Now, if you're on any kind of broadband connection, that point becomes pretty moot since the difference between downloading a 10k jpeg and a 100k PNG is less than a second.
NASA is already using AeroGel in the StarDust mission to collect high-velocity particles.
Thick enough, it could be used to capture those tiny bolts and fragments they can't track by radar.
Also, one of their concerns about using lasers to zap bigger debris was the fear of generation bazillion smaller particles that couldn't be collected or tracked thereafter.
Why not create an autonomous robot that circles the globe, zap the objects it can while collecting the smaller debris in an AeroGel fish net?
Think it won't hold up to the task? Check out the photos of AeroGel. The fluffy thing can hold up a brick!
There are a ways around it anyhow. The 7-hour free telephone access that comes with cable access (for roaming purposes) is billed separately.
Also, their newer modems (those that have both a USB and Ethernet port on them) are not compatible with their billing system. It's been like thid for nearly 2 years. Those users that have those modems basically have unlimited, unmetered access. They just don't know about it.
Videotron cable access costs me 29CDN, unlimited. It's a pretty good deal, but they're fighting hard against's Bells' ADSL offering, which is available to a much wider audience right now (Videotron's network doesn't reach the entire island of Montréal yet).
However, they did cut off, about 18 months ago, a lot of the ports that were previously open. I used to run a web server on my machine, and with DynDNS, was able to connect to my home machine and transfer files, or test out new versions of my wife's web site (which I'm managing).
Now, Videotron cable users can only use their access for regular joe-blow net access.
i'm actually considering scaling down to ADSL because of this. Bell doesn't filter out any port, so you still can host a web server for whatever purpose (I wouldn't serve something commercially off an ADSL line, but for testing purposes, it's more than adequate).
The width of a scan line is unspecified. For as long as you respect the 4-to-3 ratio, you can have as many "pixels" as you want. What determines the "end of line" is a set width of black image at the end of the scan line. This black line is the reason why a "black" image on TV is never quite black--not to confuse the scan line marker. interestingly, this black end-of-line marker is what's removed for pay TV channels. The decoder knows a sequence of cycling colors that substitutes the black marker, and filters it out. More elaborate "encoding" method also involves inverting the image, and sometimes, dynamic marker updates based on info stored via the audio channel.
Remind me again why we can't have a native Linux version of it? because nobody cares writing it?
It isn't necessarily Apple's job to port their software to every platform known to exist. Rightfully, Linux would be an interesting one, but Apple's first and primary platform if Mac OS X. The Windows port of QT is simply to help QT gain market share.
I was always wondering if those insane people who dress up as Jedi to see Star Wars realize how crazy they allow themselves to be
That's not very flattering to me. I went dressed up as Queen Amidala, in her red dress that makes the Poster or PM. Complete with battery pack for the round bulb lights at the bottom.
What cracked most people up was my 6-inch long pinch.
All I could say was "hey!, Even Portman has her bad hair days".
After the ATOC showing, though, I must admit she's got a nicer belly than I do.
IBM Germany lent us a spiffy S/390 (running Linux) to port our server to their machine.
We're located in Montréal. For some reason, they couldn't arrange for a local IBM warehouse to send us the machine. They actually shipped it from Germany! This is a big hunk of a machine, weighting in at about 550 pounds.
First, we had to argue with customs that this machine was a loan. About 10 days later, when proper paperwork arrived from Germany, the machine got clear, and off it sent to a distribution warehouse.
From there, it got lifted onto a delivery truck. Arrived at our offices, they couldn't take the machine out, as they had no fork lift! For some reason, they expected us to have a docking station (yeah, 4th floor). The machine went back to the warehouse, and was shipped from a different truck, which had an hydraulic lift on the back, two days later.
When we finally got the machine, it was time to plug it. The computer was easy. But the monitor they send us required 240v. It's hard-wired for Germany power grid.
