Exactly. OS X is still very much under construction - many regard 10.2 as the first version that is truly ready for primetime. I think the code behind the interface may actually be in a stronger state of flux than the rest of the system - consider the changes necessary to get to an incredible interface enhancement like Quartz Extreme from the intolerably slow one in 10.0! Nor is Apple's tweaking likely to stop here. I've heard at least one rumor that they are working on another iDevice (not a pda, but not a computer apparently) capable of running cocoa apps with only a simple recompile. Such a device would certainly involve substantially altered interface code, which could use standard or stripped down.nib files.
Obviously I can't verify the veracity of the rumor, but I can make these observations: 1) By keeping those APIs private, Apple is quietly trying to keep people from messing with what they consider low-level code that they probably have plans for, and 2) based on that assumption Apple is probably not concerned about themers like Kaliedescope, but major commercial programs messing with that code within an application a) thus shooting themselves in the foot with major revisions to/new versions of those APIs and potentially abandoning the platform b) lazily foisting distinctly counter-intuitive non-apple interfaces designed for another platform, or c) interfering with the proper functioning of other programs.
Re:It's called Punctuated Equilibirum...
on
Ready, Steady, Evolve
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually this new theory/evidence just provides a little extra bang to punctuated equilibrium. It could already be explained based purely on natural selection. In that case, the triggering factor is also stress - a form which had been favorable and therefore selected for in an environment is no longer so favorable when the organism's environment changes in some way, at which point natural selection starts weeding out that species, unless a series of mutations occurs that gives it an edge. Of course, such a major change in a species will itself have a marked effect on the environment, thus triggering changes in other species, and so forth. An evolutionary domino effect. The more dramatic the change, the more dramatic the effect. One of the most pronounced examples of this was after the dinosaurs were killed off, when mammals rapidly evolved in response to so many empty ecological niches.
No, what would be ideal is for it to duplicate not only the video but the entire DVD structure, menus, subtitles, extras and all. A single, fully functional video file, except of course using more modern codecs so it's smaller. (And since this is a still a very big file, it should also contain data that allows the software to detect and repair the inevitable errors.)
Of course the only file format/architecture up to the challenge for that is Quicktime and maybe MPEG4.
The chances of you winning that trip to space, even you tubby software engineers that drink a gallon of soda a day, is so slim as to be meaningless. So just drink whatever you want. At least coke has a little acidic bite to it, wheras pepsi is just disgustingly sweet and syrupy. Kind of like Brittney Spears, again.
Coke tastes better than Pepsi (way better). Dr. Pepper is better than both.
If they would integrate that lock button into the pop-up alert that says you can't do such-and-such because you lack priviledges, that would be the best solution.
I totally agree with the file moving/deleting/using problem. Apple needs to include some sort of "sudo" or "su" - like functionality option in the finder for powerusers like me.
And while I'm at it, they should reconcile some key differences between the finder and darwin, namely: slashes vs. colons to indicate directories; hard links, symbolic links, and finder alias intercompatibility and flexibility (ideally, a configurable super alias that incorporates the functionality of all three for both finder and darwin); file type/creator management and file exchange; integration of bundle/.app functionality into darwin; preconfiguring the shell config files for new users such that "rm" moves files to the trash rather than deleting them permanently or something along those lines (maybe just a "trash"/"emptytrash" command); running command line apps from the finder (and manipulating their outputs between them - graphical interface?); running X windows apps from the finder (built in X windows functionality) despite the difference in gui principles; etc.
Clearly, you are not familiar with the concept of "sarcasm."
IE for OS X does have difficulty with long file names, as do most carbon programs, for some reason. The easy workaround is to use other programs that *can* handle long file names, which is not an option on OS 9.
Hell yeah! I could never give up having every file I download get its name truncated to a mere 31 characters, assuming I can get to it before my web browser leaks memory and crashes the machine. And who needs 'nix compatibility? That just makes it easy and profitable for people to port or develop their software for an additional 3-4% of the market.
