I thought it funny that when I read the description of the devices, these ships from the Matrix movies came to mind. (Recall those big, arcing plates on the ships). I wonder if that's in fact what the writers had in mind?
You may already know, but there are solutions to this problem. I've heard of slowdown.exe and others of their ilk.
The caveat is, though, that these utilities are good at slowing the processor down, but the PCI/AGP graphics are still too fast for the game. (I run into this problem playing XCOM:UFO defense on my 450MHz AMD)
The difference, though, is that there aren't that many Macs out on the internet. (3%? 5%?) So any virus will have difficulty trying to find another Mac to infect, severely limiting its capability to spread.
Add to that the fact that virus written for OS 9 wouldn't work in X and vice versa.
Right now, the Mac platform is fairly hostile to rapid spread of viruses.
Yes, the fun little Stop-A sequence. Although I'm not proficient myself, I know a guy who knows enough to overwrite the process table from OF by directly accessing the memory. --Very handy when you need root access on your workstation.
Re:I can see wartime problems with this
on
Synthetic Vision
·
· Score: 1
I think the commercial you were referring to is a playstation commercial (or maybe gamecube). I don't think it was a commercial for one of the services. I could be remembering wrong, though.
I know I'm going to get modded down by the DRM police who has a knee-jerk reaction to anything containing that word, but this is just the kind of thing that a "trusted computing" kind of concept would solve.
If you only allowed signed, trusted binaries to execute, and sent only encrypted packets, with OS and hardware support for limiting access to the memory space of the trusted application, it would lock out most of the avenues of cheating, or at least make it a lot harder to do.
You can't modify packets because they're encrypted
You can't hack the drivers/game code because it would fail the trusted binary check
You can't read/write the game's memory space because that would be blocked by the hardware/OS.
Assuming it is implemented properly (yeah, it's a big "if"), is there any way to work around such a scheme?
This kind of application (and many more serious applications that require similar solutions) is exactly where some sort of software signing/authentications is useful. People should be able to modify/do whatever with the games they bought, but if they do, they should't be able to play online with others who don't have such advantages; at least not under any pretense that they are playing fair.
If I had mod points, I'd mod this "funny". He used "Dvorak" and "credible" in the same sentence. This is not a flame for the poster, but anyone who knows Dvorak's history would find that statement worth a snicker.
Speaking of game performance, I updated my PBG4/15"/1GHz. The only reason I use Java these days is to play Colossus. Although the AI execution and window updates seem a bit snappier, legal move calculation slows down to a crawl as the game goes on, making it unplayable after the first couple of turns.
As pointed out elsewhere, I can explicitly call the old Java from the command line. It's a bummer, as I was hoping the update will increase performance in this game.
As far as I can tell, though, that's only one of maybe a half dozen user interface duds in all of the classic Mac OS, which is a whole lot better than having to remember dozens of text commands and syntax.
Dragging to the trash was distinct from the "eject disk" command. Pre-OS 8, disks "ejected" with the eject command (or cmd-shift-1) left its icon on the desktop so that it can be targets of other actions (e.g. copying files). The dragging to the trash was equivalent to the "put away" command, which was intended to mean "the the user is completely done working with this desktop element" For disks, that means ejecting and removing its icon from the desktop. For files, it was moving them from the desktop and putting them back to their original locations.
Rather than having a separate "put away" icon on the desktop, the designers just decided to make the trash icon do double duty.
Poor choice in retrospect, but it wasn't completely unfounded.
Anyone attempting to demonstrate the classic Mac OS to newbies should have avoided the trash can shortcut and shown the "put away" menu command instead. I'm sure it would have saved a lot of trouble and complaints. Later on, the users can discover the shortcut for themselves after they are familiar with the system.
Bringing it back on topic, the OS X trash icon turns into an eject icon when a removable media icon is being dragged. This preserves the habits of long-time users while making it less confusing for newbies. That's another thing they can patent!:)
Depressing is right. Can you imagine what kind of chips we'd be seeing if Intel's ungodly amount of financial and engineering resources were being poured into something like the Alpha rather than kludging and hacking the x86 generation after generation?
It is one of my peeves that CPU architectural superiority means little in a world where x86 is the "default", and the negative feedback loop (Intel is cheap -> people buy it -> Intel is cheaper) seems to have no end in sight.
