Actually, the OS's firewall is *OFF* by default, for what it's worth.
However, most all web services (SSH, FTP, etc.) are also off by default (including CUPS).
The problem lies in the fact that most home users, when they click the box that says "Share This Printer" they don't realize that they're SHARING the printer -- the hooks are in place for remote printing, even though it requires an admin password -- and even fewer of 'em realize that it opens an HTTP port for configuration options (837? I forget, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now).
Nobody on the Net has any business opening connections to any port on your machine, but you'll get sniffed nonetheless.
Some of you may not be aware that MacOS X's printer sharing uses the CUPS system.
There was a big public disclosure today about CUPS exploits, and there's sample code and methodology available now, for white and black hats alike.
At any rate, it has been confirmed that the 10.2.3 update patches the security holes in the CUPS code in addition to lots of other security and performance-related stuff.
I'm repeating this in this thread because some Mac-types may gloss over the security/unix sections, because they don't think it applies to them.
Bottom line: it does, and it's big stuff, so get your swupdate a-running.
Yeah, I fall into the "keep your hands on the fucking steering weel" camp, myself.
I've worked on a similar project (which didn't stay connected too long because of battery charging issues + having $1200 worth of gear in my car plus the girlfriend was having second thoughts about my sanity).
iBook + clip-on Mic with creative wire splicing (to fool the Mac into thinking it's capable on a normal mic) + 10.2 + Plaintalk + iTunes + PHP/Perl/Applescript worked marginally well, although getting recognition working over 50% of the time would require a MUCH quieter car than I have.
Plusses: A kludge to brag about. You can not only choose songs and have query results read back to you, but you can also play Apple/GNUchess against the computer at the same time with voice recognition, seeing as how you've obviously got a much greater attention span than most.
Minuses: $1k worth of gear in your car, one hell of a kludge, battery requirements.
Why don'tca just get an iPod? 1-finger browsing, it's small, and it'll charge from your lighter adapter.
Or a small touch screen monitor, maybe?
I can't even dream of recommending something that would take more than a single finger to operate.
For the record, I've gone with the iPod. I'm just waiting for 802.11 or Bluetooth to be added to a new iPod model -- then I won't even have to take it out of the car to load music.
I personally cringe at the thought of how much a single 50' Firewire cable would cost for small offices. HINT: a *LOT* more than CAT5e/6. I'd wager pricing on par with Fiber -- daisy chained, no less -- so if a machine gets pulled or powered off, poof goes that link.
Workgroups in the same room, clusters or labs? Groovy... but once you start talking about multiple rooms or more than 4 or 5 machines, I have the feeling that it's gonna be REALLY cost prohibitive.
That's just not what the tech is designed for, methinks. I'm thinking that clustering is really what this is all about.
And now I'm drooling over a few Xserves or desktops clustered via Firewire 2 as a rendering farm.
My question, then, is... where are the little twin Japanese girls?!?!?
They've been called the Cosmos lately and stuff since the kiddy-Mothra movies came out, but really!
THEY would guarantee complete and utter platform dominance if they were included as a feature!
(insert your own puns here, people...)
But, hell, I'm content with my 110 days of uptime since my last rebootable update.
[OT] Not sure why anyone complains about the restarts required of their Macs these days. After that long, I'm fairly certain that Kaiko (yes, I named my "windtunnel") could use a break... [/OT]
Not sure what your opinion of NYC is as a whole, but I have to tell you that Bryant park is a very, very nice area to hang about in.
I first visited it because my girlfriend works for a downtown revitalization consortium in my city, and when I went to visit NYC (this was a couple years ago) she had me take a pile of photos and QuicktimeVR nodes of the park -- as it's the very model of an urban public park these days. It's a few blocks north of the Empire State building.
Awesome grass, pretty trees, an awesome view, upscale sandwich carts (reminds me of Central Park) -- and get this:
The tables and chairs in the park aren't concrete or nailed down. They're comfortable and light and you're encouraged to shift and move around anywhere on the block.
It's a *VERY* popular lunch and sunbathing spot.
It's a pretty huge experiment that's been really successful and is being copied by a lot of cities trying to revitalize their own downtown areas right now.
Sure, you get a couple of wierdos from time to time -- but, hell! It's New York City! You *PAY* to hang around those same wierdos in the Village come nightfall.
However, looking at my log trends over the last 2 years for all the sites I maintain (clue: lots of 'em), I found something really interesting lately.
Googlebot hits my sites more than users of all flavors of Netscape/Moz/Opera combined. More users from AvantGo and Webclipping than Moz as well.
That's right. On average, it's about 95% IE (IE 6 is dominant now -- people must actually be running their crit updates), 3% spiders & bots, 2ish percent "other" browsers.
The problem I run into is that most of my sites are subbed out from ad agencies. What do most (of my client) ad agencies still run? Netscape 4.7 for MacOS 8.x or 9.x.
