A little more accurate picture of what has happened to the four versions of NWN (To fill holes):
Windows - Late, but available
Linux - Later, but getting available
MacOS - Handed to MacSoft to finish, even Later.
BeOS - Not gonna happen.
What I find the most funny part of all this is that by handing the Mac version to MacSoft, Bioware essentially just handed over tens of millions of dollars of profit over to them as well (Since MacSoft won't port if they can't make money off of it).
I see complaining about this type of practice: leaving ports to other companies that release it later. To be honest, this is how the Mac gaming market has become over the past 5 years as formerly Mac-centric game makers have gotten eaten up by PC-centric companies like the Maxis -> EA sellout (and EA used to have a good Mac dept too) and the Bungie -> MS sellout. Loki wasn't the greatest, BUT a business model around porting games to other OSes can be very profitable. MacSoft, Aspyr, Westlake, OmniGroup and others have made a decent living from doing this, as well as doing some decent-quality ports. (OmniGroup ported Oni to OS X, in Obj-C, releasing the update for free online simply because the Carbon version was buggy under OS X... that takes some guts)
Outsourcing ports like this isn't a bad thing (although it prevents the one-box idea), since I would more rather see more porting to Linux/Mac happening. If the company that makes the game says no internally, they might be willing to say yes to another company. If that company starts saying yes to other companies, then more games will reach your hands if you prefer to use Linux/MacOS
Counterexample: (I swear, this HAS actually happened to me)... (And yes, this IS offtopic)
I had to reinstall Windows because I installed Windows on a freshly formatted hard disk. The only apps I had installed after the initial Windows install was all the service packs and updates from MS for Win98 (that seemed reasonable: critical updates, IE6, OE6, WMP7, DX8)... Then after a restart I got a dialog that said 'Re-install Windows'. Go figure.
Up a little late or something? He did mention he could be wrong, so I don't see why you had to get that snippy.
Apple may not have actually developed much in the way of new wide-spread technologies, but it sure can popularize the ones that are good ideas (USB is one of them).
1) Read the spec sheets for the higher-speed versions of Firewire in the works. If you see one that isn't backwards compatible, give me a link. I have yet to see one of the proposed specs NOT include complete backwards compatibility. Now if you are talking about FORWARDS compatibility (using USB2 devices on a USB1.1 bus), then you may have a point, since I haven't bothered checking the specs on that one.
2) When did Firewire suddenly NEED to be backwards/forwards compatible RIGHT NOW? With only one version of the spec for manufacture and use in the market, your entire argument is pointless, since there is no Firewire2 spec. If there was, *AND* if you were actually right about the compatibility between Firewire specs, then you might have something.
Which is what I was trying to point out to people. They complain it is slower as if that extra stage doesn't exist. I was trying to point out the difference/increase lies in the most CPU-intensive part of the graphics system, where current consumer 2D card technology cannot help out.
Also on the topic of the other poster commenting on the primitives: Yeah, but the most COMMON transfer is pixel-by-pixel blitting of some kind, and second is having the card draw a rect of a solid color (for screen clearing usually). Both of these are supported under both systems. Screen-to-screen blits are included as a pixel-by-pixel blit (which MacOS X does take advantage of). Lines are not very commonly used, and for the most part, and text display is really just a pixel-by-pixel blit where some offscreen buffer on the card can be used to accelerate it. This last one is usually implemented on a card-specific basis, and so it isn't used in all situations by all cards.
Ahem, I would like to point out that 2D acceleration only affects blitting at this stage. This goes for PC and Mac. So Windows is still doing quite a bit on the CPU (rendering it to a buffer), but only has 2 steps (Render, Blit Buffer to Card).
With Quartz, you have 3 steps ('Rasterize', Render, Blit Buffer to Card). You still are having 2D acceleration there, but the majority of the time spent in any 2D/3D app these days is in the Rasterize/Render stages, not the blitting stage. Especially with video cards that speed up the blitting process quite a bit. Double buffering in software is a nice hunk of CPU time as well.
Rather interesting tack you take at defending MS' position. Unfortunately, like the defense MS is currently putting up, it does have holes. This isn't to say MS can't defend itself, I am just saying it is doing a rather piss-poor job by using the English language against itself.
1) Just because you remove a component, doesn't mean you ruin the OS. Core functionality should be at the core of the system (gee, large leap o' logic).
2) Unless you can back up your 'states want money' statement, I don't believe it. I haven't seen requests/statements from the states asking for cash, but rather for action.
