MacCentral just reported (OK, it was five hours ago) that there are server editions up on the online store, to be shipping next month. Here are the specs if you don't want to read the other three sentences of the article:
933MHz PowerPC G4; Mac OS X Server software; 256K L2 cache and 2MB L3 cache; 256MB SDRAM memory (PC-133); 80GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA drive; and a CD-RW drive for US$2,799.00
Dual 1-GHz PowerPC G4; Mac OS X Server software 256K L2 cache and 2MB L3 cache; 512MB SDRAM memory (PC-133) 80GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA drive; and a CD-RW drive for $3,299.00
Dual 1-GHz PowerPC G4; Mac OS X Server software; 256K L2 cache and 2MB L3 cache; 1GB SDRAM memory (PC-133) 72GB 10000 rpm Ultra 160 SCSI drive; and a CD-RW drive for $4,549.00
"In addition, the PowerPC G4 can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle -- two to four times faster than processors found in PCs."
2,000*8=16,000Flops. They probably left one off to allow for a more real-world figure and account for processes that don't do much multithreading.
Doing complex calculations, I can easily get 2.6 GFlops out of my 466MHz G4, so I would expect to get at least 10 or 12 GFlops out of one of these in real world calculations.
We already put up with 1/8th screen, light-speed credits and having 30 mins of commercials crammed into network television premiere movies... how long before people get tired enough of this crap to start watching everything on TiVO/Replay/etc.? We've already seen this happen with web advertising: would many of us be using ad filters if they hadn't started doing pop-up/pop-under ads?
Realistically 90% of people are going to put up with any crap you force on them, but still, this might make a lot of the type of people who read/. give up on live TV.
I also think it is silly to argue that no one will notice... I agree that it will be subtle, but think about it,.5/23= about 2.2% of the show, and that's assuming it was still a 23 min long show. Don't tell me you can hear compression artifacts in a 160kbps MP3, but you can't tell that the show is 2% faster. Doesn't break my heart with many of the shows they are playing, but 2% could very well have an effect on the timing of a dramatic scene in a good show or movie, and I think the networks are far more likely to use this in addition to and not instead of cutting scenes.
Well, it's a good thing many good TV series are coming out on DVD. And just keep watching Cartoon Network, since they have to follow the 6-min commercial limit;)
You are right; I think this is a confusion of vulnerability to viruses as opposed to vulnerability to hackers... Even being based (mostly) on FreeBSD and having the dangerous services off by default, you have to admit that the OS is more vulnerable to hackers than classic, which had virtually no services in the first place and was less well-known, and it introduces the need to update all the open source components of the OS as new vulnerabilities are found. But when it comes to viruses, OS X should be more secure thanks to the real users/permissions in BSD. Some might be concerned about having a larger base of script kiddies on the OS now, but as long as Apple keeps security as a priority, I think they'll stick to their VBScripts; only one unscriptable, local exploit and no viruses so far...
Darwin 1.4.1 is based on BSD 4.4. NeXTSTEP was based on BSD 4.3, so I don't know how you could think Darwin was based on 3.5.From the latest Ask the Darwin Team:
"Darwin is an open source, UNIX-based operating system built on BSD 4.4 and Mach 3.0 which forms the core of Mac OS X."
Re:Cool, Now Apple Can Compete With Dell!
on
Woz's New Startup
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· Score: 2
Woz has always been some sort of employee for Apple, I think he's described as some sort of rep or ambassador now (it's on his site, but in an older section and I'm not remembering it exactly; you should really read the thing, well worth the time), but he has always insisted on being at the bottom of the org chart, so I don't know how the other poster got the idea that he was on the board.
Re:Woah. Wuz Woz really a success?
on
Woz's New Startup
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· Score: 2
Maybe this is just me, but I don't think there was a lot of competition from the IBM PC in the late 70s:)
You never saw that Target commercial where they had a room with the walls and ceiling painted red and completely covered with CDs?
Re:Why wouldn't I want to give up on mp3s?
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
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· Score: 2
I wasn't talking about using MP3s in games (I agree that it is a good idea), I was talking about using OGGs in games.
Re:Why wouldn't I want to give up on mp3s?
