I don't know what programs you are speaking of. I've never encountered this with 3rd party applications and believe such things are not allowed. Although Apple does it with some of their installers - so it is feasible. For instance the original Safari installer copied files and then unmounted the DMG file. I may be wrong but I believe this isn't possible with CDs. It appears to be a feature of the latest version of Disk Copy (which mounts DMGs) and is an undocumented feature Apple has used for some of its installers.
As for what I was speaking of, music CDs are the ones you buy from the store. They are in a custom format and aren't data files of the sort you are used to. OSX "fakes" a directory structure and information and makes it appear it is a regular volume. Further the CD pref pane allows you to take actions when you put the disk in your computer.
A MP3 music CD though is stored in a format different from the music CDs you buy at your local music store. They are stored in the same format that you might store a bunch of word processing documents on a CD with. The only difference is that the disk is filled with MP3 files. Now if iTunes writes a MP3 disk, it writes the MP3s and a bit of information that it can use to "fake it" so that the disk seems like a regular music CD - only one that holds many more songs. In reality though it is just a regular data CD.
The problem, as I understand it, is that music MP3 CDs of this sort made under Linux or XP aren't autoplayed by iTunes they way it autoplays a regular music CD. That's because that extra information it uses to "fake" a CD isn't present. So the person asking the question was asking how to emulate that feature.
As I mentioned above, the CD preference pane won't help because to the Finder it is a data-CD and not a music CD. There are two ways to do this. Either figure out the XML file iTunes writes and get your PC software to write it. (Unlikely). The other is to have an Applescript do all the work.
To do this you use Folder Actions. The folder in question is/Volumes, a normally invisible directory. This is the directory that OSX mounts all external file systems, such as external hard drives, network shares, and CDs. It then uses it to create those icons of disks on your desktop.
When you associate a folder action with that directory you can have an Applescript that does something whenever disks are mounted. In our case that might be to recursively scan the directory and send all MP3s to iTunes. What is nice (or not nice, depending upon how you look at it) is that you can do this for network sounds as well.
Folder Actions are one of the nicer features of OSX - although strangely one of the lesser known. You can do things like have it email files you drop in a particular directory. Its very nice. Combining it with Unix directories is very powerful.
I think the XP vs. OSX comparison site posted here a few days ago was more helpful. This article is very, very superficial. It doesn't really focus on *how* you do things with the OSs. Instead it focuses in on more subjective elements, such as appearances. (i.e. do you like Luna or Aqua)
Some things were a bit unfair, such as the slowness of OSX. Yeah, the desktop hardware sucks right now. But I'm not sure you should judge the environment on the fact that Macintoshes are on average about half as fast as Intel machines. That'll change in September with the 970 machines.
Also in usability, a lot depends upon what you are used to. Since most people are used to Windows that is unsurprisingly what most people value. Don't get me wrong. There is something to be said for that. But it then emphasizes status quo at the expense of innovation.
I think all OSes and environments have pluses and minuses. I prefer OSX but find many things that drive me batty. (Open/Save dialogs, the poor multithreading in the Finder, Column view) On the other hand I prefer the Apple approach of making things intuitive and simple rather than Microsoft's approach of hand holding and wizards.
I think both have their pluses and minuses. Certainly the fact that Windows runs on cheaper and faster hardware recommends it right now. However as an overall environment OSX has matured very nicely. I actually went and paid the price premium for a Mac for my home. (Using XP for my development at work) It is sad that most comparisons are as superficial and unhelpful as this one was.
Why would they put a SCSI plug on it when they already have firewire? Digital cameras are revolutionary. No doubt. The fact that they use a fast serial cable to download their data isn't. The fact that they happened to have picked firewire instead of USB 1.0 or the flavors of SCSI isn't revolutionary in the least.
That only autoplays *music* CDs. The CDs in question are MP3 CDs which are just data CDs filled with MP3 files.
That's why I said you may wish to tie an Applescript to Vol. I don't know if OSX allows you to attach a script to the Volume directory. But you can attach them to other directories such that they run when the contents change.