3) In probably the largest leap of logic I will make in this post, I will actually show how MS could have defended itself:
- First, I would drop all the gross abuse of the English language. All it is doing is making it look like MS is hiding something, even if it isn't.
- Second, I would be pressing on the fact that the industry NEEDS a standard, and that competition in this arena isn't always a good thing (even if I don't agree with that statement).
- Third, I would also try to convince the people involved that having one company produce the 'whole widget' can improve overall consistency in the user interaction, since one mindset created the UI in all the applications. (I don't agree with this one either)
See, it isn't difficult for MS to defend itself without having to go into the techno mumbo-jumbo field where they can easily be met with a few thousand programmers coughing 'Bullsh*t' in unison. To be perfectly honest, as a programmer myself, I find MS' defense weak and clouded in a bunch of 'we are magicians of the computer' mysticism which I find pitiful. The computer is a tool, and a rather simple one at that (from my viewpoint, others will disagree). It isn't like MS is the god of the box and is the only one that knows how it works. Get some of the other experts who have worked on other recent OSes like from the Be team, Apple's OS X team, IBM's old OS/2 team, even Linus would be a good expert to bring on this.
I guess what I am saying in a nutshell is that MS is not going to win by stating technological reasons, it can win by dealing with human reason.
No hard feelings, it is just that DivX;-) and MPEG-4 has become the target of some ugly FUD, and it helps both to clear it up (hopefully both). I do know MPEG-4 will do one major thing well that DivX is having problems doing at all: streaming. Hopefully when the licensing issues are sorted out, we will see the Sorenson-encoded trailers online switch to MPEG-4, which have a good shot at allowing non-QT streaming clients to view them.
Anyways, you are right about games driving the market. Games drive consumer hardware development, and video/server applications driver pro/server end hardware development.
If it wasn't for games, video and server applictions, we would *ALL* still be sitting on pre-ATA/66 IDE buses, with a 66Mhz FSB, and 300Mhz CPUs. Without those taxing applications, there wouldn't have been a need to push forward like many have.
This does beg the question, why did it take Apple so long to switch to ATA-100 in the PowerMac line? Another question I have is, what HDs are currently capable of saturating 100MB/sec buses? Sure you can have 2 on each channel, and max out each at 50MB/sec, but which ones are available? The highest I have seen HDs go so far are 40MB/sec sustained for ATA buses.
Oi, I am not keeping my stories straight? Point out where I contradicted myself. I dare you. MPEG-4 is the standard set forth by the board setting the standard. This standard includes strict guidelines on how MPEG-4 codecs *AND* files are supposed to work. The group working on DivX;-) never consulted with these guys on this, or even followed their guidelines.. here are a couple of reasons why it isn't MPEG-4:
1) It does not completely follow the final guidelines put forth by the standard for MPEG-4 video codecs.
2) It isn't available using the MPEG-4 file format, which was based on the QT4 streaming format, not the AVI format, and DivX;-) manages to even break AVI to some extent. QT has AVI support, but the MP3 support slammed into the AVI for DivX;-) doesn't completely follow the AVI spec, and so QT cuts out after the first half-second or so.
3) DivX;-), in using MP3 and WMA for the audio, goes outside the MPEG-4 spec by using an MPEG-1 and proprietary audio technology. The current audio codec that seems to be getting pushed is Dobly's AAC codec they produced awhile back hoping to get it used in DVDs. I am not aware if it was accepter there or not.
4) MPEG-4 video codecs are supposed to be fairly cross-compatible from my understanding, encoding with one codec and decoding with another should be little to no problem, as long as they are BOTH MPEG-4 compliant. DivX;-) doesn't do this.
There is a huge difference between MPEG-4 based, and MPEG-4 compliant. DivX;-) is MPEG-4 based. Apple's QT6 has MPEG-4 compliance with its support. You have fallen into the FUD trap started by some poor ignorant fool who mistook the 'MPEG-4 based'
phrase on the DivX site to mean 'This is really MPEG-4!'.
As I stated, as it stands now, it is illegal to release any true MPEG-4 encoder/decoder to the public, since you have to pay royalties to the MPEG LA. However, since the MPEG LA hasn't finalized their licensing scheme for MPEG-4, nobody is going to pay out royalties to them until they nail it down. Plus, the current working license requires content creators/replicators/publishers to pay out royalties to them, and this is pissing quite a few people off. NEVER make the mistake of thinking DivX;-) is MPEG-4, as it never was, isn't, and unless they make a fairly large effort, will never even be compliant. 3ivX is the same way, but was aimed at taking out DivX;-) as a truely cross-platform solution, with smaller bitrates than DivX;-) for the same quality.