I think the advantages of actually putting out an x86 version of os x (which by the way went by the name "Star Trek" before, IIRC) are outweighed by the various (mostly hardware-revenue related) disadvantages.
However, it's an invaluable asset to have anyway, because you can blackmail microsoft with it. Remember when MS bought all that Apple stock? Remember what dire straights Apple has been in in the past? Despite all that, Mac OS remains to this day the only consumer OS besides windows that has managed to gain and hold onto a significant userbase versus Windows. And it has a lot of software. So pretend you're Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs gives you a ring and says "If we start to go under, for any reason, we're releasing our x86 build of Mac OS X... as open source." There's not enough TP in Redmond to handle that kind of threat. Or any of the lesser ones they could make too.
I don't know about trademarks, but Japan has some pretty strict copyright laws. You can't even use a picture or screencap in an article or webpage without their permission, and if you do they WILL go after you. As a result Japanese fansites are kind of pathetic - mostly text, with perhaps some hand-drawn artwork. I don't know if they have anything like a fair use clause, but I seriously of doubt it. Likely toho is fuming over this "disrespectful" allusion/homage to their creation.
What would be the point? Digital animation is not that detailed. The tricky part is making textures and lighting look realistic - CG tends to lack the truly fine details that high resolution (IMAX, HDTV) can give you.
Seriously, although I am sure the Nielsens make a strong effort to be representative, their random sampling just doesn't seem so random to me. In particular, I wonder how well non-conventional households are represented.
With TiVos, there's no reason why everyone who wants to be rated can't be. The numbers would be more accurate, and the results scaled to match the level of sampling for non-tivo households. Handling overnight ratings could be much simpler. Handling weekly national ratings would be much better than the current self-reporting system.
Strictly speaking, technology did not catch up. DivX and the like improved the situation for rippers, but movies distributed on the net are rarely as good as the DVDs. They generally miss all of the bonus features, and on top of that you usually have to watch on your computer.
The real moral is: people don't need the absolute best quality to watch a movie or listen to a song. Most of the time they're satisfied with something that is merely adequate.
If nobody really wants digtal TV, then why push it? There's no need to rush. With Tivo undercutting traditional revenue methods, the Internet revolutionizing distribution and ruining distribution control, Wireless and P2P poised to exacerbate the whole situation, and the Spectrum subject to all manners of demand, controversy, and newer more efficient and effective technologies, we might as well wait.
It may take a while to get this mess all sorted out and there's doubtless significant improvements on the way. Maybe traditional commercial-driven networks will collapse. Maybe small-scale production and distribution will really take off with the enablers we're just starting to see. Maybe someone will come up with a generalized wireless system that is so good everyone wants to switch to it. In the long run it'll probably be better to go without for a few years until all the pieces fall in place, than to have ourselves saddled by an ever more complex and restrictive arrangement.
Olympus issued a press release about their new xD-Picture Card. Will be offered with capacities of up to 256MB this year, and 2 GB the next. It's only the size of a postage stamp and has adaptors for PC Cards and Compact Flash.
Which is great, assuming you don't swallow the expensive little bugger. Or need to write on it.
While I agree that relatively high-capacity solid-state flash media is the obvious choice to replace the venerable floppy (and the unreliable Zip), I have to take issue with A) The price and B) The physical size.
Firstly, floppies were great because you could just give them to people. Didn't need a computer with you or anything. Email has replaced floppies most of the really obvious matters, but the need for such media does come up every now and then, and burning CDs is a pain (not to mention non-reusable, another floppy advantage). But if they aren't dirt cheap, you're not going to be giving them away.
