I think the reason why Mail.app looks so different is proably because it is one of the truly cross platform mail apps. I remember reading somewhere that Mail.app is one of the few applications that can compile cleanly and with all functionality intact on both OS X and Linux running GNUStep. If that were the case, it might explain the different GUI, as they may have had to make some comprimises to make the application truly cross platform.
I, for one, see this as a good thing. What we've been screaming for all along is interoperability, and the ability to choose hardware and software that will play nice with each other.
I'm by no means a MS fan (own an x86 machine about 10+ years ago, and had my own macs for the last 7 or 8 years), but I don't care if they die or not. I just don't want other vendors to die. I know this is not an easy, black and white, kind of situation, but any increase in the level of interoperability is a win in my book.
I know it's a pipe dream, but I do dream for the day we are all using common, open , data formats, and vendors compete on the merits of their software, versus locking you in. Seems to have worked for the digital camera industry for the most part... I know cameras don't share data files, but at least you don't have to go out and get new software when you get a new camera.
Actually, if you are looking for something relatively cheap, the 2.0 and 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5 models actually support 16 GB of RAM, if you can find matched 2G PC 3200 DIMMs to fill the slots. This was the info given in the developers docs for the memory controller. And compared to other boxes that can support this much memory, they aren't that expensive. Linux support is also coming along for them, though not all quite there yet.
If you think your memory needs are going to rise above 16 GB, you'll need to look elsewhere, and I don't think there's a single board system out there now, that can do this, and qualifies as "cheap";-)
I'll second support for Ubuntu. My GF's parents had an OLD PC running 95. Her own
old PC was not great either, but I uppped the RAM to 384, put a 80 GB hard drive, and installed Warty. Since last Thanksgiving (~ end of November 2004 for the non-US readers), I've only had two real questions - one was to help get sound working, and the other was concerning USB and a digital camera.
And to make things easier for the transition, I pared down the GNOME interface and menus to exactly what they needed. OO for any MS docs, and AbiWord + Gnumeric for their own personal stuff (as those we much faster on that older machine than OO). They have even been able to download stuff from their digital camera and muck around with that a little without too much trouble. They have issues with some IE-centric websites, but for the most part (till the web really becomes standard - yeah right !!), it has been a surprisingly smooth and trouble-free transition on both ends - mine and theirs. Chalk up another win for OSS !!
Sounds similar to the linuxPPC challenge when LinuxPPC Inc put a Power Mac 9500 on the net in response to the Microsoft server demo. That one, IIRC, still came out in favour of linux and the older less capable Power Mac.
I'm in favour of things like this if they expose vulnerabilities that can be patched and closed, like honeypots. But I'm not in favour of these "in-your-face" types of contests and challenges. Usually leaves the challenger with eggs all over their face.
I've been able to do this for the last year or so with Mac OS X - i.e. clone my entire OS and work environment, so I could move it between my G4 tower at work, and laptop at home. Nice to see linux finally get this ability too.
And for the work I do, I don't see a huge performance hit running off the firewire chain, though I probably would off USB...
You'll probably see a Freescale G4 CPU with an embedded memory controller before you see a G5 in one of these.
One of the primary advantages of the G5 over the G4 was the memory bus speed, and also also the reason that most Pentium and Athlon chips were kicking the G4's ass... However, if Freescale can harness this benefit (an on-die memory controller) without a lot of the other power-hungry features of the G5, we'd probably have not only a neat laptop CPU, but probably a chip that plays the same role against the G5 that the Pentium-M does against the Pentium-4. I'd really like to see the outcome of this... I thought I read somewhere that this was one option Freescale was looking into for the G4 line...
I don't think it's a need to be proprietary (at least - not this time). The iPods all can be synced through USB or firewire (all pretty standard) and the song formats supported (MP3, AAC, Wav, AIFF) by the iPod are all pretty standard also, save for the DRM stuff on music purchased from iTunes. For the record, I can, and do play AAC files with VLC and on my Symbian phone with its native software...
A while ago, a company called iRez made a PCMCIA card (can't remember if it was Cardbus or not - and I would guess not) that would input video from the S-video or RCA port on the card, and use a feature of the slot called "zoomed video" that would let it transfer the video off the card to the screen with very low load. You would still need software to access the card and view the video, but a few years ago (when this card was available), viewing video with it (even at full screen) still left a very responsive system. I know of no more recent counterparts...
