Assuming you're using gigabit ethernet, dig up an old 10Base-T or 10/100 ethernet hub, put that between his Mac and the network, and you'll reduce the speed at which he can move data to and from those other Macs. A lot cheaper than a server, but don't let Dad find out!
I've been using these bulbs for almost 3 years now. At first I'd buy one or two a month at about $5-6 each, replacing the bulbs that I used most of the time. Over a few months time, all the bulbs in my apartment had been replaced. It helped me keep my electric bill under $10 per month (gas heat, and I didn't live there during air conditioning season).
Nowadays these bulbs are much more affordable - 5-6 for $12-15 at Sam's Club (depending on 60W vs. 100W equivalent). Singles have dropped to $4-5.
I've had a couple fail during 3 years, and today I probably have 20 or so throughout my house. They take a second or two to start, and it takes a little while for them to reach full brightness, but they last a long time and significantly cut electric use and your electric bill.
Highly recommended, but be aware that they won't fit all fixtures.
Well said. ADHD is a difference with both positive and negative aspects. Hyperfocus is wonderful in its place, but it can also make one prone to addictive behavior (video gaming, for instance). The fact that the ADHD brain is wired differently means we tend to be creative people and good problem solvers. I took full advantage of ADHD for decades in design work, writing, and troubleshooting computers.
The reason that ADHD is seen as a disorder is that there's a price we pay for hyperfocus and otherwise being overly aware of our surroundings - we're easily distracted and can have a hard time bringing focus to things that don't fascinate us. If the topic isn't engrossing, our minds wander.
In my experience, the greatest downside of having ADHD was never developing the social skills needed to thrive outside school and the workplace. Medication has helped me immensely. I'm no less creative, no less able to focus, but I am less distracted and better able to sustain social relationships.
It's the best of both world without being "normal" - and I really appreciate the benefits ADHD has given me. The right medication (and they are not all right for all ADHDers) can balance things out nicely; the wrong one or wrong dosage can completely remove your edge.
I suspect that you are correct. I have ADHD, one brother definitely does, and another brother very likely does. My brother was diagnosed when his son was; so was I.
In cases where ADHD has a genetic/biological component, medication seems to be very helpful. Whatever the reason, we're "wired different" and the right meds can help our minds become more balanced. The right meds (Wellbutrin in my case) don't take away the creativity and ability to see tasks through that are the positive side of ADHD, but they do help you become more socially away and deal with less interesting tasks.
As for ADHD fathers not sticking around, sometimes that because our wives don't want to deal with us and would rather run away from our "problem" than work with us. Since the divorce and going on Wellbutrin, I have become more connected with my children than ever and try to help the two with ADHD better understand how it impacts their lives.
The whole point of choosing a font (or set of fonts) is so that you can make sure a first-time visitor to your site has a good chance of seeing it as you intended. Big fonts or so small that they're almost illegible (my pet peeve of Web design). Legible or grunge. Whatever. Your choices here say as much about you and your site as the graphics and written content.
Not making wise choices here tells your visitors that you don't care.
Apple eventually abandoned SCSI for less costly IDE hard drives, but SCSI both reduced the load on the CPU and made it possible to add one or more external SCSI devices such as scanners, tape drives, external hard drives, etc.
Circa 1991, 1MB SIMMs for my Mac Plus cost about $80 per stick. If you were able to buy 4MB for $100, you were doing better than me - and I was doing purchasing for the local ComputerLand around that time.
Yes, the trackballs had as much tendency to 'gunk up' as the balls in the mice of that era. Still, it was the best technology at the time.
Q: How many PC laptops had stereo sound output or any sound input in 1991? And how often did you need to record in stereo?
IBM has or will soon have the capability to deliver 3.2 GHz CPUs to Microsoft for the Xbox 360, which will almost certainly ship before Thanksgiving. A dual core 3.2 GHz G5 would offer plenty of power - and for real power fanatics, how about four cores? Freescale is putting finishing touches on newer, faster single- and dual-core G4 processors for the low-end of Apple's line.
"...Apple was forced to take the plunge."
How many people - other than gamers and video producers - need 3 GHz and faster computers? Apple grew sales 40% year-over-year with their current hardware. People are buying 1.25 GHz Mac minis and 1.33 GHz iBooks.
This is just another Steve Jobs hissy fit. IBM made him look bad, just as Motorola had with the G4/500, so he takes his ball and plays somewhere else.
Still, this looks like a brilliantly executed plan, especially if Apple can get Intel to cut them really good pricing on 4, 5, 6 million CPUs a year.
