Well, I'd suggest installing some sort of surge protector along any analog wire coming into your system. I'm from Florida, and I've seen tons of modems be reduced to pretty but worthless fiberglass boards.
So I'd say, install a circuit breaker along the line for the antanna.
BTW, other than for applications that are small in size or voltage, why use fuses? A conspiracy by the fuse companies? Breakers are so much better, in that they can be reset, rather than having to be replaced with nails
I dunno. I have rather large hands, yet I find the iMouse (good a name as any for it) to be the best I've used.
I prefer having only one button on the top. That way I can use multiple fingers and reduce the overall strain on each finger (as with multibutton mice, which tend to require each button only be pressed by one finger)
The size and shape let me cup it in my hand in a manner that I've grown very accustomed to. Using other mice lately, I've found that they seem bulky and oversized. I suspect part of this is also due to the mouse ball being relatively further towards my fingertips when compared to larger mice (with the balls further back). Usually, the farther forward the ball, the more control you've got over it.
But at any rate, people should not default to a mouse without trying lots of other mice. The same thing goes for keyboards and monitors. Everyone has different preferences, so they should look for what they like best and are most comfortable with. After all, these three devices are your only serious I/O with the computer. One size does not fit all.
no, that's sesame street, with 'this episode has been brought to you by the letters M and S and the trademarked phrase "Where do you"- hhHey, wait just a minute....
I'm stuck using one of Microsoft's right handed mice today at work. It's not the sort with the wheel in it, but the overall shape is the same.
I HATE it.
It's forcing me to hold it in a way that is causing pains in my wrist (the generic keyboard and lack of a wrist rest isn't helping - so I'm hunting and pecking today, in an effort to type less)
The Apple mouse just sits in my cupped palm. Their earlier ADB II mouse (which is the only rounded grey one they made) was also pretty good although I like the iMac one more. What really bugs me about multibutton mice though, is that i normally use three fingers (all but the pinky) to click the mouse. With this two button mice, I not only have to think about what I'm doing, but the shape forces me to use only one finger.
My conclusion: I should start bringing in my Apple mouse to work - it won't give me RSI, like the MS mouse will.
Have you tried making 256k mpeg2s? (mpeg1 layer2) They tend to have better quality, at a minor (given the higher quality of the file) size increase. Encode faster too.
USB support is really quite widespread. There are a number of USB joysticks (the Saitek Cyborg joystick is nice, IMO) that will work fine as long as a game supports inputsprockets (most have for years)
There are a number of printer drivers of course, and if you can find a USB postscript printer (like the inexpensive lexmark something or other e310) they should work without a hitch - just use the regular laser printer driver.
Oh, btw, USB is completely hot swappable, and hardware wise work with any kind of device (of course the keyboard and mb only have type A connectors, but you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an A-B converter.
Personally I like the new round mouse. I've been using it ever since I got my blue and white G3, and it's great. Of course, you do have to sort of 'cup' it in your hand, rather than rest your hand on it. Slide it around with your fingers (I nudge the cord, myself) that sort of thing.
Now I did pass on the new keyboard, since I already have a great, albeit grey, Apple II Extended. Best keyboard I've ever used.
Actually, most of the people I've talked to (I live in the USA) who are aware of Monsanto, and what they're trying to do oppose it. Not so much because it's scary genetic engineering (although that's also a factor) but because forcing farmers to buy new seeds every year is a heavy-handed evil sort of thing to do.
No, no, not a dropout. I've got a BA in English Lit., some art theory classes under my belt, ten years of freelance & professional graphic design in print (I started in High School) and a thorough knowledge of HTML. Yet i've found it surprisingly difficult to get work in web design. If anyone has something, let me know, hm?
Minor evolutionary advances are no problem. Especially if they help satisfy our need for speed (or are percieved to do so). Personally, I've been wanting to experiment with the MacOS X Server that Apple's just released, since I think that the Un*x underpinnings could save a lot of time rebooting, and read-only disk images could protect against virii. Don't misconstrue the crashing thing by the way; the Mac's font system is old and has been extended I don't know how many times. Furthermore, since we tend to exceed these limits, and for project management reasons, we use a lot of software that is known to cause instability, betting that we'll save more time not having to shuffle stuff around. Plus this is only my impression, and I'm sure a lot of designers have trouble-free setups.
