I dont know if you guys have ever downloaded the BattleBots Rules PDF document but,you should probably be aware that it's as anti-geek as it can be!
The only weapons available are fit for medieval armies. Blades, tethered missiles only,and crushing devices form the arsenal for these robots.
Lasers, stun-like devices, electricity, radio jamming interference, heat and other geeky weapons are forbidden.
You can't advance the art of robotic combat with this, can you?
Let's start our own robo war stuff. No weels. No phisical contact allowed. Just pure nerd stuff, like melting your oponent using microwaves.
I'd still be carefull about that. Depending on your intended "Y" product, you might run into trouble if it's too close for comfort with the "KY" brand.
Years ago, I wanted to write a book which I had titled The complete marketting morons guide until the first "...For Dummies" book appears. At this point, I realised my book would not have any use.
This "brainless" creature is, against all odds, aware of The Force. No kidding. The ride through the Plaaaanet Cooore proves it:
Dont worry, the force will guide us. says Qui Gon. Ah! Itsy bit the Force! replies jar Jar.
Also, Jar Jar says he was banished from his city because he was clumbsy ("Er.. youssa might be sayin' that" he replies to Obi One's question).
This leads me to what I beleive is the true nature of Jar Jar's stupendous luck during the battle droids fight (where he keeps on shooting other droids with the one caught in his foot).
Hold on to yourself, the truth may be ugly...
There isn't only the Good and Evil side of the force...
There is also the
Stupid Force!
I know it's shocking, but it's the only true answer to the whole mistery of the force requiring ballance.
Anaking is so strong in the Evil side (and so is Palpatine) that only the Stupid side can counter-effect Palpatine's plan and lead him into the fatal decision of asking Luke to replace Vador. This really stupid move utterly pissed Vador which led to Palpatine's demise.
I bet what will kill Jar jar in episode 2 (I hope) if not episode 3 (as a last resort) will be when Jar jar tells Parpatine:
Good idea. However, there should probably be some logics involved in this. We could define regions (say, country codes, sub-codes for state/province ID) and then use something like:
"US and CAN+PQ and CAN+ON not US+IO not UK not FR+BD"
Meaning "all of US except Ohio, Ontario Canada, Quebec Canada, not England, not Bordeau in France.
Obviously, this requires better organisation, but you get the idea.
I have a worse problem where programming affects my english.
I'm a french-speaking Quebecer (the term would be "francophone"). My english was mostly influenced by US TV shows and english books on all sorts of subject, but mostly technical and programming -oriented. My pronounciation was also (and probably mostly) influenced by anglophones here in Montreal (where the population is almost split equally in french and english). Eh?
I often find myself writing in english using constructs that derrive from programming languages. My syntax is also affected once in a while.
For example, while writing some non-techical text (say, a letter to a friend of mine in the states somewhere), it's not rare that I end up typing "this" as "this->"!
The AOL client software is meant for the non-technically oriented computer *user* that wan'ts to connect to the internet using a simple front end application that will guide and "assist" them.
That's absolutelly as far as it can be from the typical Linux user.
If I were to use Linux on a day-to-day basis (I'm BSD, folks), then it surely wouldn't be for their AOL access.
Yes, and I ran Windows 95 betas under 4 megs of ram on a dx2/66.
That proves nothing though, since such Operating systems resort to disk paging when ram is not sufficient.
No, that's fully loaded in RAM. No paging (VM turned off).
In fact, I've just installed a not-so-monimal install (with ethernet drivers, among others), and it installs under 19Megs disk space. That particular install ran under 12Megs of RAM.
When Apple bought NeXT in december 1996 (actually, when NeXT let itself being bought by Apple), I knew it was for OpenStep, and had a fait idea of what was to take place. Being a Mac developer, I knew I had to start learning the inside-outs of this OS, so I searched on the web, and found orb.com (dont botter looking it up, the site is gone now) from which I bought my NeXT machine (literally).
It's what's refered to as a "color slab". The actual model name os a "Color Station". The 25Mghz one, not the Turbo Station.
It came with NeXTSTEP 3.3 pre-installed on a 400Megs HD w/ 16Megs of RAM. This machine actually could rival my PowerMac 8600/200 the Mac OS of the time (I can't remember what version it was... 7.5.5 maybe).