Apple IIGS Deliberately Crippled
on
Apple's First Flops
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The Apple IIGS was deliberately crippled. It should have run at 8 MHz, but Apple chose 2.8 MHz to make it (1) faster than other Apple II models and (2) slower than the 8 MHz Macintosh.
The IIGS had great color support but absolutely lousy resolution. If it had supported 640 x 480 instead of CGA-esque 320 x 200, that would have helped a lot.
The Ensoniq sound chip was remarkable.
But in addition to making the IIGS underpowered and giving it low-res graphics, Apple had several ROM revisions that (1) required taking the computer back to your Apple dealer and (2) broke a lot of the software you already owned.
It coulda been a contender, but Apple's decisions kept that from happening.
Except for the high end, Macs are single CPU computers. The Power Mac G5 is available in three dual-processor versions - and a single-processor one.
Yes, Apple has been using multiple processors for a long time - August 1996 with the Power Mac 9500/180MP. And they reintroduced the concept with the July 2001 Power Mac G4s. However, it wasn't until OS X that the Mac OS could really take advantage of multiple procesors.
As for multiple cores, if dual-core G4 or G5 CPUs were available, I'm sure they would use them. POWER is not the same thing. Apple cannot use what does not yet exist.
Dual core processors let you run (a) two cores at just over half the speed of equally powerful single core processors or (b) two cores at the same speed as single core processors with nearly twice the horsepower.
In neither case will dual core processors increase memory latency. In fact, by using a slower clock speed, the memory latency is reduced in terms of clock cycles.
Further, as CPUs grow larger and larger onboard caches, they make fewer calls to main memory - and latency becomes less of a factor.
Um, you think Macworld still writes about upgrades to 1997 computers? Not often!
Head on over to LowEndMac.com, visit the Beige G3 profile page, and follow the very helpful links. Much has been published addressing your specific situation.
It doesn't run your daddy's OS, but the Power Macintosh G5 has 9 variable speed fans, multiple cooling zones, and rethinks the entire cooling/noise thing. On top of that, it has a spectacular GUI on top of a Mach kernel -- BSD Unix for the rest of us.
I've had the keyboard and display replaced over the past few months on my 2-1/2 year old PowerBook G4/400. Definitly worth the price of purchase.
My wife has had the keyboard on her 14" iBook replaced three times already due to keys snapping off. The printed letters are already wearing off the new keyboard. Again, very glad to have AppleCare.
I respectfully disagree with ciroknight. There have been times when Apple has had the hardware to take on the Intel world.
The Mac 512K of 1984 at 8 MHz held its own against the 6 MHz IBM AT. Too bad it didn't have a decent hard drive.
The 40 MHz Mac IIfx outperformed the 33 MHz 386 and 20 MHz 486 systems of its era (1990), especially with Apple's accelerated video card.
MHz for MHz, the better Quadras ran circles around Windows PCs (back in the Windows 3.1 era).
In 1994 Apple went PowerPC, which didn't result in an major immediate improvements. Then again, they didn't have the Pentium math bug, which was probably responsible for the biggest CPU recall in computer history.
When the Power Mac G3 was introduced, it was the most powerful CPU on any desktop system. Remember the snail ads? The bunny suits? The BYTEmark results -- and BYTE magazine getting gobbled up by a pro-Windows company and the magazine being discontinued?
The G4 was a breakthrough as well, although the folks at Motorola seemed to believe that Moore's Law was an unatainable goal.
And now the G5 offers more power. About 25% (ballpark) more than the G4, MHz for MHz. About 25-50% more than the P4, MHz for MHz (we'll know a whole lot more when production units ship with a full release version of OS X 10.2.7 -- the NASA and other tests are all using prerelease hardware and a prerelease OS).
Not only has Apple has Intel-beating performance several times in its history, but the original Mac OS was a far more efficient OS than Microsoft's bloated consumer Windows releases (3.1, 95, 98, Me).
Unfortunately, OS X trades a lot of that efficiency for stability and eye candy, making it harder for modern Macs to feel perky compared with the old Mac OS or 2-3 GHz Windows systems. The fast G4s helped, but the G5s are going to take the OS Xperience to the next level.
On top of that, Macs are simply more productive than Unix workstations. You can run high end software, but also AppleWorks, Microsoft Office, SimCity 4, Mathematica, and a host of other apps not available for Solaris, Linux, BSD, and the like.
You're quite wrong. MFLOPS/MHz (the "H" is always captalized in honor of Mr. Hertz) can be used to project performance.