Anyhow, the problem is with major evolutionary changes. (the last revolutionary change was probably the use of photography. Computer design generally uses metaphors and extensions of what we had) Moving from the MacOS to Linux, and from our current tools to new tools is not really as major as I may have inadvertantly made it appear, but it's no walk in the park either.
We'd have to ditch much of our existing skills and either learn or retrain on using and maintaining Linux systems (we frequently get grief from MIS with Macs, so why would they want to help with Linux?), learn or retrain for the new software. The GIMP is quite similar to Photoshop, so actually it would probably present the easiest change. However, rebooting from one OS to another in order to use different programs is not going to be acceptable. The illustration software you pointed out in a previous branch looked interesting, but I didn't have the chance to try it out (still awaiting Linux for my particular Mac). TeX, I must argue though, is not awfully useful anymore. Sure, it's great for typesetters, and I'll agree readily that it's pretty certainly one of the most bug-free programs ever. But the holy trinity of design (right now) is Compositing, Vector Editing and Raster Editing. (Embodied in Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop. PageMaker and Freehand are also fairly popular) Most of us in the print world function more as compositors than typesetters for any job large enough to require much of a style guide.
Typesetting functions for anything of that length (books, really) are either performed by authors who use computers or the small group of typesetters still remaining. (a lot of them are secretaries who either moonlight or are pressed into service. Also graduate students;)
Although I couldn't try it out to be sure, ImPress didn't impress me very much as a compositing program, only as an illustration program. Trust me on this, compositing with an illustration program is not all that much fun. I've seen people who used Illustrator and Freehand for that purpose, and they could have saved a lot of time by using Quark or PageMaker.
And worst of all, a lot of existing documents would be lost if we changed over to different programs. That would mean a whole lot of time lost if a client wanted another print run, or had a minor change to make (especially a global change, like inserting a page someplace other than the end) VERY good programs for converting proprietary data formats without losing data or screwing up positioning, etc. would be essential for this task. Adobe is releasing a new program called InDesign (or something like that) which is supposed to replace PageMaker and compete with Quark. So they included a converter that is supposed (so the rumor says) to convert Quark files with 99% accuracy. If they hadn't done that, few people would be likely to switch.
So using the GIMP necessitates using a whole new set of programs, using a new operating system and the loss of specific device drivers for esoteric equipment and for the early adopters, loss of compatability (or the perception of compatability) with the rest of the dtp groups in the world. And of course the standard concerns (which don't have to be valid to have a real effect) about switching to Linux.
This is still a very large evolutionary step, and while I'd certainly like to use Linux, I just can't get my work done as quickly (if at all) on it right now. In the future this may not be the case, and then Linux and the programs available for it will have met the conditions for engendering a changeover. Think of the dilemma developers would face if a platform had an editor and a linker and no compiler. That's what we've got, only designers usually don't have the ability to code for themselves. Surprising as this may sound, not everyone cares to program. Thus other programmers would be needed to selflessly (open source software, remember) write the tools that other people need. It's beginning to be done, but Linux is just not there YET.
BTW, Photoshop does have some scripting potential in version 4.0 and later, with Actions, and on the Mac anyhow, some hooks into AppleScript (IIRC). Maybe not totally scriptable, but I don't think that it's a commonly used feature. DeBabelizer is a more obscure tool that gets used a lot for that sort of work because it's better and not a hardship to use in conjunction with everything else.
As for your point about how informed I am, well yes, I was speaking in the context of my profession. (Although I do read a lot and usually win at Trivial Pursuit, if that helps:) But how well informed do designers have to be? While I think that it's good to have a thorough knowledge of the tools that are available to oneself, that really is secondary to having a thorough knowledge of the tools at hand, the process you're involved in (composition, prepress, etc.) and plain old artistic sense. Being able to rapidly make things look good is what we do. Everything else, no matter how interesting or neat, is used in the service of that goal.
Oh, and the only section I found on CYMK in the GIMP manual (via the index on the web version) said that there was such a thing as CYMK and gave a brief description of it. I didn't see anything that indiciated that the GIMP supported it (although I infer that you can always make four greyscale images to correspond to each plate, but that's an awful way to do things). CYMK is not trivial to support in any program, that's true. It's also not a trivial feature. We NEED it.