That and the fact that Intel can use its x86 cash cow to keep funding the Itanium whether or not it has any real merit. Not saying that it doesn't (EPIC IS a cool idea), but in a level playing field, do you think they can get away with just throwing so many transistors at the problem?
As various promising architectures die off (Alpha, PA-RISC, who's next? POWER?), in the end, was the computing community better served by the dominance of one architecture designed for the lowest common denominator? It's all speculation, sure, but I think not.
Yes, it's an improvement, but IA32 is still one of the least die-area inefficient designs out there. Better process technology, as stated here, helps make up for it, but better design would have been better.
Case in point, (back when it was most noticeable): The Pentium/Pentium II was approximately 3x-4x the die area of a PowerPC 603e/604e/750, with corresponding power dissipation. Performance of the chips were quite similar. On the other end, the Alphas at the time had similar die sizes, but had approximately 3x the (FP) performance. The market, of course, picked the Pentiums, because the systems based on them were "cheaper". Too bad environmental costs don't usually get included in the price of the product.
This may be blasphemous to the Slashdot crowd, but
I suggest that the original poster reboot in OS 9 to run his games, if he were actually interested in doing so. I've seen that all of the Carbon games (the ones that run in both 9 and X) perform much better under OS 9. (Assuming OS 9 is installed at all, of course.)
WCIII drags on my 400MHz Pismo under X, but runs just fine in OS 9 (the Pismo also has a 8MB Rage128).
Ditto for Myth III. RTCW is just on the unplayable side under OSX, but barely crosses over to playable under 9. (still extremely poor fps, though)
The truth is, most games are optimized for x86/Win32. The Mac porting houses probably can't afford to spend nearly as much on assembly level optimizations and such. I get Mac versions of my games for my Powerbook as a nicety, but for serious gaming, I'd use a x86 desktop.
To bring this back on topic, I'd agree with all the other posters that say that the switch won't happen any time soon. Apple had heck of a time getting developers over to OS X. Asking them to support another platform (even with the same APIs) at this point would be suicidal in terms of developer relations.
I also think the x86-32 is just inelegant. There's thousands of transistors just sitting there converting a legacy ISA to a modern RISC-like ops. There's thousands more transistors just sitting there making its 30+ registers look like 8. Thousands more transistors sitting there trying to hide the inefficiencies of the stack based FP model to conform to the actual modernized architecture. This only works because Intel effectively higher die size limit that makes their processors economically viable. Just imagine what Intel could be doing with all those transistors and die area if it didn't have to support the crappy ISA. In any case, given Apple's arrogance/like/obsession regarding "elegance" of its products, I'm not sure they'd go for it.
If the playing field (in terms of shipping volumes) were level, there'd be no whay the x86 could have won out, especially in the days of G2 (603/604) PowerPCs. The die size differential between them and the contemporary Pentium was something like 4x. The power consumption was also something like 4x. But the peroformance was equivalent or slightly favored the PowerPC. I'm still peeved that the "inferior" architecture won out.
Final thought:
8088 = Ox-drawn cart
8086 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front.
80286 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam boiler and steam engine.
80386 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. (the internal combustion engine can emulate multiple steam engines in a special mode)
80486 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. The engine now has a turbocharger and fuel injectors.
Pentiums = Ox-drawn cart with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. They strapped on another turbo-charged, fuel injected engine next to the other one. The oxen and the horses are still there, being dead carcasses that are dragged along for backwards compatibiliy.
PPro/II/III = Ox-drawn cart with a steam engine, several internal combustion engines bolted together. The maggot-ridden oxen and horse carcases are still tied to the cart. A gigantic jet engine is strapped on with some spit and baling wire.
P4 = Like PPro, but several rocket engines are duct-taped to the sides.
My twist on this method is to use letter to number translations based on Japanese colloquial pronounciation of numbers. Of course, the original sequence is derived from initials or not-quite initials of nonsensical phrases. e.g. Rip TO sHreds Eat 9 Funny Monsters 2 Day.
Once I have a phrase or subsets thereof, any "yo" syllable can be converted 4 because "Yonn" = four, and "ro" or "lo" syllable can be converted to 6 because "roku" = six. etc. etc. And sometimes the reverse translation can be performed. Works for me, and I can remember them.
Along those lines, I found a great quote on MacObserver (which in turn was quoting NY Times)
Steve Jobs Quoth: "Our relationship with Microsoft is really pretty good," Mr. Jobs said. "What's a few market-share points between friends? It wouldn't matter to them, and we would be eternally grateful."