I predict that once Quark finally releases Xpress for OS X, that those last hold-outs will be in IE/Opera/Moz land and the agencies will upgrade. They're very slow to change -- even if half the sites on the Net are broken for 4.7.
If Quark folded tomorrow, I'd bet those agencies would still be running Xpress 3.x and MacOS 9.x primarily 5 years from now.
Most of my stuff is PHP/CMS-based -- so I just create secondary templates for NS 4-6.x users without the flashy stuff. But, honestly, a lot of what I do is glorified brochureware. Give me an excuse to stop supporting pre-5.0 browsers and they're getting cut off along with the 640x480 hold-outs.
I've been designing 3 versions (sometimes more) of sites for the past 8 years or so, and I'm about ready to stop the fight and move to a "recommended" platform for the widest possible target and 99% functionality for the rest.
Like it or not, IE is it. Now that so many users have Javascript disabled due to pop-ups, it's getting harder to sniff browsers without using PHP/ASP/etc.
I (just yesterday) got finished watching all seven hours of extras on the Extended DVD set (FOTR).
I have to say, coming out of that, that I've got huge amounts of respect for the actors and production team.
I've been on film shoots before, and I have to tell you guys that the amount of love and dedication to the craft and art displayed by these guys is really amazing. The stories about Mortensen actually treating his sword and armor as if they were real, and coming to grips with the character give the guy pretty high marks in my book. He's pretty eloquent and takes his art VERY seriously.
I was particularly impressed with the actors' sequences. They really convinced me that they digested, understood and respected the material and their roles.
Not to be a glaring commercial for the extended set, but if you're into the films or into the books or both, at least rent the set and watch for the amount of nuance, (mind-blowing) detail and love these guys put into these films. It's mind-boggling to me still, and let me enjoy the film from a much more intimate standpoint.
Check out the latest Bond film for one hell of a lot of God-awful effects. I mean jarring, mouth-gapingly bad effects.
God-awful acting, plot, direction, editing and music, too, for what it's worth:-)
And not even a REAL half-naked woman in the title squence (all CG)? I'm struggling to find anything redeeming about it at all? John Cleese? Hally Barry's T&A?
Quality filmmaking isn't about the effects, anyhow. If it were, Episodes I and II wouldn't have been the complete piles of steaming excrement they were. (For the record: Warcraft III's cutscenes were better).
Remember, kids: it's not the size of your pencil -- it's how you write your name.
...is the original ADB keyboard that came with the old Power Computing Mac clones. Very lightweight, a nice snap to the keys, etc, and a rounded-bottomed space bar (very comfy).
Power Computing is out of business now, but MacAlly makes USB clones of their old keyboards now for the Mac market. As mentioned previously in the thread, you can remap the keys however you like them, and they're BIOS supported.
They're very, very quiet -- very comfortable and have satisfying feedback.
You may need to test a couple of them though before buying, though. I own several and one of them (a Bondi model, FWIW) feels "soft" when typing.
I actually installed one of these on my token WinBox (eMachines: loudest keyboard EVER, but great feedback, ala old IBMs) for the same reason you mention -- becuase my girlfriend playing that word-scramble game on Shockwave.com was driving me completely batshit while I was trying to code.
MacAlly has a couple of other 'boards with additional features -- I'm eager to try the IceKey.
MacAlly stuff is generally carried in your local CompUSA in the Mac section, so you should be able to test drive one.
Don't be afraid to take it out of the box and play with one if it's not on display. CompUSA employees are generally scared of Mac people and won't say a word, if they are even brave enough to come near the section.:)
If I walk into Best Buy, and I felt the cd-player I bought last week was crap, that doesn't mean I can go steal some headphones to go along with it!
Actually, that analogy is skewed.
It's more like you bought a CD player at Best Buy, it was broken, they wouldn't take it back, they wouldn't refund your money and the only thing you had to do to get it working properly is break a "no user serviceable parts" seal and reseat a connector. Then the thugs burst through your door and charge you with an EULA violation.
In my opinion, not offering a refund after 3 months of completely unuseable service without a fix in sight is theft.
For the record, that part of town is too far from the CO for DSL, and the PS2 won't work with Satellite, dialup is too slow for the game in question and ATTBI is a legal monopoly in the area. As is Bellsouth, as every DSL provider resells their service and is dependent on Bell's infrastructure and engineers to get up off their lazy asses to actually bring a house live within 6 months of an order.
He *is* looking in to cellular broadband right now, however, as that's being beta tested in our area. 500ms ping doesn't look too good for fragging, though.
Of course he could sell his house and move 6 blocks closer to the CO so he's in a DSL-supported area, but that's overkill -- ain't it?
This is what is referred to as "curing a headache via decapitation."
The problem I've got with it is that if this is a "cyber crime" (per the CSEA and other nasty legislation of recent years) does that put any petty crime dealing with any type of "wired" equipment and put it in Federal hands punishable by the maximum extent of federal law?
Meaning if I forget to pay my ISP bill, being peripherally linked to things "cyber" (whatever the fuck that means) is it suddenly a felony?
