If you're referring to the Emplant board, then it wasn't exactly as you describe. Emplant was a combination hardware/software emulation system that provided Macintosh and i586 emulation (though the latter came out MUCH later and not to much fanfare, from what I remember).
The idea of the package was that you could emulate any computer (and multiple ones at the same time, from some of the hype) and typically faster than the equivalent machine of the day. Looking at the software, it was equivalent to Shapeshifter (aka SheepShaver, aka Basilisk II), which meant that it used the native CPU and took over the system ROM functions and replaced them with native ones. Very good performance. For the i586 module, from what I remember, it was a pure software emulation.
What about the hardware? It appeared that the hardware was simply responsible for holding the actual ROM chips of the Macintosh being emulated, an optional no-frills SCSI chip, some Mac serial ports and a few other sockets for random things (an audio digitizer, from the site linked, though apparently never implemented). Basically it was a hardware dongle for a pure software emulation solution, with the ability to hook up to an AppleTalk network.
If there WAS such a board, I never heard of it. I was a very active member of comp.sys.amiga.emulation back through most of the 90's, and if it did exist, it was probably mentioned on that newsgroup. Maybe I just forgot over time.
The Atari 2600 was made from off-the-shelf parts, so there are no ROM licensing issues (on the platform itself).
Off the shelf parts? No, I think you're confusing the history of the PC here. While the 2600 didn't have any ROM code (which is easily copyrightable and difficult to duplicate), it did have a few custom chips (TIA, etc). Now I'm no chip engineer, but I'm sure its probably relatively easy to create functional equivalent chips at this level of complexity in comparison to doing a clean room ROM clone that still provides 100% compatibility.
I could be somewhat wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the 2600 had no ROM (that was the cartridge!) and it was simply stuffing values into registers that made things happen immediately. Remember, 2600 programmers had to be very concious about their timing; if there was ROM code, that would complicate things.
Chrysler's quality went up a notch, Daimler-Benz went down.
As far as Japanese cars being nicer to drive, well, I still wouldn't necessarily say that. The two things that Mercedes-Benz DIDN'T lose are
Drool factor (I exclude the SUV model from this which I never liked)
Quality body construction
The problems that I've seen with the post-2000 MB cars is electric-related glitches. For example, the clock on a relative's E320 no longer displays correctly, and the computer also died (thankfully, under warranty). The body, on the other hand, is as good as they've ever been made. Still VERY solid cars.
Many models of Japanese cars have always been cheap and tinny, but then again, their price reflects that, so I can't really say much other than "you get what you pay for" in that regard. However, I've just never been a fan of Lexus or Infinity. That's just my opinion, however. I will agree, however, that those things do run very long.
American cars have gotten better. Detroit might be in a slump, but if ANYONE, Chrysler is surviving it; they probably won't be defaulting on their debt in a few weeks like GM or Ford.
Link to a
previous response
by me (thread from a few months ago) detailing some of the differences and how to get around them. Nothing earth shattering, but after using XP Pro at work and XP Home on my personal PC, I figured out how to live with Home.
My guess is that they're avoiding the Mac / Linux ports simply because Netscape 8 touts the ability to use either Gecko or MSHTML rendering libraries.
Think about it.. OS X has Firefox and Safari as the two major browsers there (IE is still included, but its no longer supported). Safari is being aggressively updated, and Firefox is, well, Firefox. On Linux, I imagine people are fairly settled in their browser of choice (most likely you already know enough about computers to at least have made a good judgement on your own).
What does Netscape offer these days? Additional bloat and ad-ware? No thanks. So what could they POSSIBLY do to make their browser worth downloading? Use both Gecko and IE's rendering engine. Hey, its something nobody else has done yet (I think), so why not? It gives Netscape a bullet point that nobody else has.
So the fact that Netscape's only compelling reason is that it uses a Windows-only library, that would certainly limit the motivation to release a Mac OS X or Linux version.
Hmm, I'm not certain if I am reading your comment correctly but if you are asking if a Mac can format a floppy while doing other tasks the answer is a qualified YES.
Slightly off-topic, but its funny that about 20 years ago, the Amiga community heralded the fact that their computer could format 4 floppies simultaneously while still having complete control over their computer. This capability was unrivaled for YEARS.
So the snyde remark is "Oh, so it looks like Apple has finally caught up to Amiga!"