In this case you'd have an Applescript that might "buffer" the MP3's or just tell iTunes to play them.
That's all that iTunes is doing with the XML file they write to the data disk. It expects the XML file in a certain place and it contains the paths of the MP3s to play. In this case you are just emulating that functionality with a folder script.
Oh, when I was discussing "auto-play" I was talking about how under Windows even data CDs can exectue a script. This is why when you put in a CD it will often open up a window. Besides being a security nightmare this can be annoying. Apple allows you to autorun specific programs or scripts for PhotoCDs, Music CDs, and video DVDs. It *won't* do it for anything else.
How is Firewire revolutionary? It is effectively just SCSI with a smaller cable that is hotpluggable. Pretty similar to USB, only faster. I'm glad they have it and even gladder cameras do. But revolutionary? No - just evolutionary.
iTunes is very good at dealing with MP3 CDs made by itself, but MP3 CDs made with other software (in this particular case, HP MyCD on a Win 98 computer) aren't recognized at all.
What do you mean they aren't recognized? I do this all the time and I've never had trouble. iTunes doesn't recognize it automatically when you put the disk in. So you do have to drag and drop the directories. Make sure under preferences you've not selected to copy the files to your iTunes directory automatically. They should play fine.
OSX doesn't "autoplay" CDs. This has been discussed many times. I personally see this as a good thing, given all the problems its caused me under Windows. I suspect if you wish you could create an Applescript to play the files in iTunes when a disk is mounted. I'm not sure how one would do this though. The CD preference pane allows you to run an Applescript when a Music CD is mounted, but I don't think that MP3 CDs count since they are basically just data disks. Probably what you'd want to do is attach an Applescript to the/Vol directory. You'll need to be administrator to do this.
I've seen Apple Powerbooks among the Fox reporters. I don't know if that is standard or not. It makes sense. I find Final Cut Pro is very nice. I don't know what their video conference software is, but it tends to be rather choppy and pixelated. If they are all using Macs, that may make sense. I believe that video conferencing software is better on PCs than Macs at the moment. (Correct me if I'm wrong - its not a field I know much about)
I'd say that the majority of news is real news and relevant to Americans. The reason most news outlets put in the entertainment and "weird" stuff is because most people don't want to listen to news. I'm constantly amazed at how, with a likely war this week, how many people don't want to hear or talk about it.
There's even a strong group of people who encourage others to turn off the news. Sort of the "psychological peace by way of the ostrich."
Having said that though I think that by and large both CNN and Fox News do a fairly admirable job. My main complaint about Fox has been a dearth of international news. But I think that was in part due to it being a fairly new service. I think that, if anything, the current situation is helping Fox expand foreign relationships and start to compete with CNN in international coverage.
Also, while I personally dislike his approach to news, one must say that O'Reilly does tend to cover news that is relevant to the lives of Americans. I find that the "pithy" approach to news oversimplifies things and forces a "rush to judgment." But in terms of the stories he covers, I feel he does a good job in topics. I just wish he covered the topics the way NPR does.
Apple's many mailing lists are excellent resources. The product developers are often members and can answer most questions. The quality of feedback on the X11 mailing list was, for instance, quite amazing. Same with the Project Builder.
Apple's ADC pages have quite a bit of source code as well I've found invaluable. No its not as nice as the initial volumes of Inside Mac were. However given the work Apple is doing on its development tools, there is too much of a moving target to have a tool like that. Apple's worked with O'Reilly to produce quality introductory materials. They also recognize that, unlike the 80's, most of us use the internet to get "how-to's." So it really is a different environment.
While we call this the slashdot effect lots of other portals do the same thing. For instance when the Elizabeth Smart case happened yesterday most Utah news orginizations had their servers thrashed by over-access. That was in part because Drudge Report (and likely others) linked to local news stories.