What if I enter a false email address when signing up for some sort of service to avoid spam?
I'm dumbfounded by the fact that corporations can call in jack booted thugs to do their dirty work -- LEGALLY -- in our present climate.
I'm also dumbfounded by the fact that I know several people in a particular part of my city who are incapable of achieving over 2k per second, up or down, from their cable modems.
AT&T Broadband has claimed that it's an "engineering problem"
However, one of my friends in that area temporarily uncapped his modem and -- presto! -- he had enough bandwidth to play SOCOM on his shiny new PS2 network adapter. On the service that he's been paying $45 per month for and hasn't had proper usage of until then.
This strangely parallels one of the stories in the article. Except the Feds haven't come for my friend. Yet.
It really depends on what you're planning on doing with it, and also if you're using a "stock" hardware configuration.
Case in point:
A 15" LCD iMac G4/700 "feels" much slower than my tricked out G4/450... here's why:
* 256 megs of RAM is absolutely inadequate for OS X, but I've been too lazy to order non-insanely priced RAM online for it yet (weird module, mega $$$ at the neighborhood instant-gratification superstore).
* Sometimes the stock hard drives on consumer-level machines are horribly slow (5400 RPM vs 7200 vs SCSI 10k makes a HUGE difference).
That said, my G4/450 is flying with a new Maxtor 80GB ATA/133, a clean install of 10.2 and 1.5 GB RAM.
Flying, meaning that I usually notice the machine running faster than in did in OS 9. And this is a dual-head setup to boot doing 3D and Photoshop work all day in addition to coding.
So that said, no OS X isn't slow -- but don't expect the machine to get out of passing gear without at least a RAM upgrade. Consider an extra 512mb chip $85 very well spent.
10.2 is very, very, very nice and a substantial speed improvement over 10.1. It "feels" as fast as OS 9 did now.
But then, to me, XP Pro running on a P4/1.4 laptop feels like it's dragging ass, so YMMV.
Half the fun of doing stuff like that as a kid is the fact that it's a pretty darned dangerous activity. Trust me, the fear of death/dismemberment/disfigurement makes anything a whole lot more fun.
Once we reach adulthood we (usually) condition ourselves to avoid stuff we perceive as dangerous, or at least get in control of the situation [insert darwinist theory here].
The point being -- the fun is in being out of control. I wouldn't use a sled with brakes if one existed, just as you astutely pointed out -- I do, in fact, take my gravity-fun very seriously.
Pile up some snow. Make a bank before the trees. And jump the fuck off!
Pixar has pumped out the only worthwhile stories/characters/animated films to come out of Disney since Mulan -- and I even give Mulan the benefit of the doubt for the awesome title sequence, the Eddie Murphy casting and the non-Disney ending.
Between Pixar's clout and their warchest, I'm hoping they go out on their own.
Honestly, I'm surprised that they've gotten away with as much as they have so far that's completely averse to the Mouse's canon (the ending to Monsters, Inc. is a BIG one -- doing Seven Samurai as 'A Bug's Life?' -- brilliant!).
To hell with photorealism. We've seen how far we can go that direction. Pixar, their animators and directors seem to have new -- at the very least -- touching and compelling stories to tell. Which barely any in the market can say now.
Shrek? How the hell can you go wrong with Mike Meyers and Eddie Murphy? You can't? It didn't matter that the film was ugly. It didn't matter that there was a cliché story. It didn't matter if they were pandering more to the adults in the crowd than the kids (which Antz did -- and it was God Awful as a result).
I couldn't care less if Pixar's films were a flipbook, as long as they're told with style, wit and heart. Oh, AND they manage to be the prettiest thing on the block when they're released even with their aversion to photorealism.
Y'know what? They care about the STORY -- although I'm a bit nervous about the three new films in three years thing. That's one hell of a lot of manpower.
Bottom line: Pixar has class, regardless of how you feel about Jobs and Disney. Getting out from under the Mouse's thumb can *only* be good for them. The Mouse is about cash, first, thank-you-very-much. Then critical acclaim/adoring fans.
I'm still at the point that I've been amazed by Pixar enough to believe the opposite of them. That's (to me) Jobs saying 'I've got money, and the most awesome storytellers there are to buy. So what are you waiting for... tell your fucking stories!'
Then you must not be getting stuck in the geometry as much as I do. I'm constantly having to use '/fixme.'
It's an absolutely awesome game... don't get me wrong.
I've long said if someone would take Everquest/DAOC/etc and put an actual storyline behind it, without relentless spawn-camping that players would get hooked.
And they have.
In Morrowind, I could give a rat's ass if anyone's experiencing it with me. The NPCs are less annoying than PCs in an MMORPG (besides the 'stay away, I don't want to catch whatever YOU'VE got!' becuse the game is too buggy to remove my disease quite often)
All that said, Morrowind is fucking brilliant -- BUT -- buggy as all hell. Getting stuck in geometry, buying things that don't end up in your inventory after laying out thousands of GP, quest ends that won't trigger.
