I wouldn't recommend carrying the machine by it since it's meant to be used to lift the internals out of the case.
Re:Not Mac OS X, just Darwin
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MacOSX and X11
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· Score: 2
DOS isn't UNIX. Most Windows users who reboot to DOS mode were once DOS users or Win 3.11/DOS users who know how to get back. Even if they don't, it's DOS, so there's no harm done in cold-rebooting the machine to get back into Windows.
However, long-term Mac users and new computer users are not familiar with UNIX as a rule. Dropping them into a UNIX prompt means leaving them lost. Furthermore, they'll be tempted to simply power-off the machine to get back, and this is a big no-no on a UNIX machine. Since most will not know to 'su' to root and type the shutdown command, this is very bad.
You mean they're finally catching up with everyone else?
Well, with the exception of the attached dialogs, mostly yes. The new open/save dialogs are really interesting. The pop-up menu has some preset locations like the Desktop and your Favorites folder (which are all contained under your user folder, like in Windows NT) as well as an extension of the old "Most Recently Used Items" features of the Classic OS's Apple Menu.
The multi-lever, New Finder-like mini-browser is new to the Mac, though, and I haven't seen it in any other mainstream OS. Chances are, though, that you still won't be able to rename & delete items like in the Windows dialog because Apple actually hold to the idea of KISS.
Also, attached dialogs are brand new. (Well, except for the fact that early Apple Lisa prototypes had a similar feature.) This means that a modal dialog for an application is firmly attached to that application's window, instead of floating off in it's own world like in Windows or, worse, taking control of input for all apps in older Mac applications.
All of this is done by Windows today and most probably by KDE and GNOME both in the not-so-far future (I'm betting on KDE, as much as I dislike it.)
Wrong. Windows will not let you drag and drop an icon of the harddrive to the desktop to peruse directly like volumes are mounted on the Classic Mac OS. While GNOME does let you have such icons on the desktop, their creation is not that straightforward. (I don't really know KDE, though.)
Also, the controls to switch views are single-click buttons, not menus like in everything else, including the Mac OS, which had iconic and list views before Windows 95 ever came out and long before GNOME and KDE set out to clone it.
The reason I posted all that info was because Mac-heads are all interesting in what shape the new GUI will take. Usability is the primary reason we own Macs, and it's important to us to see how things turn out.
I'm a little disappointed in some things. The Dock is a usability nightmare. Also, the introduction of live dragging and resizing removes one of the better UI cues in the Mac OS by not leaving an indication of how the window looked before you made changes to its size and position. A good UI should always give the user that chance to undo what they've done.
Here are my notes from the webcast, for those who weren't able to attend the expo and who missed it:
New Input Devices
New optical mouse. Still one-button only, but the entire surface is the button. Will be standard on all Macs. This is not the touchy, squeezing, twiddling mouse that everyone has rumors about, and it looks radically different from previously posted pictures.
New 108 key keyboard based on the old Mac Extended Keyboard design. Includes volume and eject keys along with the standard arrow. Both keyboard and mouse will be sold on the Apple Store as seperate components for $59 each.
Pentium vs. G4 Showdown
Used a 500 MHz G4 vs. a 1 GHz Pentium III with Altivec and SSE enhanced filters, respectively. Did the standard Photoshop test, this time rendering the "Inspector Gadget" movie poster. G4 = 100 sec, P3 = 124 sec.
They did the same showdown again with a dual-G4 machine vs. a single P3 machine. Note that Photoshop is one of the few Mac apps designed to take advantage of Apple's asymmetric multiprocessing API. Until Mac OS X, not all apps will be able to take advantage of this boost. This is a bit of a stacked comparison, but not bad for an OS without SMP. 61 seconds on dual G4.
New machines
Yes, they are formally announcing dual-G4 machines today. The 400 MHz model is going to still be single processor machines, but the 450 MHz and 500 MHz models will only be able to be bought with dual-G4s.
They are also including Gigabit Ethernet as a standard option on the motherboard for all G4 machines. To show off Gigabit Ethernet, they played a Final Cut Pro movie with the uncompressed video source being streamed from the server. They also showed scrubbing through it from the server. The showed smooth playback at over 16 Mb/sec, and showed good recovery after the cable was pulled mid-playback and replugged.
New machines will include 20 GB, 30 GB, and 40 GB drives respectively. All of these new features will be sold at the same price as the old machines.
Mac OS X
Public Beta is on track for September. Also on track to release in 2001. No time for a full-blown demo, but do show off a the new UI. They showed off the following:
Live dragging and resizing
Showed off attached dialogs. Demonstrated intelligent behavior when the window is smaller than the dialog or a little off-screen.
New save dialogs include a pop-up window with options to save to favorites, the desktop, and recent folder. Also includes a mini-browser (like the Finder browser view) to pick a different place.
Finder
Showed that you can now drag a volume to the desktop and use it like you do on the Mac today.
Showed the controls to switch between iconic, list, and browser view.
Showed that the browser view includes a preview pane that can preview all kinds of QT media.
The Dock
Showed addition and removal of apps and docs to the dock.
Showed window minizing, even had a slow-mo demo. Showed the nifty way it handles having half the window off the bottom of the screen befor being minimized. They also showed off a slow-mo demo of a quicktime window being minimized while the window still plays.
Showed the "Bomb" app while playing the movie. The app attempts to crash the system by doing everything a Mac app shouldn't do, including writing to low global memory. The app crashed itself, but didn't disturb the system.
