundtrack, partly because it is the only way, without a US distributor, to reward Toho for one of their best Mothra movies, and because I have had so much fun translating the label and writing English lyrics to the instrumental pieces.
"They bind our hearts: 'Let's sell them again and again!'"
From the fairies' song "Infant Girl" in the Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961).
rabtech writes:
.NET umbrella together. For a moment, replace ".NET" with "Win32"
.NET means to me.
.NET was only an innocent little programming platform that Microsoft was making to empower its developers and customers. Problem is, Microsoft is not a happy bunch of programmers making neat things. Microsoft is a bunch of shrewd and greedy marketers, who won't rest until every device with a chip in it has a Microsoft tax on it, and everone who uses any such device, gets a monthly bill payable to Microsoft. To make matters worse, they have broken the law, have not been punished, and now think they can get away with anything. The very name "Hailstorm" should tell you that their intentions are no where near benign. A hailstorm is when storm clouds pelt you and your belongings with lots of little balls of ice in a way that is painful and can cause extensive (and expensive) damage.
.Net umbrella is, .Net is only part of an overall strategy to control the entire industry. To understand what that strategy is, we have to look at all the pieces. In addition to .Net/Hailstorm/Passport we have the XBox, a cheap home .Net terminal currently masquerading as a game console because that was all Microsoft could persuade its developers to develop for. We have MS's recent Digital Rights Management patent (which calls for a total lock down and license check for every file, with needed licenses purchased quietly without informing the user). This in combination with getting a law passed requiring a DRM OS for every device (one was in the works recently) could spell serious trouble for all other operating systems. Toss in a similar lockdown on applications and drivers, with Microsoft in charge of certification, and even Open Source in general is in trouble.
> We must be careful not to lump all of the things under the Microsoft
>
> and re-examine what you are saying, and what Microsoft is going on
> about.
>
> For you see, ".NET" is really just a programming platform. Take
> everything that Windows can do, then wrap it in an object-oriented
> system, then subtract all the things that suck about Java. That is what
>
That's nice. I just wish
Wide as the
Ultimately, if all goes Microsoft's way, this amounts to the average home user having an Xbox (whose EULA is going to ultimately make the CueCat's look positively permissive). If you want to play a game, you pay. If you want to play a song, you pay. If you want to run an application, you pay. Microsoft owns. You pay, and pay, and pay. For businesses: substitute XP PC's for Xboxes and pay far more. For developers: pay lots for the tools, you don't want to know what you pay for the servers, and keep on paying. If you want to run another OS, too bad, there aren't any legal ones. If you want to write your own stuff, it's not going to run on Microsoft's stuff without MS say so, and written with MS tools (and much paying).
As for the poor smuck and his quarter million lines of code: he better change the name and quick. If he doesn't, the best he can hope for out of a trademark lawsuit is a settlement to change the name and the license if Microsoft wants his quarter million lines of code, or an order to bury it if they don't want it.
> I can surely write my own Passport-esque system and expose my web
> services just as passport does. Then you can use my system instead of
> Microsoft's.
Better yet, support either Sun's Liberty Alliance or Novell's ZENworks Up. They have a much better chance of unseating MS than you do alone.
Even better yet, think up something new and useful that MS hasn't thought of and spent years working on. Then you can beat them to market and really add something good to OpenSource, instead of just being a copy cat.
Homage to Rodan, most noble Samarai of the Sky, on the occasion of his 45th birthday today!
An AC wrote:
> I think that the US backed out of the Dimitry case in order to defend
> the DMCA which would in all likelyhood not have withstood supreme
> court scrutiny.
You may be right. Usually the reason laws don't withstand supreme court scrutiny is because they are unconstitutional. The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land; any law that violates it has no right to exist. It is not the place of the Department of Justice to defend possibly unconstitutional laws from the Supreme Court just because special interest groups like them (BSA, RIAA, MPAA).
> I think this was a wise move because the DMCA is a powerfull tool to
> protect our national intellectual property
1) It isn't "our national intellectual property", it's Adobe's property, and Adobe has dropped the charges and asked for the man's release.
2) It doesn't matter how powerful a tool it is. Our national Constitution is far more important. You know, the document that waxes eloquent on freedom of speech and the press?
> in countries such as Russia
> and China where there is no respect for US law.
What?!? Do you mean the US doesn't actually rule the world? That other countries get to have their own governments? Imagine that!
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
An AC wrote:
;)
> Huh. Here I thought Unix was not just AN old microcomputer
> operating system, but THE old microcomputer operating system.