I'm hopelessly addicted, happy to have paid my $49.95, but at the same time really pissed off that I need to use the console and God Mode to get myself out of bugs.... and happy that they've laid out the God Mode 'cheats' as easily as they have.
This is the point in the post where I mention to Bioware that if they had delivered Neverwinter for the Mac on "0 day" as promised, that I wouldn't have found the wonderful game that is Morrowind to begin with, lest the faithful think I've become an apolitical non-believer.
Still haven't bought it, and *won't* until the game **and editor** come out for the Mac... (and they take less than a freaking year, or all bets are off)... the bastards. And I've got a PC around to play on. I, and most of my friends, prefer to play on our Macs.
As I've said before in this thread, the 'card companies have got their pricing a little beyone the range of mere mortals, whether they purcharse Macs or not...
I made a point, a lot further down in the thread, and I'm restating it here. The video card/peripheral vendors price their items just below their (*perceived*) point of pain for the markets they're targeting.
Gamers (particularly Morrowind players -- as I've found the past week trying to play a damned game I *bought*...) seem to be the mid-high demographic, while Maya/Pro3D/Mac users seem to be the high end of their profile.
Yes, virginia, you're being *SEVERELY* overcharged for your new über video card. The only things to do about it is not buy it until the manufacturers' markerters realize that you've figured out their game -- or buy the Wintel versions (which are *still* ridiculously overpriced) and flash the ROMs.
(In retrospect...)
Wow, how self-referrential was that? You'd think I've been out drinking on Halloween or something... at least smoking some crack.
I realize that it takes additional money for Mac-side driver/firmware/software development.
The point is that on all sides vendors are fixing the prices of their products -- (against the idea of 1.5% markup) -- in a lot of cases on the Mac side at 200% the price of the *exact*same*widget* on the wintel side. Far more markup than additional driver development should allow for.
Hell, CompUSA is just as guilty of this as video card vendors. I can remember clearly when Warcraft II was released, and the Myst trilogy was rereleased. Hybrid Mac & PC in the same box, and the same exact packaging. $15 price difference depending on which "shelf" you bought it off of in the store. They may have had an after-the-fact "Made for Mac" sticker on the box. I don't remember.
The next time you walk in your neighborhood superstore, do some comparison shopping between the Mac & PC sections for hardware bits (keyboards, mice, hard drives). In a lot of cases, you'll see the original SKU covered by a sticker with the "Mac Pricing" sku/barcode for widgets that are available in two different parts of the store.
Back to my point -- since the widespread advent of the 'Net, a lot of Mac users ignore the "Mac Sections" of those stores for everything but (2-year-old and "premium" priced) games and either pick up the comparable widget from across the store, or order the stuff online. Because they know better.
I'd imagine that it's skewing the sales figures pretty heavily and isn't showing a true picture of the platform distribution -- which in turn drives prices up again and gets products discontinued.
Then (even further afield) you've got products like the Creative Mac Blaster -- which never worked and never will work, but we still paid a premium for.
Make no mistake: value-add hardware is priced just under the average "threshold of pain" for the target market -- and there's a feeling in the industry that Mac users have even more cash to throw around than die-hard gamers.
I've got a lease with an option to buy on a female geek unit right now.
She's not allowed near *my* kitchen. To be cliche, she could burn water. Even in the microwave.
Perhaps newer models have 1337 cooking skillz, but I have a substantial investment in my current model and wouldn't want to part with it just yet.
We'll see once the '03s come out, though.
Re:Got one, don't really like it
on
Airborne Mouse
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· Score: 1
I have to concur. We used the original Gyromouse (4 or 5 years ago) for presentations and the like.
For presentations where you're just doing left click/right click and maybe mapping a button to "home" they're okay. Once you switch to controlling the actual cursor, all bets are off though.
Let's just say that it takes a large amount of practice with one of these to even hit a menu.
So, to recap, you won't be fragging anyone with these. Your wrist doesn't have the control that your hand does, and once you learn how to use them -- you have to use them VERY slowly.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the OS's firewall is *OFF* by default, for what it's worth.
However, most all web services (SSH, FTP, etc.) are also off by default (including CUPS).
The problem lies in the fact that most home users, when they click the box that says "Share This Printer" they don't realize that they're SHARING the printer -- the hooks are in place for remote printing, even though it requires an admin password -- and even fewer of 'em realize that it opens an HTTP port for configuration options (837? I forget, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now).
Nobody on the Net has any business opening connections to any port on your machine, but you'll get sniffed nonetheless.
5 minutes and a reboot. Get in the habit.
Some of you may not be aware that MacOS X's printer sharing uses the CUPS system.
There was a big public disclosure today about CUPS exploits, and there's sample code and methodology available now, for white and black hats alike.
At any rate, it has been confirmed that the 10.2.3 update patches the security holes in the CUPS code in addition to lots of other security and performance-related stuff.
