Believe it or not, one of the big things that made me drool for a mac was Mechwarrior II. A special version was written for the mac to take advantage of some badass video card (Rave I think it was called). I saw it on my friends computer, thought about my crappy DOS-version graphics, and said "I MUST HAVE ONE!". It was beautiful. 10 years ago, if a game publisher wanted to, they could make a mac version that would blow the DOS/Win95 version out of the water. I imagine it stopped paying off to do so.
Obviously its been many years since then. I've never been a big gamer (even before switching to the mac), and what games I do play I play on my PS2 or one of my 4 generations of Nintendo systems.
For nostalgia's sake, I did find a copy of that old version of Mechwarrior and booted it up in classic. Still stunning!
I interviewed at JPL when I left college. What I didn't tell them was that the only reason I wanted the job was to be able to say "Come on folks, this isn't rocket science, AND I SHOULD KNOW!" when dealing with simple tasks.:)
That and the rediculously long lead times between projects. The project they were interviewing for launches in 2012! That's a long time to slip away before anyone notices your mistakes.
Having access to loads of information doesn't make you smarter.
I agree that computers do not make you smarter, but having access to loads of information increases your intelligence in two ways that I see:
1) actual knowledge. The more you see, the more of it will ooze into your brain. Just by being curious and looking at lots of stuff, you learn more.
2) learning quickly. Being smart isn't just about what you know, it's about knowing what you don't know and where to find it. This is why the magic answer when I interview someone is "I don't know that, but I bet its in my XYZ textbook or on www.sitethathasinfo.com." In my opinion, someone who knows where the answers are is a lot more useful than someone who hits a wall every time they come across something new.
Of course, you have to have a will to learn in order to use loads of information, but assuming that then having access will eventually improve your intelligence.
Oh come on! Without John Madden's insightful comments, you'd never know that "what the home team needs to do, see, is put the ball in the endzone, thus raising their score, and winning the game."
I have a suspicion that 15 years ago he was replaced with a magic 8 ball hooked up to one of those early talking macs, but no one noticed.
The device you are referring to is called the telezapper. I bought one for $20 at radio shack, and I swear by it. Yes, you do still hear the phone ring when a telemarketer calls. But as soon as you pick up the phone, you hear a BEEP, and the telemarketer hangs up.
Over time, telemarketers take your number off their lists, and your calls decrease. Quite awesome, really.
Another cool thing about it is that you only need one, no matter how many phones are connected to that line. Quite useful.
There would be GUI's, they'd just have different metaphors for desktops, folders, files, etc. They might not be as popular as Windows is today, but you can't tell me that all GUI innovation would halt if Apple had won the look-n-feel lawsuit.
On the other hand, if they had won, there'd be no windows as we know it. Can you imagine a world like that (for better or worse)? I can't.
I see a lot of people complaining on a lot of forums about this bug or that bug. Not that this isn't valid, but hoping that someone from the particular group at Apple will read your post is not a good way to go about getting your problem solved.
Step 1: Go to developer.apple.com and sign up for a free (as in beer) membership (or sign up for one of the expensive memberships if you want free software, hardware discounts, etc).
Step 2: Go to bugreporter.apple.com and fill out a report. You'll have to give up some info about your system and *detailed* info about the behavior, why its wrong, and what needs to be different. And if you can isolate the problem to a particular configuration, it'll help them fix the bug faster.
These enter Apple's internal bugtracking system. Some of your complaints are duplicates of existing ones, but if enough people bitch about a particular issue then there will be more pressure to fix it.
There is no step 3! (er, profit!)
The downside is that you'll likely never hear back from them. Even if the bug is solved, you'll never know until they release a new version. They may decide that the behavior is "works as intended" and ignore you. There is no way to follow the progress of your bug.
I recommend "Spread the teachings of Christ. Preferrably without killing non-believers or touching little boys."
Mission: We will serve our customers with (1) top-quality service, (2) good advice and (3) fair business practices.
Like most mission statements, this isn't actually a statement of your mission. It is a statement of how you want to behave while on your mission. Try adding the word "computer" somewhere in that sentence so that people can get an idea of what you actually DO. This will help you eliminate the cruft. Otherwise you will be providing your customers with top-quality service in the field of malaysian sweatshop labor.
As a professional Mechanical engineer, I *hate* it when average code monkeys call themselves "software engineers". I'm sorry, but engineers perform analysis. *Mathemetical* analysis. Some software engineers do this: they develop algorithms to optimize code and prove that they work. Most programmers don't. I'm sorry, but if you don't analyze your work to prove that it works, you don't get to be an engineer. Having QA people push buttons until something breaks is testing, not analysis.