Did not address dock overloading, organizational, or Fitt's Law problems with Dock design. It seems nothing has been done to address these issues.
3rd Parties
Bruce Chizen from Adobe came and raved about the PowerMac G4 SMP. Nothing of consequence was said, though.
Kevin Browne of MS comes to talk about the new Office 2001 for Mac. Added a new application to Office called Entourage, which is apparently an Outlook replacement.
Mac Only Features
Entourage includes a new preview pane.
There is a new categories feature that synchronizes with categories on a PalmPilot.
There is a new Project Gallery that help do finished formatting.
New set of formatting wizards for Word.
There are also some new formatting palettes that help avoid going through dialog boxes.
New picture tools for doing limited photo editing.
There is a new List Manager in Excel to help people create lists in Excel and format them well.
BIG ONE: Powerpoint can now save presentations as Quicktime Movies. They did not say whether or not this is a Mac-only feature.
Note that they also made mention improved inter-operability with Windows versions right before showing off all these Mac-specific features.
Brought up MS's VP of Games to talk about Bungie. MS and Apple are teaming up with Bungie to being bringing their entire line to the Mac, including older MS games. They transitioned to talking about the X-Box and brought up the CEO of Bungie. He mentioned their origins as a Mac company and confirmed that, yes, Halo WILL still be coming out for the Mac. Wow, this game is going to be sweet. Very cinematic.
iMac
Talked a little about the 2 year history of the iMac. 3.7 million iMacs sold in 2 years. That's about 5000+ per day, 200+ per hour, or 1 every 18 seconds. Did the demographic breakdown.
30% 1st timers
14% Wintel converts
89% of iMacs are on-line
4 New iMac models:
All models: G3 procs, slot-loading drives, USB, Ethernet, no fans, etc. All come with new mouse and keyboard.
Entry-level iMac: 350 MHz G3, 64 MB mem, 7.5 GB drive, slot-loading CD-ROM. All new color, Indigo. Price: $799. Hyped it as the best internat appliance on the market.
iMac DV: Includes Firewire and iMovie. 400 MHz G3, 64 MB mem, 10 GB disk, CD-ROM, AirPort ready. Comes in Indigo and another new color, Ruby. Price: $999. Hyped iMovie for everybody.
iMac DV+: 450 MHz, 64 MB mem, 20 GB disk, DVD-ROM, AirPort, Firewire, and iMovie. Indigo, Ruby, and another new color, Sage, which is a darker green. Price: $1299
iMac DV SE: 500 MHz, 128 MB, 30 GB disk, DVD-ROM, AirPort, Firewire, and iMovie. Price: $1499. Comes in an improved Graphite color and a new color called Snow, which is a solid white case.
Yesterday, it was announced that Circuit City will be selling iMacs. Furthermore, the digital cameras and iMacs will be sold side-by-side now. Showed off the new commercials for the new iMacs. (I love the choice of "It's Not Easy Being Green" for the Sage machines. "White Room" was also pretty funny for Snow.)
iMovie 2
New user interface, intended to be easier to use. Enhanced audio editing and special effects. They adopted some Aqua GUI elements. (Why, oh why, can't they use their own Appearance Manager?) They showed the drag and drop functionality in iMac's timeline and clip manager panel. They also showed off some new audio functionality. Unfortunately, after Jobs actually got started working, the audio for the webcast got cut, so I can't really tell all of what he was doing. They did show off how you could now have clips transition into sepia tones.
iMovie 2 is free with all desktop Macs -- but what about the entry-leve iMac? For people who aren't buying a new machine, there will be a $49 download available in August.
iTools
Talked some about iDisk and using iMovie to create movies and uploading them to iDisk along with pictures. You can use Apple's homepage templates to create personal photo and movie galleries. Did a demo of doing this.
The Cube
They are expanding their product line to create a new area between consumer and pro. The new 8" cube Mac is for real. The PowerMac G4 Cube has:
G4 proc
expandable up to 1.5 GB mem
up to 40 GB disk
modem, ethernet, usb, firewire, airport net
no fan, again
I'll be damned. The Apple Insider picture is pretty close to what it looks like. It's almost identical to the picture with the two dark screws. The slot-loading DVD drive is in the top, and the connectors are on the bottom. To open, you turn it upside down, push on a pop-up handle, and slide it all out by the handle. The handle locks it in place (and comes with a Kensington lock). Access was a key issue. (Side note: It seems to have an internal grill, so it seems that pencils aren't a case, but don't you dare put a coffee cup on it.) Comes with two little spherical Harmann speakers.
450, 64, 20, dvd, iMovie -- $1799
500, 128, 30, dvd, iMovie -- $2299
available in august
Apparently, the new 17" monitor was also dead on. The front screen is flat, and the graphite enclosing is clear. It has 2 USB ports, costs $499, and has a single cable carrying power, video, and USB. Also, they debuted new Studio Display models - 15" & 22", both with 1 cable for all needs. They say that it is compatible with the older models and not just the cube.
The wrapped up the keynote with a commercial filled with interviews about the new cube. Steve then gave free optical mice to all the keynote attendees! Sweet!
Sorry, I know the situation you're currently in. You see, I too used to be a MOSR victim. Yes, I read all the Mac rumors sites back in the good old days before Steve Jobs took the helm and clamped down on any legit product info. I watched as site after site closed down or started spewing crap, but I didn't know that they were spewing crap for over a year.