(don't treat this as flamebait; I use OS X machines as well, I just thought it was geek-funny)
If they're going to start using the shell, they might want to learn about tab completion. I assume you're probably getting them to use Bash?
The ~/.inputrc I use:
$include/etc/inputrc
set editing-mode vi
set mark-directories on
set completion-ignore-case on
The editing-mode is up to you. I'm not going to fuel this holy war.
The mark-directories and completion-ignore-case are probably worth while, however.
completion-ignore-case helps out in tab completion by ignoring the case. In other words, if your directory is Documentation, hitting "d" will expand correctly. If you've got more than one 'd' directory (upper or lower), it will treat them equally.
mark-directories makes it that when tab completing a directory, it will automatically put a slash at the end (most likely that's what you'd want to do anyway).
MAME. Show her. If she's of the age where she can remember Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede, Burger Time, etc. then she'll have a passing interest.
...Then she'll want to play one for old times sake.
...Next thing you know, she's addicted!
Well, that was my story, anyway. Almost 4 years ago, I put MAME on my girlfriend's computer with a few classics (notably Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Burger Time). Eventually I noticed over time that the play counter on her MAME installation was reaching into the hundreds, and that her high score tables were astronomical! We're talking 160,000 in BT, 85,000 in DK, 150,000 in MB to give some examples.
After a while, she realized it was like crack and it was preventing her from getting any work done. She figured that dragging the MAME icon off the desktop into the trash and emptying the trash would remove the program. Luckily this was Windows, so the program still lived as she only deleted the shortcut. I preserved the high score files and told her that it was all still there, but I had hidden it from her (power of the H attribute and a rename). She's happy, and it is some kind of occasional treat I can give to her by leaving it running when I leave - she just needs the strength to close it.
I think you'll get more performance just by letting the OS handle things though.
For the most part, yes, this is true. However, one thing about letting the OS handle the affinity is that it may move your thread around to other processors. I've found a VERY slight speed improvement running some jobs by tying them to a single CPU; the idea is that the cache of the processor may still be relevant for your thread.
Of course, your L1/L2/L3 cache has to be large enough and there shouldn't be a high contention for CPU resources that would effectively flush the cache clean of your data.
Yeah, its one of those strange things of the market. There is a concept called the "whisper price" or "whisper number", which is basically a rumored target price, earnings number, etc. Sometimes it comes from insiders, but in this case it was most likely from the analysts on the street; they figured that stock X should have reported earnings per share of (say) $0.70, while the company expects to post earnings of $0.50, and last report was $0.30. When it actually comes out as $0.60, it didn't meet the whisper number which causes the stock price to go down.
This isn't all as bad as you would think, since much of the stock price prior to the actual earnings announcement were inflated based on the whisper numbers. So the fact that the stock goes down is really a "reality adjustment", you could say.
It doesn't make sense, and it is because some analysts moved the value of the stock based on a RUMOR.. because that is all that the whisper number is based on.
They open back up because the conductor re-opens the doors. The train cannot release the brakes unless all doors are in their closed and LOCKED position (you hear a slight "click" when the doors actually lock) unless they're overridden by a key (there is a key hole by every door for this; enable/disable/override).
Basically, the conductor HAS to reopen the door to attempt to resolve the situation so the train can move out of the station.
I've been in trains before where the door actually failed to work right and the train couldn't leave. The conductor had to come down, use the key and disable the door in the closed position. After that, the train could go.
Having used XP Home (at home, funny enough) and XP Pro at work for a few years now, I can tell you that the biggest difference I've seen is simply around how easy it is to control users/groups/ACLs/shares. However, there are ways around this on XP Home.
Users / Groups: You can create as many users as you want, but there is no facility to create groups or necessarily assign users to groups through the GUI. However, there is the ability to do this when logged in as the Administrator account. I believe there might be a command line utility to assign a group to a user from non-admin account (but admin rights required), but it escapes me at the moment.
ACLs: This is easy. While there is no GUI under non-administrator account, the ability is easy enough from the command line. Check out the utility 'cacls'. If you're proficient with chmod/chgrp/chown, then this shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you to figure out. Basically 'cacls filename.exe/G Everyone:R', for example, will grant read-only access to 'Everyone' group (can be a user as well) for filename.exe.
Shares: The only GUI creates a share, and a checkbox says whether or not people can modify the contents. For more control, check out the 'net share' command.