Not really. The moment that the Mac clones hit the shelves (and I lost my 50% discount on Apple equipement - a good reason to stick with them) I built a clone out of parts. It was cheaper. Now that we don't have clones, we're back with Apple.
I buy Macs because I:
Like them
Have an investment in time learning how to use one
Have an investment in money buying software
Have documents in proprietary formats that I can't tolerate losing (precluding a change to other software that can't read and edit those files)
That kind of nonsense does work in the PC market, by the way. The iMac is sold mostly to generic consumers. How many generic consumers buy Compaq monitors with Compaqs, Dell monitors with Dells, Apple monitors with Apples, etc? 99.44% of them, that's how many. It has nothing to do with the Mac, and everything to do with the market that buys consumer-oriented computers.
Me, I like Sony's trinitron tubes. I use an Apple monitor with an OEMed Sony tube on my Mac. (Got it under that 50% discount) But then, I'm not a generic consumer.
OTOH, I'd pay $100-200 for an ornate brass and cherrywood case for my computer, just to make it look nice. I also buy my clothes not only for functionality, but also to look nice. If it costs a little extra for a better look that's okay. I'm deliberately buying a better look. That's got value to some people dontcha know.
Obviously the space men developed RFC 1149 before developing April Fools's Day. It's tricky to broadcast that sort of thing over interstellar distances you know. Unless they have also developed Gallagher.
-cpt kangarooski, who wants to go the the gangster planet from star trek
Sigh. Look, I do web and print design for a living. It's not much of a living, but anyhow....
What would really make the GIMP become a serious contender to Photoshop is a Mac binary. My box is not currently supported by Linux, although it should be soon. But even so, I'll be damned if I'm going to reboot, when my layout and illustration programs (Quark XPress/Adobe PageMaker and Adobe Illustrator/Macromedia Freehand) are on the Mac side. Having to use the GIMP under Linux is unacceptable to me, and I'm a pretty liberal designer, with an interest in linux, beos, etc. Most designers would balk at the thought of anything that would even possibly, maybe screw up their systems, which are known quantities, even if they still sometimes crash.
What the GIMP people need to do is out Photoshop Photoshop, and on its own turf, too boot. Few people in design and production are willing to have overlapping programs (outside of prepress, where you want to have all programs). Quark OR PageMaker. Illustrator OR Freehand. Photoshop OR... uh... heh. Well there is no viable alternative yet. Not professionally pal. And I'm a professional.
Give me Photoshop or give me the GIMP with CYMK support, colorsync support, Mac binaries, better undo/text support/paths/scaling than Photoshop....
I do think that with effort the GIMP could become a competitor to Photoshop. But until it's every day, in every way, better, it's not going to win too many friends in the design world. Sorry.
And here only gay men and women (all orientations) have ever used Macs, ever since '84.
Basically this is because there are special subliminal suggestions blitted onto the screen by QuickDraw that say something to the effect of: "IF YOU'RE A STRAIGHT MAN, DON'T USE THIS COMPUTER"
In fact, although the famous 1984 ad was broadcast during SuperBowl XVIII, the director (John Waters, not Ridley Scott, as many are led to believe) the messages printed on the bottom of the large screen encouraged straights watching to run right out during halftime and buy IBMs.
Although System 7.1, QuickTime, the Newton, and several other Apple products have always initially attracted straight men to them for their exceptional ease-of-use, or cool technology, or what have you, Apple has always consciously taken steps to prevent their actually using them.
Anyhow, back in the mid seventies, their 801 project, which was not really a microprocessor for a while longer, really helped get RISC started. Seymour Cray was involved in an earlier proto-RISC project, but then he was a blue ribbon genius.
Well, IBM did use some of their RISC developments, but it wasn't until the early nineties that they created the POWER1 chip (which is not really all that RISCy, but that's neither here nor there - it did evolve from the 801 project, is all)
In '92, Apple, IBM and Motorola (collectively known as AIM, or the Smith Street Gang;) got together and began developing the PowerPC design, which was based off of POWER and was intended to replace the Motorola 68000 series (which it basically did) and the Intel x86 series, which is still crawling along, much to everyone's surprise.