Ryan Meader is full of crap. The Mac Junkie site documents in good detail how willing MOSR is to take anything and post it up as from legit sources. My eyes were opened by parody site mosr.net and other sites, and my own critical eye has caught Apple Insider fibbing on occasion, though they seem to be less obsessed with putting something, anything out no matter how blatantly false it is.
If you want legit news, go to Macintouch or MacNN, but don't trust the rumors sites. They haven't had good hit-miss ratios for over 2 years or so, and since they are in the entertainment business, they don't really care. I just regret getting my Dad hooked on the damn site.
I don't get it either. People who have never seen a computer are still likely to have seen a Coke, and everywhere Microsoft is, so is Coke. How can Microsoft's brand be only 3-4% less valuable's than Coke's. Heh. Consulting firms. Do they ever produce anything of value?
Did you read the MacJunkie article? Look at the screws on the top in both pictures. In the front-on view, there are two dark screws and in the corner-perspective view, there are 3 white/clear ones. While Apple might just actually be showing off a new cube, those are not the pictures.
I also loved the 15" Apple Studio Display from the site. Funny how it looks identical to the 22" Apple Studio Display. "But it's smaller! No, really, it is!"
Just because the HR people have their heads up their rear-ends, doesn't mean that the rest of the company isn't pretty cool. Many a good company makes the mistake of letting non-technical people determine who to hire in a technical field. (Of course, that beats the alternative mistake, which is to force techies to pull themselves from their work to make hiring decisions.) Trust me, I can speak from experience that sometimes the people who you interview with aren't always really representative of the whole company and who you'll be working with.
Re:Not Mac OS X, just Darwin
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MacOSX and X11
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· Score: 1
Into Darwin itself, not at all. Darwin is a seperate OS in its own right. The graphics model, Carbon APIs, and etc. that make the Mac the Mac are all implemented on top of Darwin.
As far as I know there are very little hooks, but there was an essay linked to in a Slashdot article a few days to a couple of weeks ago about the architectural decisions that Apple has had to make in integrating UNIX and the Mac OS. They had to make some extensions to BSD to handle some Mac-centric issues, such as forked files, but they didn't break the code for normal BSD apps to do it. Darwin can still be gotten seperately from Mac OS X from Apple's website.
As the other person who responded to my reply said, he was able to kill the GUI layer without crashing the BSD layer by accident, so it doesn't seem too dependant on it. However, from a non-UNIX user's standpoint, the system is entirely dependant on it. I don't expect to see any option to drop out of Aqua given to us by Apple other than deliberately crashing it. It would be a usability black hole for Mac users who don't know UNIX and who say, "What does this button do?"
If you wanted Nader, why weren't you out collecting signatures for the Green party?
Because, maybe, just maybe, I'd like the opportunity to vote for a candidate who isn't a loser without having to dedicate a year of my life to their cause. Not once have I ever voted for the guy that gets the Democratic/Republican nomination in the primaries, but I've done my part. My signature is on that list, but that doesn't mean that it's all my fault that I haven't given up school and my job to go work for their party. This is like saying it's my fault there's war in the Middle East because I'm not over there trying to stop it.
Not Mac OS X, just Darwin
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MacOSX and X11
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· Score: 2
Carmack ported XFree86 to Darwin, Apple's free distribution of the underlying BSD-based system. This means that you can use XFree86 as a GUI instead of the Aqua environment. The two cannot be run side-by-side, and there is no current way to shut down the Aqua environment in actual Mac OS X developer pre-releases.
So, Carmack didn't actually port it to Mac OS X. Tenon is porting their existing Mac OS-based X server to Carbon so that it will actually run on Mac OS X, not just Darwin.
Troll or grossly in need of information? I'll assume the latter. All the BSD layer will be hidden from the end users. They'll never once have to deal with UNIX if they don't want to. However, it will still be there. As far as they'll know, it will be just another Mac with a Candyland face lift. If you need more information, why don't you actually look at Apple's site. Surely, if you're actually a Mac owner, you've been hearing about this for 2 years now.
Tenon's product may not be a tool for porting X code anyway. It's primary purpose is to allow people to run X applications on another UNIX machine and display them on a Mac, much like do with my Windows machine at work. Apple isn't doing this, Tenon is. If you don't like it, then don't buy it and quit spouting nonsense.
I'll refuse to use a language where I have to assume everyone ELSE can't write code. All the Perl code I've had to look at was written by people who know they'll never have to see it again after it's passed on to the next guy. Python is used by people who actually care what the next guy has to see, even if it's themselves in 6 months.
Forced indentation is good. It forces you to make your logic visible. There probably will never be a Obfuscated Python contest, while I consider the Obfuscated Perl contest to be a redundant celebration of the language's greatest flaw.
Most VB-based viruses don't take advantage of any of the "Visual" features of the language. Most VB apps I've seen don't include the ability to execute external scripts as a feature. So, why should a Visual Python app be inherently insecure?
Any Linux app could include unsafe virus-executing functionality be exploiting scripting languages that already exist, like Python or Perl, with little regard to security. The reason we don't have this problem now is that there are no major networked Linux apps that take advantage of automatic scripting like MS Office does.
This is just a RAD tool, not the beginning of the end of Linux security. All the problems with VB as a virus don't come from the language itself, but with the applications that make use of it. (Of course, an exception to this is the 2 lines of code at the beginning of a Word macro virus I once caught in action that turned off user-notification and then virus-checking. WTF? They let scripts do that?)