No. it's a debugging aid, not a generic system utility. You wouldn't find much use of it leaving it one.
As I said in another reply, it's purpose is to aid in development. The way the image is refreshed in the window is through periodic refresh of the update region of a window.
It's the same as calling QDFlushPortBuffer repeatedly as you draw each element (a line, a rect, a paint operation etc).
It's not quite like a direct-to-screen switch.
NIB-based windows (as per InterfaceBuilder) have a flag that allows them not to be retained or back-buffered. I haven't tried this yet, so i can't attest it's working or not.
Actually, our networking stack is switched only once.
At startup, we check the environment and instranciate a "driver"-like structure w/ function pointers. When then use that at runtime.
Most of the 'if' switches in the code have to do with UI. Many UI drawing code need specifics for Classic or MOSX, or, at times, switch out functions that can not be called on a specific OS version. They're not things we can practically move into separate functions.
Re:Instead of sprinkling around duplicate code...
on
Apple Drops Mac OS 9
·
· Score: 2
It's a single bool-returning function that actually caches the value.
The point is not the function call. The point is still having those IFs sprinkled all over the code, and having to maintain two copies of functions (or part of functions).
The perceived UI sluggishness is due to the double-buffering of window content.
If you install the dev tools, the
/Developer/Applications/Quartz\ Debug
application can be used to disable double-buffering. You'll see how different the system feels when using the "Autoflush drawing" switch.
Now, in terms of actual speec, getting a task done un X means not stopping other tasks, unlike in Classic. One striking example is those Photoshop bake-off Apple likes to do against Intel.
This really doesn't prove anything, because while Mac OS 9 -based Photoshop creams Intel-based Photoshop in throughput, the Windows version actually still lets you run stuff in the background, where as Mac OS 9 would technically suck the entire processor to itself, making background processes grind to a halt.
It'll be interesting how Photoshop back-offs will do, now that Adobe finally released it.
Apart from the UI perceived sluggishness, there are area where Mac OS X is clearly faster. We've noticed this from out (heavily) network-based application. Download speeds are much more efficient using BSD sockets than OpenTransport. On the plus side, the machine is not rendered useless when downloading data.
Re:Does this really impact developers?
on
Apple Drops Mac OS 9
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Dropping OS 9 has big implications on developers.
For our Mac version of the product, we had just decided (last week!) to drop support for Mac OS 8.6. Carbon on 8.6 was a major pain.
By going 9-up only, it'll spare us about 4 weeks testing.
Now that Apple itself is dropping support for Mac OS 9, it'll be easier on us to talk about dropping 8.6 support.
We'll continue supporting Mac OS 9 for this release, but for the next release, we'll have ample munitions to entirely drop classic Mac OSes. That ought to trim the application code by about 10%, and accelerate the runtime because of all the IF X switches in the code.
Might not sound like that big of a deal, but when your networking stack checks, at runtime, which layer you're using (Mac TCP for 8.6, OpenTransport for 8.6 up to X, and BSD for X), this really adds up. Let alone all the Classic vs AQUA UI tweaks.
Out of curiosity, I just grepped our sources for this specific runtime switch. There are 87 occurences of it!
Slashdot Mirror
considering a very resembling STS-51 less successful one.
Now, if you're on any kind of broadband connection, that point becomes pretty moot since the difference between downloading a 10k jpeg and a 100k PNG is less than a second.
Gee, it shows you're not running a server.
Saving 90% bandwidth is a god-given when you do.
most of the "extra" material was usually cut because it adds nothing to the film anyway
Uh-ho... imagine the AotC DVD release... more scenes of Anakin riding space mega ticks, and the complete soundtrack of Sound of Music.
NASA is already using AeroGel in the StarDust mission to collect high-velocity particles.
Thick enough, it could be used to capture those tiny bolts and fragments they can't track by radar.
Also, one of their concerns about using lasers to zap bigger debris was the fear of generation bazillion smaller particles that couldn't be collected or tracked thereafter.