Sure DivX;-) is good right now as a solution for distributing online video, especially bootlegs of movies (which seem to be the main reason, backups I understand, but the majority of the use has been digital bootlegging and leeching) and digital anime fansubs (which can also be argued as bootlegging depending on your POV). Some people have been distributing work in DivX;-) which is a good thing.
The source of the DivX;-) codec is true as I stated, as the first true player for the Mac used the MSMPEG4v3 ASF codec in WMP 6.3 to play the video. As DivX;-) has grown, they removed their hooks into the Microsoft codec. I would seriously doubt if MS would let them go public if they didn't. Your statement of non-support for MacOS, go to divx.com and look on the downloads page for the 4.11 alpha drivers they recently released. For alpha they are actually very usable and stable. They only lack the speed that the 3rd party solutions have. The issue with 'no sound' is because of the odd abnormal method they are storing sound in the AVI file, and that is easily corrected with the DivX tools available for the Mac.
Also, I got 256MB of RAM for this thing, 2 FPM DIMMs for 70$, still more than I would be paying for a decent PC133, but isn't the 300+$ you claim, and your price for the PC RAM is off as well, I can get 256MB for about 50$. Question I have is, why grab an ATA card for an old machine when you can use FW? I can grab a 60GB FW drive for 200$, and switching to a new machine, I would be better off getting an external that I can use more easily, even if I get a laptop. That saves a slot, and takes the price to get USB/FW down to 50$ (20$ USB card, 30$ FW card). I wouldn't dare upgrade the CPU, since the bus can't handle it. Better save the money for a new machine.
I have one very serious question: How the hell can you encode to MPEG4 in real-time if there aren't any commercially available MPEG4-compliant encoders on the market because of licensing not being nailed down by the board yet?
DivX;-) is a hacked codec which originated as MS' submission to try to get them to use ASF as the MPEG4 file format, which failed. MS wrote the codec (which is now WMV7) to help demonstrate the advantages of using ASF. This codec was then plugged into for the first couple of versions of DivX;-), hence the smiley. Then with 4.x, they moved over to their own codebase.
If you are going to bash a group for something, get the facts straight. I can view DivX on this Mac, and the DivX programming group even released their own codec for MacOS 9/X users. Not to mention DivX Player for OS 9 users, and Jamby's DivX component for QT under OS X, plus others have given Jamby's CLI tools a decent GUI interface so that converting the hacked AVI format to something QT can natively read is easy (the DivX hack produced non-standard AVI files, and QT chokes on non-standard AVI files).
The thing is, your posts has holes, and isn't even on-topic. If you are going to use this board to bash us, at least do it over the topic.
Suffice it to say, I have a pre-G3 8600 @ 300Mhz which runs pretty damn well. PDF is not an issue in readability or speed, especially when running OS X (unsupported) on this machine. However, I do realize this 5-year-old machine doesn't do what I need it to these days, and a jump to a better machine will do me a world of good for the arenas I intend to enter after college.
On the topic itself, this is hardly new, and as one person pointed out, the 48-bit addressing can be done in software. Or as another person pointed out, get the free ATA133 card that comes with most large HDs from Maxtor or Western Digital, or whatever. This isn't exactly a Mac-only issue, has been around for awhile, and I am not even sure why it was posted in the Apple section. I ask, should this ARTICLE be moderated as (-1, Flamebait)?
Uh, if you want to look at it with blinders on, go ahead. It is actually due to the fact that MacOS X uses a very cleaned up, and strict driver interface to hardware that also allows apps to get access to drivers without compromising any sort of protected memory boundary. Everything is layered to the point where every driver calls upon a shared library to talk to the hardware, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel (and sometimes getting it wrong). Less chance for conflict if all your drivers are partitioned out from each other where they can't do damage to each other.
threaten to sic the hounds of the DMCA on him as well? Afterall, if you are buying a circumvention device from him, isn't he traffiking in illegal goods?
Somewhat seriously, this is nuts. This is my first post on a topic like this on Slashdot, and the whole situation is nuts. These guys have so much fscking money, they manage to lobby laws that benefit so few, but fsck over so many, it is practically unconstitional (the spirit never meant for stupid bull like this to happen, but the wording never truly prevents it).