Now that's the pot calling the kettle black. You're code include no variable with more than 2 characters, which is a maintainability nightmare. Furthermore, all it seems to do it repeatedly read in a fixed size buffer, with no regard to the contents (such as newlines) and spit them out with a newline appended, whereas the Python code he wrote actually automatically breaks a line at the presence of a newline and prints them out in an intelligently formatted fashion.
What you wrote was much uglier (and arguably less useful) that what he did, and what he wrote took me half the time to understand, despite the fact that I've been coding in C on UNIX for over 2 years, while I only coded Python for 2 weeks over 3 months ago.
Even if you've never participated in your local party machine, contributed to or volunteered for a candidate more to your likeing, or voted in the primary, there are more than two presidential candidates on the ballot.
Not where I live. You have to have a certain number of signatures to get on the ballot. I literaly don't have any options other than Bush or Gore. There's no one else on the ballot.
The Republican and Democratic candidates are always a shoe-in, but not 3rd party candidates. I would've voted for Nader because of his environmental and consumer rights positions, but the Green party is a few thousand signatures short of getting Nader on the ballot here. Similarly, though I'd rather be shot than vote for a Liberatarian candidate, it's even not an option here. I'm stuck with the snuff-flick candidates -- Bush and Gore.
And FYI, Taco, you dumbfuck, Ryoko never "morphed" into anything. You just saw the first half of the first episode, right? Don't try and sound familiar with someting you're not. You're starting to sound like Katz. What's up?
Dude, she's nearly skeletal when she rises up out of the water. Take a good look at her ribcage next time. Ryouko was not in the best of shape when she was set free. Presumably she healed the damage being locked in place for 700 years did to her.
Re:Some translation -- No new series
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Tenchi Muyou 3?
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· Score: 2
Oh wait, I figured it out. "Karaa 4 P & Monokuro 28 P" means that it will feature 4 color pages and 28 black and white pages.
Some translation -- No new series
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Tenchi Muyou 3?
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· Score: 2
Here's my translation of a few bits. The stuff on the middle right of the cover picture says:
"Tenchi Muyou!" A new publication enters the stage!! 700-year Ravaazu (Lovers?) 3
The bit right below the small picture of the cast relaxing on the beach says:
A "Tenchi Muyou! Ryo-oh-ki" original comic, "700 year Ravaazu (Lovers?)" (I can't find a translation of the "chiba jirou" on picture or immediately following this.)
It will be a biographical comic that once again searches the world of "Tenchi Muyou!". Even though it is early/soon [to say so], [it is in] the middle of a rise in popularity. (Then after that, I can't even guess at what the katakana's supposed to say. "Karaa 4 P & Monokuro 28 P")
It sounds to me like they're just running an original comic series in their magazine. No new anime series, I'm afraid. I haven't gotten into the text next to the picture of Ryouko or the text at the bottom with the various cast members.
Seems like a post of a deliberately inflammitory nature against the topic of a discussion group. I believe that's the very definition of a troll.
While I do watch a lot of anime, I also recognize Sturgeon's Law in effect. However, the poster didn't site any examples. He just made a blanket assertion that seemed intended to offend people in the way only ignorant blanket assertions can. That he did it as an AC instead of being willing to take the karma as it can shows that he knew it would be found offensive.
By the way, do you even know what censorship is? The whole point of the moderation system is that nothing is censored. Posts never get pulled off of Slashdot articles. They are just subjected to peer evaluation. If you want to read every post, they are all still available for viewing. However, if you are willing to set the threshhold a little higher and trust your peers to raise the signal-to-noise ratio, then it's your own doing that block you from seeing them. Browse at -1 if you want to read it all or don't. Just don't accuse moderators of "censorship" when it clearly isn't.
Fah. I bet you'd accuse of scientific journals of censorship for bothering to check the research before posting any crackpot theory that gets submitted.
Don't try to correct spellings, when you don't know a thing about Romanization. Japanese pronunciation includes what is known as long vowels. When a mora (Japanese syllable) is followed by a repitition of the vowel component (i.e. o-ka-a-sa-n), the vowel sound is held for twice as long. By default, all Japanese mora are pronounced just as fast as each other.
This means that there is a difference between obasan (aunt) and obaasan (grandmother). The Japanese vowels are a, i, u, e, o (Ah, Ee, Oo, Ay, Oh). Combinations like 'ai,' 'ue,' and 'au' make sounds like 'Aye,' 'Oo-Eh,' and 'Ah-oo' (or Ow as in Chow). However, 'ei' and 'ou' are a long 'e' and a long 'o'. In fact, a long 'o' is more commonly spelled 'ou' than 'oo,' and a long 'e' is more commonly spelled 'ei'.
Now for Romanization. Muyou, or "a lack of need for," would be spelled differently under different romanization methods. Most romanization methods would have you spell it either "muyou" or "muyo" with a bar over the "o." Since it's hard for people to type the "o" with a bar over it, which is the most common way of spelling a long "o," people drop it.
However, this is incorrect. This spelling would confuse "muko" (bridgegroom) with "mukou" (beyond) and "oki" (open sea) with "ookii" (large). Few people would drop double consonants (which I haven't covered here), but many drop double vowels. The correct way to handle it is indeed the way that they did for the site. "Muyou" captures the actual pronunciation and kana spelling of "mu" (nothingness) and "you" (use).
Side note, tenchimuyou is also how you say "this side up," or "do not turn over."