The first PowerPC chip was the 601, and it can be considered a Generation 1 chip in this family (G1).
The 603 chip, intended primarily for laptops, but also used in low-end systems due to it being quite cheap, was more or less a G2 chip. The version that Apple used more frequently was the 603e, which had a larger cache - critical for laptops, where a L2 cache would prove detrimental.
The big name G2 chip was the 604. Rather than being a heavily POWER influenced design it was the first 'real' PowerPC chip. Its big brother is the rarely seen 620, which expanded the design to 64 bits, but was only really used for the IBM RS/6000 machines, and maybe some others. It was kind of slow, and arrived late, and is quite large and hot, IIRC.
There was also a rumored 615 chip which would have an x86 core as well as a 604. This never materialized however, but it's a neat, if useless (probably too expensive and unpredictable) idea.
The G3 that Apple touts is really the 750 chip. I suspect that they call it the G3, because it sounds better when compared to the PII.;)
Well, to be quite frank, although the 750 is damned fast, and exceptionally cheap (it destroyed the market for used macs) it is actually pretty weak in the FPU department as compared to the 604, and is more of a successor to the 603. It's a cheap laptop chip that's popular in desktops due to low cost and reasonable performance.
Copper wiring is also now being used in the 750's (my G3 Blue and White has a copper chip) which not only boosts clock speeds by approx 33%, but also is an excellent folk debugging remedy.;)
A little later this year, hopefully by July (the NY Macworld show) we'll see the first Macs with the G4 processor which will have several innovations.
First, it'll have additional instructions (collectively known as Altivec) which are somewhat like the MMX extensions. They're supposed to speed up a number of 128 bit 'multimedia' operations by operating in parallel with the int and fpu. While they have been reported to speed a lot of stuff up a great deal, I think that Motorola's management heard about the MMX announcement some years back and told their designers to one-up them. It would explain why they're so late.
Also, although we're unlikely to see this on anything that actual people can afford, AIM is also going to be making multiprocessor G4 chips. That is, multiple processors on the same piece of silicon. That should be hella fast, but i doubt they'll be used in much outside of servers and the worlds' most wicked pissah photoshop box (1 GB RAM, natch)
jeez - the prize in the contest is maintaining a website? forget that. how about a T1 for a year? Or at least a vacation to someplace that's not so sunny; New Zealand, Antarctica, Scottish moors, the missile silo thing on here recently....
God I'd hate to think of what the government would do to the net if this happened. Especially if they couldn't capture &| try the culprit.
If you were careful though, and fortunate in certain respects, it would pretty certainly work. Good thing I don't make enough money to need to balance it on my computer. Also good that I use a Mac.
Yes, that probably was more of what he was getting at. Certainly the net, given that the only significant form of communication is text, does depersonalize communication. No argument there.
Of course, if people try not only to carefully and properly express themselves in text, and more importantly keep their cool and try to understand their fellow man, the depersonalization is rendered moot.
Understanding can come from content-rich conversation. For example, irl conversation; you can see facial expressions, differences in tone of speech, etc. But it can also be manufactured through an effort to listen openly to other people.
I'm not a big fan of flamers, but when I do respond to them, I treat them just as I would like to be treated myself. It works surprisingly well, and I highly reccomend it. If it doesn't, then perhaps you found someone not worth talking to. But the important thing is that you checked to see if that was the case, rather than assume that it was in the first place.
Anyhow, I'm sorry for the digression from the article in the earlier post. I've really been getting fed up with the large numbers of people on/. who casually dismiss anonymous and psuedonymous postings. At least, in the comments I've been reading.
Slashdot Mirror
I bow to your superior electronics knowledge
Well, I'd suggest installing some sort of surge protector along any analog wire coming into your system. I'm from Florida, and I've seen tons of modems be reduced to pretty but worthless fiberglass boards.
So I'd say, install a circuit breaker along the line for the antanna.
BTW, other than for applications that are small in size or voltage, why use fuses? A conspiracy by the fuse companies? Breakers are so much better, in that they can be reset, rather than having to be replaced with nails
x_x
I dunno. I have rather large hands, yet I find the iMouse (good a name as any for it) to be the best I've used.