As for utilizing this, I suppose you could set up a script that monitors such sites in a manner akin to ping. Although I think that most administrators would prefer you didn't. Get a bunch of such clients going and you effectively have an accidental denial of service attack.
Further such monitoring only works on servers that aren't designed for high traffic. Put an other way, what would cause a slowdown for your local paper is likely very different from what would cause a slowdown to CNN. Further as servers are upgraded you lose your "baseline."
So there is an effect and the effect correleates to what is "significant" to the readers of that site. But doing much with the information would be hard.
Having said that though someone had a joke about an early warning system built by checking Drudge Report (a popular American news portal). It probably is a good idea. When there is breaking news most people go to the Drudge Report because he typically links to the best information about the news. He further tends to put important breaking stories in red.
Length-prefixed strings (PStrings) are actually often useful. I know lots of projects developed entirely in C which use PStrings. Some people prefer structures with a length and a char pointer or char array. However for some things a PString does the job quite elegantly. Which is why you still see them so often in APIs. It typically has nothing to do with Pascal origins. (Although in Apple's case it does)
Math calculations in Pascal? Ugh. Wouldn't that be Fortran? (laugh)
Seriously though, isn't this just an update of their Pascal compiler? I believe that most of the GNU compilers have had PPC ports for some time. Anyone know which ones don't have PPC code?
Yeah. I don't know what dropping JBuilder for the Mac would entail. Probably just loss of support. I've heard (here on Slashdot) that the Mac programmers would release info on how to run it under OSX and would test it under OSX. But that basically active testing wouldn't be done.
I can't say if that would really affect things. But then I'm not a big Java programmer. I did play around with JBuilder (the full version) and I liked what I saw. I think our Java programmers here decided to standardize on a different IDE though.
Actually I loved Lightspeed Pascal which became Codewarrior. It was, at the time, light years ahead of any other development system, especially in its IDE.
MPW I never was able to get into. It had an odd mixture of editor/cli which I never liked. Further it lacked a lot of the nice debugging features that Lightspeed Pascal had. This was *way* back in the 68K days, mind you. Programming was a damn site easier then. Further the initial versions of C for the Mac required lots of resources and never were as nice as Pascal initially. Further even on the PC side Turbo Pascal (which became Delphi) was king.
Where Apple went wrong was never following Borland's lead and pushing their development system more towards RAD. That was true with C/C++. Indeed I think one of the reasons that Apple had troubles in the mid-90's was that it was so much easier to develop software on the PC than the Mac. As computers became more complex they retained the basic approach of the 80's. That's fine and even desirable for some applications. And they did have a framework for MPW and then there was PowerPlant for CodeWarrior. But neither really addressed people who weren't trying to write an application they wanted fine control over. There never was a Delphi for the Mac.
Now we have Interface Builder and Obj-C. However I still think, as nice as those are, that Microsoft with C# and Borland with Delphi/C++ Builder have better RAD tools.
Speaking of Delphi, I've wondered why Borland doesn't offer Kylix for the Mac. Kylix is basically Delphi for Linux and offers a reasonable degree of crossplatform compatibility.
Of course rumor is that Borland may drop JBuilder on OSX because of poor sales. So that may not bode well for Borland developing for Apple period. They do seem to be (wisely) trying to stay focused on large markets.
Which is a good point, and not just funny. First off it has been my experience that rebates are a pain in the ass. When I bought my Mac I had all sorts of rebates I sent in. Unfortunately I only ended up getting about 1/2 the rebates back. One took me months because Apple cancelled the rebate fairly soon after I bought the computer. But instead of keeping the department open they just closed down the PO Box. Fortunately I called several of the other rebate offers and finally got an understanding manager. Then I found out that of the three, nearly identical, bar codes on the box I had to send in, I'd sent the wrong one in. More hassle. Fortunately again a very understanding person on the other end of the phone. Unfortunately not all the other rebate offers were as understanding.