Also, engineers have responsibility. I've spoken to high ranking programmers at prestigious silicon valley companies, and one actually said "I could put in code that EATS BABIES and I would never get fired for it. Even if someone went line by line through the code and caught it, I'd never get in trouble for it because we have so many levels that everything has to pass through and be signed off on."
I don't understand that. If I designed some widget that exploded, I would get in trouble. Certified engineers have it even tougher, they can lose their license if they screw up. Engineers have responsiblity after their ship date, programmers don't seem to have that care.
In short, it is not engineering. Its an art. A special kind of art, one that I cannot possibly perform, but art nonetheless.
As soon as he decided to be an asshole, he lost his right to participate in society.
Can we get this added to the US Constitution somewhere? Its kind of subjective, but I think it is clearly a case of the positives far outweighing the negatives;)
I feel obligated to point out that one of Hollywood's favorite representatives is Howard Berman, D-CA. Bastard is the representative in for the area I grew up in, and my only regret is that I moved away before I could vote against him.
There are plenty of asshole legislators on both sides of the fence in the pocket of the Content Cartels (TM).
I hated the drawer, mostly because the method of opening it didn't make any sense to me. I don't even think the mailboxes button is in the Panther toolbar by default. Then sometimes the drawer would appear on the other side of the mail window.
They pay people...They pay people...They pay masses in marketing...They pay masses in marketing...They pay dealers and distributors...They pay dealers and distributors...They pay training companies...They pay their own developers...They pay anything
I'm reminded of an old saying: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If they spent a tenth of this money actually making their products better, they wouldn't have to spend all this other money, and we'd be flocking to their products in droves. There'd be no argument about which OS was better. And they wouldn't need the underhanded behavior that makes people hate them.
Slashdot Mirror
Believe it or not, one of the big things that made me drool for a mac was Mechwarrior II. A special version was written for the mac to take advantage of some badass video card (Rave I think it was called). I saw it on my friends computer, thought about my crappy DOS-version graphics, and said "I MUST HAVE ONE!". It was beautiful. 10 years ago, if a game publisher wanted to, they could make a mac version that would blow the DOS/Win95 version out of the water. I imagine it stopped paying off to do so.
Obviously its been many years since then. I've never been a big gamer (even before switching to the mac), and what games I do play I play on my PS2 or one of my 4 generations of Nintendo systems.
For nostalgia's sake, I did find a copy of that old version of Mechwarrior and booted it up in classic. Still stunning!
I interviewed at JPL when I left college. What I didn't tell them was that the only reason I wanted the job was to be able to say "Come on folks, this isn't rocket science, AND I SHOULD KNOW!" when dealing with simple tasks. :)
That and the rediculously long lead times between projects. The project they were interviewing for launches in 2012! That's a long time to slip away before anyone notices your mistakes.
Yeah because Orin Hatch will NEVER FREAKING DIE! ;)
Having access to loads of information doesn't make you smarter.
I agree that computers do not make you smarter, but having access to loads of information increases your intelligence in two ways that I see:
1) actual knowledge. The more you see, the more of it will ooze into your brain. Just by being curious and looking at lots of stuff, you learn more.
2) learning quickly. Being smart isn't just about what you know, it's about knowing what you don't know and where to find it. This is why the magic answer when I interview someone is "I don't know that, but I bet its in my XYZ textbook or on www.sitethathasinfo.com." In my opinion, someone who knows where the answers are is a lot more useful than someone who hits a wall every time they come across something new.
Of course, you have to have a will to learn in order to use loads of information, but assuming that then having access will eventually improve your intelligence.
I was just going to ask him "which group of people are you referring to?"
Thanks for getting there first.
Oh come on! Without John Madden's insightful comments, you'd never know that "what the home team needs to do, see, is put the ball in the endzone, thus raising their score, and winning the game."
I have a suspicion that 15 years ago he was replaced with a magic 8 ball hooked up to one of those early talking macs, but no one noticed.
If you aren't familiar with Weird Al's "It's all about the Pentiums, baby!" then I suggest you pick up a copy of his album, Running With Scissors.
i ums.html
Here's a link to the lyrics.
http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/itsallaboutthepent
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
The device you are referring to is called the telezapper. I bought one for $20 at radio shack, and I swear by it. Yes, you do still hear the phone ring when a telemarketer calls. But as soon as you pick up the phone, you hear a BEEP, and the telemarketer hangs up.
Over time, telemarketers take your number off their lists, and your calls decrease. Quite awesome, really.
Another cool thing about it is that you only need one, no matter how many phones are connected to that line. Quite useful.
There would be GUI's, they'd just have different metaphors for desktops, folders, files, etc. They might not be as popular as Windows is today, but you can't tell me that all GUI innovation would halt if Apple had won the look-n-feel lawsuit.
On the other hand, if they had won, there'd be no windows as we know it. Can you imagine a world like that (for better or worse)? I can't.
