The roots of OSX, namely Rhapsody, OpenStep, and NeXTSTEP all had x86 versions. In fact, they also had Sparc, Moto 68K and HP Gecko versions as well.
We are not talking about making an x86 port, a port existed with the codebase Apple obtained when it purchased NeXT. If Apple would not continue to maintain the x86 port as a hedge bet against Motorola's lack of ability to ramp up the speeds of their PowerPC chip, then they took a very big risk.
Continuing to keep the x86 codebase in line with the recent versions of OS X would be a very nice alternative just in case IBM and their PPC 970 crapped out and failed to deliver. After all, they would just have to maintain the code and keep it up with the current PPC release. As long as it compiles and runs (to some degree), they are mostly there.
That way, they could switch themselves over to the best offerings from Intel and/or AMD at a moment's notice rather than get caught with sub 2 GHz G4's for the next 2-3 years until a rushed port is available. Or worse yet, Motorola decides to sell off or get out of the CPU business.
Ano gaijin wa aho desu ka? Iie, oshiri boushi to iimasu ne.
I commend your use of keigo but it isn't totally warranted in this case. Ano yatsu aho ka? (Said to friend) Chigau, ketsu-boushi da. (oshiri is polite form like "bottom" or "butt". Ketsu is more vulgar, closer to the meaning "ass". I've never heard Japanese refer to the sphincter as ohshiri-no-ana, only as ketsu-no-ana, anaru, or komon)
If you are wondering where I picked most of this up, you get to learn a lot in Akihabara watching some kids teach Sega's Seaman to talk in Japanese.
You may find it interesting to know that in T1 there was an Arnold "weenie shot". Evidently he's better endowed than most, or the night wasn't all that cold, 'cause he was flappin out of the shadow just before the "wash day, nothing to wear" scene.
Frightening to think of what a Terminator would do with it. The female counterpart in Kei Mizutani's Terminatrix had a clever use for her naughty bits.
Sperm whales deep-dive after giant squid. Baleen whales eat krill and other *small* ocean invertebrates. The dead humpback found near the "mass" is a baleen whale.
I drive both an Auto and a Manual. The manual is not a problem at all in the city. In fact, it is considerably more fun.
It only becomes a hassle when traffic is stop and go from 0-4MPH then back to 0. Or to state it another way, advancing one car length at a time. Spend about 10-15 minutes in this and you and your clutch will be hating life.
Here in Los Angeles, I always try to maintain a safe distance and keep several car lengths between me and the car I am following.
Unfortunately for most drivers, just one "car length" means "I can change lanes and drive here" and cut you off.
So basically you have to keep hitting the brakes because asshats decide to use your buffer zone because they decided that your lane is going.01 MPH faster than the one they were in originally.
Possibly. My GPS periodically loses signals due to trees, buildings and such. When the signal comes back on, it goes from the last point measured to the current point.
Instantly.
I've had it record speeds in excess of 230MPH... in a Toyota Camry.
Not too expensive, like $100. This company sells a speedo calibrator to compensate for tire size and gearing changes.
Re:it's not my kind of hobby, but...
on
Geocaching Crackdown?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Who's to say the cache sites need to be obvious or posted?
The park ranger can know the locations of the approved cache sites and visitors need not know about them. Just a posted sign saying to contact the ranger before leaving or moving an existing cache. That way the ranger knows the exact location of each cache and everyone's happy.
Either do that, or paint big black blotches on the park maps stating "spoiler alert".
Inference and aggregation are two big problems with database security.
Another possible use/misuse of this info:
Assume 10 years from now, satellite and digital cable become commonplace, and PVR functionality is built into the decoder boxes. Tivo is also alive and well.
Suddenly an Amber alert is released in a nearby community and a little girl turns up missing. The police then demand records from the PVR companies on a fishing expedition to find possible suspects... and you watched Kubrick's Lolita last week.
Yes, but I have a feeling it will affect the resale value of my property. Can I get the homeowner's association to draft up some rules on viewing habits now?
I had the opposite experience. I called Covad and they told me my nearest exchange was 50 miles away.
The funny thing is I live in Los Angeles, 50 miles in any direction would take me completely out of of the city.
I called them and tried to let them know of their mistake and they refused to listen. I gave them the location of the exchange (about 1.5 miles away) they said the distance didn't matter, it was the length of the wire between them and my house. I agreed and stated that if the exchange was 1.5 miles away, how exactly did they run the phone lines to my house? Did they spiral them in? They had no answer for that, but said they and their computer don't make mistakes and it was impossible to get ADSL service.