I don't mess with this too much at home, since I got it set up the way I wanted it a while back. I should be mostly right here, though. If anyone wants to correct or extend, please do.
In short, unless you're running a dual processor box, you can probably get away with XP Home.
From my memory of reading Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and EnslavedYour Children about 10 years ago, I recall that Howard Phillips first joined Nintendo in Washington State as a young man (somewhere between 18 and 25, I'd say). He had the resemblance of Alfred E. Newman and was hired to help test the new batch of machines that were being brought in from Japan. In particular, they wanted to make sure that the conversions they were doing to their unsuccessful Radar Scope machines were done correctly. They observed quickly thereafter that Howard was really REALLY interested in the conversion, and was more than willing to stick around to keep playing the conversion. That game turned out to be Donkey Kong.
He ended up being the official tester for all of Nintendo's games, and ultimately got the job as the head of the Nintendo Power club.
The engines of large trucks (think 18 wheelers or similar sized cabs) start with compressed air, and have been for years. You know those air guns that service stations use to tighten/loosen lug nuts on car wheels? Same idea, just use that instead of an electric starter. Next time you're standing near a truck when the driver starts the engine, you'll hear it plain as day.
You can do that with Windows shortcuts today. Create a shortcut to a document, program or whatever. You can specify working directory and program/arguments/etc. After that, you can assign an icon to it.
Its been a while since I've fired up my Amiga, but if I remember correctly, you created a specific icon type, created the graphic, and then set up the command line, etc.. You couldn't change the icon after the fact.
Try google. I can't access the actual pages from work, but I know that someone named Ben Valdes made a very nice map for Pitfall 1. You can probably find all this on http://www.atariage.com.
I have been using eDonkey on Mac OS X for a few weeks now to grab a few files, and from my shallow observation, I don't think any spyware was installed on my machine. Yeah, I know, Macs don't really have the spyware / virus problem that PCs do, but it is interesting that the same program in the Macintosh world appears to be completely legitimate.
What is my observation? I use almost exclusively the Firefox browser (rarely use Safari), and I haven't seen any issues with pop-ups or page hijacking. Of course, I could just be lucky.
It's been pretty much impossible to buy a new PC for the last couple of years from any of the off-the-rack vendors without it coming with a DVD drive. The transition from CD to DVD for PC games has taken far too long already and I wish the publishers who haven't already would just hurry up and make the link. If you haven't got a DVD drive, chances are you've custom built your system. In which case, you're perfectly capable of putting in a sub-$50 DVD drive yourself.
No, it hasn't been nearly impossible to buy a PC off the rack without a DVD drive in a couple of years. Heck, you can even click through and buy a Dell machine TODAY with only a CD-RW. I just tried it. Go to the Dell site, pick a Dimension 3000, and don't customize anything; you'll end up with a CD-RW. Sure, the Dimension 4700 comes with a DVD and CD-RW drive, but that machine also costs a couple hundred dollars more, and not everyone can afford that.
Do people have a DVD drive today? Most likely. Impossible that they wouldn't have one? Disagree.
A program that does "automatic documentation" is worthless if it just generates headers that say "TODO: Insert comment here. You've got parameters X and Y which are integers" and nothing else.
I've seen too many projects where someone claims that they have javadocs, but in fact its just the crap that was generated by JBuilder or Eclipse or something like that. The documentation those things generate is USELESS. You need to write in your own words.
If you're worried about ergonomics and wrist pain, etc., then you might want to try something completely different: the Kensington Expert Mouse.
Basically, this is a track ball that is about the size of a billiards ball, not one of those 1-inch diameter "thumb rollers". With this mouse, you use your index, middle and ring fingers to manipulate the ball, your thumb and pinky to left/right click, all while your wrist rests on a pad and doesn't move.
I've tried recommending this to people for the last two years, and very few people use them. For the most part, the resistance is due to the complete change of how you use a computer's pointer. However, the ones who have switched don't complain about wrist pain anymore, and tend to swear by the things.
Whats bad about the device? Three things:
Cost. The Pro version (shortcut buttons, wrist pad, etc) is about $95.
Dirty mechanisms. I have to clean the rollers about every 2-3 weeks (not a big job, but I could go a year on a mouse without cleaning it).
Not good for 3D FPS gaming.
If you're working with computers most of your week, you should really be considering ergonomic solutions.