I'm repeating this in this thread because some Mac-types may gloss over the security/unix sections, because they don't think it applies to them.
Bottom line: it does, and it's big stuff, so get your swupdate a-running.
--dr00gy
Yeah, I fall into the "keep your hands on the fucking steering weel" camp, myself.
I've worked on a similar project (which didn't stay connected too long because of battery charging issues + having $1200 worth of gear in my car plus the girlfriend was having second thoughts about my sanity).
iBook + clip-on Mic with creative wire splicing (to fool the Mac into thinking it's capable on a normal mic) + 10.2 + Plaintalk + iTunes + PHP/Perl/Applescript worked marginally well, although getting recognition working over 50% of the time would require a MUCH quieter car than I have.
Plusses: A kludge to brag about. You can not only choose songs and have query results read back to you, but you can also play Apple/GNUchess against the computer at the same time with voice recognition, seeing as how you've obviously got a much greater attention span than most.
Minuses: $1k worth of gear in your car, one hell of a kludge, battery requirements.
Why don'tca just get an iPod? 1-finger browsing, it's small, and it'll charge from your lighter adapter.
Or a small touch screen monitor, maybe?
I can't even dream of recommending something that would take more than a single finger to operate.
For the record, I've gone with the iPod. I'm just waiting for 802.11 or Bluetooth to be added to a new iPod model -- then I won't even have to take it out of the car to load music.
I personally cringe at the thought of how much a single 50' Firewire cable would cost for small offices. HINT: a *LOT* more than CAT5e/6. I'd wager pricing on par with Fiber -- daisy chained, no less -- so if a machine gets pulled or powered off, poof goes that link.
Workgroups in the same room, clusters or labs? Groovy... but once you start talking about multiple rooms or more than 4 or 5 machines, I have the feeling that it's gonna be REALLY cost prohibitive.
That's just not what the tech is designed for, methinks. I'm thinking that clustering is really what this is all about.
And now I'm drooling over a few Xserves or desktops clustered via Firewire 2 as a rendering farm.
My question, then, is... where are the little twin Japanese girls?!?!?
They've been called the Cosmos lately and stuff since the kiddy-Mothra movies came out, but really!
THEY would guarantee complete and utter platform dominance if they were included as a feature!
(insert your own puns here, people...)
But, hell, I'm content with my 110 days of uptime since my last rebootable update.
[OT]
Not sure why anyone complains about the restarts required of their Macs these days. After that long, I'm fairly certain that Kaiko (yes, I named my "windtunnel") could use a break...
[/OT]
That is about the most irony my brain can take after a few Bass this evening.
At least the guy's cool with the fact that some even bigger dork has decided that it's too tall, and he can live with that.
On a side note, I know the bigger dork is right (for the record, as we're comparing dorkiness).
And I'm okay with that!
--dr00gy
Not sure what your opinion of NYC is as a whole, but I have to tell you that Bryant park is a very, very nice area to hang about in.
I first visited it because my girlfriend works for a downtown revitalization consortium in my city, and when I went to visit NYC (this was a couple years ago) she had me take a pile of photos and QuicktimeVR nodes of the park -- as it's the very model of an urban public park these days. It's a few blocks north of the Empire State building.
Awesome grass, pretty trees, an awesome view, upscale sandwich carts (reminds me of Central Park) -- and get this:
The tables and chairs in the park aren't concrete or nailed down. They're comfortable and light and you're encouraged to shift and move around anywhere on the block.
It's a *VERY* popular lunch and sunbathing spot.
It's a pretty huge experiment that's been really successful and is being copied by a lot of cities trying to revitalize their own downtown areas right now.
Sure, you get a couple of wierdos from time to time -- but, hell! It's New York City! You *PAY* to hang around those same wierdos in the Village come nightfall.
Absolutely true.
However, looking at my log trends over the last 2 years for all the sites I maintain (clue: lots of 'em), I found something really interesting lately.
Googlebot hits my sites more than users of all flavors of Netscape/Moz/Opera combined. More users from AvantGo and Webclipping than Moz as well.
That's right. On average, it's about 95% IE (IE 6 is dominant now -- people must actually be running their crit updates), 3% spiders & bots, 2ish percent "other" browsers.
The problem I run into is that most of my sites are subbed out from ad agencies. What do most (of my client) ad agencies still run? Netscape 4.7 for MacOS 8.x or 9.x.
I predict that once Quark finally releases Xpress for OS X, that those last hold-outs will be in IE/Opera/Moz land and the agencies will upgrade. They're very slow to change -- even if half the sites on the Net are broken for 4.7.
If Quark folded tomorrow, I'd bet those agencies would still be running Xpress 3.x and MacOS 9.x primarily 5 years from now.
Most of my stuff is PHP/CMS-based -- so I just create secondary templates for NS 4-6.x users without the flashy stuff. But, honestly, a lot of what I do is glorified brochureware. Give me an excuse to stop supporting pre-5.0 browsers and they're getting cut off along with the 640x480 hold-outs.