Re:Anime is cartoon child porn
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Tenchi Muyou 3?
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· Score: 2
It's vastly oversimplyifying things to place the blame for all that simply on cartoons.
Oh, I'm not. In fact, I'd say it's the reverse in action. Their culture's emphasis on responsibility for one's actions is probably the primary reason that they portray violence in that fashion. Of course, they also often have good ol' cartoony violence where someone bonks someone over the head with a fatally heavy object and tears just stream from the victim's eyes, but that's known to be comic exaggeration. Such behavior in real life would be considered unacceptable, but it's funny for the extreme personalities in anime to do it.
I've taken Japanese, and some of their cultural constructs -- responsibility, in-group/out-group mentality, and levels of politeness -- are drilled into their language itself. It seems to be that it'd be much easier to instill a group ethic in children when your language doesn't distinguish between singular and plural. One is just the smallest group.
Culturally we didn't have the best upbringing (Puritans, bleh) so it'll take a few centuries before we've settled down to the same sort of relaxed and mellow vibe that you get anywhere in the older cultures like Europe and Japan. Time will tell whether aging will turn America into a fine wine or a vinegar.
I'd just like to comment that like the analogy here. Don't completely knock the Puritans, though. Our country was founded by their descendants, and much of the reason for the First Amendment comes from their reactions to religious oppression (even though they did a little themselves).
Hasn't Silicon Valley been heavily dominated by the tech industry since the late 70s to early 80s? I mean, aren't there a bunch of EPA Superfund sites in the area caused by pollution from hardware manufacture, and weren't most of them created during the 80s? I mean, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition has been around since 1982, and was formed in reaction to groundwater pollution by Fairchild Semiconductor. Doesn't that mean the "high-tech" industry has been there for a looong time?
Slashdot Mirror
On the Internet? I think they can safely get away with stub code for that.
I wouldn't recommend carrying the machine by it since it's meant to be used to lift the internals out of the case.
DOS isn't UNIX. Most Windows users who reboot to DOS mode were once DOS users or Win 3.11/DOS users who know how to get back. Even if they don't, it's DOS, so there's no harm done in cold-rebooting the machine to get back into Windows.
However, long-term Mac users and new computer users are not familiar with UNIX as a rule. Dropping them into a UNIX prompt means leaving them lost. Furthermore, they'll be tempted to simply power-off the machine to get back, and this is a big no-no on a UNIX machine. Since most will not know to 'su' to root and type the shutdown command, this is very bad.
You mean they're finally catching up with everyone else?
Well, with the exception of the attached dialogs, mostly yes. The new open/save dialogs are really interesting. The pop-up menu has some preset locations like the Desktop and your Favorites folder (which are all contained under your user folder, like in Windows NT) as well as an extension of the old "Most Recently Used Items" features of the Classic OS's Apple Menu.
The multi-lever, New Finder-like mini-browser is new to the Mac, though, and I haven't seen it in any other mainstream OS. Chances are, though, that you still won't be able to rename & delete items like in the Windows dialog because Apple actually hold to the idea of KISS.
Also, attached dialogs are brand new. (Well, except for the fact that early Apple Lisa prototypes had a similar feature.) This means that a modal dialog for an application is firmly attached to that application's window, instead of floating off in it's own world like in Windows or, worse, taking control of input for all apps in older Mac applications.
All of this is done by Windows today and most probably by KDE and GNOME both in the not-so-far future (I'm betting on KDE, as much as I dislike it.)
Wrong. Windows will not let you drag and drop an icon of the harddrive to the desktop to peruse directly like volumes are mounted on the Classic Mac OS. While GNOME does let you have such icons on the desktop, their creation is not that straightforward. (I don't really know KDE, though.)
Also, the controls to switch views are single-click buttons, not menus like in everything else, including the Mac OS, which had iconic and list views before Windows 95 ever came out and long before GNOME and KDE set out to clone it.
The reason I posted all that info was because Mac-heads are all interesting in what shape the new GUI will take. Usability is the primary reason we own Macs, and it's important to us to see how things turn out.
I'm a little disappointed in some things. The Dock is a usability nightmare. Also, the introduction of live dragging and resizing removes one of the better UI cues in the Mac OS by not leaving an indication of how the window looked before you made changes to its size and position. A good UI should always give the user that chance to undo what they've done.
New Input Devices
New optical mouse. Still one-button only, but the entire surface is the button. Will be standard on all Macs. This is not the touchy, squeezing, twiddling mouse that everyone has rumors about, and it looks radically different from previously posted pictures.
New 108 key keyboard based on the old Mac Extended Keyboard design. Includes volume and eject keys along with the standard arrow. Both keyboard and mouse will be sold on the Apple Store as seperate components for $59 each.
Pentium vs. G4 Showdown
Used a 500 MHz G4 vs. a 1 GHz Pentium III with Altivec and SSE enhanced filters, respectively. Did the standard Photoshop test, this time rendering the "Inspector Gadget" movie poster. G4 = 100 sec, P3 = 124 sec.
They did the same showdown again with a dual-G4 machine vs. a single P3 machine. Note that Photoshop is one of the few Mac apps designed to take advantage of Apple's asymmetric multiprocessing API. Until Mac OS X, not all apps will be able to take advantage of this boost. This is a bit of a stacked comparison, but not bad for an OS without SMP. 61 seconds on dual G4.