Secondly, these little cards are getting too damn small. Anything smaller than a stick of gum has no room to write on or read off, can't be held well with just your fingers, and is just begging to be lost. (From a design point of view, I think Sony's memory stick is superior to the alternatives). Olympus has been using the wafer-thin smartmedia cards for a while, and they have a marked tendency to break. Wonder how this new one will be .
or 80 and 96, comparable to 160 and 192 for mp3s respectively. Any lossy codec is going to break down at some point. The question is where and how quickly? One way is to design a codec to perform as well as it can at some bitrate, determined by needs. But for music, when your goal is to have audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original rather than merely audible, the goal is for it to be as indistinguishable as possible for as low a bitrate as possible (which means you have tradeoffs). Below that, who cares? A codec that can do that is not necessarily going to scale properly to very low bitrates. And I have yet to hear of any codec that can handle near-indistinguishable music at 64.
It was also easy for the **typical** end user to use **thousands** of MacOS Classic, Carbon, Cocoa, and Java apps. X11 has a very un-mac-like interface - or rather, it has a very crappy interface, wheras Aqua was designed to be as much like the MacOS as possible. Why trash what ain't broke for a clearly less desirable system?
OTOH, I think this article is more evidence that apple has learned their lesson. Macs used to rely on proprietary hardware, inflating prices, but no more. On the old MacOS they suffered for lack of software. By embracing a unix core, they've gained a huge base of pre-existing software, and added incentive for Windows developers to port to Mac/Unix. If they could find a way to incorporate X-windows (especially GTK) apps (and make command-line apps and functionality easily accessible from the Aqua gui - sort of a gui super terminal, kinda like shellshell) that would be perfect.
Apple did not and should not have designed the Aqua interface around the X windows style. On the contrary - they should make an open source Aqua-style gui for Unix to replace X windows, and make it that much easier to port/run Unix Apps on OS X!
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Exactly. OS X is still very much under construction - many regard 10.2 as the first version that is truly ready for primetime. I think the code behind the interface may actually be in a stronger state of flux than the rest of the system - consider the changes necessary to get to an incredible interface enhancement like Quartz Extreme from the intolerably slow one in 10.0! Nor is Apple's tweaking likely to stop here. I've heard at least one rumor that they are working on another iDevice (not a pda, but not a computer apparently) capable of running cocoa apps with only a simple recompile. Such a device would certainly involve substantially altered interface code, which could use standard or stripped down .nib files.
Obviously I can't verify the veracity of the rumor, but I can make these observations: 1) By keeping those APIs private, Apple is quietly trying to keep people from messing with what they consider low-level code that they probably have plans for, and 2) based on that assumption Apple is probably not concerned about themers like Kaliedescope, but major commercial programs messing with that code within an application a) thus shooting themselves in the foot with major revisions to/new versions of those APIs and potentially abandoning the platform b) lazily foisting distinctly counter-intuitive non-apple interfaces designed for another platform, or c) interfering with the proper functioning of other programs.
Actually this new theory/evidence just provides a little extra bang to punctuated equilibrium. It could already be explained based purely on natural selection. In that case, the triggering factor is also stress - a form which had been favorable and therefore selected for in an environment is no longer so favorable when the organism's environment changes in some way, at which point natural selection starts weeding out that species, unless a series of mutations occurs that gives it an edge. Of course, such a major change in a species will itself have a marked effect on the environment, thus triggering changes in other species, and so forth. An evolutionary domino effect. The more dramatic the change, the more dramatic the effect. One of the most pronounced examples of this was after the dinosaurs were killed off, when mammals rapidly evolved in response to so many empty ecological niches.
I just ordered a bunch of stuff as a gift from amazon yesterday - it wasn't on commission, but boy am I annoyed.
No, what would be ideal is for it to duplicate not only the video but the entire DVD structure, menus, subtitles, extras and all. A single, fully functional video file, except of course using more modern codecs so it's smaller. (And since this is a still a very big file, it should also contain data that allows the software to detect and repair the inevitable errors.)
Of course the only file format/architecture up to the challenge for that is Quicktime and maybe MPEG4.
I can't imagine anyone BUT Terry Gilliam pulling this film off properly.