I called up Verizon later that afternoon, they verified that I was about 1.5 miles away and qualified me for every level of service.
I explained my dealings with Covad, and the rep at Verizon laughed and told me Covad colocates their equipment in the same building. They also laughed at the 50 mile distance and told me if that was the case, they would be suprised if my phone worked at all.
That's a crapload of customers being passed over and handed to the regional Bells because of stupidity on the part of Covad. Because of that, I have little sympathy for them.
As for customer service, I leave them alone (I run my own mail and web servers) and they leave me alone (I have a business DSL account, so servers are allowed). An excellent arrangement for the two of us. All they provide is a reliable pipe to send/receive data.
Re:Wait wait wait wait wait...
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
I do. It's Pixar. They probably use Macs.
Anyhow, they actually had Sun servers, now they have an 8-blade rack system with 1,024 2.8GHz Intel Xeon processors.
Anyhow, there was an article here recently that stated Pixar bought a ton of new Intel boxes so there you go.
Re:Wait wait wait wait wait...
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
I'm also sure the "8 hours per frame" is also a rough guess. Maybe it takes 7.5 hours, maybe 8.49 hours. Is it an average? Who knows. Some frames can take 30 seconds, some can take 4 days.
The point is since we are spouting off "rough" numbers, then stating a speed increase with 100% efficiency due to 8 CPUs is just as valid since all we are doing are silly wild-assed guesses.
You can't. You can patent methods, so all you have to do is:
cat patent_application | sed s/algorithm/method/g > new_patent_application
There you go! And I saved you thousands in legal fees. For my next trick, I'll show you how to patent common business methods on the internet. Here's how:
Take an existing business method, preferably one that cannot be patented like:
Receiving payment from a customer for a good or service.
Now add the magic substitution:
Receiving payment from a customer for a good or service on the Internet.
And there's plenty more where that came from. It's a brave new world!
My university here in California teaches a course similar to this at the 4th year undergrad or graduate level.
I just finished writing my final exam (actually, a report) in the "Network Security" class. It was actually quite fun. The class is divided into several teams of 3 or 4 students and each team sets up an e-commerce site that is visited by an administrative team that logs successful transactions from their own machines.
Each team's job is to keep their site up while simultaneously trying to knock other teams off of the network. Each site uses two machines with two different operating systems: Redhat 8 and Windows XP professional.
Needless to say, we checked the security and hacking sites several times a day to make sure to be aware of new exploits creeping out.
Hack sessions were "anything goes", we basically progressed from larval stage (script kiddie) to juvenile (perl, java and C based exploits.
No one wrote any new exploits this time around, but a whole new batch of wet-behind-the-ears "hackers" are released from this univeristy every semester.
Of course, the purpose of the class is to create an environment where teams can learn about security by practicing the arts of the "Black Hat". It was surely the most fun I have had yet in the university.
No harpoon, but I did see a video once of a device that is basically looks like a rocket-powered skateboard that launches from the front of the patrol car, pops up a couple of electrodes and runs under the fleeing car, shorting out the ignition system.
It was pretty cool, and lots safer than a harpoon.
Why charge just the hosting site? They just send plain ol' text and images. The pop-ups are generated on the client side.
He should bill all the end users every time their browser violates his patent. If that proves too onerous, force a monthly fee levied on customers by the ISP.
I mean, if you are going to get greedy on the patent gravy train, you might as well go all out, no one's going to stop you for 20 years.
The tests were said to have been performed on 32-bit apps on a 64-bit version of the OS. They also claimed no speed penalty in doing so. This is why (again stated in the article) Apple is choosing to release now instead of porting everything over to 64-bits first.
Granted, this is all still rumors and speculation as far as I am concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
The roots of OSX, namely Rhapsody, OpenStep, and NeXTSTEP all had x86 versions. In fact, they also had Sparc, Moto 68K and HP Gecko versions as well.
We are not talking about making an x86 port, a port existed with the codebase Apple obtained when it purchased NeXT. If Apple would not continue to maintain the x86 port as a hedge bet against Motorola's lack of ability to ramp up the speeds of their PowerPC chip, then they took a very big risk.
Continuing to keep the x86 codebase in line with the recent versions of OS X would be a very nice alternative just in case IBM and their PPC 970 crapped out and failed to deliver. After all, they would just have to maintain the code and keep it up with the current PPC release. As long as it compiles and runs (to some degree), they are mostly there.