Even worse, small-fry 'customer service agents' are starting to spout the propaganda that got people to accept this in the first place. MS even uses piracy as an excuse for extortion. Let me put it this way: Apple charges 130$ for MacOS X and MacOS 9 in the same box (9 is used for the Classic layer), and when the next major upgrade comes out, it will be the same (if 9 is still included) or drop back to 100$ if they remove 9. SuSE and RH sell Linux even cheaper (excuse me, the support and documentation, the discs are 'free'). MS does not need to be charging over 300$ for an OS with no bundled software. 99$ for the 'upgrade' cost would get me the full install CD of any other OS. MS is pulling the same 'piracy hurts me badly' stunt that the RIAA and MPAA are using to justify fscking their customers.
On a side note: my MP3 collection has breached 3GB in size, still growing, still legal. Most of the music I listen to isn't sold anywhere, so I listen to the many independant artists online who sell their wares or share their music online in MP3 format. RIAA be damned, if they don't want to support a nice wide variety of music and get it out to the people, then they aren't getting my money, 'encryption' or no 'encryption'.
Yes, I am responding to myself so I can respond to both posters who responded... (And note that yes, why would Linux users pay for MS Office when there is a viable alternative maturing as we speak?)
The thing is porting an app that uses the now non-existant APIs in MacOS 9 is really a pain in the butt... I started work on one of these suckers (roughly about 7 million lines after header inclusion as reported by Codewarrior... actually a little under 1 million on its own), and I can say the time spent on it was just not worth it for the client. Well over 6000 compiler errors after the switch (and some changes to the code already), many more linker errors, as well as the runtime glitches introduced during the fixing process.
If you didn't actually follow Apple's guides on accessing their APIs (which most didn't to achieve special results), you were in for some big trouble in porting. Most of the smaller 3rd party apps came over just fine, but the bigger and more complicated the app, the more like porting to a brand new OS it is.
On the topic of being able to port Cocoa over to GNUStep... how? Was an Obj-C library introduced that actually matches up (for the most part) with Apple's Obj-C library? It would be rather interesting to see, but there would still be API issues. Apple made changes to the structure of NeXT's Obj-C library to make it more at home with OS X, Quartz, and OpenGL. So at the very least, it would be just as nasty as porting a Classic app to Carbon.
He is absolutely right, but what is really bad is that not only does it not use X11, it doesn't use anything even remotely POSIX-compliant (AFAIK) anywhere. Carbon is as he said, a transitional API.
They hacked off the parts of the MacOS 9 APIs that would be too difficult to implement in OS X's environment (especially things like OS traps that opened up potential conflicts and created instability). Unfortunately, a lot of things in OS 9 required these traps to work correctly instead of access sockets to other processes and the like. This makes it difficult for programmers that worked with these unusual parts of the APIs just to port to Carbon.
Cocoa is even worse to port to, since you have to write the app from scratch. The good news is that a Cocoa app is setup in such a way that Apple can add new features or tweak with the UI slightly and the app will automagically adapt without needing an update.
Porting either Carbon or Cocoa over to another *nix is as difficult as porting Win32 code to a *nix. Of course, some of these apps being written to be run as daemons under OS X with the POSIX libraries will be rather easy to port to another *nix, the problem being: They are trying to make money off of a webserver, ftp server, etc. Marketting to a group already with free ftpd and apache is a tough sell. MS Office could be just as tough a sell once OpenOffice truly matures.
Interesting that despite the age of this (the cap was put in before we were 'installed'), it is still a very active topic.
In our area, Seattle, we have indeed been capped to 1.5Mbps (192KB/sec) downstream and 128Kbps (16KB/sec) upstream. I have been stuck on 56k for the past few years, so I really can't complain about the speeds. Sure it would be nice to be getting 4Mbps (~525KB/sec) downstream, but the thing is, I was getting lousy 56Kbps downstream before, and am only paying 20$ a month until around May due to a promotion. Extra money I am paying now: 0$, extra I will pay when it goes back to 35$ a month: 15$. So much extra for so little is a boon.
Now to comment on Comcast buying AT&T, Comcast's site is currently advertising the exact same cap as AT&T: 1.5Mbps down, 128Kbps up. (Although your milage may vary, as usual) This should mean that AT&T users, no matter how pissed off so far, should not be losing any more bandwidth when AT&T Comcast is formed.
One of the reasons I think @Home failed: Morpheus users saturing the bandwidth 24/7 when Excite was dumb enough to not cap the cable when they said they would. Obviously not just Morpheus users, but when my friend was traffiking over 2GB of movies, mp3s, etc each day, Excite had to foot the bill. Multiply that buy a couple thousand and you get my point. Pathetic.