This is probably off topic, but the SCSI/IDE thing has always bugged me. It's yet another example of the market picking a sub-optimal solution, thus giving it the opportunity to be kludged layer by layer over years and years to get to what the competing technology offered (perhaps for a little more $$) from the beginning. (e.g. Windows, x86 procs) And, if the superior technology had gotten all of the engineering effort and money thrown at it that the inferior technology got, everybody would have been better off. Just imagine how cheap and commonplace SCSI would be if it had become the "standard". It would also have needed fewer kludges along the way that had caused consumers all sorts of headaches over the years (500MB limit, 1GB limit, 2GB limit, finally move to LBA). It would also have offered everybody a fast external interconnect for peripherals. (just compare scan speeds of parallel port scanners vs. SCSI)
Way back when all computer components were expensive regardless of IDE or SCSI,(yes, I know, SCSI was still more expensive, but difference overall would have been relatively small) if people had informed themselves and supported the technology that offered more value, We would not be having this discussion. Everybody would have the latest SCSI technology with all of its benefits, and the costs would be similar to what IDE is today.
Just my rant, to chew over next time you're considering buying something cheap vs. something better.
Not exactly iPods, but what would be cool is if
you can hook this up to an iPod. Music for
the rest of the decade.
Re:Silly people *tsk,tsk,tsk*
on
Unix Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I might get modded off topic, but I think it's interesting:
Regarding that/dev/audio bug. . . I had a co-worker who made many interesting uses of that in our group. The first use was transmission of "biological noises" to someone else's cube-just ftp an audio file to the machine's/dev/audio, or telnet in and cat any file.
The second use was a recording of a telephone ring. When someone is standing just outside the office, he'd send a telephone ring, which sounds like it's coming from the phone (if the phone was right next to the computer), and the victim would rush to get the phone to no avail.
It was really fun to play with and I missed it when we got upgraded to Solaris.
I think the motivation angle is just what the LA Times writer spun onto the event. As stated, the talks were being given to science/engineering students. As I recall, these talks were given for the benefit of interested students outside of class, and attended only by people who wanted to go. So the point was obviously not to increase student interest in the topic with "cool" or "wow" factor. Don't take issue with the researchers or the topic/presentation; take issue with the Times writer who spun it in a wierd way.
This one sounded interesting. I wish I'd taken advantage of more of them while I was there.
Given your comment, I thought you might enjoy this: http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2 92.html "Joy of Tech"
It's not just for the cats, though. (I don't have any) I sometimes turn on and muck around with my Athlon box when the room gets too cold.
You gotta realize that Intel has had an effective die size advantage vs. its competitors for years. I think the worst of it was during the mid-90's when the PowerPC's were 1/4 the die size of the Pentiums at comparable performance.
They can afford to do that due to their COLLOSAL volumes. There's no way the Pentiums could have been price competitive if it weren't for the vast number of chips to divide up up-front costs to offset the high production costs. Here's a clear case of market forces NOT choosing the optimal solution.
Also, it makes one wonder what Intel could have been doing with all that die area if they didn't have to waste it on such a kludgy architecture. (x86)
OTOH, by the look of what they're doing with the Itanium, maybe not much.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it funny that when I read the description of the devices, these ships from the Matrix movies came to mind. (Recall those big, arcing plates on the ships). I wonder if that's in fact what the writers had in mind?
For the slashdot crowd, I believe they have a linux version of one of their games.
I've recently allowed myseld to get sucked back into the original Exile, and I still like it.
The caveat is, though, that these utilities are good at slowing the processor down, but the PCI/AGP graphics are still too fast for the game. (I run into this problem playing XCOM:UFO defense on my 450MHz AMD)
Add to that the fact that virus written for OS 9 wouldn't work in X and vice versa.
Right now, the Mac platform is fairly hostile to rapid spread of viruses.
Yes, the fun little Stop-A sequence. Although I'm not proficient myself, I know a guy who knows enough to overwrite the process table from OF by directly accessing the memory. --Very handy when you need root access on your workstation.
I think the commercial you were referring to is a playstation commercial (or maybe gamecube). I don't think it was a commercial for one of the services. I could be remembering wrong, though.
If you only allowed signed, trusted binaries to execute, and sent only encrypted packets, with OS and hardware support for limiting access to the memory space of the trusted application, it would lock out most of the avenues of cheating, or at least make it a lot harder to do.