That way, they could switch themselves over to the best offerings from Intel and/or AMD at a moment's notice rather than get caught with sub 2 GHz G4's for the next 2-3 years until a rushed port is available. Or worse yet, Motorola decides to sell off or get out of the CPU business.
I commend your use of keigo but it isn't totally warranted in this case.
Ano yatsu aho ka? (Said to friend)
Chigau, ketsu-boushi da. (oshiri is polite form like "bottom" or "butt". Ketsu is more vulgar, closer to the meaning "ass". I've never heard Japanese refer to the sphincter as ohshiri-no-ana, only as ketsu-no-ana, anaru, or komon)
If you are wondering where I picked most of this up, you get to learn a lot in Akihabara watching some kids teach Sega's Seaman to talk in Japanese.
You may find it interesting to know that in T1 there was an Arnold "weenie shot". Evidently he's better endowed than most, or the night wasn't all that cold, 'cause he was flappin out of the shadow just before the "wash day, nothing to wear" scene.
Frightening to think of what a Terminator would do with it. The female counterpart in Kei Mizutani's Terminatrix had a clever use for her naughty bits.
Sperm whales deep-dive after giant squid. Baleen whales eat krill and other *small* ocean invertebrates. The dead humpback found near the "mass" is a baleen whale.
The ATI 9800 Pro is a $300 add-on option.
Mail.app has been around in one version or another since NeXT in 1988 or so.
It's had quite a long development cycle. In fact, there are still a few holdovers from the old days:
If you turn off the "Display Images" in HTML mail, you will see the purple squares that were seen quite often in Mail.app in NeXTSTEP 3.3
I drive both an Auto and a Manual. The manual is not a problem at all in the city. In fact, it is considerably more fun.
It only becomes a hassle when traffic is stop and go from 0-4MPH then back to 0. Or to state it another way, advancing one car length at a time. Spend about 10-15 minutes in this and you and your clutch will be hating life.
Depends on the driving habits of your local city.
.01 MPH faster than the one they were in originally.
Here in Los Angeles, I always try to maintain a safe distance and keep several car lengths between me and the car I am following.
Unfortunately for most drivers, just one "car length" means "I can change lanes and drive here" and cut you off.
So basically you have to keep hitting the brakes because asshats decide to use your buffer zone because they decided that your lane is going
Yeah, Tom Hanks was pushing this technology in the movie "Big". That's where I heard it before.
Possibly. My GPS periodically loses signals due to trees, buildings and such. When the signal comes back on, it goes from the last point measured to the current point.
Instantly.
I've had it record speeds in excess of 230MPH... in a Toyota Camry.
Not too expensive, like $100. This company sells a speedo calibrator to compensate for tire size and gearing changes.
Who's to say the cache sites need to be obvious or posted?
The park ranger can know the locations of the approved cache sites and visitors need not know about them. Just a posted sign saying to contact the ranger before leaving or moving an existing cache. That way the ranger knows the exact location of each cache and everyone's happy.
Either do that, or paint big black blotches on the park maps stating "spoiler alert".
Yes, I'm only giving an example. However, I do believe if the info is there it will be used or abused for all of our "common good".
If marketing would love to pry into our viewing habits, so would big government keeping tabs on citizens and law enforcement looking for leads.
"They" already want to know what books you read, why wouldn't they want to know what shows you watch as well?
Inference and aggregation are two big problems with database security.
Another possible use/misuse of this info:
Assume 10 years from now, satellite and digital cable become commonplace, and PVR functionality is built into the decoder boxes. Tivo is also alive and well.
Suddenly an Amber alert is released in a nearby community and a little girl turns up missing. The police then demand records from the PVR companies on a fishing expedition to find possible suspects... and you watched Kubrick's Lolita last week.
Yes, but I have a feeling it will affect the resale value of my property. Can I get the homeowner's association to draft up some rules on viewing habits now?
Sincerely,
A Concerned NIMBY
I had the opposite experience. I called Covad and they told me my nearest exchange was 50 miles away.
The funny thing is I live in Los Angeles, 50 miles in any direction would take me completely out of of the city.
I called them and tried to let them know of their mistake and they refused to listen. I gave them the location of the exchange (about 1.5 miles away) they said the distance didn't matter, it was the length of the wire between them and my house. I agreed and stated that if the exchange was 1.5 miles away, how exactly did they run the phone lines to my house? Did they spiral them in? They had no answer for that, but said they and their computer don't make mistakes and it was impossible to get ADSL service.