Let me, up front, profess my ignorance about Open Office and it's development, other than the blurbs that have appeared on/. I've been a long-time user of LaTeX and Xmgrace for my word-processing and data presentation needs, so I've generally avoided the need for any other office-type software. In recent months, I've installed gnumeric and abiword to deal with some Word and Excel documents, but that's been about the extent of my dealings with office suites.
So the million dollar question is - are there any libraries out there (being developed) that will let any program open up a.doc or.xls file ? I'm thinking about something along the lines of libjpeg, libtiff, or libmpeg, but more along the lines of librtf, libmsword, libmsexcel, etc ? So that any office suite would be able to use these conversion libraries, render the document correctly, and make available the editing features the author wants to implement...
It just seems to that all of the work that has made gnumeric as good as it is should help make OO better, and likewise for OO writer and abiword.
So do such libraries exist, or is every OS office project doing their own conversion, and essentially "reinventing the wheel." It would make sense to pool efforts here, make the libraries, and slap whatever front-end you want to on it, just as is done with Gecko, and KHTML...
In a similar view, though probably not as annoying as this, I got to be a fan of Monk. Even though it's on "basic" cable, we really did not feel like shelling out an extra 30-35 USD a month to be able to watch this series. So we got friends to tape a few episodes for us, but for the most part, we waited for the series DVDs to come out. As they are now, you have to put up with the ads for other USA series on the f*#@!ing DVD, and it won't allow you to skip them. Thankfully, our player as a 16x or 32x FF mode, so it made short work of that. But it's getting REALLY annoying.
We also have a ton of movies on VHS that we WERE thinking of buying, but now were reconsidering. I've already invested in a Canopus ADVC-100, and all I still need to get is a fast-enough hard drive to capture and process about 3 hours of video at a time... With all their DRM and further annoyances, the MPAA just lost at least 1K or so in movie sales from us. Not even a drop in their bucket, but if enough people do it, maybe... maybe we'll see a shift.
Remember folks, speak not only with your voices, but with your $$. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only thing that really gets through these days...
Seriously - I laughed out loud when I read the headline on the piece. This is a pretty significant public acknowledgement about the failure of this project, which considering how much $, publicity, etc was behind it, results in a lot of egg-covered faces.
Hopefully, this will only push the market and competition forward...
I have to admit I'm a bit curious about all the effort and publicity surrounding this, but I guess with Apple and Motorola being former bedroom buddies and with iTunes and Apple as hot as they are right now, anything involving either would make news.
Most of Apple's functions (Bluetooth, MP3, AAC, 3GPP, contact synchroniztion) already work with Nokia's Symbian platform right now, except for iTunes' DRM - which, admittedly, is the show-stopper. But why would you not also try to partner with, or license your stuff to, another company who has done much of the grunt work already ?
I've been able to get my mac powerbook to use T-Mobile's data service. Their service is a standard PPP access service (~ 56 K) and I was able to get it working with both a Nokia 6610 over a USB-serial converter cable, and on an N-Gage over bluetooth. The trick is getting your laptop/PC to see the phone as a standard modem. Once that's accomplished, you just dial the access number, and the rest of their system is standard enough to use. I used them as my only at-home internet access for about 2 years (didn't feel like paying an extra $50 a month when I had high speed access at work), so the extra $20/month at the time was at my price point. Service is slow, but functional. And though the lower level tech folks don't know a whole lot, at least you got a live person, and they scaled you up the levels very quickly if they could not help you.
I just wished T-Mobile had a mobile high speed network like Verizon does. I'd much rather pay for their service and support than I do for the other communication companies I've dealt with (SBC, MCI, Sprint, Time Warner).
Slashdot Mirror
Kinda like in California ... ? ;-)
I think the reason why Mail.app looks so different is proably because it is one of the truly cross platform mail apps. I remember reading somewhere that Mail.app is one of the few applications that can compile cleanly and with all functionality intact on both OS X and Linux running GNUStep. If that were the case, it might explain the different GUI, as they may have had to make some comprimises to make the application truly cross platform.
I, for one, see this as a good thing. What we've been screaming for all along is interoperability, and the ability to choose hardware and software that will play nice with each other.