For instance, NASA tested a 2.66 GHz P4 system. By using MFLOPS/MHz, they can estimate the performance of a 3.06 or 3.2 GHz P4 system.
Likewise, IBM has promised a 3 GHz G5 within 12 months. The MFLOPS/MHz metric allows you to project the potential performance of such a system as well.
That is why the NASA test doesn't simply look at raw performance. They want some idea where things are going as the G5 gets faster and Intel tries to eke another 0.167 GHz out for a "next generation" Pentium4. (How long did it take to jump from 3.06 to 3.2 GHz?)
Sorry, if someone emails me, asks a question, and I reply, there's no reason in the world I should have to jump through any hoops (get on their "whitelist") so they can get my reply. I refuse to do it.
Whitelists are not just a way to get rid of spam; they're a hell of a great way to annoy people who are already busy enough.
My folks and their folks went to Canada after the War. The last name on my maternal side wasn't a problem, but nobody *but nobody* but a Dutchman could pronounce Knegt, so they Anglicized and translated it to Knight.
Then my mother went an named me after an author who had the same name as one of the inventors of the airplane and some guy who later became famous for popcorn. (Also Sgt. Snorkel's first name in Beetle Bailey.) I was 30 before I actually met someone else named Orville.
I changed it in the middle of my college years. Sorta. In a bass ackwards sort of way. I changed my middle name, which was also my father's first name and my youngest brother's first name (he goes by his middle name) -- and use that almost exclusively.
So I've still got the last name acquired after immigration. I've still got the first name my parents gave me. And I go by a name I chose for myself. (The Jansen is a pen name -- son of Jan, which is my father's original Dutch first name, but he goes by John these days.)
I know who I am, but without some documentation, future genealogists could get massively confused....
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming you're using gigabit ethernet, dig up an old 10Base-T or 10/100 ethernet hub, put that between his Mac and the network, and you'll reduce the speed at which he can move data to and from those other Macs. A lot cheaper than a server, but don't let Dad find out!
Um, there never was a Switchback virus. The Rumor Mill by "Anne Onymus" (get it) specializes in this kind of parody.
I've been using these bulbs for almost 3 years now. At first I'd buy one or two a month at about $5-6 each, replacing the bulbs that I used most of the time. Over a few months time, all the bulbs in my apartment had been replaced. It helped me keep my electric bill under $10 per month (gas heat, and I didn't live there during air conditioning season).
Nowadays these bulbs are much more affordable - 5-6 for $12-15 at Sam's Club (depending on 60W vs. 100W equivalent). Singles have dropped to $4-5.
I've had a couple fail during 3 years, and today I probably have 20 or so throughout my house. They take a second or two to start, and it takes a little while for them to reach full brightness, but they last a long time and significantly cut electric use and your electric bill.
Highly recommended, but be aware that they won't fit all fixtures.
Well said. ADHD is a difference with both positive and negative aspects. Hyperfocus is wonderful in its place, but it can also make one prone to addictive behavior (video gaming, for instance). The fact that the ADHD brain is wired differently means we tend to be creative people and good problem solvers. I took full advantage of ADHD for decades in design work, writing, and troubleshooting computers.
The reason that ADHD is seen as a disorder is that there's a price we pay for hyperfocus and otherwise being overly aware of our surroundings - we're easily distracted and can have a hard time bringing focus to things that don't fascinate us. If the topic isn't engrossing, our minds wander.
In my experience, the greatest downside of having ADHD was never developing the social skills needed to thrive outside school and the workplace. Medication has helped me immensely. I'm no less creative, no less able to focus, but I am less distracted and better able to sustain social relationships.
It's the best of both world without being "normal" - and I really appreciate the benefits ADHD has given me. The right medication (and they are not all right for all ADHDers) can balance things out nicely; the wrong one or wrong dosage can completely remove your edge.
DJ
I suspect that you are correct. I have ADHD, one brother definitely does, and another brother very likely does. My brother was diagnosed when his son was; so was I.
In cases where ADHD has a genetic/biological component, medication seems to be very helpful. Whatever the reason, we're "wired different" and the right meds can help our minds become more balanced. The right meds (Wellbutrin in my case) don't take away the creativity and ability to see tasks through that are the positive side of ADHD, but they do help you become more socially away and deal with less interesting tasks.
As for ADHD fathers not sticking around, sometimes that because our wives don't want to deal with us and would rather run away from our "problem" than work with us. Since the divorce and going on Wellbutrin, I have become more connected with my children than ever and try to help the two with ADHD better understand how it impacts their lives.