My advice? Think of rebates as a "plus." Do NOT calculate it into your purchase. Unless you have a lot of disposable cash, you can't count on the price. (i.e. your initial cost) Secondly it can be up to months before you see that cash. Thirdly I'd say at least half my rebates run into problems. Then you have to fit into your busy day tracking down phone numbers, finding receipts, etc. In about 1/4 of all rebates I never see the rebate. (That is with all products, not just computers)
This is why companies love rebates instead of price reductions. They know that in practice they won't pay out all of them.
My advice? Always keep a backup of everything. (A scanner is very nice for this) Prior to sending in the rebate, call up the help line to ensure you're sending in the right proof. (I think that a lot of rebate instructions are intentionally misleading so as to make it less likely you'll collect) Also if it is a rebate with a reasonable price (i.e. hundreds of dollars) consider sending certified mail and keep your proof.
CompUSA isn't particularly worse than anyone else in rebates. But they do tend to over-emphasize the price of products in terms of rebates.
[b]If you pick over the Cold War/Pre Three Mile Island information people made Nuclear out to the "next big thing" too. "Its cheap and efficient and will solve all of the power problems of tomorrow's world." Of course it didn't turn out like that because they glossed over a few wrinkles.[/b]
The main problems were public relations. People came to see "nuclear" as the latest boogy man. Hundreds could die in coal mine accidents with thousands more dying of black lung disease. But one death due to radiation was magnified all out of proportion. Further red tape made it impossible to really continue the development of the technology.
But I'll make you a bet. If you go out and compare the long term health damage and environmental damage of the US nuclear industry to the coal industry or the oil inustry you'll be surprised.
There is no doubt there is a public fear of nuclear power. Some a little warranted. Most not. And that fear is probably insurmountable. (Sadly) My one hope is that with people seeing the devestation on the environment that coal, oil, and hydro does and the limited production available via wind and solar that nuclear will get a second wind. The fact that the "power" can be moved around in many ways - through the grid or stored in hydrogen fuel cells - may cause people to rethink nuclear power.
Cynical person that I am, I don't see how 100 Billion could prevent someone nuking a city if such weapons are easily available. The only way to give safety is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from rogue states. I'm not sure I agree with how Bush is going about this. But I am afraid I agree that eliminating such available weapons is the only solution.
It is important to note that merely mandating that something ought to happen doesn't make it happen. Something that, unfortuantely, many well meaning people on all sides of the political fence all too often forget. Just because something makes sense in theory doesn't mean it will work in practice. Just look at fusion power. How many billions upon billions of dollars have been poured into such projects with absolutely no practical results.
The money on hydrogen power is exciting because hydrogen power is a technology that is almost available in a commercial setting. Further it is a technology that many organizations ranging from GM to DOE to several oil companies have already been studying heavily. (I remember under Bush 41 when there was an initiative at Los Alamos on hydrogen fuel cells between DOE and GM due to Los Alamos' experience with hydrogen from weapons research)
Anyway, my ultimate point is that this is not an either/or situation. Energy independence certainly is a necessary step to avoid problems in the middle-east. Merely saying we'll do it doesn't suddenly make the engineering problems disappear.
I guess that's my point. All the good Java applications are Java development programs. JEdit, JBuilder, Poseidon and a half dozen other UML/workflow programs. There are many others I didn't mention.
My point is that Java seems primarily used for client/server applications or XML based messaging. (Thus the large number of UML programs) The end user applications end up tied into that via support. Other than a few so-so chat or P2P clients, I just don't see many end user applications writen for Java.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking Java. Some folks who work here swear by it. We're even going to start coming out with some nice Java libraries and toolkits ourselves. But it seems oriented towards custom programs and perhaps largely the enterprise. Sort of one step up above scripting languages like Perl or Python but not quite in the C++ territory.
Yet I just never see applications outside of that market. Not a slam. Just curious. It just seems odd that there are more Basic programs for OSX than Java. (At least judging by what gets downloaded at VersionTracker)
I have a weird question. Other than Limewire and JEdit, what end user applications that are *useful* are available for OSX? I mean I looked around and while Java seems great for servers, I just don't see that many useful applications I'd use. Even with JEdit, BBEdit is vastly superior.