The chances of you winning that trip to space, even you tubby software engineers that drink a gallon of soda a day, is so slim as to be meaningless. So just drink whatever you want. At least coke has a little acidic bite to it, wheras pepsi is just disgustingly sweet and syrupy. Kind of like Brittney Spears, again.
Coke tastes better than Pepsi (way better). Dr. Pepper is better than both.
Since when do snowboarders give a shit about anybody else on the slopes?
If they would integrate that lock button into the pop-up alert that says you can't do such-and-such because you lack priviledges, that would be the best solution.
I totally agree with the file moving/deleting/using problem. Apple needs to include some sort of "sudo" or "su" - like functionality option in the finder for powerusers like me.
And while I'm at it, they should reconcile some key differences between the finder and darwin, namely: slashes vs. colons to indicate directories; hard links, symbolic links, and finder alias intercompatibility and flexibility (ideally, a configurable super alias that incorporates the functionality of all three for both finder and darwin); file type/creator management and file exchange; integration of bundle/.app functionality into darwin; preconfiguring the shell config files for new users such that "rm" moves files to the trash rather than deleting them permanently or something along those lines (maybe just a "trash"/"emptytrash" command); running command line apps from the finder (and manipulating their outputs between them - graphical interface?); running X windows apps from the finder (built in X windows functionality) despite the difference in gui principles; etc.
Clearly, you are not familiar with the concept of "sarcasm."
IE for OS X does have difficulty with long file names, as do most carbon programs, for some reason. The easy workaround is to use other programs that *can* handle long file names, which is not an option on OS 9.
Hell yeah! I could never give up having every file I download get its name truncated to a mere 31 characters, assuming I can get to it before my web browser leaks memory and crashes the machine. And who needs 'nix compatibility? That just makes it easy and profitable for people to port or develop their software for an additional 3-4% of the market.
I think the advantages of actually putting out an x86 version of os x (which by the way went by the name "Star Trek" before, IIRC) are outweighed by the various (mostly hardware-revenue related) disadvantages.
However, it's an invaluable asset to have anyway, because you can blackmail microsoft with it. Remember when MS bought all that Apple stock? Remember what dire straights Apple has been in in the past? Despite all that, Mac OS remains to this day the only consumer OS besides windows that has managed to gain and hold onto a significant userbase versus Windows. And it has a lot of software. So pretend you're Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs gives you a ring and says "If we start to go under, for any reason, we're releasing our x86 build of Mac OS X... as open source." There's not enough TP in Redmond to handle that kind of threat. Or any of the lesser ones they could make too.
Personally, I prefer the withering critique of modern adolescence of High School of the Apes and Hentai- Sim Girl.
Hopefully, the appeal of such enlightening games as these will continue to grow.
"I don't know, Davey..." Davey and Goliath
I don't know about trademarks, but Japan has some pretty strict copyright laws. You can't even use a picture or screencap in an article or webpage without their permission, and if you do they WILL go after you. As a result Japanese fansites are kind of pathetic - mostly text, with perhaps some hand-drawn artwork. I don't know if they have anything like a fair use clause, but I seriously of doubt it. Likely toho is fuming over this "disrespectful" allusion/homage to their creation.
Seriously. If there's one thing people in Hollywood know how to do, it's waste money.
What would be the point? Digital animation is not that detailed. The tricky part is making textures and lighting look realistic - CG tends to lack the truly fine details that high resolution (IMAX, HDTV) can give you.
If they thought the breasts were preposterously large in video, wait'll they get a load of this!
Heh heh... forget porn... they should do an Amazing Nurse Nanako marathon...
That's not very accurate. I know quite a few young adults who have ditched regular phones entirely in favor of mobiles. I've considered it myself.
Cowboy Bebop on NBC? Good Idea!
Seriously, although I am sure the Nielsens make a strong effort to be representative, their random sampling just doesn't seem so random to me. In particular, I wonder how well non-conventional households are represented.