Why not create an autonomous robot that circles the globe, zap the objects it can while collecting the smaller debris in an AeroGel fish net?
Think it won't hold up to the task? Check out the photos of AeroGel. The fluffy thing can hold up a brick!
for those who have not read the books (fools!).
This, concerning the white dressed man, in the forest. I'll say no more.
I rarely cap this limit.
There are a ways around it anyhow. The 7-hour free telephone access that comes with cable access (for roaming purposes) is billed separately.
Also, their newer modems (those that have both a USB and Ethernet port on them) are not compatible with their billing system. It's been like thid for nearly 2 years. Those users that have those modems basically have unlimited, unmetered access. They just don't know about it.
Videotron cable access costs me 29CDN, unlimited. It's a pretty good deal, but they're fighting hard against's Bells' ADSL offering, which is available to a much wider audience right now (Videotron's network doesn't reach the entire island of Montréal yet).
However, they did cut off, about 18 months ago, a lot of the ports that were previously open. I used to run a web server on my machine, and with DynDNS, was able to connect to my home machine and transfer files, or test out new versions of my wife's web site (which I'm managing).
Now, Videotron cable users can only use their access for regular joe-blow net access.
i'm actually considering scaling down to ADSL because of this. Bell doesn't filter out any port, so you still can host a web server for whatever purpose (I wouldn't serve something commercially off an ADSL line, but for testing purposes, it's more than adequate).
The width of a scan line is unspecified. For as long as you respect the 4-to-3 ratio, you can have as many "pixels" as you want. What determines the "end of line" is a set width of black image at the end of the scan line.
This black line is the reason why a "black" image on TV is never quite black--not to confuse the scan line marker.
interestingly, this black end-of-line marker is what's removed for pay TV channels. The decoder knows a sequence of cycling colors that substitutes the black marker, and filters it out. More elaborate "encoding" method also involves inverting the image, and sometimes, dynamic marker updates based on info stored via the audio channel.
Remind me again why we can't have a native Linux version of it?
because nobody cares writing it?
It isn't necessarily Apple's job to port their software to every platform known to exist. Rightfully, Linux would be an interesting one, but Apple's first and primary platform if Mac OS X. The Windows port of QT is simply to help QT gain market share.
Well, I'm french. And "man du" nowhere near comes close to be pronounced like "mon dieu".
Besides, in Québec, we'd apreviate this to a word that starts with "tabar" and ends with "nac".
But that too wouldn't be funny if I'd explain it to you.
That would be stupid. She's never been reported to having the Force.
Unless Anaking has some serious saber powers which Lucas didn't tell us about.
I wonder if this game will allow bombing down Canadians in training exercise, as in reality.
It's called iTunes.
...
Oh wait! It almost had me fooled
Well, if I have a 6 inch long pinch beard, I must be male.
And yes, I dressed as Amidala, a female character. (t'was part of a curious bet.)
I was always wondering if those insane people who dress up as Jedi to see Star Wars realize how crazy they allow themselves to be
That's not very flattering to me. I went dressed up as Queen Amidala, in her red dress that makes the Poster or PM. Complete with battery pack for the round bulb lights at the bottom.
What cracked most people up was my 6-inch long pinch.
All I could say was "hey!, Even Portman has her bad hair days".
After the ATOC showing, though, I must admit she's got a nicer belly than I do.
IBM Germany lent us a spiffy S/390 (running Linux) to port our server to their machine.
We're located in Montréal. For some reason, they couldn't arrange for a local IBM warehouse to send us the machine. They actually shipped it from Germany! This is a big hunk of a machine, weighting in at about 550 pounds.
First, we had to argue with customs that this machine was a loan. About 10 days later, when proper paperwork arrived from Germany, the machine got clear, and off it sent to a distribution warehouse.