While I like a lot of Dick's writing, I think that _Blade Runner_ was far superior to the book. As with many writers, Dick's novels often are hit and miss. Lots of good ideas that often doesn't finish well. Further what works in a book doesn't always work in a movie (and vice versa).
It's not just the energy but the symmetries. If you don't get a symmetrical explosion then you get a blow out and fission or fusion doesn't take place. In effect you just get a dirty bomb. Most of the things we monitor when trying to limit nuclear proliferation are devices that can produce the very symmetrical explosions. i.e. triggers.
Unfortunately the last decade or so our technology has become such that such things aren't nearly as rare as they once were. So now we tend to monitor the plutonium or enriched uranium. I suspect that will become problematic soon as well, for a variety of reasons.
It really is a miracle no one has nuked anyone since WWII.
Javascript is a nice little scripting language. Nothing wrong with it and it fits the market it is after. Lots of other projects use it (such as Apple's own Sherlock technology). Certainly it is better than IE's crippled version of Visual Basic.
This being Slashdot, I'm sure a lot of people are shocked and disappointed that Microsoft and Netscape didn't use Perl. But realistically for what they were doing Javascript was great.
I was about to respond and saw you'd made my point. (Avoiding that -1 Redundant score for us kharma whores)
I would point out though that a lot of people *don't* like the interface for Project Builder and do find it somewhat jarring compared to the rest of the OSX GUI. Still, I'm hard pressed to come up with a different way to do it functionally, beyond requiring a right click to a context menu. But that would then contradict Apple's desire to have a visual clue for action. (i.e. no "invisibile" UIs for necessary actions)
I should also point out that v64 fixes a bug that kept the tabs from looking right when you put an Aqua appearance to Safari instead of Brushed Metal. (It looks much better) For those who've not downloaded v64 for fear of stability issues, you can check it out along with a discussion at MacNN.
I'm one of those who hasn't downloaded the beta. I prefer stability at the moment and the public beta of Safari is very nice. (I think Apple just made references to these betas to get the tab fanatics out of their hair) One thing I hope that the Safari final has is the ability ala Adobe apps to drag tabs out of the window and automatically create a new window.
Slashdot Mirror
As for what I was speaking of, music CDs are the ones you buy from the store. They are in a custom format and aren't data files of the sort you are used to. OSX "fakes" a directory structure and information and makes it appear it is a regular volume. Further the CD pref pane allows you to take actions when you put the disk in your computer.
A MP3 music CD though is stored in a format different from the music CDs you buy at your local music store. They are stored in the same format that you might store a bunch of word processing documents on a CD with. The only difference is that the disk is filled with MP3 files. Now if iTunes writes a MP3 disk, it writes the MP3s and a bit of information that it can use to "fake it" so that the disk seems like a regular music CD - only one that holds many more songs. In reality though it is just a regular data CD.
The problem, as I understand it, is that music MP3 CDs of this sort made under Linux or XP aren't autoplayed by iTunes they way it autoplays a regular music CD. That's because that extra information it uses to "fake" a CD isn't present. So the person asking the question was asking how to emulate that feature.
As I mentioned above, the CD preference pane won't help because to the Finder it is a data-CD and not a music CD. There are two ways to do this. Either figure out the XML file iTunes writes and get your PC software to write it. (Unlikely). The other is to have an Applescript do all the work.
To do this you use Folder Actions. The folder in question is /Volumes, a normally invisible directory. This is the directory that OSX mounts all external file systems, such as external hard drives, network shares, and CDs. It then uses it to create those icons of disks on your desktop.
When you associate a folder action with that directory you can have an Applescript that does something whenever disks are mounted. In our case that might be to recursively scan the directory and send all MP3s to iTunes. What is nice (or not nice, depending upon how you look at it) is that you can do this for network sounds as well.
