I think it would be an absolute coup for Apple to take the (cheap) graphics chip from the flipper and plop it inside their next-generation iMac. Add a GameCube-USB controller adapter, and you've finally got an answer to the eternal complaint that there aren't any good games on the Mac.
But back to the original idea, exactly how hard would it be to get Darwin working on one of these things? Storage media aside (hopefully there will be some sort of hard drive available soon enough), all that would need to be written would be drivers for the Flipper chip and the controllers. And once you've got a working Darwin PPC platform, how hard would it be to get Quartz / Aqua working on top of that?
Apparently Apple sent a memo out to its retail partners telling them not to throw out their cube displays... I guess there's always hope:) Too bad the things weren't appreciated until it was too late.
In Canada, at least, you can't become a certified professional engineer when you're 'just fresh out of school'. You have to gain experience and pass a certification test first.
I worked at a nuclear power plant for a while working on the plant monitoring systems. All the PC-based stuff was written for OS/2 using Modula-2. Anybody ever use Modula-2? Anyone ever use it outside of a first year CS class? Turns out it's actually a great language for systems programming, at least with the Object Oriented extensions that the version I used came with. It was actually a lot like Delphi. And much nicer to debug than C++.
Most modern videogames (and the same is true for movies) are far too complex for any one person to do by him- or herself. What you end up with is large teams working by committee towards a similar objective. However, quite often the artistic vision of the creator can be limitted by the skills and distinct visions of those other members of the team, and also by those marketing types who just want something that will sell.
The effort to combine storytelling, visuals, music and game mechanics requires an enourmous amount of talent on the part of a director / producer for his vision to shine through. The same is true for movies.
This is why it is much easier to look at a painting or a poem and see that it is a reflection of the artistic and creative vision of the creator, as he or she had full control over the creative process.
As far as coding itself is concerned, IMO the idea of it being a craft seems for the most part a little more fitting. Squeezing performance out of a limitted hardware platform is more a result of skill and intelligence, much like an innovative design for a bridge.
... would be if you could easily set aside a certain percentage of your bandwidth (say 10-15%) for use by other people, and more if its available. That way you aren't taking a backseat to freeloaders on your own network, but you also aren't curring people off whenever you start a big, bandwidth-heavy transfer.
You don't think Adobe optimizes any of their code for x86? Of course they do, the reason why the G4 so soundly whips the P4 in Photoshop is because of the nature of the AltiVec units. If you had read the article, you would know this.
I'm pretty sure Adobe doesn't care whether you spend your $900 on the Windows or the Mac version of Photoshop.
Actually, MOSR is one of the better rumour sites. Their next-gen iMac pieces are worded more like 'what prototypes Apple has in-house at the moment. You'd be stupid if you didn't think they have at least several designs for a flat-panel iMac, they're just sticking with the current one because it's not yet economical to release an LCD-based consumer machine.
They also seem to be more adept at spotting a bad photoshop job than some sites:)
The PowerPC (specifically the 74x0 aka G4 class, which is what I assume you're interrested in) is similar to the P4's situation in that it doesn't show its full potential without a compiler taht specifically takes advantage of the floating point capability of the processor.
There is a vectorizing compiler available for the G4, but it is expensive and (afaik) isn't available for linux. Intel's vectorizing P4 compiler (the one tested in the article) is also quite costly.
Apple has committed themselves to optimizing gcc for the G4s, since it's what they're using to compile Darwin/OS X. Intel hasn't mentioned supporting GCC, and it seems they would rather work towards being able to re-compile the linux kernel using their own (proprietary and expensive) compiler.
Speaking of cubes, and GameCube licencing of said cube tech, I can think of another company that makes a cube-shaped machine with a PowerPC-based processor, ATI graphics, and DVD-based storage capabilities. Apple licencing the GameCube tech to stick inside their machines would certainly a good way to stop people complaining about the lack of games on the Mac platform. The extra hardware cost would be minimal, as well...
I agree, and it shouldn't be too hard to implement WP filters, either, since Corel seems to have been able to keep the same file format since WordPerfect 6.0.
Incedentally, WordPerfect Office 2000 works fine on my Mandrake 8 box and it's wonderful. WP8 is sufferent from some serious bitrot, and it relies on some really old libraries that haven't been shipped with any Linux distro I've used in the last 2 years.
StarOffice 5.1/5.2 will import WP documents, but they don't do any exporting, I'm afraid.
I'm not 100% on this, but in the developer's notes in the README file (I believe), he mentions that Konqueror doesn't support DCOP, so you can't use KGesture to control it. Also, Mozilla's -remote option doesn't seem to be working with the GoBack, etc. commands yet. Not sure about Netscape 4.x's remote commands, though.
I have found it useful for skipping forward / back in XMMS though, especially if it is minimized, or on a different desktop, etc. Not having to switch applications is very convenient.
This seems to be another instance of someone confusing USB 1.1/1.0 with the still very vapourous USB 2.0.
There are actually quite a few firewire devices around, mostly in the higher-bandwidth area, i.e., storage, DV cameras, etc.
The thing I'd love to see is 1394-based home networking....
.. that 'rare funny gem' isn't a swipe at BBspot, which I personally think is one of the funnier sites in the linux/whatever corner of the net. They're quite good at the Onionesque style fake news reporting, and they seem to have a good sense of what's actually funny, unlike (IMO, no flames) sites like segfault.