By microcomputer, I mean the old, slow, tiny computers that were sold for use in the home. The Timex Sinclair 1000, Commodore 64, Apple IIe, etc. were on the low end of the scale, with the PC jr., early PCs, and early Macs on the high end of the scale. These computers ran proprietary operating systems, were designed for one user at a time, and to run one program at a time. These computers were limited to only using physical memory (2K - 640K), rarely had hard drives (or even floppies) on the low end, and graphical user interfaces were very rare, and usually on the high end (ie. Mac, although GEOS was available for the Commodore 64 as I recall). That Apple could take an OS with these roots and do all the things that Mac OS 9 can do is absolutely phenomenal!
Unix, on the other hand, was developed by Bell Labs - for mainframes! It quickly became a multi-user, multi-tasking, networking OS for the mainframes and minicomputers of big business and the universities: powerful, but no great looker. It got a GUI thanks to MIT's Project Athena; which I did think looked great at the time. Now, the X Window GUI looks like an ugly duckling compared to Aqua's beautiful swan. X did have one neat feature: you could run a program on a Cray (for the number crunching) and have it display on a SGI (for the graphics and GUI).
The PC didn't have the horsepower or the capabilities to run Unix until the 386 era (this was also when Windows 3.0 showed up). SCO and a few others made some PC versions of Unix, but they were expensive, came with a shelf of manuals (not entirely a bad thing - you needed them!), and failed to make a big splash. It took a Finnish college student's pet project (he was bored with Minix - another Unix variant - working all the time) to change all that. Linux had a slow start, but once it hit critical mass, it made a big splash. Microsoft thought Unix was safely on the way out, and Windows' reign secure, when here came this upstart to challenge it! Linux hasn't made the desktop world yet (a shame because it is far prettier and easier to use than any Unix that preceeded it - pretty much the pinacle of what has been done with X). On the other hand, Linux is leading the charge against Microsoft on the server side. Linux, like Unix, is very portable, and runs on anything from watches to IBM's mainframes (its IBM's new best buddy), including the Mac.
OS X combines the power of Unix and the ahead-of-its-time technology from NeXT with a beautiful user interface only Apple could make. Its various APIs, Java run time, and available emulators let it run pretty much any application out there.
> But then, I don't think that old == bad, either.
I don't either. After all, OS X's Unix parentage is decades old. But it is the royal heritage of the mighty supercomputers of old, not the rich cousin to Timex Sinclair doorstops.
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
dsyu wrote:
r eleases/maya/mayaosxships/index.shtml)
;)
> Maya is in the process of being ported to OSX, but AFAIK, isn't quite
> complete yet.
Well, you better go run and tell Alias|Wavefront that they have been shipping an incomplete OS X product since September 19th! (http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/WhoWeAre/press_
> One application you should've mentioned and didn't is Electric Image
> [electricimage.com], which has been used by ILM and others, and
> started its life out on Macs.
Um, that's because Electric Image is a company, not a 3D program. They make Amorphium, which I did mention, and Universe, which I didn't. Universe is probably what you are talking about. According to the link you gave, version 4 of Universe is fully native in OS X.
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp!
WildBeast wrote:
> Al Qaeda members aren't supposed to know what the other members
> are doing. Their own mission is revealed to them at the last moment.
That is exactly right. Bin Laden himself said that none of the 9/11 groups (except the leader) knew the others existed or what they were doing. They didn't know what they themselves were doing until they were getting on the plane.
> This guy is probably not even a member of Al Qaeda, he's just a crazy
> guy who's probably too dumb to even be a terrorist.
Oh, he's a terrorist alright, and if Walker is saying what he has been reported to say (attack yesterday), then he is one too. When one of these people have been captured and can do nothing else to support their cause, they use their mouths in one last terrorist attack: spreading wild (but at least remotely believable) rumors to terrify their enemies. After all, the real business of terrorists is not high body counts, but *TERROR*.
Afroze's claims are false, but Microsoft's all consuming greed was leading them to engage in terror marketing (those "buy more or be audited" postcards) prior to 9/11. Greed, terror, and cruelty are all three heads of one terrible monster.
Wisdom overcomes greed.
Courage sends terror running.
Compassion, the greatest power, conquers cruelty.
Mothra, you were right! Heart can reach!
logout writes:
;)
> There are already numerous OSX applications available in open or
> closed source form.
And it also runs most OS 9 applications, and Java 2 Swing applications.
> I still have to run Windows 2000 to use some commercial application
> and I could not get rid of it.
Virtual PC is releasing its OS X version, so you can run that app in the Windows 2000 emulator. You can also get a Linux emulator, or install Linux for PPC on a separate partition.
> You always have to buy a new Macintosh to use Apple's OSX.