I prefer having only one button on the top. That way I can use multiple fingers and reduce the overall strain on each finger (as with multibutton mice, which tend to require each button only be pressed by one finger)
The size and shape let me cup it in my hand in a manner that I've grown very accustomed to. Using other mice lately, I've found that they seem bulky and oversized. I suspect part of this is also due to the mouse ball being relatively further towards my fingertips when compared to larger mice (with the balls further back). Usually, the farther forward the ball, the more control you've got over it.
But at any rate, people should not default to a mouse without trying lots of other mice. The same thing goes for keyboards and monitors. Everyone has different preferences, so they should look for what they like best and are most comfortable with. After all, these three devices are your only serious I/O with the computer. One size does not fit all.
we've got that already.
login as 'cypherpunk' with password 'cypherpunk'
try doing so at Amtrak. It's mildly amusing.
n.b. that you may still require cookies to be running, e.g. at the new york times.
no, that's sesame street, with 'this episode has been brought to you by the letters M and S and the trademarked phrase "Where do you"- hhHey, wait just a minute....
I'm stuck using one of Microsoft's right handed mice today at work. It's not the sort with the wheel in it, but the overall shape is the same.
I HATE it.
It's forcing me to hold it in a way that is causing pains in my wrist (the generic keyboard and lack of a wrist rest isn't helping - so I'm hunting and pecking today, in an effort to type less)
The Apple mouse just sits in my cupped palm. Their earlier ADB II mouse (which is the only rounded grey one they made) was also pretty good although I like the iMac one more. What really bugs me about multibutton mice though, is that i normally use three fingers (all but the pinky) to click the mouse. With this two button mice, I not only have to think about what I'm doing, but the shape forces me to use only one finger.
My conclusion: I should start bringing in my Apple mouse to work - it won't give me RSI, like the MS mouse will.
Different mice for different, uh, folks.
Have you tried making 256k mpeg2s? (mpeg1 layer2)
They tend to have better quality, at a minor (given the higher quality of the file) size increase. Encode faster too.
USB support is really quite widespread. There are a number of USB joysticks (the Saitek Cyborg joystick is nice, IMO) that will work fine as long as a game supports inputsprockets (most have for years)
There are a number of printer drivers of course, and if you can find a USB postscript printer (like the inexpensive lexmark something or other e310) they should work without a hitch - just use the regular laser printer driver.
Oh, btw, USB is completely hot swappable, and hardware wise work with any kind of device (of course the keyboard and mb only have type A connectors, but you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an A-B converter.
Personally I like the new round mouse. I've been using it ever since I got my blue and white G3, and it's great. Of course, you do have to sort of 'cup' it in your hand, rather than rest your hand on it. Slide it around with your fingers (I nudge the cord, myself) that sort of thing.
Now I did pass on the new keyboard, since I already have a great, albeit grey, Apple II Extended. Best keyboard I've ever used.
Actually, most of the people I've talked to (I live in the USA) who are aware of Monsanto, and what they're trying to do oppose it. Not so much because it's scary genetic engineering (although that's also a factor) but because forcing farmers to buy new seeds every year is a heavy-handed evil sort of thing to do.
Alright. In case you don't recieve my mail, you can get ahold of me at (bear with me, spam avoidance here):
@gryphon.auspice.net
Those three letters are "cpt" of course.
Wasn't there an IgNoble prize (or some other booby prize, appropriately enough) given out for this very matter?
Anyone care to look up the details and post them?
No, no, not a dropout. I've got a BA in English Lit., some art theory classes under my belt, ten years of freelance & professional graphic design in print (I started in High School) and a thorough knowledge of HTML. Yet i've found it surprisingly difficult to get work in web design. If anyone has something, let me know, hm?
I think you may have misunderstood me.
Minor evolutionary advances are no problem. Especially if they help satisfy our need for speed (or are percieved to do so). Personally, I've been wanting to experiment with the MacOS X Server that Apple's just released, since I think that the Un*x underpinnings could save a lot of time rebooting, and read-only disk images could protect against virii. Don't misconstrue the crashing thing by the way; the Mac's font system is old and has been extended I don't know how many times. Furthermore, since we tend to exceed these limits, and for project management reasons, we use a lot of software that is known to cause instability, betting that we'll save more time not having to shuffle stuff around. Plus this is only my impression, and I'm sure a lot of designers have trouble-free setups.