You can't modify packets because they're encrypted
You can't hack the drivers/game code because it would fail the trusted binary check
You can't read/write the game's memory space because that would be blocked by the hardware/OS.
Assuming it is implemented properly (yeah, it's a big "if"), is there any way to work around such a scheme?
This kind of application (and many more serious applications that require similar solutions) is exactly where some sort of software signing/authentications is useful. People should be able to modify/do whatever with the games they bought, but if they do, they should't be able to play online with others who don't have such advantages; at least not under any pretense that they are playing fair.
If I had mod points, I'd mod this "funny". He used "Dvorak" and "credible" in the same sentence.
This is not a flame for the poster, but anyone who knows Dvorak's history would find that statement worth a snicker.
As pointed out elsewhere, I can explicitly call the old Java from the command line. It's a bummer, as I was hoping the update will increase performance in this game.
Dragging to the trash was distinct from the "eject disk" command. Pre-OS 8, disks "ejected" with the eject command (or cmd-shift-1) left its icon on the desktop so that it can be targets of other actions (e.g. copying files). The dragging to the trash was equivalent to the "put away" command, which was intended to mean "the the user is completely done working with this desktop element" For disks, that means ejecting and removing its icon from the desktop. For files, it was moving them from the desktop and putting them back to their original locations.
Rather than having a separate "put away" icon on the desktop, the designers just decided to make the trash icon do double duty.
Poor choice in retrospect, but it wasn't completely unfounded.
Anyone attempting to demonstrate the classic Mac OS to newbies should have avoided the trash can shortcut and shown the "put away" menu command instead. I'm sure it would have saved a lot of trouble and complaints. Later on, the users can discover the shortcut for themselves after they are familiar with the system.
Bringing it back on topic, the OS X trash icon turns into an eject icon when a removable media icon is being dragged. This preserves the habits of long-time users while making it less confusing for newbies. That's another thing they can patent! :)
That's his point.
Depressing is right. Can you imagine what kind of chips we'd be seeing if Intel's ungodly amount of financial and engineering resources were being poured into something like the Alpha rather than kludging and hacking the x86 generation after generation?
It is one of my peeves that CPU architectural superiority means little in a world where x86 is the "default", and the negative feedback loop (Intel is cheap -> people buy it -> Intel is cheaper) seems to have no end in sight.
That and the fact that Intel can use its x86 cash cow to keep funding the Itanium whether or not it has any real merit. Not saying that it doesn't (EPIC IS a cool idea), but in a level playing field, do you think they can get away with just throwing so many transistors at the problem?
As various promising architectures die off (Alpha, PA-RISC, who's next? POWER?), in the end, was the computing community better served by the dominance of one architecture designed for the lowest common denominator? It's all speculation, sure, but I think not.
Case in point, (back when it was most noticeable): The Pentium/Pentium II was approximately 3x-4x the die area of a PowerPC 603e/604e/750, with corresponding power dissipation. Performance of the chips were quite similar. On the other end, the Alphas at the time had similar die sizes, but had approximately 3x the (FP) performance. The market, of course, picked the Pentiums, because the systems based on them were "cheaper". Too bad environmental costs don't usually get included in the price of the product.
WCIII drags on my 400MHz Pismo under X, but runs just fine in OS 9 (the Pismo also has a 8MB Rage128). Ditto for Myth III. RTCW is just on the unplayable side under OSX, but barely crosses over to playable under 9. (still extremely poor fps, though)
The truth is, most games are optimized for x86/Win32. The Mac porting houses probably can't afford to spend nearly as much on assembly level optimizations and such. I get Mac versions of my games for my Powerbook as a nicety, but for serious gaming, I'd use a x86 desktop.
To bring this back on topic, I'd agree with all the other posters that say that the switch won't happen any time soon. Apple had heck of a time getting developers over to OS X. Asking them to support another platform (even with the same APIs) at this point would be suicidal in terms of developer relations.
I also think the x86-32 is just inelegant. There's thousands of transistors just sitting there converting a legacy ISA to a modern RISC-like ops. There's thousands more transistors just sitting there making its 30+ registers look like 8. Thousands more transistors sitting there trying to hide the inefficiencies of the stack based FP model to conform to the actual modernized architecture. This only works because Intel effectively higher die size limit that makes their processors economically viable. Just imagine what Intel could be doing with all those transistors and die area if it didn't have to support the crappy ISA. In any case, given Apple's arrogance/like/obsession regarding "elegance" of its products, I'm not sure they'd go for it.