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This does a good job pointing out some of the benefits of Ogg, but some of it makes no sense to me:
In most cases, a 60kbps OGG file sounds as good as an 128k mp3. An 80k OGG is as good as 160k mp3 and half the size.
Actually, Ogg only shaves off 30-40% (still respectable, just not revolutionary)
If you have a portable player, you would appreciate the smaller size with high quality.
If you have a portable player, you almost certainly can't use Ogg's:)
If you make computer games, you have a high quality free way of adding a lot of music to your games. (possibly patents for mp3)
If you want background music in a computer game, why would you want to use a format that eats drastically more processing power?
You can do 44.1khz and 48 khz audio.
So can MP3, what's your point?
The encoder sounds good by default, so music traded on file sharing systems sounds good (unlike all those terrible 128k mp3s encoded by anything that isn't LAME).
So "The Encoder" for MP3 is bad? If there was just one encoder this would be an argument. And I do hat those 128k bastards just as much as you:) At least iTunes defaults to 160k.
Now the other points are very valid, but they probably won't get anyone to switch at this point. What we need is a format that gives at least 4x the compression of MP3 with the same quality (and reasonable CPU usage) to get people to switch. Hopefully it will be an open technology like Ogg.
The other reason Ogg hasn't caught on...
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
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· Score: 2
besides the fact that it's hard to go up against an established standard and the fact that there is no hardware support, is that storage is so cheap now. If I can get a 60GB drive for under $100, why would I want to sacrifice a big chunk of processing power to make my music 1/3 smaller? Only if I absolutely wanted to use something open.
If you have a G4...
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Sticking with MP3s is a no brainer unless you have to use open software for moral reasons, since Apple has enhanced MP3 encoding/decoding for AltiVec, and this is an area where those gigaFlops do wonders at quick, high-quality encodes and freeing up more CPU for your work (or the visualizer:) during playback.
Re:Duron will eventually use Marketing Ploy
on
1.3GHz Duron Arrives
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Apple's "Photoshop tests" are getting a lot more relevant now that all the power-hungry apps are optimized, however. Maya, FCP3, Photoshop, Filemaker, CodeWarrior, and iTunes are AltiVec, and Quake3 is getting more and more optimized code every day. Those are all the apps you are likely to have using 100% of your CPU anyway. With all these apps optimized and a $1299 Mac running at almost 4 GigaFlops, I don't think you can downplay AltiVec anymore.
TPI seems to actually be achieving some credibility at this point: techies regard it as a necessary marketing ploy and mostly ture, and all the consumers I've seen in electronics stores that were using clock frequency to compare performance seem to be willing to buy any number a chip manufacturer wants to slap on the machine. There was adiscussion on macslash as to whether the AIM PowerPC chips should be marketed under the TPI numbers. The main problem (this was in Nov.) was that everyone seemed to regard TPI as a cheap trick. Has this changed enough for us to see them adopt it. Having every consumer system that didn't use an Intel chip use TPI numbers would also lend more credibility to the initiative, it would seem, and both AMD and Apple could benefit from this. So, will there be an iMac G4 1900+ in our future?
While we're on the subject of MP3 players, did anyone else notice that Toshiba just announced plans to start manufacturing 10GB and 20GB 1.8" drives this spring. How long before someone hacks one into an iPod and posts it;) Price might still be a concern though; the 5GB drive used in the iPod can only be gotten by buying the PC card version from Toshiba, which costs $399 ($299 for the 2GB version), or by buying an iPod, which also costs $399 ($369 for students).
Which one? "Windows" and "not proprietary" or "ultra fast" and "USB" or "Simple" and "Windows" or... OK, I'll stop.
Re:Thats the real artistry...
on
NY Times on Anime
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Where Western animators struggle to create a convincing illusion of life, Japanese animators are more interested in capturing single expressive gestures, or in evoking a particular mood through the careful use of color.
Isn't it interesting how this is reversed in the CG world? Square Pictures was the one going for "convincing illusion of life" and ending up with lifeless characters, whereas Pixar and PDI use heavy stylization and do a better job of, "capturing single expressive gestures, or evoking a particular mood through the careful use of color."