Folder Actions are one of the nicer features of OSX - although strangely one of the lesser known. You can do things like have it email files you drop in a particular directory. Its very nice. Combining it with Unix directories is very powerful.
Hope that helps. . .
Some things were a bit unfair, such as the slowness of OSX. Yeah, the desktop hardware sucks right now. But I'm not sure you should judge the environment on the fact that Macintoshes are on average about half as fast as Intel machines. That'll change in September with the 970 machines.
Also in usability, a lot depends upon what you are used to. Since most people are used to Windows that is unsurprisingly what most people value. Don't get me wrong. There is something to be said for that. But it then emphasizes status quo at the expense of innovation.
I think all OSes and environments have pluses and minuses. I prefer OSX but find many things that drive me batty. (Open/Save dialogs, the poor multithreading in the Finder, Column view) On the other hand I prefer the Apple approach of making things intuitive and simple rather than Microsoft's approach of hand holding and wizards.
I think both have their pluses and minuses. Certainly the fact that Windows runs on cheaper and faster hardware recommends it right now. However as an overall environment OSX has matured very nicely. I actually went and paid the price premium for a Mac for my home. (Using XP for my development at work) It is sad that most comparisons are as superficial and unhelpful as this one was.
That's why I said you may wish to tie an Applescript to Vol. I don't know if OSX allows you to attach a script to the Volume directory. But you can attach them to other directories such that they run when the contents change.
In this case you'd have an Applescript that might "buffer" the MP3's or just tell iTunes to play them.
That's all that iTunes is doing with the XML file they write to the data disk. It expects the XML file in a certain place and it contains the paths of the MP3s to play. In this case you are just emulating that functionality with a folder script.
Oh, when I was discussing "auto-play" I was talking about how under Windows even data CDs can exectue a script. This is why when you put in a CD it will often open up a window. Besides being a security nightmare this can be annoying. Apple allows you to autorun specific programs or scripts for PhotoCDs, Music CDs, and video DVDs. It *won't* do it for anything else.
How is Firewire revolutionary? It is effectively just SCSI with a smaller cable that is hotpluggable. Pretty similar to USB, only faster. I'm glad they have it and even gladder cameras do. But revolutionary? No - just evolutionary.
What do you mean they aren't recognized? I do this all the time and I've never had trouble. iTunes doesn't recognize it automatically when you put the disk in. So you do have to drag and drop the directories. Make sure under preferences you've not selected to copy the files to your iTunes directory automatically. They should play fine.
OSX doesn't "autoplay" CDs. This has been discussed many times. I personally see this as a good thing, given all the problems its caused me under Windows. I suspect if you wish you could create an Applescript to play the files in iTunes when a disk is mounted. I'm not sure how one would do this though. The CD preference pane allows you to run an Applescript when a Music CD is mounted, but I don't think that MP3 CDs count since they are basically just data disks. Probably what you'd want to do is attach an Applescript to the /Vol directory. You'll need to be administrator to do this.
I've seen Apple Powerbooks among the Fox reporters. I don't know if that is standard or not. It makes sense. I find Final Cut Pro is very nice. I don't know what their video conference software is, but it tends to be rather choppy and pixelated. If they are all using Macs, that may make sense. I believe that video conferencing software is better on PCs than Macs at the moment. (Correct me if I'm wrong - its not a field I know much about)
There's even a strong group of people who encourage others to turn off the news. Sort of the "psychological peace by way of the ostrich."
Having said that though I think that by and large both CNN and Fox News do a fairly admirable job. My main complaint about Fox has been a dearth of international news. But I think that was in part due to it being a fairly new service. I think that, if anything, the current situation is helping Fox expand foreign relationships and start to compete with CNN in international coverage.
Also, while I personally dislike his approach to news, one must say that O'Reilly does tend to cover news that is relevant to the lives of Americans. I find that the "pithy" approach to news oversimplifies things and forces a "rush to judgment." But in terms of the stories he covers, I feel he does a good job in topics. I just wish he covered the topics the way NPR does.
And with Playboy's Girls of the Armed Services pictorial, you get to combine the two!