DJ
What the writer missed is that Aero was charging Apple something like $125,000 per hour to use the jet.
Other than that, a very good read and a nice perspective on Amelio's crucial role in keeping Apple independent and solvent.
The whole point of choosing a font (or set of fonts) is so that you can make sure a first-time visitor to your site has a good chance of seeing it as you intended. Big fonts or so small that they're almost illegible (my pet peeve of Web design). Legible or grunge. Whatever. Your choices here say as much about you and your site as the graphics and written content.
Not making wise choices here tells your visitors that you don't care.
There were 300MB laptop hard drives in 1991?
Apple eventually abandoned SCSI for less costly IDE hard drives, but SCSI both reduced the load on the CPU and made it possible to add one or more external SCSI devices such as scanners, tape drives, external hard drives, etc.
Circa 1991, 1MB SIMMs for my Mac Plus cost about $80 per stick. If you were able to buy 4MB for $100, you were doing better than me - and I was doing purchasing for the local ComputerLand around that time.
Yes, the trackballs had as much tendency to 'gunk up' as the balls in the mice of that era. Still, it was the best technology at the time.
Q: How many PC laptops had stereo sound output or any sound input in 1991? And how often did you need to record in stereo?
"...forced by IBM." No way.
IBM has or will soon have the capability to deliver 3.2 GHz CPUs to Microsoft for the Xbox 360, which will almost certainly ship before Thanksgiving. A dual core 3.2 GHz G5 would offer plenty of power - and for real power fanatics, how about four cores? Freescale is putting finishing touches on newer, faster single- and dual-core G4 processors for the low-end of Apple's line.
"...Apple was forced to take the plunge."
How many people - other than gamers and video producers - need 3 GHz and faster computers? Apple grew sales 40% year-over-year with their current hardware. People are buying 1.25 GHz Mac minis and 1.33 GHz iBooks.
This is just another Steve Jobs hissy fit. IBM made him look bad, just as Motorola had with the G4/500, so he takes his ball and plays somewhere else.
Still, this looks like a brilliantly executed plan, especially if Apple can get Intel to cut them really good pricing on 4, 5, 6 million CPUs a year.
The Apple IIGS was deliberately crippled. It should have run at 8 MHz, but Apple chose 2.8 MHz to make it (1) faster than other Apple II models and (2) slower than the 8 MHz Macintosh.
The IIGS had great color support but absolutely lousy resolution. If it had supported 640 x 480 instead of CGA-esque 320 x 200, that would have helped a lot.
The Ensoniq sound chip was remarkable.
But in addition to making the IIGS underpowered and giving it low-res graphics, Apple had several ROM revisions that (1) required taking the computer back to your Apple dealer and (2) broke a lot of the software you already owned.
It coulda been a contender, but Apple's decisions kept that from happening.
"In a CeBIT debate today it was concluded that the MS monopoly would not exist with today's software patenting in place back in 1985."
Or circa 1980 to prevent Microsoft/Seattle Computing from ripping off CP/M.
In a similar vein, Disney would not be what it is today if copyright had been applied to fairy tales and the like - and then never allowed to expire.
But now that they've taken advantage of the way things were, they want protection from others doing the same to them.
Turnabout is fair play.
Daniel Jansen
Except for the high end, Macs are single CPU computers. The Power Mac G5 is available in three dual-processor versions - and a single-processor one.
Yes, Apple has been using multiple processors for a long time - August 1996 with the Power Mac 9500/180MP. And they reintroduced the concept with the July 2001 Power Mac G4s. However, it wasn't until OS X that the Mac OS could really take advantage of multiple procesors.
As for multiple cores, if dual-core G4 or G5 CPUs were available, I'm sure they would use them. POWER is not the same thing. Apple cannot use what does not yet exist.
Dual core processors let you run (a) two cores at just over half the speed of equally powerful single core processors or (b) two cores at the same speed as single core processors with nearly twice the horsepower.
In neither case will dual core processors increase memory latency. In fact, by using a slower clock speed, the memory latency is reduced in terms of clock cycles.
Further, as CPUs grow larger and larger onboard caches, they make fewer calls to main memory - and latency becomes less of a factor.
Um, you think Macworld still writes about upgrades to 1997 computers? Not often!
Head on over to LowEndMac.com, visit the Beige G3 profile page, and follow the very helpful links. Much has been published addressing your specific situation.
It doesn't run your daddy's OS, but the Power Macintosh G5 has 9 variable speed fans, multiple cooling zones, and rethinks the entire cooling/noise thing. On top of that, it has a spectacular GUI on top of a Mach kernel -- BSD Unix for the rest of us.