When Apple introduced NeXTSTEP to the Mac community, it actually simply released OpenStep 4.2 for Intel to developers. It turns out that the CDs were fat-binaries that would also work on my color slab. I downloaded the installer floppy image to boot my machine with, and was able to install OpenStep 4.2 on there--for free. The machine has been running superbly ever since.
I eventually bought a N2000 NeXT Laser Printer. The best 400DPI I have ever seen. Never has that printer, actually controled by the NeXT itself for PostScript rastering, ever failed to print anything I threw at it, regardless of the complexity of the image. By having installed CAPer on it, I can use this printer on my network like any regular Mac networked printer.
I have just bought a first-generation NeXT Cube (N1000A) for the coolness factor. I'm picking it up tomorow, and am eager to spin it up. It should look pretty dandy on my desk, next to my color slab, original Mac II (rev A), PowerMac 8600/200, iMac DV/SE, Mac SE+20" mobius display and my (yes) Apple//c.
Now, I just need another hub...
If you want to learn a bit more on the machines NeXT produced, check out this link.
Even though it turned out that apple was working on the iMac instead, Apple Legal still asked rumors sites to remove material about the "network appliance" that didn't exist.
It's probably a little more complicated than this. Larry Elisson (Oracle fame) is very much inclined in a NC machine. He's on the board of director of Apple. He's a good friend of Jobs.
So, Apple may have been working in an NC in the past, but at some point in time, they realised that they couldn't effectivelly penetrate that market at that time (at least until Apple gained it's reputation/credibility back--this is back when Apple was "doomed").
So, they turn around, add a hard drive and bingo, the perfect home setup (3.7 million+ buyers confirms this). but, if you inspect this machine carefully, it's written NC all over it.
Dont beleive me? Fire up a packet sniffer, and boot an iMac holding down the "n" key. It tries to boot off a "netboot" server (a well advertised feature of MOSX). The interesting thing is that the iMac identifies itself as "MacNC".
Apple's intent in this lawsuit, as far as I can gatter, is it's need (yes, need) to protect itself against leaks of would-be product that could end up not being marketed as such, or released at all for various reasons. It's quite damaging for Apple if the bulk of it's followers expect a quad-processor machine (as rumored) when actually none were meant (or fit) to ship. Same thing for the "squeesable" mouse (another false rumour), or it's wireless mouse//keyboard (something that might have proved difficult to market at this time if, for example, Apple thought it sucked too much life out of ordinaty batteries, and decided to wait a bit).
[...]And since when does the iMac DV have a replacable video card? (I have one. Do you?)
They dont (I have an iMac DV SE, thank you). I never said they did. But ATI still has to produce the on-board chips, which takes away resources from their manufacturing facilities.
The then (and today's) G4 towers have PCI cards and optional AGP2x versions. Apple had to stock on those, which forced ATI to mass produce for Apple, which delayed their TV card (which wasn't in all that high demand anyhow--a friend of mine has one, and had to wait 9 months to get it).
--The Cube is the most expensive Mac.
Not by a long shot. Have you even seen the thing at Apple's site?
Wise up. The G4 Cube introductory price is 1799 while the G4 Tower is 1599.
It was announced that ATI would be a guest speaker at the keynote (and rumored to be for the introduction of Radeon). This didn't happen.
Besides, Apple is a huge client for ATI, and Apple does get it's EOM supplies before the OEMs have a chance to ship on the shelves. One proof to this was the 8 month delay in the release of the Rage 128/TV card, was because ATI was ramping up production and supply of Rage 128 Pro & AGP2X for the new machines (iMac DVs and the then G4 tower).
The Radeon is shipping now in it's PCI form. AGP 2X will be available in september only. This only mean one thing: someone else is stocking up on them.
And nobody said anything about the G4 Cube being the only machine with it. The G4 tower is a serious contender for that card, too.
The Cube is the most expensive Mac.
The announced price of the G4 Cube doesn't make sense compared to the G4 tower given the absence of the superior video card. Redo the math with the Radeon card, and the G4 Cube's price makes sense.
Apple has a huge impact across the computer industry in terms of exposure and recognition. You dont have to like Apple to know alot about that company. Little could be said of it's competitors7.