Well, I'd have to buy a new PC to run Windows XP, or a new PC to run Linux (my old Linux box doesn't do fun things like USB). Taking home an OS box with a manual and a disk don't do a whole lot of good if you don't own any or new enough hardware to run it on. Joe Sixpack usually buys hardware + OS, and if he ever considers getting an OS upgrade, he either finds a smart friend or family member, or takes his computer in to the nice(?) folks at CompUSA to take care of that highly technical operation for him. Remember, a lot of Joe Sixpacks have trouble with simple drag and drop operations (like my boss, the owner of a tech company), and probably dump everything on their desktop.
> You want to develop an application for OSX? You'll never see it
> running on Intel platform or whatever, because Apple won't port
> Cocoa to other platofrm than Apple's Mac.
Well, you could develop it in Java and have it run everywhere Java runs (in theory, that works out in fact nicely with the PC Java apps I've tried under OS X). Or you could go for a compatiblity library like Qt, and run your program in OS X, Windows, and Linux. Go into CompUSA, and compare the Mac section to the PC section. There are a lot of titles in common. For instance, The Sims now seems to run under Windows, OS 9, OS X, and Linux (in a Mandrake box I think).
> I think Apple must port its entire OSX product into Intel platform.
> Apple will lose money from its reduced hardware sales, but once OSX
> for x86 reaches a critical mass of user base, then it can ship OSX to
> the major PC providers like Dell or Compaq.
Yeah, like that would work. Which of the three: Apple, Dell, and Compaq, are not in bad shape due to the collapse of the PC market? Apple. Which one is the only one not shipping on an Intel platform? Apple. Sounds to me like Apple is the one doing something right, hardware platform-wise.
> Apple is losing a best chance of conquering the Intel user base,
> surfacing themselves as a major competitor against Microsoft. But it
> rather chose to live with Microsoft and keep their realms separate.
The December 3rd Time ad did not sound like Apple was keeping their realm separate from Microsoft. Apple was directly comparing themselves to Microsoft, in no uncertain terms. The Intel PC market is crumbling. PC's themselves show no innovation that would compel a user to buy a new one. Microsoft is perched above the PC makers like a great big tick, sucking them dry. That is Microsoft's powerbase, the base of their core monopoly that they extend to everything they do. Any vender that walks into this situation in good financial health, with an innovative software/hardware combination that compels people to buy will grab marketshare with every sale. That is all Apple has to do, and come this spring, will they ever have the software and hardware! As the economic recovery gains steam, Apple will be able to sell more, while all the PC side has is more icky beige boxes with more ugly Windows XP (with that nasty tick staring at you the whole time you use it - yuck!). HP/Compaq merges, and CompUSA stares at all that blank shelf space wondering if (gasp) they will have to use it to expand the Apple section. Meanwhile at 27+ Apple stores, bouncy employees show happy mall shoppers what fun new things their Macs can do. That old PC base caves in on one side, and the nasty old tick goes splat (yuck!). If they are smart, the remainder of the PC market catches a clue and has a hasty conference with software developers and those Linux folks, tossing Windows altogether.
Hopefully, when the dust settles, OS X, Linux, and other OS's are competing happily, finding new ways to work together, and generally living happily every after. Billy Bob Gates is off in a corner whining "Waaa, I wanna rule the world!". (Maybe the DoJ may finally decide that since he doesn't have any power anymore, they will feel safe enough fining him for being an illegal monopoly meanie.
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
An AC wrote:
> So why now?
Why, oh why, did you choose *that* day to make *that* posting? Five years ago, on December 14th, 1996, Mothra Leo resurrected a charred dead sapling, and made to grow into a mighty Apple tree. Did you not see Friday afternoon, the sun displaying a bite like that of the Apple logo? Did you not hear Godzilla's mighty roar echoing over Japan? Or the crack of the egg heralding Mothra's rebirth? Or the meteor showers that accompanied Ghidrah's return (yeah, he promised Mothra to behave this time, but can she really get him to give up Windows for the Mac)?
> *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic
> circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD
> keeps losing market share but why?
The OS X boxed version, which is based on BSD, outsold the Windows 2000 upgrade for its first two months out, and placed number 8 out of the 10 top selling PC (not Mac specific) business software packages for those months (March and April 2001). OS X has been shipping on every Mac sold since last May. Decline? Hardly. And you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until 2002, when OS X gets to run on 1.6 ghz G5's with gigabit firewire!
> The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come
> back from the grave.
Mac OS: gave its last gasp circa 1995-1996 when Apple did its impression of a burnt cinder. Apple and its beloved OS are quite fine now, thanks to timely intervention by Mothra and Steve Jobs. See above comment on OS X, Mac OS's remarkable child (sired by *BSD).