I've had the keyboard and display replaced over the past few months on my 2-1/2 year old PowerBook G4/400. Definitly worth the price of purchase.
My wife has had the keyboard on her 14" iBook replaced three times already due to keys snapping off. The printed letters are already wearing off the new keyboard. Again, very glad to have AppleCare.
Recommended on any iBook or PowerBook.
I respectfully disagree with ciroknight. There have been times when Apple has had the hardware to take on the Intel world.
The Mac 512K of 1984 at 8 MHz held its own against the 6 MHz IBM AT. Too bad it didn't have a decent hard drive.
The 40 MHz Mac IIfx outperformed the 33 MHz 386 and 20 MHz 486 systems of its era (1990), especially with Apple's accelerated video card.
MHz for MHz, the better Quadras ran circles around Windows PCs (back in the Windows 3.1 era).
In 1994 Apple went PowerPC, which didn't result in an major immediate improvements. Then again, they didn't have the Pentium math bug, which was probably responsible for the biggest CPU recall in computer history.
When the Power Mac G3 was introduced, it was the most powerful CPU on any desktop system. Remember the snail ads? The bunny suits? The BYTEmark results -- and BYTE magazine getting gobbled up by a pro-Windows company and the magazine being discontinued?
The G4 was a breakthrough as well, although the folks at Motorola seemed to believe that Moore's Law was an unatainable goal.
And now the G5 offers more power. About 25% (ballpark) more than the G4, MHz for MHz. About 25-50% more than the P4, MHz for MHz (we'll know a whole lot more when production units ship with a full release version of OS X 10.2.7 -- the NASA and other tests are all using prerelease hardware and a prerelease OS).
Not only has Apple has Intel-beating performance several times in its history, but the original Mac OS was a far more efficient OS than Microsoft's bloated consumer Windows releases (3.1, 95, 98, Me).
Unfortunately, OS X trades a lot of that efficiency for stability and eye candy, making it harder for modern Macs to feel perky compared with the old Mac OS or 2-3 GHz Windows systems. The fast G4s helped, but the G5s are going to take the OS Xperience to the next level.
On top of that, Macs are simply more productive than Unix workstations. You can run high end software, but also AppleWorks, Microsoft Office, SimCity 4, Mathematica, and a host of other apps not available for Solaris, Linux, BSD, and the like.
You're quite wrong. MFLOPS/MHz (the "H" is always captalized in honor of Mr. Hertz) can be used to project performance.
For instance, NASA tested a 2.66 GHz P4 system. By using MFLOPS/MHz, they can estimate the performance of a 3.06 or 3.2 GHz P4 system.
Likewise, IBM has promised a 3 GHz G5 within 12 months. The MFLOPS/MHz metric allows you to project the potential performance of such a system as well.
That is why the NASA test doesn't simply look at raw performance. They want some idea where things are going as the G5 gets faster and Intel tries to eke another 0.167 GHz out for a "next generation" Pentium4. (How long did it take to jump from 3.06 to 3.2 GHz?)
Each increase of 3 dB is a doubling in volume. Every 10 dB increase means the sound is 10x louder.
;-)
That means the G5s are 1/10 as loud, not half as loud.
Back to Physics 101 for you.
Sorry, if someone emails me, asks a question, and I reply, there's no reason in the world I should have to jump through any hoops (get on their "whitelist") so they can get my reply. I refuse to do it.
Whitelists are not just a way to get rid of spam; they're a hell of a great way to annoy people who are already busy enough.
My 2.
My folks and their folks went to Canada after the War. The last name on my maternal side wasn't a problem, but nobody *but nobody* but a Dutchman could pronounce Knegt, so they Anglicized and translated it to Knight.
Then my mother went an named me after an author who had the same name as one of the inventors of the airplane and some guy who later became famous for popcorn. (Also Sgt. Snorkel's first name in Beetle Bailey.) I was 30 before I actually met someone else named Orville.
I changed it in the middle of my college years. Sorta. In a bass ackwards sort of way. I changed my middle name, which was also my father's first name and my youngest brother's first name (he goes by his middle name) -- and use that almost exclusively.
So I've still got the last name acquired after immigration. I've still got the first name my parents gave me. And I go by a name I chose for myself. (The Jansen is a pen name -- son of Jan, which is my father's original Dutch first name, but he goes by John these days.)
I know who I am, but without some documentation, future genealogists could get massively confused....
Canucks know -- it's eh-mail. ;-)
Great idea. I'll send a letter and take the links off my site!