I've been designing 3 versions (sometimes more) of sites for the past 8 years or so, and I'm about ready to stop the fight and move to a "recommended" platform for the widest possible target and 99% functionality for the rest.
Like it or not, IE is it. Now that so many users have Javascript disabled due to pop-ups, it's getting harder to sniff browsers without using PHP/ASP/etc.
I (just yesterday) got finished watching all seven hours of extras on the Extended DVD set (FOTR).
I have to say, coming out of that, that I've got huge amounts of respect for the actors and production team.
I've been on film shoots before, and I have to tell you guys that the amount of love and dedication to the craft and art displayed by these guys is really amazing. The stories about Mortensen actually treating his sword and armor as if they were real, and coming to grips with the character give the guy pretty high marks in my book. He's pretty eloquent and takes his art VERY seriously.
I was particularly impressed with the actors' sequences. They really convinced me that they digested, understood and respected the material and their roles.
Not to be a glaring commercial for the extended set, but if you're into the films or into the books or both, at least rent the set and watch for the amount of nuance, (mind-blowing) detail and love these guys put into these films. It's mind-boggling to me still, and let me enjoy the film from a much more intimate standpoint.
BIG computers != talented VFX artists.
:-)
Check out the latest Bond film for one hell of a lot of God-awful effects. I mean jarring, mouth-gapingly bad effects.
God-awful acting, plot, direction, editing and music, too, for what it's worth
And not even a REAL half-naked woman in the title squence (all CG)? I'm struggling to find anything redeeming about it at all? John Cleese? Hally Barry's T&A?
Quality filmmaking isn't about the effects, anyhow. If it were, Episodes I and II wouldn't have been the complete piles of steaming excrement they were. (For the record: Warcraft III's cutscenes were better).
Remember, kids: it's not the size of your pencil -- it's how you write your name.
...is the original ADB keyboard that came with the old Power Computing Mac clones. Very lightweight, a nice snap to the keys, etc, and a rounded-bottomed space bar (very comfy).
:)
Power Computing is out of business now, but MacAlly makes USB clones of their old keyboards now for the Mac market. As mentioned previously in the thread, you can remap the keys however you like them, and they're BIOS supported.
They're very, very quiet -- very comfortable and have satisfying feedback.
You may need to test a couple of them though before buying, though. I own several and one of them (a Bondi model, FWIW) feels "soft" when typing.
I actually installed one of these on my token WinBox (eMachines: loudest keyboard EVER, but great feedback, ala old IBMs) for the same reason you mention -- becuase my girlfriend playing that word-scramble game on Shockwave.com was driving me completely batshit while I was trying to code.
MacAlly has a couple of other 'boards with additional features -- I'm eager to try the IceKey.
MacAlly stuff is generally carried in your local CompUSA in the Mac section, so you should be able to test drive one.
Don't be afraid to take it out of the box and play with one if it's not on display. CompUSA employees are generally scared of Mac people and won't say a word, if they are even brave enough to come near the section.
Actually, that analogy is skewed.
It's more like you bought a CD player at Best Buy, it was broken, they wouldn't take it back, they wouldn't refund your money and the only thing you had to do to get it working properly is break a "no user serviceable parts" seal and reseat a connector. Then the thugs burst through your door and charge you with an EULA violation.
In my opinion, not offering a refund after 3 months of completely unuseable service without a fix in sight is theft.
For the record, that part of town is too far from the CO for DSL, and the PS2 won't work with Satellite, dialup is too slow for the game in question and ATTBI is a legal monopoly in the area. As is Bellsouth, as every DSL provider resells their service and is dependent on Bell's infrastructure and engineers to get up off their lazy asses to actually bring a house live within 6 months of an order.
He *is* looking in to cellular broadband right now, however, as that's being beta tested in our area. 500ms ping doesn't look too good for fragging, though.
Of course he could sell his house and move 6 blocks closer to the CO so he's in a DSL-supported area, but that's overkill -- ain't it?
This is what is referred to as "curing a headache via decapitation."
The problem I've got with it is that if this is a "cyber crime" (per the CSEA and other nasty legislation of recent years) does that put any petty crime dealing with any type of "wired" equipment and put it in Federal hands punishable by the maximum extent of federal law?
Meaning if I forget to pay my ISP bill, being peripherally linked to things "cyber" (whatever the fuck that means) is it suddenly a felony?
What if I enter a false email address when signing up for some sort of service to avoid spam?
I'm dumbfounded by the fact that corporations can call in jack booted thugs to do their dirty work -- LEGALLY -- in our present climate.
I'm also dumbfounded by the fact that I know several people in a particular part of my city who are incapable of achieving over 2k per second, up or down, from their cable modems.
AT&T Broadband has claimed that it's an "engineering problem"
However, one of my friends in that area temporarily uncapped his modem and -- presto! -- he had enough bandwidth to play SOCOM on his shiny new PS2 network adapter. On the service that he's been paying $45 per month for and hasn't had proper usage of until then.