I'm by no means a MS fan (own an x86 machine about 10+ years ago, and had my own macs for the last 7 or 8 years), but I don't care if they die or not. I just don't want other vendors to die. I know this is not an easy, black and white, kind of situation, but any increase in the level of interoperability is a win in my book.
I know it's a pipe dream, but I do dream for the day we are all using common, open , data formats, and vendors compete on the merits of their software, versus locking you in. Seems to have worked for the digital camera industry for the most part... I know cameras don't share data files, but at least you don't have to go out and get new software when you get a new camera.
Actually, if you are looking for something relatively cheap, the 2.0 and 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5 models actually support 16 GB of RAM, if you can find matched 2G PC 3200 DIMMs to fill the slots. This was the info given in the developers docs for the memory controller. And compared to other boxes that can support this much memory, they aren't that expensive. Linux support is also coming along for them, though not all quite there yet.
If you think your memory needs are going to rise above 16 GB, you'll need to look elsewhere, and I don't think there's a single board system out there now, that can do this, and qualifies as "cheap" ;-)
I believe you're talking about Mark Shuttleworth. See this link.
I'll second support for Ubuntu. My GF's parents had an OLD PC running 95. Her own old PC was not great either, but I uppped the RAM to 384, put a 80 GB hard drive, and installed Warty. Since last Thanksgiving (~ end of November 2004 for the non-US readers), I've only had two real questions - one was to help get sound working, and the other was concerning USB and a digital camera.
And to make things easier for the transition, I pared down the GNOME interface and menus to exactly what they needed. OO for any MS docs, and AbiWord + Gnumeric for their own personal stuff (as those we much faster on that older machine than OO). They have even been able to download stuff from their digital camera and muck around with that a little without too much trouble. They have issues with some IE-centric websites, but for the most part (till the web really becomes standard - yeah right !!), it has been a surprisingly smooth and trouble-free transition on both ends - mine and theirs. Chalk up another win for OSS !!
I think you meant to say slacKware ...
Sounds similar to the linuxPPC challenge when LinuxPPC Inc put a Power Mac 9500 on the net in response to the Microsoft server demo. That one, IIRC, still came out in favour of linux and the older less capable Power Mac.
I'm in favour of things like this if they expose vulnerabilities that can be patched and closed, like honeypots. But I'm not in favour of these "in-your-face" types of contests and challenges. Usually leaves the challenger with eggs all over their face.
Okay - so when the slashdot story hit, the update was available, and now (as of 2005.03.11, 1830 CST) the update is no longer available...
...
Maybe those multi-CPU tabs were NOT supposed to be seen after all
I've been able to do this for the last year or so with Mac OS X - i.e. clone my entire OS and work environment, so I could move it between my G4 tower at work, and laptop at home. Nice to see linux finally get this ability too.
...
And for the work I do, I don't see a huge performance hit running off the firewire chain, though I probably would off USB
Anyone else thought "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" when they read that tagline ? ;-)
I wonder if this is somehow a move (albeit a small one) to the iPod in video mode ?
You'll probably see a Freescale G4 CPU with an embedded memory controller before you see a G5 in one of these.
... However, if Freescale can harness this benefit (an on-die memory controller) without a lot of the other power-hungry features of the G5, we'd probably have not only a neat laptop CPU, but probably a chip that plays the same role against the G5 that the Pentium-M does against the Pentium-4. I'd really like to see the outcome of this... I thought I read somewhere that this was one option Freescale was looking into for the G4 line...
One of the primary advantages of the G5 over the G4 was the memory bus speed, and also also the reason that most Pentium and Athlon chips were kicking the G4's ass
Wouldn't you also get the increased video size if you got the 15-in model with the upgraded video card ?
Though I have to admit, the optical audio I/O is pretty neat !
I don't think it's a need to be proprietary (at least - not this time). The iPods all can be synced through USB or firewire (all pretty standard) and the song formats supported (MP3, AAC, Wav, AIFF) by the iPod are all pretty standard also, save for the DRM stuff on music purchased from iTunes. For the record, I can, and do play AAC files with VLC and on my Symbian phone with its native software ...