If the playing field (in terms of shipping volumes) were level, there'd be no whay the x86 could have won out, especially in the days of G2 (603/604) PowerPCs. The die size differential between them and the contemporary Pentium was something like 4x. The power consumption was also something like 4x. But the peroformance was equivalent or slightly favored the PowerPC. I'm still peeved that the "inferior" architecture won out.
Final thought:
- 8088 = Ox-drawn cart
- 8086 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front.
- 80286 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam boiler and steam engine.
- 80386 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. (the internal combustion engine can emulate multiple steam engines in a special mode)
- 80486 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. The engine now has a turbocharger and fuel injectors.
- Pentiums = Ox-drawn cart with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. They strapped on another turbo-charged, fuel injected engine next to the other one. The oxen and the horses are still there, being dead carcasses that are dragged along for backwards compatibiliy.
- PPro/II/III = Ox-drawn cart with a steam engine, several internal combustion engines bolted together. The maggot-ridden oxen and horse carcases are still tied to the cart. A gigantic jet engine is strapped on with some spit and baling wire.
- P4 = Like PPro, but several rocket engines are duct-taped to the sides.
Point: It's fast, but it's not pretty.My twist on this method is to use letter to number translations based on Japanese colloquial pronounciation of numbers. Of course, the original sequence is derived from initials or not-quite initials of nonsensical phrases. e.g.
Rip TO sHreds Eat 9 Funny Monsters 2 Day.
Once I have a phrase or subsets thereof,
any "yo" syllable can be converted 4 because "Yonn" = four, and "ro" or "lo" syllable can be converted to 6 because "roku" = six. etc. etc. And sometimes the reverse translation can be performed.
Works for me, and I can remember them.
I hope it's not easy to crack.
Along those lines, I found a great quote on MacObserver (which in turn was quoting NY Times)
Steve Jobs Quoth:
"Our relationship with Microsoft is really pretty good," Mr. Jobs said. "What's a few market-share points between friends? It wouldn't matter to them, and we would be eternally grateful."
It thought it was hillarious.
Way back when all computer components were expensive regardless of IDE or SCSI,(yes, I know, SCSI was still more expensive, but difference overall would have been relatively small) if people had informed themselves and supported the technology that offered more value, We would not be having this discussion. Everybody would have the latest SCSI technology with all of its benefits, and the costs would be similar to what IDE is today.
Just my rant, to chew over next time you're considering buying something cheap vs. something better.
RAID
Not exactly iPods, but what would be cool is if you can hook this up to an iPod. Music for the rest of the decade.
I might get modded off topic, but I think it's interesting:
/dev/audio bug. . . I had a co-worker who made many interesting uses of that in our group. The first use was transmission of "biological noises" to someone else's cube-just ftp an audio file to the machine's /dev/audio, or telnet in and cat any file.
Regarding that
The second use was a recording of a telephone ring. When someone is standing just outside the office, he'd send a telephone ring, which sounds like it's coming from the phone (if the phone was right next to the computer), and the victim would rush to get the phone to no avail.
It was really fun to play with and I missed it when we got upgraded to Solaris.
I got something called "command and control" and
it works for me in os 10.1.3
Also, I doubt the hardware is really ADB any more.
I don't think the new-world hardware even has
an ADB controller on it any more.
This one sounded interesting. I wish I'd taken advantage of more of them while I was there.
I'm glad Mudd got mentioned on slashdot, too.
Given your comment, I thought you might enjoy this:2 92.html "Joy of Tech"
It's not just for the cats, though. (I don't have any) I sometimes turn on and muck around with my Athlon box when the room gets too cold.
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/
You gotta realize that Intel has had an effective die size advantage vs. its competitors for years. I think the worst of it was during the mid-90's when the PowerPC's were 1/4 the die size of the Pentiums at comparable performance.
They can afford to do that due to their COLLOSAL volumes. There's no way the Pentiums could have been price competitive if it weren't for the vast number of chips to divide up up-front costs to offset the high production costs. Here's a clear case of market forces NOT choosing the optimal solution.
Also, it makes one wonder what Intel could have been doing with all that die area if they didn't have to waste it on such a kludgy architecture. (x86)
OTOH, by the look of what they're doing with the Itanium, maybe not much.