Slashdot Mirror
A little more accurate picture of what has happened to the four versions of NWN (To fill holes):
Windows - Late, but available
Linux - Later, but getting available
MacOS - Handed to MacSoft to finish, even Later.
BeOS - Not gonna happen.
What I find the most funny part of all this is that by handing the Mac version to MacSoft, Bioware essentially just handed over tens of millions of dollars of profit over to them as well (Since MacSoft won't port if they can't make money off of it).
I see complaining about this type of practice: leaving ports to other companies that release it later. To be honest, this is how the Mac gaming market has become over the past 5 years as formerly Mac-centric game makers have gotten eaten up by PC-centric companies like the Maxis -> EA sellout (and EA used to have a good Mac dept too) and the Bungie -> MS sellout. Loki wasn't the greatest, BUT a business model around porting games to other OSes can be very profitable. MacSoft, Aspyr, Westlake, OmniGroup and others have made a decent living from doing this, as well as doing some decent-quality ports. (OmniGroup ported Oni to OS X, in Obj-C, releasing the update for free online simply because the Carbon version was buggy under OS X... that takes some guts)
Outsourcing ports like this isn't a bad thing (although it prevents the one-box idea), since I would more rather see more porting to Linux/Mac happening. If the company that makes the game says no internally, they might be willing to say yes to another company. If that company starts saying yes to other companies, then more games will reach your hands if you prefer to use Linux/MacOS
Counterexample: (I swear, this HAS actually happened to me)... (And yes, this IS offtopic)
I had to reinstall Windows because I installed Windows on a freshly formatted hard disk. The only apps I had installed after the initial Windows install was all the service packs and updates from MS for Win98 (that seemed reasonable: critical updates, IE6, OE6, WMP7, DX8)... Then after a restart I got a dialog that said 'Re-install Windows'. Go figure.
Up a little late or something? He did mention he could be wrong, so I don't see why you had to get that snippy.
Apple may not have actually developed much in the way of new wide-spread technologies, but it sure can popularize the ones that are good ideas (USB is one of them).
Backwards compatibility?
1) Read the spec sheets for the higher-speed versions of Firewire in the works. If you see one that isn't backwards compatible, give me a link. I have yet to see one of the proposed specs NOT include complete backwards compatibility. Now if you are talking about FORWARDS compatibility (using USB2 devices on a USB1.1 bus), then you may have a point, since I haven't bothered checking the specs on that one.
2) When did Firewire suddenly NEED to be backwards/forwards compatible RIGHT NOW? With only one version of the spec for manufacture and use in the market, your entire argument is pointless, since there is no Firewire2 spec. If there was, *AND* if you were actually right about the compatibility between Firewire specs, then you might have something.
3) Did you post while low on sleep?
Which is what I was trying to point out to people. They complain it is slower as if that extra stage doesn't exist. I was trying to point out the difference/increase lies in the most CPU-intensive part of the graphics system, where current consumer 2D card technology cannot help out.
Also on the topic of the other poster commenting on the primitives: Yeah, but the most COMMON transfer is pixel-by-pixel blitting of some kind, and second is having the card draw a rect of a solid color (for screen clearing usually). Both of these are supported under both systems. Screen-to-screen blits are included as a pixel-by-pixel blit (which MacOS X does take advantage of). Lines are not very commonly used, and for the most part, and text display is really just a pixel-by-pixel blit where some offscreen buffer on the card can be used to accelerate it. This last one is usually implemented on a card-specific basis, and so it isn't used in all situations by all cards.
Ahem, I would like to point out that 2D acceleration only affects blitting at this stage. This goes for PC and Mac. So Windows is still doing quite a bit on the CPU (rendering it to a buffer), but only has 2 steps (Render, Blit Buffer to Card). With Quartz, you have 3 steps ('Rasterize', Render, Blit Buffer to Card). You still are having 2D acceleration there, but the majority of the time spent in any 2D/3D app these days is in the Rasterize/Render stages, not the blitting stage. Especially with video cards that speed up the blitting process quite a bit. Double buffering in software is a nice hunk of CPU time as well.
Rather interesting tack you take at defending MS' position. Unfortunately, like the defense MS is currently putting up, it does have holes. This isn't to say MS can't defend itself, I am just saying it is doing a rather piss-poor job by using the English language against itself.
1) Just because you remove a component, doesn't mean you ruin the OS. Core functionality should be at the core of the system (gee, large leap o' logic).
2) Unless you can back up your 'states want money' statement, I don't believe it. I haven't seen requests/statements from the states asking for cash, but rather for action.