One proof to this is Slashdot. Macs aren't a Linux machine per say (though it does run it quite well), and yet, Apple gets more press on Slashdot than any single Intel-based hardware company, including strictly-Linux vendors like VA Research (or do they sell non-Linux setups?).
So, when ATI was originally invited onto the Big Stage at one of the most coveted Mac events (and thus before the entire industry), it was granted a huge favor. Apple doesn't have top care about ATI. No more than it should about IBM that supplies hard drives into most of their machines.
But instead of taking this humbly, ATI's invlated heads went off to blow away some of the punch lines Apple (aka, Steve) need to keep the crowd alive, by pre-anouncing products that were up until this point just rumors.
Keeping the faithful crowd happy is what saved Apple.
For sure, Radeon will ship in the Cubes within 2 months from now. You can bet that, since the machine is already up for order, there are actually quite a few already in the pipeline that have the Radeon cards inside.
Thought for the launch, ATI got what it deserved: no chance for the spotlight, for having shadowed Steve's spotlight.
Looks like TheMacJunkie.com has been taken offline from it's ISP. Probably on demmand from Apple layers, similarely to what they tried with Macintouch.com recently.
Slashdot Mirror
I dont know if you guys have ever downloaded the BattleBots Rules PDF document but,you should probably be aware that it's as anti-geek as it can be! The only weapons available are fit for medieval armies. Blades, tethered missiles only,and crushing devices form the arsenal for these robots.
Lasers, stun-like devices, electricity, radio jamming interference, heat and other geeky weapons are forbidden.
You can't advance the art of robotic combat with this, can you?
Let's start our own robo war stuff. No weels. No phisical contact allowed. Just pure nerd stuff, like melting your oponent using microwaves.
Looks like the Save Iridium organisation couldn't.
Too bad. They had a nice (and noble) idea.
It's also 100% vaporware.
Or, in the case of Amiga, "CasperWare"...
Y, however, appears to be available
I'd still be carefull about that. Depending on your intended "Y" product, you might run into trouble if it's too close for comfort with the "KY" brand.
Years ago, I wanted to write a book which I had titled The complete marketting morons guide until the first "...For Dummies" book appears. At this point, I realised my book would not have any use.
If Linux is going to make it on the desktop, there needs to be a single, unified desktop layer. Fragmentation is bad.
So much for free speech.
Let me reiterate my thoughts on Jar Jar...
...
This "brainless" creature is, against all odds, aware of The Force. No kidding. The ride through the Plaaaanet Cooore proves it:
Dont worry, the force will guide us. says Qui Gon.
Ah! Itsy bit the Force! replies jar Jar.
Also, Jar Jar says he was banished from his city because he was clumbsy ("Er.. youssa might be sayin' that" he replies to Obi One's question).
This leads me to what I beleive is the true nature of Jar Jar's stupendous luck during the battle droids fight (where he keeps on shooting other droids with the one caught in his foot).
Hold on to yourself, the truth may be ugly...
There isn't only the Good and Evil side of the force
There is also the
Stupid Force!
I know it's shocking, but it's the only true answer to the whole mistery of the force requiring ballance.
Anaking is so strong in the Evil side (and so is Palpatine) that only the Stupid side can counter-effect Palpatine's plan and lead him into the fatal decision of asking Luke to replace Vador. This really stupid move utterly pissed Vador which led to Palpatine's demise.
I bet what will kill Jar jar in episode 2 (I hope) if not episode 3 (as a last resort) will be when Jar jar tells Parpatine:
I know thessa stupid in you!
"US and CAN+PQ and CAN+ON not US+IO not UK not FR+BD"
Meaning "all of US except Ohio, Ontario Canada, Quebec Canada, not England, not Bordeau in France.
Obviously, this requires better organisation, but you get the idea.
English Language And Its Effect On Programming?
I have a worse problem where programming affects my english.
I'm a french-speaking Quebecer (the term would be "francophone"). My english was mostly influenced by US TV shows and english books on all sorts of subject, but mostly technical and programming -oriented. My pronounciation was also (and probably mostly) influenced by anglophones here in Montreal (where the population is almost split equally in french and english). Eh?
I often find myself writing in english using constructs that derrive from programming languages. My syntax is also affected once in a while.
For example, while writing some non-techical text (say, a letter to a friend of mine in the states somewhere), it's not rare that I end up typing "this" as "this->"!