Anyhow, the problem is with major evolutionary changes. (the last revolutionary change was probably the use of photography. Computer design generally uses metaphors and extensions of what we had) Moving from the MacOS to Linux, and from our current tools to new tools is not really as major as I may have inadvertantly made it appear, but it's no walk in the park either.
We'd have to ditch much of our existing skills and either learn or retrain on using and maintaining Linux systems (we frequently get grief from MIS with Macs, so why would they want to help with Linux?), learn or retrain for the new software. The GIMP is quite similar to Photoshop, so actually it would probably present the easiest change. However, rebooting from one OS to another in order to use different programs is not going to be acceptable. The illustration software you pointed out in a previous branch looked interesting, but I didn't have the chance to try it out (still awaiting Linux for my particular Mac). TeX, I must argue though, is not awfully useful anymore. Sure, it's great for typesetters, and I'll agree readily that it's pretty certainly one of the most bug-free programs ever. But the holy trinity of design (right now) is Compositing, Vector Editing and Raster Editing. (Embodied in Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop. PageMaker and Freehand are also fairly popular) Most of us in the print world function more as compositors than typesetters for any job large enough to require much of a style guide.
Typesetting functions for anything of that length (books, really) are either performed by authors who use computers or the small group of typesetters still remaining. (a lot of them are secretaries who either moonlight or are pressed into service. Also graduate students ;)
Although I couldn't try it out to be sure, ImPress didn't impress me very much as a compositing program, only as an illustration program. Trust me on this, compositing with an illustration program is not all that much fun. I've seen people who used Illustrator and Freehand for that purpose, and they could have saved a lot of time by using Quark or PageMaker.
And worst of all, a lot of existing documents would be lost if we changed over to different programs. That would mean a whole lot of time lost if a client wanted another print run, or had a minor change to make (especially a global change, like inserting a page someplace other than the end) VERY good programs for converting proprietary data formats without losing data or screwing up positioning, etc. would be essential for this task. Adobe is releasing a new program called InDesign (or something like that) which is supposed to replace PageMaker and compete with Quark. So they included a converter that is supposed (so the rumor says) to convert Quark files with 99% accuracy. If they hadn't done that, few people would be likely to switch.
So using the GIMP necessitates using a whole new set of programs, using a new operating system and the loss of specific device drivers for esoteric equipment and for the early adopters, loss of compatability (or the perception of compatability) with the rest of the dtp groups in the world. And of course the standard concerns (which don't have to be valid to have a real effect) about switching to Linux.
This is still a very large evolutionary step, and while I'd certainly like to use Linux, I just can't get my work done as quickly (if at all) on it right now. In the future this may not be the case, and then Linux and the programs available for it will have met the conditions for engendering a changeover. Think of the dilemma developers would face if a platform had an editor and a linker and no compiler. That's what we've got, only designers usually don't have the ability to code for themselves. Surprising as this may sound, not everyone cares to program. Thus other programmers would be needed to selflessly (open source software, remember) write the tools that other people need. It's beginning to be done, but Linux is just not there YET.
BTW, Photoshop does have some scripting potential in version 4.0 and later, with Actions, and on the Mac anyhow, some hooks into AppleScript (IIRC). Maybe not totally scriptable, but I don't think that it's a commonly used feature. DeBabelizer is a more obscure tool that gets used a lot for that sort of work because it's better and not a hardship to use in conjunction with everything else.
As for your point about how informed I am, well yes, I was speaking in the context of my profession. (Although I do read a lot and usually win at Trivial Pursuit, if that helps :) But how well informed do designers have to be? While I think that it's good to have a thorough knowledge of the tools that are available to oneself, that really is secondary to having a thorough knowledge of the tools at hand, the process you're involved in (composition, prepress, etc.) and plain old artistic sense. Being able to rapidly make things look good is what we do. Everything else, no matter how interesting or neat, is used in the service of that goal.