Also, getting back to cel animation, it's interesting how far Disney Animation Studios has fallen behind Japanese studios since The Lion King (yes, TLK is still the highest grossing animated film ever, but no one would disagree that Mononoke looks better/is a better film). The stuff they're doing now looks much worse than the Anime of the late 80s.
Anime Sucks. Honestly it does. Bad art, terrible plots, all sorts of really twisted underage-girl-rape subthemes. Why do people watch this crap?.
Yeah, man. They have all those shitty flat-shaded cells and the dialog doesn't make sense. Everyone knows the only one doing decent animation is Disney Animation Studios...
Oh wait, it's not 1982 anymore;) I find the role reversal rather interesting, actually.
I can go to jail for writing or talking about a piece of software that lets me access a piece of media I paid for.
Has it? Last time I checked, when a huge corporation tried to go after someone for practicing free speech there was a huge public outcry and the case was dropped. This is the difference between democracy and totalitarianism, which is what the original poster was trying to point out. In our country, unjust laws like the DCMA are fought tooth and nail, are currently not being enforced very rigidly, and will probably be struck down in court or repealed in congress, or at least amended, in the near future. Want to go over to China and try to get them to change the law to allow freedom of religion?
It is important to work to maintain our civil liberties in the U.S. in the digital age, but I find all these smartass comments about the U.S. being the same as China abhorrent; the DCMA is wrong, Carnivore is wrong, but you infinitely cheapen the suffering of the oppressed in China by even beginning to compare these to being jailed and tortured for practicing your religious beliefs. Why not buy yourself a clue before you go out and post trash like this?
Apple added support for Simplified Chinese
and Traditional Chinese in Mac OS X yesterday (as well as Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, and Swedish), so now you could also use OS X to create PDF files from any application.
it's that the entire fonts system on *nix machines is esoteric enough that all the fiddling with suitcases etc on the Mac (as of several years ago at least -- I really haven't played with the fonts on my iBook) is nothing in comparison.
Apple has further simplified fonts in OS X by using data-fork TrueType font files (.dfont) instead of suitcases, although old suitcase TrueType fonts, bitmap fonts, and PostScript fonts are still supported (Note also that Mac OS X comes with 100s of dollars of fonts, and they aren't exaggerating, those suckers are expensive! Mmmm, Copperplate Gothic:). They also have drastically increased the max number of fonts to save you from having to make sets, and OS X automatically loads fonts in the OS 9 system folder as well as those in the OS X font library and the user's font library, so you will automatically have every font in either format from either version of the OS available to every application.
The stock market fluctuates on speculation, but pricing is determined by earnings and expectation of future growth. The fact is that Apple had better earnings than HP, Compaq, and Gateway in 2001 and investors certainly have more confidence in their continued survival than they do in Compaq or Gateway. BTW, Apple's stock went down after the introduction of the new iMac, since the price always goes up in anticipation of the event and down once it is confirmed.
The problem is that the entire argument is based on the assumption that Apple isn't successful, when in fact they did were one of the most successful PC manufacturers in 2001. Go look at this chart and tell me where there is, "confusion between what's cool and what's going to be successful." Ditto to his argument that Microsoft and AOL, "get it." Need I provide another 2001 sotck chart?
There is a metal dome right below the plastic, so you wouldn't be able to see in, and under the dome is the power supply; it would be impossible to design it so that you could see the motherboard. Apple has put translucent cases right over their metal cases in the past to create an interesting effect, however, in the PMG3 for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone know PPC architecture??
From: http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html
"In addition, the PowerPC G4 can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle -- two to four times faster than processors found in PCs."
2,000*8=16,000Flops. They probably left one off to allow for a more real-world figure and account for processes that don't do much multithreading.
Doing complex calculations, I can easily get 2.6 GFlops out of my 466MHz G4, so I would expect to get at least 10 or 12 GFlops out of one of these in real world calculations.
Realistically 90% of people are going to put up with any crap you force on them, but still, this might make a lot of the type of people who read /. give up on live TV.
I also think it is silly to argue that no one will notice... I agree that it will be subtle, but think about it, .5/23= about 2.2% of the show, and that's assuming it was still a 23 min long show. Don't tell me you can hear compression artifacts in a 160kbps MP3, but you can't tell that the show is 2% faster. Doesn't break my heart with many of the shows they are playing, but 2% could very well have an effect on the timing of a dramatic scene in a good show or movie, and I think the networks are far more likely to use this in addition to and not instead of cutting scenes.