UNIX: as a whole presumed finished (again back in 1995-1996), when the NT steamroller came to town promising to erradicate that old outdated OS. Linux, the *BSDs, and OS X have changed all that.
OS/2: supposed to be dead. Doesn't seem to care, though.
NeXT: died, I think, in the 80's or early 90's (wasn't paying that much attention to it at the time -- silly me). IP was sold to Apple, and parts (such as Cocoa, kernal, etc.) used in OS X. User groups for the old system have simply switched over to OS X, with some grumbling.
> As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed
> OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death
> shround over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone;
"Lightning shines on wavey beach, and all clouds are made right:
Happiness appears!"
From "Infant Girl" song in "Mosura" (1961 - japanese version only) - my translation
SkepTech wrote:
> And what will Apple do about it?
>
> What's their market share again? Maybe 5% in a good sales month?
What did Apple do about the plan to include copy protection in hard drives? They opposed it, and together with several other companies, put a stop to it.
What did Apple do about the Microsoft settlement plan to dump $1 billion in MS software and reconditioned hardware on our poor school systems? Jobs and Apple screamed 'bloody murder!", and the judge in the case is at least listening. This is the first time in five years that Jobs has personally and forcefully spoke out against Microsoft.
Apple's influence does not match its marketshare. Microsoft is usually too busy copying them for that to be true. Apple's size is also very temporary. At one time, they had 40% of the market. They are getting set up to retake that marketshare. They are one of the only desktop computer makers to be firmly in the black, and hiring instead of doing massive layoffs. Given their 26 stores, OS X, and the new hardware coming out possibly as soon as next month, they will finally be ready. The December 3rd Time ad, "The only thing we have a monopoly on is complements", was a gauntlet tossed directly at Microsoft. 2002 is going to be a *very* interesting year for Apple. And remember, any increase in Apple's marketshare, whittles away at Microsoft's core monopoly: Windows. Without that monopoly, Microsoft has no power and no teeth.
Apple does have a concern about this issue. Not only does this hurt QuickTime, but also iDVD, DVD Pro, and Apple's superdrive. Do you think they will not care about the Mac's DVD authoring capablilities? Do you think Apple will like using Microsoft's formats instead of their own?
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have got to pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, "We need you today!"
The heroic, wonder-working deity returns, in TWO days!
J05H wrote:
;) I'm sure the PCs of today are faster than the Macs of yesteryear. Wait a month or two, and Macs are going to totally leapfrog Itanium into the next generation. While Intel is still scratching its head wondering how to sell a 800 mhz high end chip in a gigahertz world, Apple is going to be putting G5 gigahertz screamers in CompUSA for anyone to buy.
;)
> I will NEVER go back to relying on Macs for paying work, to
> unreliable, to hard to maintain, crash to much, and they are way slow
> compared to modern PC hardware.
Never, ever, say "NEVER".
I have used OS 9 enough to know you are right about the "crash to much". Most of the problems I've seen were either caused by a driver conflict I was able to fix, my screwing up something in an install that I was able to back out of and have the Mac work just fine, or most commonly, the programs would crash, and because the operating system is an old design, it would bring the whole Mac down. I have not had any of these problems happen in OS X, which I installed last March. OS X is based on real Unix (what Windows NT wanted to grow up to be, but never made it), not an old microcomputer operating system. All the 2D (especially Photoshop) and 3D graphics programs I've tried run great either natively, or in Classic mode (which is like a little OS 9 environment just for them). If an OS 9 program crashes now, it may take down any others that were running in Classic mode, but the OS X programs are untouched. Simply restart Classic (while you continue to work in your OS X programs) and when it is going again, restart your apps and keep on working.
As for unreliable, well I haven't used my Macs as hard as someone with a deadline to meet would, but I haven't needed any repairs with any of them.
> make mine... whatever goes fast and is stable...
Ooooh, Dual 1.6 Ghz G5 with OS X! Yum! Wanna buy me one next month?
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected an apple tree.
In just 4 days, she will return to see its fruit:
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
Microlith wrote:
> None of the programs they tested have Mac versions, though Maya and
> (I think) 3D Studio Max are developing Linux versions.
Read the article! Only 3D Studio Max and Truespace were mentioned as not running on Macs. Maya and Lightwave I believe have been made OS X native. And there are a whole host of less expensive programs: Bryce, Carrara, Poser, Amapi, Amorphium, pay versions of Strata Studio, etc. There are also two free 3D programs for the Mac: Strata Studio Base, and the OS X alpha of Blender!
4 days until Mothra's return!