Oh, and the only section I found on CYMK in the GIMP manual (via the index on the web version) said that there was such a thing as CYMK and gave a brief description of it. I didn't see anything that indiciated that the GIMP supported it (although I infer that you can always make four greyscale images to correspond to each plate, but that's an awful way to do things). CYMK is not trivial to support in any program, that's true. It's also not a trivial feature. We NEED it.
Not really. The moment that the Mac clones hit the shelves (and I lost my 50% discount on Apple equipement - a good reason to stick with them) I built a clone out of parts. It was cheaper. Now that we don't have clones, we're back with Apple.
I buy Macs because I:
That kind of nonsense does work in the PC market, by the way. The iMac is sold mostly to generic consumers. How many generic consumers buy Compaq monitors with Compaqs, Dell monitors with Dells, Apple monitors with Apples, etc? 99.44% of them, that's how many. It has nothing to do with the Mac, and everything to do with the market that buys consumer-oriented computers.
Me, I like Sony's trinitron tubes. I use an Apple monitor with an OEMed Sony tube on my Mac. (Got it under that 50% discount) But then, I'm not a generic consumer.
OTOH, I'd pay $100-200 for an ornate brass and cherrywood case for my computer, just to make it look nice. I also buy my clothes not only for functionality, but also to look nice. If it costs a little extra for a better look that's okay. I'm deliberately buying a better look. That's got value to some people dontcha know.
Obviously the space men developed RFC 1149 before developing April Fools's Day. It's tricky to broadcast that sort of thing over interstellar distances you know. Unless they have also developed Gallagher.
-cpt kangarooski, who wants to go the the gangster planet from star trek
Sigh. Look, I do web and print design for a living. It's not much of a living, but anyhow....
What would really make the GIMP become a serious contender to Photoshop is a Mac binary. My box is not currently supported by Linux, although it should be soon. But even so, I'll be damned if I'm going to reboot, when my layout and illustration programs (Quark XPress/Adobe PageMaker and Adobe Illustrator/Macromedia Freehand) are on the Mac side. Having to use the GIMP under Linux is unacceptable to me, and I'm a pretty liberal designer, with an interest in linux, beos, etc. Most designers would balk at the thought of anything that would even possibly, maybe screw up their systems, which are known quantities, even if they still sometimes crash.
What the GIMP people need to do is out Photoshop Photoshop, and on its own turf, too boot. Few people in design and production are willing to have overlapping programs (outside of prepress, where you want to have all programs). Quark OR PageMaker. Illustrator OR Freehand. Photoshop OR... uh... heh. Well there is no viable alternative yet. Not professionally pal. And I'm a professional.
Give me Photoshop or give me the GIMP with CYMK support, colorsync support, Mac binaries, better undo/text support/paths/scaling than Photoshop....
I do think that with effort the GIMP could become a competitor to Photoshop. But until it's every day, in every way, better, it's not going to win too many friends in the design world. Sorry.
Don't they smell after a while?
And here only gay men and women (all orientations) have ever used Macs, ever since '84.
Basically this is because there are special subliminal suggestions blitted onto the screen by QuickDraw that say something to the effect of:
"IF YOU'RE A STRAIGHT MAN, DON'T USE THIS COMPUTER"
In fact, although the famous 1984 ad was broadcast during SuperBowl XVIII, the director (John Waters, not Ridley Scott, as many are led to believe) the messages printed on the bottom of the large screen encouraged straights watching to run right out during halftime and buy IBMs.
Although System 7.1, QuickTime, the Newton, and several other Apple products have always initially attracted straight men to them for their exceptional ease-of-use, or cool technology, or what have you, Apple has always consciously taken steps to prevent their actually using them.
I guess you were just too clever for us Ellis.
In the beginning there was IBM.
Well who did you expect? Transmeta? Maybe?
Anyhow, back in the mid seventies, their 801 project, which was not really a microprocessor for a while longer, really helped get RISC started. Seymour Cray was involved in an earlier proto-RISC project, but then he was a blue ribbon genius.
Well, IBM did use some of their RISC developments, but it wasn't until the early nineties that they created the POWER1 chip (which is not really all that RISCy, but that's neither here nor there - it did evolve from the 801 project, is all)
In '92, Apple, IBM and Motorola (collectively known as AIM, or the Smith Street Gang ;) got together and began developing the PowerPC design, which was based off of POWER and was intended to replace the Motorola 68000 series (which it basically did) and the Intel x86 series, which is still crawling along, much to everyone's surprise.