This strangely parallels one of the stories in the article. Except the Feds haven't come for my friend. Yet.
It really depends on what you're planning on doing with it, and also if you're using a "stock" hardware configuration.
Case in point:
A 15" LCD iMac G4/700 "feels" much slower than my tricked out G4/450... here's why:
* 256 megs of RAM is absolutely inadequate for OS X, but I've been too lazy to order non-insanely priced RAM online for it yet (weird module, mega $$$ at the neighborhood instant-gratification superstore).
* Sometimes the stock hard drives on consumer-level machines are horribly slow (5400 RPM vs 7200 vs SCSI 10k makes a HUGE difference).
That said, my G4/450 is flying with a new Maxtor 80GB ATA/133, a clean install of 10.2 and 1.5 GB RAM.
Flying, meaning that I usually notice the machine running faster than in did in OS 9. And this is a dual-head setup to boot doing 3D and Photoshop work all day in addition to coding.
So that said, no OS X isn't slow -- but don't expect the machine to get out of passing gear without at least a RAM upgrade. Consider an extra 512mb chip $85 very well spent.
10.2 is very, very, very nice and a substantial speed improvement over 10.1. It "feels" as fast as OS 9 did now.
But then, to me, XP Pro running on a P4/1.4 laptop feels like it's dragging ass, so YMMV.
--dr00gy
So to [-1 redundant], we've established that:
1. Inertia's a bitch.
Half the fun of doing stuff like that as a kid is the fact that it's a pretty darned dangerous activity. Trust me, the fear of death/dismemberment/disfigurement makes anything a whole lot more fun.
Once we reach adulthood we (usually) condition ourselves to avoid stuff we perceive as dangerous, or at least get in control of the situation [insert darwinist theory here].
The point being -- the fun is in being out of control. I wouldn't use a sled with brakes if one existed, just as you astutely pointed out -- I do, in fact, take my gravity-fun very seriously.
Pile up some snow. Make a bank before the trees. And jump the fuck off!
Do you *really* think so?
Pixar has pumped out the only worthwhile stories/characters/animated films to come out of Disney since Mulan -- and I even give Mulan the benefit of the doubt for the awesome title sequence, the Eddie Murphy casting and the non-Disney ending.
Between Pixar's clout and their warchest, I'm hoping they go out on their own.
Honestly, I'm surprised that they've gotten away with as much as they have so far that's completely averse to the Mouse's canon (the ending to Monsters, Inc. is a BIG one -- doing Seven Samurai as 'A Bug's Life?' -- brilliant!).
To hell with photorealism. We've seen how far we can go that direction. Pixar, their animators and directors seem to have new -- at the very least -- touching and compelling stories to tell. Which barely any in the market can say now.
Shrek? How the hell can you go wrong with Mike Meyers and Eddie Murphy? You can't? It didn't matter that the film was ugly. It didn't matter that there was a cliché story. It didn't matter if they were pandering more to the adults in the crowd than the kids (which Antz did -- and it was God Awful as a result).
I couldn't care less if Pixar's films were a flipbook, as long as they're told with style, wit and heart. Oh, AND they manage to be the prettiest thing on the block when they're released even with their aversion to photorealism.
Y'know what? They care about the STORY -- although I'm a bit nervous about the three new films in three years thing. That's one hell of a lot of manpower.
Bottom line: Pixar has class, regardless of how you feel about Jobs and Disney. Getting out from under the Mouse's thumb can *only* be good for them. The Mouse is about cash, first, thank-you-very-much. Then critical acclaim/adoring fans.
I'm still at the point that I've been amazed by Pixar enough to believe the opposite of them. That's (to me) Jobs saying 'I've got money, and the most awesome storytellers there are to buy. So what are you waiting for... tell your fucking stories!'
--dr00gy
Then you must not be getting stuck in the geometry as much as I do. I'm constantly having to use '/fixme.'
It's an absolutely awesome game... don't get me wrong.
I've long said if someone would take Everquest/DAOC/etc and put an actual storyline behind it, without relentless spawn-camping that players would get hooked.
And they have.
In Morrowind, I could give a rat's ass if anyone's experiencing it with me. The NPCs are less annoying than PCs in an MMORPG (besides the 'stay away, I don't want to catch whatever YOU'VE got!' becuse the game is too buggy to remove my disease quite often)
All that said, Morrowind is fucking brilliant -- BUT -- buggy as all hell. Getting stuck in geometry, buying things that don't end up in your inventory after laying out thousands of GP, quest ends that won't trigger.
I'm hopelessly addicted, happy to have paid my $49.95, but at the same time really pissed off that I need to use the console and God Mode to get myself out of bugs.... and happy that they've laid out the God Mode 'cheats' as easily as they have.
This is the point in the post where I mention to Bioware that if they had delivered Neverwinter for the Mac on "0 day" as promised, that I wouldn't have found the wonderful game that is Morrowind to begin with, lest the faithful think I've become an apolitical non-believer.