Note that I do not work for Kensington, nor do I get any kind of kick-back at all. I simply found that this product really helped my discomfort issue, and that there doesn't seem to be another product on the market like this one.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of the package was that you could emulate any computer (and multiple ones at the same time, from some of the hype) and typically faster than the equivalent machine of the day. Looking at the software, it was equivalent to Shapeshifter (aka SheepShaver, aka Basilisk II), which meant that it used the native CPU and took over the system ROM functions and replaced them with native ones. Very good performance. For the i586 module, from what I remember, it was a pure software emulation.
What about the hardware? It appeared that the hardware was simply responsible for holding the actual ROM chips of the Macintosh being emulated, an optional no-frills SCSI chip, some Mac serial ports and a few other sockets for random things (an audio digitizer, from the site linked, though apparently never implemented). Basically it was a hardware dongle for a pure software emulation solution, with the ability to hook up to an AppleTalk network.
If there WAS such a board, I never heard of it. I was a very active member of comp.sys.amiga.emulation back through most of the 90's, and if it did exist, it was probably mentioned on that newsgroup. Maybe I just forgot over time.
Off the shelf parts? No, I think you're confusing the history of the PC here. While the 2600 didn't have any ROM code (which is easily copyrightable and difficult to duplicate), it did have a few custom chips (TIA, etc). Now I'm no chip engineer, but I'm sure its probably relatively easy to create functional equivalent chips at this level of complexity in comparison to doing a clean room ROM clone that still provides 100% compatibility.
I could be somewhat wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the 2600 had no ROM (that was the cartridge!) and it was simply stuffing values into registers that made things happen immediately. Remember, 2600 programmers had to be very concious about their timing; if there was ROM code, that would complicate things.
Mac%20OS%20X%20Kernel%20Presentation?
For some reason, EVERY non-alphanumeric character is coming up in the hex format.
As far as Japanese cars being nicer to drive, well, I still wouldn't necessarily say that. The two things that Mercedes-Benz DIDN'T lose are
The problems that I've seen with the post-2000 MB cars is electric-related glitches. For example, the clock on a relative's E320 no longer displays correctly, and the computer also died (thankfully, under warranty). The body, on the other hand, is as good as they've ever been made. Still VERY solid cars.
Many models of Japanese cars have always been cheap and tinny, but then again, their price reflects that, so I can't really say much other than "you get what you pay for" in that regard. However, I've just never been a fan of Lexus or Infinity. That's just my opinion, however. I will agree, however, that those things do run very long.
American cars have gotten better. Detroit might be in a slump, but if ANYONE, Chrysler is surviving it; they probably won't be defaulting on their debt in a few weeks like GM or Ford.
OK, this became an off-topic rant. Apologies.
Can I just pour the petri dish into my ear?
Link to a previous response by me (thread from a few months ago) detailing some of the differences and how to get around them. Nothing earth shattering, but after using XP Pro at work and XP Home on my personal PC, I figured out how to live with Home.
Think about it.. OS X has Firefox and Safari as the two major browsers there (IE is still included, but its no longer supported). Safari is being aggressively updated, and Firefox is, well, Firefox. On Linux, I imagine people are fairly settled in their browser of choice (most likely you already know enough about computers to at least have made a good judgement on your own).
What does Netscape offer these days? Additional bloat and ad-ware? No thanks. So what could they POSSIBLY do to make their browser worth downloading? Use both Gecko and IE's rendering engine. Hey, its something nobody else has done yet (I think), so why not? It gives Netscape a bullet point that nobody else has.
So the fact that Netscape's only compelling reason is that it uses a Windows-only library, that would certainly limit the motivation to release a Mac OS X or Linux version.
Slightly off-topic, but its funny that about 20 years ago, the Amiga community heralded the fact that their computer could format 4 floppies simultaneously while still having complete control over their computer. This capability was unrivaled for YEARS.
So the snyde remark is "Oh, so it looks like Apple has finally caught up to Amiga!"
(don't treat this as flamebait; I use OS X machines as well, I just thought it was geek-funny)
I believe -march implies combinations of the flags above. For example, if you say -march=pentium4, I think this implies -mmx, -msse, -msse2.
The ~/.inputrc I use:
$include /etc/inputrc
set editing-mode vi
set mark-directories on
set completion-ignore-case on
The editing-mode is up to you. I'm not going to fuel this holy war.
The mark-directories and completion-ignore-case are probably worth while, however.
Just thought this might help..
Bad commenting on the publisher's part, eh?