3) In probably the largest leap of logic I will make in this post, I will actually show how MS could have defended itself:
- First, I would drop all the gross abuse of the English language. All it is doing is making it look like MS is hiding something, even if it isn't.
- Second, I would be pressing on the fact that the industry NEEDS a standard, and that competition in this arena isn't always a good thing (even if I don't agree with that statement).
- Third, I would also try to convince the people involved that having one company produce the 'whole widget' can improve overall consistency in the user interaction, since one mindset created the UI in all the applications. (I don't agree with this one either)
See, it isn't difficult for MS to defend itself without having to go into the techno mumbo-jumbo field where they can easily be met with a few thousand programmers coughing 'Bullsh*t' in unison. To be perfectly honest, as a programmer myself, I find MS' defense weak and clouded in a bunch of 'we are magicians of the computer' mysticism which I find pitiful. The computer is a tool, and a rather simple one at that (from my viewpoint, others will disagree). It isn't like MS is the god of the box and is the only one that knows how it works. Get some of the other experts who have worked on other recent OSes like from the Be team, Apple's OS X team, IBM's old OS/2 team, even Linus would be a good expert to bring on this.
I guess what I am saying in a nutshell is that MS is not going to win by stating technological reasons, it can win by dealing with human reason.
No hard feelings, it is just that DivX ;-) and MPEG-4 has become the target of some ugly FUD, and it helps both to clear it up (hopefully both). I do know MPEG-4 will do one major thing well that DivX is having problems doing at all: streaming. Hopefully when the licensing issues are sorted out, we will see the Sorenson-encoded trailers online switch to MPEG-4, which have a good shot at allowing non-QT streaming clients to view them.
Anyways, you are right about games driving the market. Games drive consumer hardware development, and video/server applications driver pro/server end hardware development.
If it wasn't for games, video and server applictions, we would *ALL* still be sitting on pre-ATA/66 IDE buses, with a 66Mhz FSB, and 300Mhz CPUs. Without those taxing applications, there wouldn't have been a need to push forward like many have.
This does beg the question, why did it take Apple so long to switch to ATA-100 in the PowerMac line? Another question I have is, what HDs are currently capable of saturating 100MB/sec buses? Sure you can have 2 on each channel, and max out each at 50MB/sec, but which ones are available? The highest I have seen HDs go so far are 40MB/sec sustained for ATA buses.
Oi, I am not keeping my stories straight? Point out where I contradicted myself. I dare you. MPEG-4 is the standard set forth by the board setting the standard. This standard includes strict guidelines on how MPEG-4 codecs *AND* files are supposed to work. The group working on DivX ;-) never consulted with these guys on this, or even followed their guidelines.. here are a couple of reasons why it isn't MPEG-4:
;-) manages to even break AVI to some extent. QT has AVI support, but the MP3 support slammed into the AVI for DivX ;-) doesn't completely follow the AVI spec, and so QT cuts out after the first half-second or so.
;-), in using MP3 and WMA for the audio, goes outside the MPEG-4 spec by using an MPEG-1 and proprietary audio technology. The current audio codec that seems to be getting pushed is Dobly's AAC codec they produced awhile back hoping to get it used in DVDs. I am not aware if it was accepter there or not.
;-) doesn't do this.
;-) is MPEG-4 based. Apple's QT6 has MPEG-4 compliance with its support. You have fallen into the FUD trap started by some poor ignorant fool who mistook the 'MPEG-4 based'
phrase on the DivX site to mean 'This is really MPEG-4!'.
;-) is MPEG-4, as it never was, isn't, and unless they make a fairly large effort, will never even be compliant. 3ivX is the same way, but was aimed at taking out DivX ;-) as a truely cross-platform solution, with smaller bitrates than DivX ;-) for the same quality.
;-) is good right now as a solution for distributing online video, especially bootlegs of movies (which seem to be the main reason, backups I understand, but the majority of the use has been digital bootlegging and leeching) and digital anime fansubs (which can also be argued as bootlegging depending on your POV). Some people have been distributing work in DivX ;-) which is a good thing.
;-) codec is true as I stated, as the first true player for the Mac used the MSMPEG4v3 ASF codec in WMP 6.3 to play the video. As DivX ;-) has grown, they removed their hooks into the Microsoft codec. I would seriously doubt if MS would let them go public if they didn't. Your statement of non-support for MacOS, go to divx.com and look on the downloads page for the 4.11 alpha drivers they recently released. For alpha they are actually very usable and stable. They only lack the speed that the 3rd party solutions have. The issue with 'no sound' is because of the odd abnormal method they are storing sound in the AVI file, and that is easily corrected with the DivX tools available for the Mac.