Check them out:
http://search.lists.apple.com/
Apple's ADC pages have quite a bit of source code as well I've found invaluable. No its not as nice as the initial volumes of Inside Mac were. However given the work Apple is doing on its development tools, there is too much of a moving target to have a tool like that. Apple's worked with O'Reilly to produce quality introductory materials. They also recognize that, unlike the 80's, most of us use the internet to get "how-to's." So it really is a different environment.
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/
As for utilizing this, I suppose you could set up a script that monitors such sites in a manner akin to ping. Although I think that most administrators would prefer you didn't. Get a bunch of such clients going and you effectively have an accidental denial of service attack.
Further such monitoring only works on servers that aren't designed for high traffic. Put an other way, what would cause a slowdown for your local paper is likely very different from what would cause a slowdown to CNN. Further as servers are upgraded you lose your "baseline."
So there is an effect and the effect correleates to what is "significant" to the readers of that site. But doing much with the information would be hard.
Having said that though someone had a joke about an early warning system built by checking Drudge Report (a popular American news portal). It probably is a good idea. When there is breaking news most people go to the Drudge Report because he typically links to the best information about the news. He further tends to put important breaking stories in red.
Length-prefixed strings (PStrings) are actually often useful. I know lots of projects developed entirely in C which use PStrings. Some people prefer structures with a length and a char pointer or char array. However for some things a PString does the job quite elegantly. Which is why you still see them so often in APIs. It typically has nothing to do with Pascal origins. (Although in Apple's case it does)
Seriously though, isn't this just an update of their Pascal compiler? I believe that most of the GNU compilers have had PPC ports for some time. Anyone know which ones don't have PPC code?
I can't say if that would really affect things. But then I'm not a big Java programmer. I did play around with JBuilder (the full version) and I liked what I saw. I think our Java programmers here decided to standardize on a different IDE though.
MPW I never was able to get into. It had an odd mixture of editor/cli which I never liked. Further it lacked a lot of the nice debugging features that Lightspeed Pascal had. This was *way* back in the 68K days, mind you. Programming was a damn site easier then. Further the initial versions of C for the Mac required lots of resources and never were as nice as Pascal initially. Further even on the PC side Turbo Pascal (which became Delphi) was king.
Where Apple went wrong was never following Borland's lead and pushing their development system more towards RAD. That was true with C/C++. Indeed I think one of the reasons that Apple had troubles in the mid-90's was that it was so much easier to develop software on the PC than the Mac. As computers became more complex they retained the basic approach of the 80's. That's fine and even desirable for some applications. And they did have a framework for MPW and then there was PowerPlant for CodeWarrior. But neither really addressed people who weren't trying to write an application they wanted fine control over. There never was a Delphi for the Mac.
Now we have Interface Builder and Obj-C. However I still think, as nice as those are, that Microsoft with C# and Borland with Delphi/C++ Builder have better RAD tools.
Of course rumor is that Borland may drop JBuilder on OSX because of poor sales. So that may not bode well for Borland developing for Apple period. They do seem to be (wisely) trying to stay focused on large markets.
My advice? Think of rebates as a "plus." Do NOT calculate it into your purchase. Unless you have a lot of disposable cash, you can't count on the price. (i.e. your initial cost) Secondly it can be up to months before you see that cash. Thirdly I'd say at least half my rebates run into problems. Then you have to fit into your busy day tracking down phone numbers, finding receipts, etc. In about 1/4 of all rebates I never see the rebate. (That is with all products, not just computers)
This is why companies love rebates instead of price reductions. They know that in practice they won't pay out all of them.
My advice? Always keep a backup of everything. (A scanner is very nice for this) Prior to sending in the rebate, call up the help line to ensure you're sending in the right proof. (I think that a lot of rebate instructions are intentionally misleading so as to make it less likely you'll collect) Also if it is a rebate with a reasonable price (i.e. hundreds of dollars) consider sending certified mail and keep your proof.