Well, it's a good thing many good TV series are coming out on DVD. And just keep watching Cartoon Network, since they have to follow the 6-min commercial limit ;)
You are right; I think this is a confusion of vulnerability to viruses as opposed to vulnerability to hackers... Even being based (mostly) on FreeBSD and having the dangerous services off by default, you have to admit that the OS is more vulnerable to hackers than classic, which had virtually no services in the first place and was less well-known, and it introduces the need to update all the open source components of the OS as new vulnerabilities are found. But when it comes to viruses, OS X should be more secure thanks to the real users/permissions in BSD. Some might be concerned about having a larger base of script kiddies on the OS now, but as long as Apple keeps security as a priority, I think they'll stick to their VBScripts; only one unscriptable, local exploit and no viruses so far...
"Darwin is an open source, UNIX-based operating system built on BSD 4.4 and Mach 3.0 which forms the core of Mac OS X."
Woz has always been some sort of employee for Apple, I think he's described as some sort of rep or ambassador now (it's on his site, but in an older section and I'm not remembering it exactly; you should really read the thing, well worth the time), but he has always insisted on being at the bottom of the org chart, so I don't know how the other poster got the idea that he was on the board.
Maybe this is just me, but I don't think there was a lot of competition from the IBM PC in the late 70s :)
You never saw that Target commercial where they had a room with the walls and ceiling painted red and completely covered with CDs?
I wasn't talking about using MP3s in games (I agree that it is a good idea), I was talking about using OGGs in games.
In most cases, a 60kbps OGG file sounds as good as an 128k mp3. An 80k OGG is as good as 160k mp3 and half the size.
Actually, Ogg only shaves off 30-40% (still respectable, just not revolutionary)
If you have a portable player, you would appreciate the smaller size with high quality.
If you have a portable player, you almost certainly can't use Ogg's :)
If you make computer games, you have a high quality free way of adding a lot of music to your games. (possibly patents for mp3)
If you want background music in a computer game, why would you want to use a format that eats drastically more processing power?
You can do 44.1khz and 48 khz audio.
So can MP3, what's your point?
The encoder sounds good by default, so music traded on file sharing systems sounds good (unlike all those terrible 128k mp3s encoded by anything that isn't LAME).
So "The Encoder" for MP3 is bad? If there was just one encoder this would be an argument. And I do hat those 128k bastards just as much as you :) At least iTunes defaults to 160k.
Now the other points are very valid, but they probably won't get anyone to switch at this point. What we need is a format that gives at least 4x the compression of MP3 with the same quality (and reasonable CPU usage) to get people to switch. Hopefully it will be an open technology like Ogg.
besides the fact that it's hard to go up against an established standard and the fact that there is no hardware support, is that storage is so cheap now. If I can get a 60GB drive for under $100, why would I want to sacrifice a big chunk of processing power to make my music 1/3 smaller? Only if I absolutely wanted to use something open.
Sticking with MP3s is a no brainer unless you have to use open software for moral reasons, since Apple has enhanced MP3 encoding/decoding for AltiVec, and this is an area where those gigaFlops do wonders at quick, high-quality encodes and freeing up more CPU for your work (or the visualizer :) during playback.
Apple's "Photoshop tests" are getting a lot more relevant now that all the power-hungry apps are optimized, however. Maya, FCP3, Photoshop, Filemaker, CodeWarrior, and iTunes are AltiVec, and Quake3 is getting more and more optimized code every day. Those are all the apps you are likely to have using 100% of your CPU anyway. With all these apps optimized and a $1299 Mac running at almost 4 GigaFlops, I don't think you can downplay AltiVec anymore.