1) It does not completely follow the final guidelines put forth by the standard for MPEG-4 video codecs.
2) It isn't available using the MPEG-4 file format, which was based on the QT4 streaming format, not the AVI format, and DivX
3) DivX
4) MPEG-4 video codecs are supposed to be fairly cross-compatible from my understanding, encoding with one codec and decoding with another should be little to no problem, as long as they are BOTH MPEG-4 compliant. DivX
There is a huge difference between MPEG-4 based, and MPEG-4 compliant. DivX
As I stated, as it stands now, it is illegal to release any true MPEG-4 encoder/decoder to the public, since you have to pay royalties to the MPEG LA. However, since the MPEG LA hasn't finalized their licensing scheme for MPEG-4, nobody is going to pay out royalties to them until they nail it down. Plus, the current working license requires content creators/replicators/publishers to pay out royalties to them, and this is pissing quite a few people off. NEVER make the mistake of thinking DivX
Sure DivX
The source of the DivX
Also, I got 256MB of RAM for this thing, 2 FPM DIMMs for 70$, still more than I would be paying for a decent PC133, but isn't the 300+$ you claim, and your price for the PC RAM is off as well, I can get 256MB for about 50$. Question I have is, why grab an ATA card for an old machine when you can use FW? I can grab a 60GB FW drive for 200$, and switching to a new machine, I would be better off getting an external that I can use more easily, even if I get a laptop. That saves a slot, and takes the price to get USB/FW down to 50$ (20$ USB card, 30$ FW card). I wouldn't dare upgrade the CPU, since the bus can't handle it. Better save the money for a new machine.
I have one very serious question: How the hell can you encode to MPEG4 in real-time if there aren't any commercially available MPEG4-compliant encoders on the market because of licensing not being nailed down by the board yet?
;-) is a hacked codec which originated as MS' submission to try to get them to use ASF as the MPEG4 file format, which failed. MS wrote the codec (which is now WMV7) to help demonstrate the advantages of using ASF. This codec was then plugged into for the first couple of versions of DivX ;-), hence the smiley. Then with 4.x, they moved over to their own codebase.
DivX
If you are going to bash a group for something, get the facts straight. I can view DivX on this Mac, and the DivX programming group even released their own codec for MacOS 9/X users. Not to mention DivX Player for OS 9 users, and Jamby's DivX component for QT under OS X, plus others have given Jamby's CLI tools a decent GUI interface so that converting the hacked AVI format to something QT can natively read is easy (the DivX hack produced non-standard AVI files, and QT chokes on non-standard AVI files).
The thing is, your posts has holes, and isn't even on-topic. If you are going to use this board to bash us, at least do it over the topic. Suffice it to say, I have a pre-G3 8600 @ 300Mhz which runs pretty damn well. PDF is not an issue in readability or speed, especially when running OS X (unsupported) on this machine. However, I do realize this 5-year-old machine doesn't do what I need it to these days, and a jump to a better machine will do me a world of good for the arenas I intend to enter after college.
On the topic itself, this is hardly new, and as one person pointed out, the 48-bit addressing can be done in software. Or as another person pointed out, get the free ATA133 card that comes with most large HDs from Maxtor or Western Digital, or whatever. This isn't exactly a Mac-only issue, has been around for awhile, and I am not even sure why it was posted in the Apple section. I ask, should this ARTICLE be moderated as (-1, Flamebait)?
Uh, if you want to look at it with blinders on, go ahead. It is actually due to the fact that MacOS X uses a very cleaned up, and strict driver interface to hardware that also allows apps to get access to drivers without compromising any sort of protected memory boundary. Everything is layered to the point where every driver calls upon a shared library to talk to the hardware, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel (and sometimes getting it wrong). Less chance for conflict if all your drivers are partitioned out from each other where they can't do damage to each other.
threaten to sic the hounds of the DMCA on him as well? Afterall, if you are buying a circumvention device from him, isn't he traffiking in illegal goods?
Somewhat seriously, this is nuts. This is my first post on a topic like this on Slashdot, and the whole situation is nuts. These guys have so much fscking money, they manage to lobby laws that benefit so few, but fsck over so many, it is practically unconstitional (the spirit never meant for stupid bull like this to happen, but the wording never truly prevents it).