Still haven't bought it, and *won't* until the game **and editor** come out for the Mac... (and they take less than a freaking year, or all bets are off)... the bastards. And I've got a PC around to play on. I, and most of my friends, prefer to play on our Macs.
But we can only wait so long.
--dr00gy
This is like the... what .... 3rd identical post I've seen to this, all modded to 5?
Do you guys read a bloody thing?
C'mon mods -- you wouldn't know a Troll if it bit you in the ass!
Here y'go, my friend.
As I've said before in this thread, the 'card companies have got their pricing a little beyone the range of mere mortals, whether they purcharse Macs or not...
Here's a to show you how to flash a Radeon 8500 ($229 retail in the Mac market), and here's a link to show you where to get it for $89 (US). It's the exact same card. Just slightly over $240 difference in the retail price once you factor in shipping.
I made a point, a lot further down in the thread, and I'm restating it here. The video card/peripheral vendors price their items just below their (*perceived*) point of pain for the markets they're targeting.
Gamers (particularly Morrowind players -- as I've found the past week trying to play a damned game I *bought*...) seem to be the mid-high demographic, while Maya/Pro3D/Mac users seem to be the high end of their profile.
For the record, I wish they'd cut that shit out -- so the people who didnt' know any better could buy the same gear at the same price point without having to do the whole run-around.
Yes, virginia, you're being *SEVERELY* overcharged for your new über video card. The only things to do about it is not buy it until the manufacturers' markerters realize that you've figured out their game -- or buy the Wintel versions (which are *still* ridiculously overpriced) and flash the ROMs.
(In retrospect...)
Wow, how self-referrential was that? You'd think I've been out drinking on Halloween or something... at least smoking some crack.
--dr00gy
That wasn't exactly the point I was making.
I realize that it takes additional money for Mac-side driver/firmware/software development.
The point is that on all sides vendors are fixing the prices of their products -- (against the idea of 1.5% markup) -- in a lot of cases on the Mac side at 200% the price of the *exact*same*widget* on the wintel side. Far more markup than additional driver development should allow for.
Hell, CompUSA is just as guilty of this as video card vendors. I can remember clearly when Warcraft II was released, and the Myst trilogy was rereleased. Hybrid Mac & PC in the same box, and the same exact packaging. $15 price difference depending on which "shelf" you bought it off of in the store. They may have had an after-the-fact "Made for Mac" sticker on the box. I don't remember.
The next time you walk in your neighborhood superstore, do some comparison shopping between the Mac & PC sections for hardware bits (keyboards, mice, hard drives). In a lot of cases, you'll see the original SKU covered by a sticker with the "Mac Pricing" sku/barcode for widgets that are available in two different parts of the store.
Back to my point -- since the widespread advent of the 'Net, a lot of Mac users ignore the "Mac Sections" of those stores for everything but (2-year-old and "premium" priced) games and either pick up the comparable widget from across the store, or order the stuff online. Because they know better.
I'd imagine that it's skewing the sales figures pretty heavily and isn't showing a true picture of the platform distribution -- which in turn drives prices up again and gets products discontinued.
Then (even further afield) you've got products like the Creative Mac Blaster -- which never worked and never will work, but we still paid a premium for.
Make no mistake: value-add hardware is priced just under the average "threshold of pain" for the target market -- and there's a feeling in the industry that Mac users have even more cash to throw around than die-hard gamers.
$299 up until 3 weeks ago. It's $229 now that the 9000 is out.
An ATI Radeon 8500 OEM card for wintel cost $99. Non-OEMs cost about $129.
The difference?
Zilch. Zero. Fuck all.
A sticker, a box, and just a few k on the flash rom.
Not to plead the case of the poor-trod-upon-mac-nazi, but...
nVidia Geforce 4 Ti dual-head for PC: $199
nVidia Geforce 4 Ti dual-head for the Mac: $399 (as of today)
I guess my point is that some of us have it worse than you might imagine.
C'mon, everyone knows you can only use an uzi for a drive-by, not a tommy gun.
Geez, get modern or something!
I have to agree.
I've got a lease with an option to buy on a female geek unit right now.
She's not allowed near *my* kitchen. To be cliche, she could burn water. Even in the microwave.
Perhaps newer models have 1337 cooking skillz, but I have a substantial investment in my current model and wouldn't want to part with it just yet.
We'll see once the '03s come out, though.
I have to concur. We used the original Gyromouse (4 or 5 years ago) for presentations and the like.
For presentations where you're just doing left click/right click and maybe mapping a button to "home" they're okay. Once you switch to controlling the actual cursor, all bets are off though.
Let's just say that it takes a large amount of practice with one of these to even hit a menu.
So, to recap, you won't be fragging anyone with these. Your wrist doesn't have the control that your hand does, and once you learn how to use them -- you have to use them VERY slowly.
What a wonderful idea!
Now I've got a new use for all those tradeshow shirts that they used to give away before the economy went all to hell.
Who says AskSlash isn't worth a shit?