A while ago, a company called iRez made a PCMCIA card (can't remember if it was Cardbus or not - and I would guess not) that would input video from the S-video or RCA port on the card, and use a feature of the slot called "zoomed video" that would let it transfer the video off the card to the screen with very low load. You would still need software to access the card and view the video, but a few years ago (when this card was available), viewing video with it (even at full screen) still left a very responsive system. I know of no more recent counterparts ...
Let me, up front, profess my ignorance about Open Office and it's development, other than the blurbs that have appeared on /. I've been a long-time user of LaTeX and Xmgrace for my word-processing and data presentation needs, so I've generally avoided the need for any other office-type software. In recent months, I've installed gnumeric and abiword to deal with some Word and Excel documents, but that's been about the extent of my dealings with office suites.
.doc or .xls file ? I'm thinking about something along the lines of libjpeg, libtiff, or libmpeg, but more along the lines of librtf, libmsword, libmsexcel, etc ? So that any office suite would be able to use these conversion libraries, render the document correctly, and make available the editing features the author wants to implement...
...
So the million dollar question is - are there any libraries out there (being developed) that will let any program open up a
It just seems to that all of the work that has made gnumeric as good as it is should help make OO better, and likewise for OO writer and abiword.
So do such libraries exist, or is every OS office project doing their own conversion, and essentially "reinventing the wheel." It would make sense to pool efforts here, make the libraries, and slap whatever front-end you want to on it, just as is done with Gecko, and KHTML
In a similar view, though probably not as annoying as this, I got to be a fan of Monk. Even though it's on "basic" cable, we really did not feel like shelling out an extra 30-35 USD a month to be able to watch this series. So we got friends to tape a few episodes for us, but for the most part, we waited for the series DVDs to come out. As they are now, you have to put up with the ads for other USA series on the f*#@!ing DVD, and it won't allow you to skip them. Thankfully, our player as a 16x or 32x FF mode, so it made short work of that. But it's getting REALLY annoying.
... maybe we'll see a shift.
...
We also have a ton of movies on VHS that we WERE thinking of buying, but now were reconsidering. I've already invested in a Canopus ADVC-100, and all I still need to get is a fast-enough hard drive to capture and process about 3 hours of video at a time... With all their DRM and further annoyances, the MPAA just lost at least 1K or so in movie sales from us. Not even a drop in their bucket, but if enough people do it, maybe
Remember folks, speak not only with your voices, but with your $$. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only thing that really gets through these days
Anyone have a .torrent of the article ?
Seriously - I laughed out loud when I read the headline on the piece. This is a pretty significant public acknowledgement about the failure of this project, which considering how much $, publicity, etc was behind it, results in a lot of egg-covered faces.
...
Hopefully, this will only push the market and competition forward
I have to admit I'm a bit curious about all the effort and publicity surrounding this, but I guess with Apple and Motorola being former bedroom buddies and with iTunes and Apple as hot as they are right now, anything involving either would make news.
Most of Apple's functions (Bluetooth, MP3, AAC, 3GPP, contact synchroniztion) already work with Nokia's Symbian platform right now, except for iTunes' DRM - which, admittedly, is the show-stopper. But why would you not also try to partner with, or license your stuff to, another company who has done much of the grunt work already ?
Just tried - Camino 0.8.2 on OS X 10.3.6 IS vulnerable.
Luke: What is it Obi-Wan ?
OWK: I felt a deep disturbance in the force. It was as if Debian decided to be more current with their packages.
Is there where if your code is not great quality, you actually get thrown off a pier by the code reviewers ?
...
I knew the code acceptance barrier was high, but man, that is brutal
I've been able to get my mac powerbook to use T-Mobile's data service. Their service is a standard PPP access service (~ 56 K) and I was able to get it working with both a Nokia 6610 over a USB-serial converter cable, and on an N-Gage over bluetooth. The trick is getting your laptop/PC to see the phone as a standard modem. Once that's accomplished, you just dial the access number, and the rest of their system is standard enough to use. I used them as my only at-home internet access for about 2 years (didn't feel like paying an extra $50 a month when I had high speed access at work), so the extra $20/month at the time was at my price point. Service is slow, but functional. And though the lower level tech folks don't know a whole lot, at least you got a live person, and they scaled you up the levels very quickly if they could not help you.
I just wished T-Mobile had a mobile high speed network like Verizon does. I'd much rather pay for their service and support than I do for the other communication companies I've dealt with (SBC, MCI, Sprint, Time Warner).