New machines
Yes, they are formally announcing dual-G4 machines today. The 400 MHz model is going to still be single processor machines, but the 450 MHz and 500 MHz models will only be able to be bought with dual-G4s.
They are also including Gigabit Ethernet as a standard option on the motherboard for all G4 machines. To show off Gigabit Ethernet, they played a Final Cut Pro movie with the uncompressed video source being streamed from the server. They also showed scrubbing through it from the server. The showed smooth playback at over 16 Mb/sec, and showed good recovery after the cable was pulled mid-playback and replugged.
New machines will include 20 GB, 30 GB, and 40 GB drives respectively. All of these new features will be sold at the same price as the old machines.
Mac OS X
Public Beta is on track for September. Also on track to release in 2001. No time for a full-blown demo, but do show off a the new UI. They showed off the following:
3rd Parties
Bruce Chizen from Adobe came and raved about the PowerMac G4 SMP. Nothing of consequence was said, though.
Kevin Browne of MS comes to talk about the new Office 2001 for Mac. Added a new application to Office called Entourage, which is apparently an Outlook replacement.
Brought up MS's VP of Games to talk about Bungie. MS and Apple are teaming up with Bungie to being bringing their entire line to the Mac, including older MS games. They transitioned to talking about the X-Box and brought up the CEO of Bungie. He mentioned their origins as a Mac company and confirmed that, yes, Halo WILL still be coming out for the Mac. Wow, this game is going to be sweet. Very cinematic.
iMac
Talked a little about the 2 year history of the iMac. 3.7 million iMacs sold in 2 years. That's about 5000+ per day, 200+ per hour, or 1 every 18 seconds. Did the demographic breakdown.
4 New iMac models:
Yesterday, it was announced that Circuit City will be selling iMacs. Furthermore, the digital cameras and iMacs will be sold side-by-side now. Showed off the new commercials for the new iMacs. (I love the choice of "It's Not Easy Being Green" for the Sage machines. "White Room" was also pretty funny for Snow.)
iMovie 2
New user interface, intended to be easier to use. Enhanced audio editing and special effects. They adopted some Aqua GUI elements. (Why, oh why, can't they use their own Appearance Manager?) They showed the drag and drop functionality in iMac's timeline and clip manager panel. They also showed off some new audio functionality. Unfortunately, after Jobs actually got started working, the audio for the webcast got cut, so I can't really tell all of what he was doing. They did show off how you could now have clips transition into sepia tones.
iMovie 2 is free with all desktop Macs -- but what about the entry-leve iMac? For people who aren't buying a new machine, there will be a $49 download available in August.
iTools
Talked some about iDisk and using iMovie to create movies and uploading them to iDisk along with pictures. You can use Apple's homepage templates to create personal photo and movie galleries. Did a demo of doing this.
The Cube
They are expanding their product line to create a new area between consumer and pro. The new 8" cube Mac is for real. The PowerMac G4 Cube has:
I'll be damned. The Apple Insider picture is pretty close to what it looks like. It's almost identical to the picture with the two dark screws. The slot-loading DVD drive is in the top, and the connectors are on the bottom. To open, you turn it upside down, push on a pop-up handle, and slide it all out by the handle. The handle locks it in place (and comes with a Kensington lock). Access was a key issue. (Side note: It seems to have an internal grill, so it seems that pencils aren't a case, but don't you dare put a coffee cup on it.) Comes with two little spherical Harmann speakers.
Apparently, the new 17" monitor was also dead on. The front screen is flat, and the graphite enclosing is clear. It has 2 USB ports, costs $499, and has a single cable carrying power, video, and USB. Also, they debuted new Studio Display models - 15" & 22", both with 1 cable for all needs. They say that it is compatible with the older models and not just the cube.
The wrapped up the keynote with a commercial filled with interviews about the new cube. Steve then gave free optical mice to all the keynote attendees! Sweet!
Sorry, I know the situation you're currently in. You see, I too used to be a MOSR victim. Yes, I read all the Mac rumors sites back in the good old days before Steve Jobs took the helm and clamped down on any legit product info. I watched as site after site closed down or started spewing crap, but I didn't know that they were spewing crap for over a year.
Ryan Meader is full of crap. The Mac Junkie site documents in good detail how willing MOSR is to take anything and post it up as from legit sources. My eyes were opened by parody site mosr.net and other sites, and my own critical eye has caught Apple Insider fibbing on occasion, though they seem to be less obsessed with putting something, anything out no matter how blatantly false it is.
If you want legit news, go to Macintouch or MacNN, but don't trust the rumors sites. They haven't had good hit-miss ratios for over 2 years or so, and since they are in the entertainment business, they don't really care. I just regret getting my Dad hooked on the damn site.
I don't get it either. People who have never seen a computer are still likely to have seen a Coke, and everywhere Microsoft is, so is Coke. How can Microsoft's brand be only 3-4% less valuable's than Coke's. Heh. Consulting firms. Do they ever produce anything of value?
Did you read the MacJunkie article? Look at the screws on the top in both pictures. In the front-on view, there are two dark screws and in the corner-perspective view, there are 3 white/clear ones. While Apple might just actually be showing off a new cube, those are not the pictures.
I also loved the 15" Apple Studio Display from the site. Funny how it looks identical to the 22" Apple Studio Display. "But it's smaller! No, really, it is!"