TPI seems to actually be achieving some credibility at this point: techies regard it as a necessary marketing ploy and mostly ture, and all the consumers I've seen in electronics stores that were using clock frequency to compare performance seem to be willing to buy any number a chip manufacturer wants to slap on the machine. There was adiscussion on macslash as to whether the AIM PowerPC chips should be marketed under the TPI numbers. The main problem (this was in Nov.) was that everyone seemed to regard TPI as a cheap trick. Has this changed enough for us to see them adopt it. Having every consumer system that didn't use an Intel chip use TPI numbers would also lend more credibility to the initiative, it would seem, and both AMD and Apple could benefit from this. So, will there be an iMac G4 1900+ in our future?
While we're on the subject of MP3 players, did anyone else notice that Toshiba just announced plans to start manufacturing 10GB and 20GB 1.8" drives this spring. How long before someone hacks one into an iPod and posts it ;) Price might still be a concern though; the 5GB drive used in the iPod can only be gotten by buying the PC card version from Toshiba, which costs $399 ($299 for the 2GB version), or by buying an iPod, which also costs $399 ($369 for students).
Which one? "Windows" and "not proprietary" or "ultra fast" and "USB" or "Simple" and "Windows" or... OK, I'll stop.
Isn't it interesting how this is reversed in the CG world? Square Pictures was the one going for "convincing illusion of life" and ending up with lifeless characters, whereas Pixar and PDI use heavy stylization and do a better job of, "capturing single expressive gestures, or evoking a particular mood through the careful use of color."
Also, getting back to cel animation, it's interesting how far Disney Animation Studios has fallen behind Japanese studios since The Lion King (yes, TLK is still the highest grossing animated film ever, but no one would disagree that Mononoke looks better/is a better film). The stuff they're doing now looks much worse than the Anime of the late 80s.
Yeah, man. They have all those shitty flat-shaded cells and the dialog doesn't make sense. Everyone knows the only one doing decent animation is Disney Animation Studios...
Oh wait, it's not 1982 anymore ;) I find the role reversal rather interesting, actually.
Has it? Last time I checked, when a huge corporation tried to go after someone for practicing free speech there was a huge public outcry and the case was dropped. This is the difference between democracy and totalitarianism, which is what the original poster was trying to point out. In our country, unjust laws like the DCMA are fought tooth and nail, are currently not being enforced very rigidly, and will probably be struck down in court or repealed in congress, or at least amended, in the near future. Want to go over to China and try to get them to change the law to allow freedom of religion?
It is important to work to maintain our civil liberties in the U.S. in the digital age, but I find all these smartass comments about the U.S. being the same as China abhorrent; the DCMA is wrong, Carnivore is wrong, but you infinitely cheapen the suffering of the oppressed in China by even beginning to compare these to being jailed and tortured for practicing your religious beliefs. Why not buy yourself a clue before you go out and post trash like this?
Apple added support for Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese in Mac OS X yesterday (as well as Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, and Swedish), so now you could also use OS X to create PDF files from any application.
Apple has further simplified fonts in OS X by using data-fork TrueType font files (.dfont) instead of suitcases, although old suitcase TrueType fonts, bitmap fonts, and PostScript fonts are still supported (Note also that Mac OS X comes with 100s of dollars of fonts, and they aren't exaggerating, those suckers are expensive! Mmmm, Copperplate Gothic:). They also have drastically increased the max number of fonts to save you from having to make sets, and OS X automatically loads fonts in the OS 9 system folder as well as those in the OS X font library and the user's font library, so you will automatically have every font in either format from either version of the OS available to every application.
The stock market fluctuates on speculation, but pricing is determined by earnings and expectation of future growth. The fact is that Apple had better earnings than HP, Compaq, and Gateway in 2001 and investors certainly have more confidence in their continued survival than they do in Compaq or Gateway. BTW, Apple's stock went down after the introduction of the new iMac, since the price always goes up in anticipation of the event and down once it is confirmed.
The problem is that the entire argument is based on the assumption that Apple isn't successful, when in fact they did were one of the most successful PC manufacturers in 2001. Go look at this chart and tell me where there is, "confusion between what's cool and what's going to be successful." Ditto to his argument that Microsoft and AOL, "get it." Need I provide another 2001 sotck chart?
There is a metal dome right below the plastic, so you wouldn't be able to see in, and under the dome is the power supply; it would be impossible to design it so that you could see the motherboard. Apple has put translucent cases right over their metal cases in the past to create an interesting effect, however, in the PMG3 for example.