The end of Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was one of the most surreal moments in movies, *spoiler* Complete nuclear destruction accompanied by pleasant music leaves you horrified and chuckling at the same time.
There have been cases of Canadian farmers reporting that crop dusters have flown over their field and sprayed pesticide in a small area. The probable reason being that if the pesticide doesn't kill the crop, then the farmer is using Monsanto's Round-Up Ready brand of seeds. As if farmers don't have enough problems as it is...
Slashdot Mirror
But back to the original idea, exactly how hard would it be to get Darwin working on one of these things? Storage media aside (hopefully there will be some sort of hard drive available soon enough), all that would need to be written would be drivers for the Flipper chip and the controllers. And once you've got a working Darwin PPC platform, how hard would it be to get Quartz / Aqua working on top of that?
Great, now I've got two things to dream about..
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Apparently Apple sent a memo out to its retail partners telling them not to throw out their cube displays... I guess there's always hope :) Too bad the things weren't appreciated until it was too late.
In Canada, at least, you can't become a certified professional engineer when you're 'just fresh out of school'. You have to gain experience and pass a certification test first.
What's a file?
I worked at a nuclear power plant for a while working on the plant monitoring systems. All the PC-based stuff was written for OS/2 using Modula-2. Anybody ever use Modula-2? Anyone ever use it outside of a first year CS class? Turns out it's actually a great language for systems programming, at least with the Object Oriented extensions that the version I used came with. It was actually a lot like Delphi. And much nicer to debug than C++.
The effort to combine storytelling, visuals, music and game mechanics requires an enourmous amount of talent on the part of a director / producer for his vision to shine through. The same is true for movies.
This is why it is much easier to look at a painting or a poem and see that it is a reflection of the artistic and creative vision of the creator, as he or she had full control over the creative process.
As far as coding itself is concerned, IMO the idea of it being a craft seems for the most part a little more fitting. Squeezing performance out of a limitted hardware platform is more a result of skill and intelligence, much like an innovative design for a bridge.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
... would be if you could easily set aside a certain percentage of your bandwidth (say 10-15%) for use by other people, and more if its available. That way you aren't taking a backseat to freeloaders on your own network, but you also aren't curring people off whenever you start a big, bandwidth-heavy transfer.
The very beauty of this project, IMO, is that they are doing something so cool with such limitted (and cheap) hardware.
I'm pretty sure Adobe doesn't care whether you spend your $900 on the Windows or the Mac version of Photoshop.
They also seem to be more adept at spotting a bad photoshop job than some sites :)
Before us Canucks get a piece of that Broadband-for-All goodness that we've been hearing about lately :)
There is a vectorizing compiler available for the G4, but it is expensive and (afaik) isn't available for linux. Intel's vectorizing P4 compiler (the one tested in the article) is also quite costly.
Apple has committed themselves to optimizing gcc for the G4s, since it's what they're using to compile Darwin/OS X. Intel hasn't mentioned supporting GCC, and it seems they would rather work towards being able to re-compile the linux kernel using their own (proprietary and expensive) compiler.
Speaking of cubes, and GameCube licencing of said cube tech, I can think of another company that makes a cube-shaped machine with a PowerPC-based processor, ATI graphics, and DVD-based storage capabilities. Apple licencing the GameCube tech to stick inside their machines would certainly a good way to stop people complaining about the lack of games on the Mac platform. The extra hardware cost would be minimal, as well...
Incedentally, WordPerfect Office 2000 works fine on my Mandrake 8 box and it's wonderful. WP8 is sufferent from some serious bitrot, and it relies on some really old libraries that haven't been shipped with any Linux distro I've used in the last 2 years.
StarOffice 5.1/5.2 will import WP documents, but they don't do any exporting, I'm afraid.
I'm not 100% on this, but in the developer's notes in the README file (I believe), he mentions that Konqueror doesn't support DCOP, so you can't use KGesture to control it. Also, Mozilla's -remote option doesn't seem to be working with the GoBack, etc. commands yet. Not sure about Netscape 4.x's remote commands, though.
I have found it useful for skipping forward / back in XMMS though, especially if it is minimized, or on a different desktop, etc. Not having to switch applications is very convenient.
This seems to be another instance of someone confusing USB 1.1/1.0 with the still very vapourous USB 2.0. There are actually quite a few firewire devices around, mostly in the higher-bandwidth area, i.e., storage, DV cameras, etc. The thing I'd love to see is 1394-based home networking....
Although I'll bet Celera sues God, since he forgot to register the patents before they did :)
.. that 'rare funny gem' isn't a swipe at BBspot, which I personally think is one of the funnier sites in the linux/whatever corner of the net. They're quite good at the Onionesque style fake news reporting, and they seem to have a good sense of what's actually funny, unlike (IMO, no flames) sites like segfault.
The end of Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was one of the most surreal moments in movies, *spoiler* Complete nuclear destruction accompanied by pleasant music leaves you horrified and chuckling at the same time.
There have been cases of Canadian farmers reporting that crop dusters have flown over their field and sprayed pesticide in a small area. The probable reason being that if the pesticide doesn't kill the crop, then the farmer is using Monsanto's Round-Up Ready brand of seeds. As if farmers don't have enough problems as it is...