How well does Windows run on these machines? How about Virtual PC? This is the only place where I see real lag in macs these days.
I see a lot of people complaining on a lot of forums about this bug or that bug. Not that this isn't valid, but hoping that someone from the particular group at Apple will read your post is not a good way to go about getting your problem solved.
Step 1: Go to developer.apple.com and sign up for a free (as in beer) membership (or sign up for one of the expensive memberships if you want free software, hardware discounts, etc).
Step 2: Go to bugreporter.apple.com and fill out a report. You'll have to give up some info about your system and *detailed* info about the behavior, why its wrong, and what needs to be different. And if you can isolate the problem to a particular configuration, it'll help them fix the bug faster.
These enter Apple's internal bugtracking system. Some of your complaints are duplicates of existing ones, but if enough people bitch about a particular issue then there will be more pressure to fix it.
There is no step 3! (er, profit!)
The downside is that you'll likely never hear back from them. Even if the bug is solved, you'll never know until they release a new version. They may decide that the behavior is "works as intended" and ignore you. There is no way to follow the progress of your bug.
Thus far, I haven't been able to get it
I recommend "Spread the teachings of Christ. Preferrably without killing non-believers or touching little boys."
Mission: We will serve our customers with (1) top-quality service, (2) good advice and (3) fair business practices.
Like most mission statements, this isn't actually a statement of your mission. It is a statement of how you want to behave while on your mission. Try adding the word "computer" somewhere in that sentence so that people can get an idea of what you actually DO. This will help you eliminate the cruft. Otherwise you will be providing your customers with top-quality service in the field of malaysian sweatshop labor.
Forget assembly. Assembly is pretty close to free (less dinner, movies, and maybe a diamond ring). MAINTENANCE is the killer.
Political affliation is irrelevant. Don't forget that it was Tipper Gore who brought us the RIAA advisory "EXPLICT LYRICS" labels.
There's a number of people on both sides of the fence fighting against the evils of naughty words and boobies.
...but I wanted it moved to Redmond.
I prefer "one spoonful at a time!"
As a professional Mechanical engineer, I *hate* it when average code monkeys call themselves "software engineers". I'm sorry, but engineers perform analysis. *Mathemetical* analysis. Some software engineers do this: they develop algorithms to optimize code and prove that they work. Most programmers don't. I'm sorry, but if you don't analyze your work to prove that it works, you don't get to be an engineer. Having QA people push buttons until something breaks is testing, not analysis.
Also, engineers have responsibility. I've spoken to high ranking programmers at prestigious silicon valley companies, and one actually said "I could put in code that EATS BABIES and I would never get fired for it. Even if someone went line by line through the code and caught it, I'd never get in trouble for it because we have so many levels that everything has to pass through and be signed off on."
I don't understand that. If I designed some widget that exploded, I would get in trouble. Certified engineers have it even tougher, they can lose their license if they screw up. Engineers have responsiblity after their ship date, programmers don't seem to have that care.
In short, it is not engineering. Its an art. A special kind of art, one that I cannot possibly perform, but art nonetheless.
As soon as he decided to be an asshole, he lost his right to participate in society.
;)
Can we get this added to the US Constitution somewhere? Its kind of subjective, but I think it is clearly a case of the positives far outweighing the negatives
I feel obligated to point out that one of Hollywood's favorite representatives is Howard Berman, D-CA. Bastard is the representative in for the area I grew up in, and my only regret is that I moved away before I could vote against him.
There are plenty of asshole legislators on both sides of the fence in the pocket of the Content Cartels (TM).
java is actually a very powerful language that drives alot of enterprise solutions and embedded systems
Yeah...and they're gonna use it for annoying flash intros. Just like 99% of the corporate a-holes on the internet.
Will this allow media companies that put flash intros on their websites to put them on DVD's? Yes? Then its a good bet that they'll do it.
Or we could just use "*AA*". Doesn't really save any keystrokes, though.
I hated the drawer, mostly because the method of opening it didn't make any sense to me. I don't even think the mailboxes button is in the Panther toolbar by default. Then sometimes the drawer would appear on the other side of the mail window.
However, I'm not sure the new way is better.
PEDANT WARNING
Shockwave was a laser gun. SOUNDwave was the boombox.
What are you talking about? "grabtastic" is not protected by the first amendment.
Fucking mexican jew lizard.
They pay people...They pay people...They pay masses in marketing...They pay masses in marketing...They pay dealers and distributors...They pay dealers and distributors...They pay training companies...They pay their own developers...They pay anything
I'm reminded of an old saying: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If they spent a tenth of this money actually making their products better, they wouldn't have to spend all this other money, and we'd be flocking to their products in droves. There'd be no argument about which OS was better. And they wouldn't need the underhanded behavior that makes people hate them.