CompUSA isn't particularly worse than anyone else in rebates. But they do tend to over-emphasize the price of products in terms of rebates.
But I'll make you a bet. If you go out and compare the long term health damage and environmental damage of the US nuclear industry to the coal industry or the oil inustry you'll be surprised.
There is no doubt there is a public fear of nuclear power. Some a little warranted. Most not. And that fear is probably insurmountable. (Sadly) My one hope is that with people seeing the devestation on the environment that coal, oil, and hydro does and the limited production available via wind and solar that nuclear will get a second wind. The fact that the "power" can be moved around in many ways - through the grid or stored in hydrogen fuel cells - may cause people to rethink nuclear power.
It is important to note that merely mandating that something ought to happen doesn't make it happen. Something that, unfortuantely, many well meaning people on all sides of the political fence all too often forget. Just because something makes sense in theory doesn't mean it will work in practice. Just look at fusion power. How many billions upon billions of dollars have been poured into such projects with absolutely no practical results.
The money on hydrogen power is exciting because hydrogen power is a technology that is almost available in a commercial setting. Further it is a technology that many organizations ranging from GM to DOE to several oil companies have already been studying heavily. (I remember under Bush 41 when there was an initiative at Los Alamos on hydrogen fuel cells between DOE and GM due to Los Alamos' experience with hydrogen from weapons research)
Anyway, my ultimate point is that this is not an either/or situation. Energy independence certainly is a necessary step to avoid problems in the middle-east. Merely saying we'll do it doesn't suddenly make the engineering problems disappear.
My point is that Java seems primarily used for client/server applications or XML based messaging. (Thus the large number of UML programs) The end user applications end up tied into that via support. Other than a few so-so chat or P2P clients, I just don't see many end user applications writen for Java.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking Java. Some folks who work here swear by it. We're even going to start coming out with some nice Java libraries and toolkits ourselves. But it seems oriented towards custom programs and perhaps largely the enterprise. Sort of one step up above scripting languages like Perl or Python but not quite in the C++ territory.
Yet I just never see applications outside of that market. Not a slam. Just curious. It just seems odd that there are more Basic programs for OSX than Java. (At least judging by what gets downloaded at VersionTracker)
I have a weird question. Other than Limewire and JEdit, what end user applications that are *useful* are available for OSX? I mean I looked around and while Java seems great for servers, I just don't see that many useful applications I'd use. Even with JEdit, BBEdit is vastly superior.
While I like a lot of Dick's writing, I think that _Blade Runner_ was far superior to the book. As with many writers, Dick's novels often are hit and miss. Lots of good ideas that often doesn't finish well. Further what works in a book doesn't always work in a movie (and vice versa).
Unfortunately the last decade or so our technology has become such that such things aren't nearly as rare as they once were. So now we tend to monitor the plutonium or enriched uranium. I suspect that will become problematic soon as well, for a variety of reasons.
It really is a miracle no one has nuked anyone since WWII.
This being Slashdot, I'm sure a lot of people are shocked and disappointed that Microsoft and Netscape didn't use Perl. But realistically for what they were doing Javascript was great.
I would point out though that a lot of people *don't* like the interface for Project Builder and do find it somewhat jarring compared to the rest of the OSX GUI. Still, I'm hard pressed to come up with a different way to do it functionally, beyond requiring a right click to a context menu. But that would then contradict Apple's desire to have a visual clue for action. (i.e. no "invisibile" UIs for necessary actions)
I should also point out that v64 fixes a bug that kept the tabs from looking right when you put an Aqua appearance to Safari instead of Brushed Metal. (It looks much better) For those who've not downloaded v64 for fear of stability issues, you can check it out along with a discussion at MacNN.
I'm one of those who hasn't downloaded the beta. I prefer stability at the moment and the public beta of Safari is very nice. (I think Apple just made references to these betas to get the tab fanatics out of their hair) One thing I hope that the Safari final has is the ability ala Adobe apps to drag tabs out of the window and automatically create a new window.