The first PowerPC chip was the 601, and it can be considered a Generation 1 chip in this family (G1).
The 603 chip, intended primarily for laptops, but also used in low-end systems due to it being quite cheap, was more or less a G2 chip. The version that Apple used more frequently was the 603e, which had a larger cache - critical for laptops, where a L2 cache would prove detrimental.
The big name G2 chip was the 604. Rather than being a heavily POWER influenced design it was the first 'real' PowerPC chip. Its big brother is the rarely seen 620, which expanded the design to 64 bits, but was only really used for the IBM RS/6000 machines, and maybe some others. It was kind of slow, and arrived late, and is quite large and hot, IIRC.
There was also a rumored 615 chip which would have an x86 core as well as a 604. This never materialized however, but it's a neat, if useless (probably too expensive and unpredictable) idea.
The G3 that Apple touts is really the 750 chip. I suspect that they call it the G3, because it sounds better when compared to the PII. ;)
Well, to be quite frank, although the 750 is damned fast, and exceptionally cheap (it destroyed the market for used macs) it is actually pretty weak in the FPU department as compared to the 604, and is more of a successor to the 603. It's a cheap laptop chip that's popular in desktops due to low cost and reasonable performance.
Copper wiring is also now being used in the 750's (my G3 Blue and White has a copper chip) which not only boosts clock speeds by approx 33%, but also is an excellent folk debugging remedy. ;)
A little later this year, hopefully by July (the NY Macworld show) we'll see the first Macs with the G4 processor which will have several innovations.
First, it'll have additional instructions (collectively known as Altivec) which are somewhat like the MMX extensions. They're supposed to speed up a number of 128 bit 'multimedia' operations by operating in parallel with the int and fpu. While they have been reported to speed a lot of stuff up a great deal, I think that Motorola's management heard about the MMX announcement some years back and told their designers to one-up them. It would explain why they're so late.
Also, although we're unlikely to see this on anything that actual people can afford, AIM is also going to be making multiprocessor G4 chips. That is, multiple processors on the same piece of silicon. That should be hella fast, but i doubt they'll be used in much outside of servers and the worlds' most wicked pissah photoshop box (1 GB RAM, natch)
For more information on Grank Funk... er, PowerPCs, check out http://infopad.eecs.b erkeley.edu/CIC/archive/cpu_history.html, http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/ and http://www.chips.ibm.com/products/ppc/
At the '98 Macworld expo in NY, apple gave away nice posters with an iMac on them. The motto: I think, therefore iMac.
jeez - the prize in the contest is maintaining a website? forget that. how about a T1 for a year? Or at least a vacation to someplace that's not so sunny; New Zealand, Antarctica, Scottish moors, the missile silo thing on here recently....
And there's always Pottsylvania. I like the idea of having the head of state be called Fearless Leader. Maybe we could get DeNiro... ;)
Horribly, horribly evil.
God I'd hate to think of what the government would do to the net if this happened. Especially if they couldn't capture &| try the culprit.
If you were careful though, and fortunate in certain respects, it would pretty certainly work. Good thing I don't make enough money to need to balance it on my computer. Also good that I use a Mac.
Yes, that probably was more of what he was getting at. Certainly the net, given that the only significant form of communication is text, does depersonalize communication. No argument there.
/. who casually dismiss anonymous and psuedonymous postings. At least, in the comments I've been reading.
Of course, if people try not only to carefully and properly express themselves in text, and more importantly keep their cool and try to understand their fellow man, the depersonalization is rendered moot.
Understanding can come from content-rich conversation. For example, irl conversation; you can see facial expressions, differences in tone of speech, etc. But it can also be manufactured through an effort to listen openly to other people.
I'm not a big fan of flamers, but when I do respond to them, I treat them just as I would like to be treated myself. It works surprisingly well, and I highly reccomend it. If it doesn't, then perhaps you found someone not worth talking to. But the important thing is that you checked to see if that was the case, rather than assume that it was in the first place.
Anyhow, I'm sorry for the digression from the article in the earlier post. I've really been getting fed up with the large numbers of people on