I called up Verizon later that afternoon, they verified that I was about 1.5 miles away and qualified me for every level of service.
I explained my dealings with Covad, and the rep at Verizon laughed and told me Covad colocates their equipment in the same building. They also laughed at the 50 mile distance and told me if that was the case, they would be suprised if my phone worked at all.
That's a crapload of customers being passed over and handed to the regional Bells because of stupidity on the part of Covad. Because of that, I have little sympathy for them.
As for customer service, I leave them alone (I run my own mail and web servers) and they leave me alone (I have a business DSL account, so servers are allowed). An excellent arrangement for the two of us. All they provide is a reliable pipe to send/receive data.
I do. It's Pixar. They probably use Macs.
Anyhow, they actually had Sun servers, now they have an 8-blade rack system with 1,024 2.8GHz Intel Xeon processors.
Anyhow, there was an article here recently that stated Pixar bought a ton of new Intel boxes so there you go.
I'm also sure the "8 hours per frame" is also a rough guess. Maybe it takes 7.5 hours, maybe 8.49 hours. Is it an average? Who knows. Some frames can take 30 seconds, some can take 4 days.
The point is since we are spouting off "rough" numbers, then stating a speed increase with 100% efficiency due to 8 CPUs is just as valid since all we are doing are silly wild-assed guesses.
You can't. You can patent methods, so all you have to do is:
cat patent_application | sed s/algorithm/method/g > new_patent_application
There you go! And I saved you thousands in legal fees. For my next trick, I'll show you how to patent common business methods on the internet. Here's how:
Take an existing business method, preferably one that cannot be patented like:
Receiving payment from a customer for a good or service.
Now add the magic substitution:
Receiving payment from a customer for a good or service on the Internet.
And there's plenty more where that came from. It's a brave new world!
My university here in California teaches a course similar to this at the 4th year undergrad or graduate level.
I just finished writing my final exam (actually, a report) in the "Network Security" class. It was actually quite fun. The class is divided into several teams of 3 or 4 students and each team sets up an e-commerce site that is visited by an administrative team that logs successful transactions from their own machines.
Each team's job is to keep their site up while simultaneously trying to knock other teams off of the network. Each site uses two machines with two different operating systems: Redhat 8 and Windows XP professional.
Needless to say, we checked the security and hacking sites several times a day to make sure to be aware of new exploits creeping out.
Hack sessions were "anything goes", we basically progressed from larval stage (script kiddie) to juvenile (perl, java and C based exploits.
No one wrote any new exploits this time around, but a whole new batch of wet-behind-the-ears "hackers" are released from this univeristy every semester.
Of course, the purpose of the class is to create an environment where teams can learn about security by practicing the arts of the "Black Hat". It was surely the most fun I have had yet in the university.
No harpoon, but I did see a video once of a device that is basically looks like a rocket-powered skateboard that launches from the front of the patrol car, pops up a couple of electrodes and runs under the fleeing car, shorting out the ignition system.
It was pretty cool, and lots safer than a harpoon.
Heck, in NeXTSTEP, earlier versions of Ominweb even "blocked" animated GIFs by only displaying the first frame.
Funny how innovative that company was, there were hardly any banners, let alone animated ones back then too.
It's great how in hindsight you can take a software shortcoming and turn it into a great feature.
Why charge just the hosting site? They just send plain ol' text and images. The pop-ups are generated on the client side.
He should bill all the end users every time their browser violates his patent. If that proves too onerous, force a monthly fee levied on customers by the ISP.
I mean, if you are going to get greedy on the patent gravy train, you might as well go all out, no one's going to stop you for 20 years.
Just remember: 2.54cm/inch, or 25.4mm/inch. I tried to get the dimensions to match up the best I could:
Nomad: 112.6 x 75.9 x 24.5 mm
Ipod: 104.1 x 58.8 x 18.54 mm
-or-
Nomad: 4.43 by 2.99 by 0.96 inches
Ipod: 4.1 by 2.4 by 0.73 inches
The tests were said to have been performed on 32-bit apps on a 64-bit version of the OS. They also claimed no speed penalty in doing so. This is why (again stated in the article) Apple is choosing to release now instead of porting everything over to 64-bits first.
Granted, this is all still rumors and speculation as far as I am concerned.