Just because the HR people have their heads up their rear-ends, doesn't mean that the rest of the company isn't pretty cool. Many a good company makes the mistake of letting non-technical people determine who to hire in a technical field. (Of course, that beats the alternative mistake, which is to force techies to pull themselves from their work to make hiring decisions.) Trust me, I can speak from experience that sometimes the people who you interview with aren't always really representative of the whole company and who you'll be working with.
Into Darwin itself, not at all. Darwin is a seperate OS in its own right. The graphics model, Carbon APIs, and etc. that make the Mac the Mac are all implemented on top of Darwin.
As far as I know there are very little hooks, but there was an essay linked to in a Slashdot article a few days to a couple of weeks ago about the architectural decisions that Apple has had to make in integrating UNIX and the Mac OS. They had to make some extensions to BSD to handle some Mac-centric issues, such as forked files, but they didn't break the code for normal BSD apps to do it. Darwin can still be gotten seperately from Mac OS X from Apple's website.
As the other person who responded to my reply said, he was able to kill the GUI layer without crashing the BSD layer by accident, so it doesn't seem too dependant on it. However, from a non-UNIX user's standpoint, the system is entirely dependant on it. I don't expect to see any option to drop out of Aqua given to us by Apple other than deliberately crashing it. It would be a usability black hole for Mac users who don't know UNIX and who say, "What does this button do?"
If you wanted Nader, why weren't you out collecting signatures for the Green party?
Because, maybe, just maybe, I'd like the opportunity to vote for a candidate who isn't a loser without having to dedicate a year of my life to their cause. Not once have I ever voted for the guy that gets the Democratic/Republican nomination in the primaries, but I've done my part. My signature is on that list, but that doesn't mean that it's all my fault that I haven't given up school and my job to go work for their party. This is like saying it's my fault there's war in the Middle East because I'm not over there trying to stop it.
Carmack ported XFree86 to Darwin, Apple's free distribution of the underlying BSD-based system. This means that you can use XFree86 as a GUI instead of the Aqua environment. The two cannot be run side-by-side, and there is no current way to shut down the Aqua environment in actual Mac OS X developer pre-releases.
So, Carmack didn't actually port it to Mac OS X. Tenon is porting their existing Mac OS-based X server to Carbon so that it will actually run on Mac OS X, not just Darwin.
Troll or grossly in need of information? I'll assume the latter. All the BSD layer will be hidden from the end users. They'll never once have to deal with UNIX if they don't want to. However, it will still be there. As far as they'll know, it will be just another Mac with a Candyland face lift. If you need more information, why don't you actually look at Apple's site. Surely, if you're actually a Mac owner, you've been hearing about this for 2 years now.
Tenon's product may not be a tool for porting X code anyway. It's primary purpose is to allow people to run X applications on another UNIX machine and display them on a Mac, much like do with my Windows machine at work. Apple isn't doing this, Tenon is. If you don't like it, then don't buy it and quit spouting nonsense.
I'll refuse to use a language where I have to assume everyone ELSE can't write code. All the Perl code I've had to look at was written by people who know they'll never have to see it again after it's passed on to the next guy. Python is used by people who actually care what the next guy has to see, even if it's themselves in 6 months.
Forced indentation is good. It forces you to make your logic visible. There probably will never be a Obfuscated Python contest, while I consider the Obfuscated Perl contest to be a redundant celebration of the language's greatest flaw.
Most VB-based viruses don't take advantage of any of the "Visual" features of the language. Most VB apps I've seen don't include the ability to execute external scripts as a feature. So, why should a Visual Python app be inherently insecure?
Any Linux app could include unsafe virus-executing functionality be exploiting scripting languages that already exist, like Python or Perl, with little regard to security. The reason we don't have this problem now is that there are no major networked Linux apps that take advantage of automatic scripting like MS Office does.
This is just a RAD tool, not the beginning of the end of Linux security. All the problems with VB as a virus don't come from the language itself, but with the applications that make use of it. (Of course, an exception to this is the 2 lines of code at the beginning of a Word macro virus I once caught in action that turned off user-notification and then virus-checking. WTF? They let scripts do that?)
Now that's the pot calling the kettle black. You're code include no variable with more than 2 characters, which is a maintainability nightmare. Furthermore, all it seems to do it repeatedly read in a fixed size buffer, with no regard to the contents (such as newlines) and spit them out with a newline appended, whereas the Python code he wrote actually automatically breaks a line at the presence of a newline and prints them out in an intelligently formatted fashion.
What you wrote was much uglier (and arguably less useful) that what he did, and what he wrote took me half the time to understand, despite the fact that I've been coding in C on UNIX for over 2 years, while I only coded Python for 2 weeks over 3 months ago.
Even if you've never participated in your local party machine, contributed to or volunteered for a candidate more to your likeing, or voted in the primary, there are more than two presidential candidates on the ballot.
Not where I live. You have to have a certain number of signatures to get on the ballot. I literaly don't have any options other than Bush or Gore. There's no one else on the ballot.
The Republican and Democratic candidates are always a shoe-in, but not 3rd party candidates. I would've voted for Nader because of his environmental and consumer rights positions, but the Green party is a few thousand signatures short of getting Nader on the ballot here. Similarly, though I'd rather be shot than vote for a Liberatarian candidate, it's even not an option here. I'm stuck with the snuff-flick candidates -- Bush and Gore.
And FYI, Taco, you dumbfuck, Ryoko never "morphed" into anything. You just saw the first half of the first episode, right? Don't try and sound familiar with someting you're not. You're starting to sound like Katz. What's up?