"That's no moon, it's a space station"
Nah it can't be. It's too big to be a space station. Must be a HD space hogger.
I wonder if AOL really knows it's market?
The AOL client software is meant for the non-technically oriented computer *user* that wan'ts to connect to the internet using a simple front end application that will guide and "assist" them.
That's absolutelly as far as it can be from the typical Linux user.
If I were to use Linux on a day-to-day basis (I'm BSD, folks), then it surely wouldn't be for their AOL access.
Yes, and I ran Windows 95 betas under 4 megs of ram on a dx2/66.
That proves nothing though, since such Operating systems resort to disk paging when ram is not sufficient.
No, that's fully loaded in RAM. No paging (VM turned off).
In fact, I've just installed a not-so-monimal install (with ethernet drivers, among others), and it installs under 19Megs disk space. That particular install ran under 12Megs of RAM.
Yeah, but does it have a GUI interface under 70 meg? Windows 95 and Mac OS have had one for years.
I will unfortunatelly bite on your flamebait.
My Mac OS 9.0.4 runs under 23Megs of RAM, fully loaded.
Please review your numbers, or at least dont associate Mac OS with Windose.
I bet it was Lars trying to get in to add their system in the banned users list.
When Apple bought NeXT in december 1996 (actually, when NeXT let itself being bought by Apple), I knew it was for OpenStep, and had a fait idea of what was to take place. Being a Mac developer, I knew I had to start learning the inside-outs of this OS, so I searched on the web, and found orb.com (dont botter looking it up, the site is gone now) from which I bought my NeXT machine (literally).
//c.
...
It's what's refered to as a "color slab". The actual model name os a "Color Station". The 25Mghz one, not the Turbo Station.
It came with NeXTSTEP 3.3 pre-installed on a 400Megs HD w/ 16Megs of RAM. This machine actually could rival my PowerMac 8600/200 the Mac OS of the time (I can't remember what version it was... 7.5.5 maybe).
When Apple introduced NeXTSTEP to the Mac community, it actually simply released OpenStep 4.2 for Intel to developers. It turns out that the CDs were fat-binaries that would also work on my color slab. I downloaded the installer floppy image to boot my machine with, and was able to install OpenStep 4.2 on there--for free. The machine has been running superbly ever since.
I eventually bought a N2000 NeXT Laser Printer. The best 400DPI I have ever seen. Never has that printer, actually controled by the NeXT itself for PostScript rastering, ever failed to print anything I threw at it, regardless of the complexity of the image. By having installed CAPer on it, I can use this printer on my network like any regular Mac networked printer.
I have just bought a first-generation NeXT Cube (N1000A) for the coolness factor. I'm picking it up tomorow, and am eager to spin it up. It should look pretty dandy on my desk, next to my color slab, original Mac II (rev A), PowerMac 8600/200, iMac DV/SE, Mac SE+20" mobius display and my (yes) Apple
Now, I just need another hub
If you want to learn a bit more on the machines NeXT produced, check out this link.
Even though it turned out that apple was working on the iMac instead, Apple Legal still asked rumors sites to remove material about the "network appliance" that didn't exist.
It's probably a little more complicated than this. Larry Elisson (Oracle fame) is very much inclined in a NC machine. He's on the board of director of Apple. He's a good friend of Jobs.
So, Apple may have been working in an NC in the past, but at some point in time, they realised that they couldn't effectivelly penetrate that market at that time (at least until Apple gained it's reputation/credibility back--this is back when Apple was "doomed").
So, they turn around, add a hard drive and bingo, the perfect home setup (3.7 million+ buyers confirms this). but, if you inspect this machine carefully, it's written NC all over it.
Dont beleive me? Fire up a packet sniffer, and boot an iMac holding down the "n" key. It tries to boot off a "netboot" server (a well advertised feature of MOSX). The interesting thing is that the iMac identifies itself as "MacNC".
Apple's intent in this lawsuit, as far as I can gatter, is it's need (yes, need) to protect itself against leaks of would-be product that could end up not being marketed as such, or released at all for various reasons. It's quite damaging for Apple if the bulk of it's followers expect a quad-processor machine (as rumored) when actually none were meant (or fit) to ship. Same thing for the "squeesable" mouse (another false rumour), or it's wireless mouse//keyboard (something that might have proved difficult to market at this time if, for example, Apple thought it sucked too much life out of ordinaty batteries, and decided to wait a bit).