Even worse, small-fry 'customer service agents' are starting to spout the propaganda that got people to accept this in the first place. MS even uses piracy as an excuse for extortion. Let me put it this way: Apple charges 130$ for MacOS X and MacOS 9 in the same box (9 is used for the Classic layer), and when the next major upgrade comes out, it will be the same (if 9 is still included) or drop back to 100$ if they remove 9. SuSE and RH sell Linux even cheaper (excuse me, the support and documentation, the discs are 'free'). MS does not need to be charging over 300$ for an OS with no bundled software. 99$ for the 'upgrade' cost would get me the full install CD of any other OS. MS is pulling the same 'piracy hurts me badly' stunt that the RIAA and MPAA are using to justify fscking their customers.
On a side note: my MP3 collection has breached 3GB in size, still growing, still legal. Most of the music I listen to isn't sold anywhere, so I listen to the many independant artists online who sell their wares or share their music online in MP3 format. RIAA be damned, if they don't want to support a nice wide variety of music and get it out to the people, then they aren't getting my money, 'encryption' or no 'encryption'.
Yes, I am responding to myself so I can respond to both posters who responded... (And note that yes, why would Linux users pay for MS Office when there is a viable alternative maturing as we speak?)
The thing is porting an app that uses the now non-existant APIs in MacOS 9 is really a pain in the butt... I started work on one of these suckers (roughly about 7 million lines after header inclusion as reported by Codewarrior... actually a little under 1 million on its own), and I can say the time spent on it was just not worth it for the client. Well over 6000 compiler errors after the switch (and some changes to the code already), many more linker errors, as well as the runtime glitches introduced during the fixing process.
If you didn't actually follow Apple's guides on accessing their APIs (which most didn't to achieve special results), you were in for some big trouble in porting. Most of the smaller 3rd party apps came over just fine, but the bigger and more complicated the app, the more like porting to a brand new OS it is.
On the topic of being able to port Cocoa over to GNUStep... how? Was an Obj-C library introduced that actually matches up (for the most part) with Apple's Obj-C library? It would be rather interesting to see, but there would still be API issues. Apple made changes to the structure of NeXT's Obj-C library to make it more at home with OS X, Quartz, and OpenGL. So at the very least, it would be just as nasty as porting a Classic app to Carbon.
He is absolutely right, but what is really bad is that not only does it not use X11, it doesn't use anything even remotely POSIX-compliant (AFAIK) anywhere. Carbon is as he said, a transitional API.
They hacked off the parts of the MacOS 9 APIs that would be too difficult to implement in OS X's environment (especially things like OS traps that opened up potential conflicts and created instability). Unfortunately, a lot of things in OS 9 required these traps to work correctly instead of access sockets to other processes and the like. This makes it difficult for programmers that worked with these unusual parts of the APIs just to port to Carbon.
Cocoa is even worse to port to, since you have to write the app from scratch. The good news is that a Cocoa app is setup in such a way that Apple can add new features or tweak with the UI slightly and the app will automagically adapt without needing an update.
Porting either Carbon or Cocoa over to another *nix is as difficult as porting Win32 code to a *nix. Of course, some of these apps being written to be run as daemons under OS X with the POSIX libraries will be rather easy to port to another *nix, the problem being: They are trying to make money off of a webserver, ftp server, etc. Marketting to a group already with free ftpd and apache is a tough sell. MS Office could be just as tough a sell once OpenOffice truly matures.
Interesting that despite the age of this (the cap was put in before we were 'installed'), it is still a very active topic.
In our area, Seattle, we have indeed been capped to 1.5Mbps (192KB/sec) downstream and 128Kbps (16KB/sec) upstream. I have been stuck on 56k for the past few years, so I really can't complain about the speeds. Sure it would be nice to be getting 4Mbps (~525KB/sec) downstream, but the thing is, I was getting lousy 56Kbps downstream before, and am only paying 20$ a month until around May due to a promotion. Extra money I am paying now: 0$, extra I will pay when it goes back to 35$ a month: 15$. So much extra for so little is a boon.
Now to comment on Comcast buying AT&T, Comcast's site is currently advertising the exact same cap as AT&T: 1.5Mbps down, 128Kbps up. (Although your milage may vary, as usual) This should mean that AT&T users, no matter how pissed off so far, should not be losing any more bandwidth when AT&T Comcast is formed.
One of the reasons I think @Home failed: Morpheus users saturing the bandwidth 24/7 when Excite was dumb enough to not cap the cable when they said they would. Obviously not just Morpheus users, but when my friend was traffiking over 2GB of movies, mp3s, etc each day, Excite had to foot the bill. Multiply that buy a couple thousand and you get my point. Pathetic.