Well, that was my story, anyway. Almost 4 years ago, I put MAME on my girlfriend's computer with a few classics (notably Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Burger Time). Eventually I noticed over time that the play counter on her MAME installation was reaching into the hundreds, and that her high score tables were astronomical! We're talking 160,000 in BT, 85,000 in DK, 150,000 in MB to give some examples.
After a while, she realized it was like crack and it was preventing her from getting any work done. She figured that dragging the MAME icon off the desktop into the trash and emptying the trash would remove the program. Luckily this was Windows, so the program still lived as she only deleted the shortcut. I preserved the high score files and told her that it was all still there, but I had hidden it from her (power of the H attribute and a rename). She's happy, and it is some kind of occasional treat I can give to her by leaving it running when I leave - she just needs the strength to close it.
For the most part, yes, this is true. However, one thing about letting the OS handle the affinity is that it may move your thread around to other processors. I've found a VERY slight speed improvement running some jobs by tying them to a single CPU; the idea is that the cache of the processor may still be relevant for your thread.
Of course, your L1/L2/L3 cache has to be large enough and there shouldn't be a high contention for CPU resources that would effectively flush the cache clean of your data.
This isn't all as bad as you would think, since much of the stock price prior to the actual earnings announcement were inflated based on the whisper numbers. So the fact that the stock goes down is really a "reality adjustment", you could say.
It doesn't make sense, and it is because some analysts moved the value of the stock based on a RUMOR.. because that is all that the whisper number is based on.
Basically, the conductor HAS to reopen the door to attempt to resolve the situation so the train can move out of the station.
I've been in trains before where the door actually failed to work right and the train couldn't leave. The conductor had to come down, use the key and disable the door in the closed position. After that, the train could go.
I don't mess with this too much at home, since I got it set up the way I wanted it a while back. I should be mostly right here, though. If anyone wants to correct or extend, please do.
In short, unless you're running a dual processor box, you can probably get away with XP Home.
He ended up being the official tester for all of Nintendo's games, and ultimately got the job as the head of the Nintendo Power club.
The engines of large trucks (think 18 wheelers or similar sized cabs) start with compressed air, and have been for years. You know those air guns that service stations use to tighten/loosen lug nuts on car wheels? Same idea, just use that instead of an electric starter. Next time you're standing near a truck when the driver starts the engine, you'll hear it plain as day.
Its been a while since I've fired up my Amiga, but if I remember correctly, you created a specific icon type, created the graphic, and then set up the command line, etc.. You couldn't change the icon after the fact.
Try google. I can't access the actual pages from work, but I know that someone named Ben Valdes made a very nice map for Pitfall 1. You can probably find all this on http://www.atariage.com.
What is my observation? I use almost exclusively the Firefox browser (rarely use Safari), and I haven't seen any issues with pop-ups or page hijacking. Of course, I could just be lucky.
No, it hasn't been nearly impossible to buy a PC off the rack without a DVD drive in a couple of years. Heck, you can even click through and buy a Dell machine TODAY with only a CD-RW. I just tried it. Go to the Dell site, pick a Dimension 3000, and don't customize anything; you'll end up with a CD-RW. Sure, the Dimension 4700 comes with a DVD and CD-RW drive, but that machine also costs a couple hundred dollars more, and not everyone can afford that.
Do people have a DVD drive today? Most likely. Impossible that they wouldn't have one? Disagree.
I've seen too many projects where someone claims that they have javadocs, but in fact its just the crap that was generated by JBuilder or Eclipse or something like that. The documentation those things generate is USELESS. You need to write in your own words.
Yeah, they're always trying to build a better mouse (trap).
Basically, this is a track ball that is about the size of a billiards ball, not one of those 1-inch diameter "thumb rollers". With this mouse, you use your index, middle and ring fingers to manipulate the ball, your thumb and pinky to left/right click, all while your wrist rests on a pad and doesn't move.
I've tried recommending this to people for the last two years, and very few people use them. For the most part, the resistance is due to the complete change of how you use a computer's pointer. However, the ones who have switched don't complain about wrist pain anymore, and tend to swear by the things.
Whats bad about the device? Three things:
If you're working with computers most of your week, you should really be considering ergonomic solutions.
Note that I do not work for Kensington, nor do I get any kind of kick-back at all. I simply found that this product really helped my discomfort issue, and that there doesn't seem to be another product on the market like this one.