With TiVos, there's no reason why everyone who wants to be rated can't be. The numbers would be more accurate, and the results scaled to match the level of sampling for non-tivo households. Handling overnight ratings could be much simpler. Handling weekly national ratings would be much better than the current self-reporting system.
Strictly speaking, technology did not catch up. DivX and the like improved the situation for rippers, but movies distributed on the net are rarely as good as the DVDs. They generally miss all of the bonus features, and on top of that you usually have to watch on your computer.
The real moral is: people don't need the absolute best quality to watch a movie or listen to a song. Most of the time they're satisfied with something that is merely adequate.
If nobody really wants digtal TV, then why push it? There's no need to rush. With Tivo undercutting traditional revenue methods, the Internet revolutionizing distribution and ruining distribution control, Wireless and P2P poised to exacerbate the whole situation, and the Spectrum subject to all manners of demand, controversy, and newer more efficient and effective technologies, we might as well wait.
It may take a while to get this mess all sorted out and there's doubtless significant improvements on the way. Maybe traditional commercial-driven networks will collapse. Maybe small-scale production and distribution will really take off with the enablers we're just starting to see. Maybe someone will come up with a generalized wireless system that is so good everyone wants to switch to it. In the long run it'll probably be better to go without for a few years until all the pieces fall in place, than to have ourselves saddled by an ever more complex and restrictive arrangement.
Olympus issued a press release about their new xD-Picture Card. Will be offered with capacities of up to 256MB this year, and 2 GB the next. It's only the size of a postage stamp and has adaptors for PC Cards and Compact Flash.
Which is great, assuming you don't swallow the expensive little bugger. Or need to write on it.
While I agree that relatively high-capacity solid-state flash media is the obvious choice to replace the venerable floppy (and the unreliable Zip), I have to take issue with A) The price and B) The physical size.
Firstly, floppies were great because you could just give them to people. Didn't need a computer with you or anything. Email has replaced floppies most of the really obvious matters, but the need for such media does come up every now and then, and burning CDs is a pain (not to mention non-reusable, another floppy advantage). But if they aren't dirt cheap, you're not going to be giving them away.
Secondly, these little cards are getting too damn small. Anything smaller than a stick of gum has no room to write on or read off, can't be held well with just your fingers, and is just begging to be lost. (From a design point of view, I think Sony's memory stick is superior to the alternatives). Olympus has been using the wafer-thin smartmedia cards for a while, and they have a marked tendency to break. Wonder how this new one will be .
or 80 and 96, comparable to 160 and 192 for mp3s respectively. Any lossy codec is going to break down at some point. The question is where and how quickly? One way is to design a codec to perform as well as it can at some bitrate, determined by needs. But for music, when your goal is to have audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original rather than merely audible, the goal is for it to be as indistinguishable as possible for as low a bitrate as possible (which means you have tradeoffs). Below that, who cares? A codec that can do that is not necessarily going to scale properly to very low bitrates. And I have yet to hear of any codec that can handle near-indistinguishable music at 64.
It was also easy for the **typical** end user to use **thousands** of MacOS Classic, Carbon, Cocoa, and Java apps. X11 has a very un-mac-like interface - or rather, it has a very crappy interface, wheras Aqua was designed to be as much like the MacOS as possible. Why trash what ain't broke for a clearly less desirable system?
OTOH, I think this article is more evidence that apple has learned their lesson. Macs used to rely on proprietary hardware, inflating prices, but no more. On the old MacOS they suffered for lack of software. By embracing a unix core, they've gained a huge base of pre-existing software, and added incentive for Windows developers to port to Mac/Unix. If they could find a way to incorporate X-windows (especially GTK) apps (and make command-line apps and functionality easily accessible from the Aqua gui - sort of a gui super terminal, kinda like shellshell) that would be perfect.
Apple did not and should not have designed the Aqua interface around the X windows style. On the contrary - they should make an open source Aqua-style gui for Unix to replace X windows, and make it that much easier to port/run Unix Apps on OS X!