Tenon Intersystems has already announced X (as in X11R6.4) for X (as in Mac OS X).
Therefore, for simple ports, it should be a no-brainer.
Carbon or Cocoa ports will demand a wee bit more work, depending on the app.
Then, Lard Ulrich will release a drum-only MP3 soundtrack and see how many people pays a dollar to download it.
Then, they'll add a bass guitar track and see how many people pays a dollar and download it.
If this is successfull, they'll add a guitar track and see how many people pays a dollar to download it.
And if THAT is successfull, they'll add the lyrics track and see how much people they'll have coned into paying four bucks a song.
[...]And since when does the iMac DV have a replacable video card? (I have one. Do you?)
They dont (I have an iMac DV SE, thank you). I never said they did. But ATI still has to produce the on-board chips, which takes away resources from their manufacturing facilities.
The then (and today's) G4 towers have PCI cards and optional AGP2x versions. Apple had to stock on those, which forced ATI to mass produce for Apple, which delayed their TV card (which wasn't in all that high demand anyhow--a friend of mine has one, and had to wait 9 months to get it).
--The Cube is the most expensive Mac.
Not by a long shot. Have you even seen the thing at Apple's site?
Wise up. The G4 Cube introductory price is 1799 while the G4 Tower is 1599.
It was announced that ATI would be a guest speaker at the keynote (and rumored to be for the introduction of Radeon). This didn't happen.
Besides, Apple is a huge client for ATI, and Apple does get it's EOM supplies before the OEMs have a chance to ship on the shelves. One proof to this was the 8 month delay in the release of the Rage 128/TV card, was because ATI was ramping up production and supply of Rage 128 Pro & AGP2X for the new machines (iMac DVs and the then G4 tower).
The Radeon is shipping now in it's PCI form. AGP 2X will be available in september only. This only mean one thing: someone else is stocking up on them.
And nobody said anything about the G4 Cube being the only machine with it. The G4 tower is a serious contender for that card, too.
The Cube is the most expensive Mac.
The announced price of the G4 Cube doesn't make sense compared to the G4 tower given the absence of the superior video card. Redo the math with the Radeon card, and the G4 Cube's price makes sense.
Apple has a huge impact across the computer industry in terms of exposure and recognition. You dont have to like Apple to know alot about that company. Little could be said of it's competitors7.
One proof to this is Slashdot. Macs aren't a Linux machine per say (though it does run it quite well), and yet, Apple gets more press on Slashdot than any single Intel-based hardware company, including strictly-Linux vendors like VA Research (or do they sell non-Linux setups?).
So, when ATI was originally invited onto the Big Stage at one of the most coveted Mac events (and thus before the entire industry), it was granted a huge favor. Apple doesn't have top care about ATI. No more than it should about IBM that supplies hard drives into most of their machines.
But instead of taking this humbly, ATI's invlated heads went off to blow away some of the punch lines Apple (aka, Steve) need to keep the crowd alive, by pre-anouncing products that were up until this point just rumors.
Keeping the faithful crowd happy is what saved Apple.
For sure, Radeon will ship in the Cubes within 2 months from now. You can bet that, since the machine is already up for order, there are actually quite a few already in the pipeline that have the Radeon cards inside.
Thought for the launch, ATI got what it deserved: no chance for the spotlight, for having shadowed Steve's spotlight.
Looks like TheMacJunkie.com has been taken offline from it's ISP. Probably on demmand from Apple layers, similarely to what they tried with Macintouch.com recently.
It would really be cool to meet him one day, just to have a conversation and thank him.
Send him an email at Woz.org. He answers all received emails.
Before they start toying with technologies that will make it not interrupt your chain of through, they ought to clean Windows UI first.
Windows still pops-up alerts WHILE your drawing into applications (such as PhotoShop), screwing up your stroke.
The phrase 'monopoly' comes to mind, here.
Monopoly isn't a phrase. It's a word. Just like dumb.
That was a dumb, unthought of BS comment is a phrase.
The mere thought of someone saying Apple holds a monopoly with it's 8-9% marketshare dims my hope for global intelligence. is my answer.