Dude, she's nearly skeletal when she rises up out of the water. Take a good look at her ribcage next time. Ryouko was not in the best of shape when she was set free. Presumably she healed the damage being locked in place for 700 years did to her.
Oh wait, I figured it out. "Karaa 4 P & Monokuro 28 P" means that it will feature 4 color pages and 28 black and white pages.
Here's my translation of a few bits. The stuff on the middle right of the cover picture says:
"Tenchi Muyou!"
A new publication enters the stage!!
700-year Ravaazu (Lovers?) 3
The bit right below the small picture of the cast relaxing on the beach says:
A "Tenchi Muyou! Ryo-oh-ki" original comic, "700 year Ravaazu (Lovers?)" (I can't find a translation of the "chiba jirou" on picture or immediately following this.)
It will be a biographical comic that once again searches the world of "Tenchi Muyou!". Even though it is early/soon [to say so], [it is in] the middle of a rise in popularity. (Then after that, I can't even guess at what the katakana's supposed to say. "Karaa 4 P & Monokuro 28 P")
It sounds to me like they're just running an original comic series in their magazine. No new anime series, I'm afraid. I haven't gotten into the text next to the picture of Ryouko or the text at the bottom with the various cast members.
Seems like a post of a deliberately inflammitory nature against the topic of a discussion group. I believe that's the very definition of a troll.
While I do watch a lot of anime, I also recognize Sturgeon's Law in effect. However, the poster didn't site any examples. He just made a blanket assertion that seemed intended to offend people in the way only ignorant blanket assertions can. That he did it as an AC instead of being willing to take the karma as it can shows that he knew it would be found offensive.
By the way, do you even know what censorship is? The whole point of the moderation system is that nothing is censored. Posts never get pulled off of Slashdot articles. They are just subjected to peer evaluation. If you want to read every post, they are all still available for viewing. However, if you are willing to set the threshhold a little higher and trust your peers to raise the signal-to-noise ratio, then it's your own doing that block you from seeing them. Browse at -1 if you want to read it all or don't. Just don't accuse moderators of "censorship" when it clearly isn't.
Fah. I bet you'd accuse of scientific journals of censorship for bothering to check the research before posting any crackpot theory that gets submitted.
You have a trailing 'u' in the title.
Don't try to correct spellings, when you don't know a thing about Romanization. Japanese pronunciation includes what is known as long vowels. When a mora (Japanese syllable) is followed by a repitition of the vowel component (i.e. o-ka-a-sa-n), the vowel sound is held for twice as long. By default, all Japanese mora are pronounced just as fast as each other.
This means that there is a difference between obasan (aunt) and obaasan (grandmother). The Japanese vowels are a, i, u, e, o (Ah, Ee, Oo, Ay, Oh). Combinations like 'ai,' 'ue,' and 'au' make sounds like 'Aye,' 'Oo-Eh,' and 'Ah-oo' (or Ow as in Chow). However, 'ei' and 'ou' are a long 'e' and a long 'o'. In fact, a long 'o' is more commonly spelled 'ou' than 'oo,' and a long 'e' is more commonly spelled 'ei'.
Now for Romanization. Muyou, or "a lack of need for," would be spelled differently under different romanization methods. Most romanization methods would have you spell it either "muyou" or "muyo" with a bar over the "o." Since it's hard for people to type the "o" with a bar over it, which is the most common way of spelling a long "o," people drop it.
However, this is incorrect. This spelling would confuse "muko" (bridgegroom) with "mukou" (beyond) and "oki" (open sea) with "ookii" (large). Few people would drop double consonants (which I haven't covered here), but many drop double vowels. The correct way to handle it is indeed the way that they did for the site. "Muyou" captures the actual pronunciation and kana spelling of "mu" (nothingness) and "you" (use).
Side note, tenchimuyou is also how you say "this side up," or "do not turn over."
It's vastly oversimplyifying things to place the blame for all that simply on cartoons.
Oh, I'm not. In fact, I'd say it's the reverse in action. Their culture's emphasis on responsibility for one's actions is probably the primary reason that they portray violence in that fashion. Of course, they also often have good ol' cartoony violence where someone bonks someone over the head with a fatally heavy object and tears just stream from the victim's eyes, but that's known to be comic exaggeration. Such behavior in real life would be considered unacceptable, but it's funny for the extreme personalities in anime to do it.
I've taken Japanese, and some of their cultural constructs -- responsibility, in-group/out-group mentality, and levels of politeness -- are drilled into their language itself. It seems to be that it'd be much easier to instill a group ethic in children when your language doesn't distinguish between singular and plural. One is just the smallest group.
Culturally we didn't have the best upbringing (Puritans, bleh) so it'll take a few centuries before we've settled down to the same sort of relaxed and mellow vibe that you get anywhere in the older cultures like Europe and Japan. Time will tell whether aging will turn America into a fine wine or a vinegar.
I'd just like to comment that like the analogy here. Don't completely knock the Puritans, though. Our country was founded by their descendants, and much of the reason for the First Amendment comes from their reactions to religious oppression (even though they did a little themselves).
Hasn't Silicon Valley been heavily dominated by the tech industry since the late 70s to early 80s? I mean, aren't there a bunch of EPA Superfund sites in the area caused by pollution from hardware manufacture, and weren't most of them created during the 80s? I mean, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition has been around since 1982, and was formed in reaction to groundwater pollution by Fairchild Semiconductor. Doesn't that mean the "high-tech" industry has been there for a looong time?