From there, it got lifted onto a delivery truck. Arrived at our offices, they couldn't take the machine out, as they had no fork lift! For some reason, they expected us to have a docking station (yeah, 4th floor). The machine went back to the warehouse, and was shipped from a different truck, which had an hydraulic lift on the back, two days later.
When we finally got the machine, it was time to plug it. The computer was easy. But the monitor they send us required 240v. It's hard-wired for Germany power grid.
This thing has already been dreamed up by Apple more than 10 years ago.
See their Knowlege Navigator QuickTime movie.
...knows about emotions, and has been using it for years.
When it senses that it has ticked you long enough, it knows it has to go. And it just does.
At that point, my emotion peaks, and suddenly, my pulse rate go down, as I wait for CodeWarrior to reopen my project.
Now, I can't say it's helping me much. But it sure is prudent enough, by quitting, to preserve my TiBook.
No. it's a debugging aid, not a generic system utility. You wouldn't find much use of it leaving it one.
As I said in another reply, it's purpose is to aid in development. The way the image is refreshed in the window is through periodic refresh of the update region of a window.
It's the same as calling QDFlushPortBuffer repeatedly as you draw each element (a line, a rect, a paint operation etc).
It's not quite like a direct-to-screen switch.
NIB-based windows (as per InterfaceBuilder) have a flag that allows them not to be retained or back-buffered. I haven't tried this yet, so i can't attest it's working or not.
It's purpose is not to make your screen faster (otherwise, that would end up in System Preferences!).
The idea is to demonstrate how much is being drawn before the result is dumped on the screen, in one single sweep.
Actually, our networking stack is switched only once.
At startup, we check the environment and instranciate a "driver"-like structure w/ function pointers. When then use that at runtime.
Most of the 'if' switches in the code have to do with UI. Many UI drawing code need specifics for Classic or MOSX, or, at times, switch out functions that can not be called on a specific OS version. They're not things we can practically move into separate functions.
It's a single bool-returning function that actually caches the value.
The point is not the function call. The point is still having those IFs sprinkled all over the code, and having to maintain two copies of functions (or part of functions).
If you install the dev tools, the
- /Developer/Applications/Quartz\ Debug
application can be used to disable double-buffering. You'll see how different the system feels when using the "Autoflush drawing" switch.Now, in terms of actual speec, getting a task done un X means not stopping other tasks, unlike in Classic. One striking example is those Photoshop bake-off Apple likes to do against Intel.
This really doesn't prove anything, because while Mac OS 9 -based Photoshop creams Intel-based Photoshop in throughput, the Windows version actually still lets you run stuff in the background, where as Mac OS 9 would technically suck the entire processor to itself, making background processes grind to a halt.
It'll be interesting how Photoshop back-offs will do, now that Adobe finally released it.
Apart from the UI perceived sluggishness, there are area where Mac OS X is clearly faster. We've noticed this from out (heavily) network-based application. Download speeds are much more efficient using BSD sockets than OpenTransport. On the plus side, the machine is not rendered useless when downloading data.
Dropping OS 9 has big implications on developers.
For our Mac version of the product, we had just decided (last week!) to drop support for Mac OS 8.6. Carbon on 8.6 was a major pain.
By going 9-up only, it'll spare us about 4 weeks testing.
Now that Apple itself is dropping support for Mac OS 9, it'll be easier on us to talk about dropping 8.6 support.
We'll continue supporting Mac OS 9 for this release, but for the next release, we'll have ample munitions to entirely drop classic Mac OSes. That ought to trim the application code by about 10%, and accelerate the runtime because of all the IF X switches in the code.
Might not sound like that big of a deal, but when your networking stack checks, at runtime, which layer you're using (Mac TCP for 8.6, OpenTransport for 8.6 up to X, and BSD for X), this really adds up. Let alone all the Classic vs AQUA UI tweaks.
Out of curiosity, I just grepped our sources for this specific runtime switch. There are 87 occurences of it!
Correction:
It's only mirroring.