I'd say PhotoShop is a prime example of a bloated splash-screen. I don't mind little 'loading bars' but watching Photoshop load is just painful. Side note: Speaking of Photoshop, I don't use even a fraction of the abilities of the program, and I'd appreciate the ability to take out the extraneous parts (ie, filters I'll never need, etc) that simply slow down loading. Since started using Paint Shop Pro 7 (I'm not a bitmap pro, what do I need PS for anyway???) things have been a lot nicer.. Hence my desire for SPEED and bare functionality...,.
Just because you don't know how to use it doesn't mean that the system is inferior.
I agree with that red herring completely. DOS was better than Mac OS for my purposes, and I've never regretted that decision. The necessitation of the tools you allude to is unfortunate; use of such things to obtain reasonable control of a system should be strictly optional, n'est-ce pas?
Develop a FAST, cleanly coded and preferably efficient app first with bare functionality, then you can add the usual bloat - or better, don't add it.
Avoid splash screens beyond the initial installation sequence (assuming Windows install). They detract from any product by their intrinsically intrusive nature - somewhat like pop-up ads, IMHO.
Clearly a workbook cannot be software, in the normal sense of the word. I hesitate to call a spreadsheet anything other than self-organizing, or perhaps scripted, data; however, "software" in the common vernacular denotes a functional program, which a workbook certainly isn't. Furthermore, there is no *requirement* for that data to be dynamically organized: often, it is static arrays of data.
You stole the words from my mouth. Symantec Corporate Edition is far and away the best anti-viral application on the market due to the following reasons: 1) Relatively light on resources
-server scans all transactions with little apparent performance hit, at least in my environment.
-client performance is very fast 2) It's completely different from the standard Norton sieve AV product for personal use
-I've seen Norton Personal squashed by crappy little kit viruses, but Corporate Ed. has killed them all. 3) Price is competitive for multi-license products of this nature 4) Auto update. Everything's automatic, and so far, entirely reliable. I still double-check it.
There's really no excuse for my sloppiness, and I realized this error only after you pointed it out. You have my sincerest apologies. Thank you for setting me straight. N.
Now this may come as a shock to you, but professional work such as graphics and audio is *very expensive*
Aye, I'll vouch for that... however, it need not be so, and I've quoted you what I would pay for the equivalent of $2300 of Mac hardware.
Vanishingly few buyers in the target demographic are interested in a locally-bought machine put together with a view first-and-foremost to price It seems that you are under the mistaken impression that price is the end of the road: rather, price is simply a baseline used to compare the relative value of two roughly equivalent machines. In other words, without sacrificing quality, I can obtain performance that will crush the Mac at the same price point.
Whoopsie, put 3000 for the Mac, shoulda been 2300.. sorry. But the wholesale price is what every nerd and tech nut I know would pay for such a machine, so I stand by that figure.
It's good to know that you were able to overcome the natural Mac abstraction to tweak a little.. gives me some hope that someday the GUI won't get in my way if I ever, for any reason, have no alternative but to use a Mac again.
Let's do a price analysis of single-processor machines then, shall we?
Starting with the PowerMac G4, with:
933 MHz PowerPC G4 processor (not too bad...)
256 MB SDRAM (yes, i know the nineties are over, but seriously..)
60 GB of single disk storage
SuperDrive
NVidia GeForce4 MX
and a 56k modem... total: USD$3000
This is from the Apple.com store. I'd imagine the price is 'competitive' by Apple standards.
Next, let's take a look at a pre-built system from local wholesale outlet: Athlon XP2000 processor (about 1.7 GHz, probably quite over-clockable) 256MB DDRAM (just to be fair, I'll stoop a bit) 2x40GB Maxtor 7200 rpm hard drives (safer and faster than a single unit) 1.44MB floppy (the power of legacy.. oh well) nVidia GeForce4 MX 420 350 watt power supply (anemic, yes.. but more than comparable) second case fan, a couple extra buttons on the mouse, some shitty speakers total: USD$925 plus Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD burner: USD$1345
The math speaks for itself.
laptop survey --- At last glance, there wasn't a single iBook or other portable Mac out there that is under 3 pounds, so there's no comparison for my intents and purposes. As much as I like big clunky PowerBooks, I'd rather spend that loose change on a pad of paper, due to size handicap.
total cost of ownership??? Here's the deal: I can upgrade my DDR-RAM, swap in a new graphics card, buy a few replacement DVD burners and maybe a printer/scanner or two while STILL saving HUGE dollar$ over your initial investment, so don't talk too loudly about TCO. As for reliability, all my machines (I have several) are rock solid. No (hardware) problems with a machine in three years, aside from standard gaming upgrades.
Your "better overall experience" is a load of tripe, unless you think of OS X as a revelation.. the old Mac OS was a buggy, crashing piece of unworthy shit that never gave me a peek into the vitals of the machine. I used that shit quite recently in school, and I'll never forget the pleasure of that "better overall experience," thank you very much. For a well-worn list of Dock peccadilloes you can read Tog's column at http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.ht ml... that takes care of my major annoyances with the OS X, at least. I haven't the time to enlighten you any further. Please do some research of your own. Good night.
I'd like to see you upgrade one of those desk-lamp computers;O) show me a comparable *pre-built* PC (ie. Compaq/Dell) with a significantly lower price I buy my PC hardware pre-assembled from a local whole-saler for ridiculously low prices. Windows is NOT included, and warranty=1 year. I've never seen a Mac that could touch my prices, and I never will because Apple doesn't sell affordably priced hardware for the masses. Heck, even an Apple flat panel display costs twice what I pay, for a comparable model (ie, same contrast ratio, viewable area, etc) so please don't try to convince me of the affordability of Apples unless you are prepared to lick my testicular appendages..
Apple sell a cheap line of computers (starting at $799) and a more expensive line? That doesn't seem unreasonable, and it also seems to contradict the rest of your argument I'd say that for 800 bucks I can get a relatively decent Intel system, or a Fisher-Price piece of plastic that barely lugs along. In case you haven't noticed, those low-end iMac baubles are barely usable - in other words, severely underpowered and I don't call USD$800 cheap for such a device. For triple that much, I can have a system that will eat your Mac's unborn babies at will, and I'll end up paying less for every upgrade than you do. You, on the other hand, will get robbed as soon as you walk in the store. No offense intended, but Mac's don't offer a great deal of power per dollar spent unless they come as donations.
I don't understand how anybody with a claim to a rational thought process can look me straight in the eye, and claim that Mac's are 'cheap, affordable, or reasonably priced' machines.
Rant? Troll? This is an opinion that evidence indicates I'm hardly alone in positing.
Mac price per unit of processing power (NOT just clock speed - I'm talking about actual work done from a user's perspective) is about triple what I pay for an Intel-based workstation.
For the price of a top of the line dual-G4+half-GB of RAM I can get 3 and a half loaded Athlon XP2000 powered beasts with a Gig of DDR apiece. In addition, relative to its Intel equivalent, every MacIntosh I've ever seen and tested (and sometimes even cussed at) has a severely limited range of reasonably-priced peripherals. This is understandable when one applies the immutable law of supply and demand, but my beef with the HW does not end here. Mac laptops are insanely priced for the amount of horsepower available - and on top of that there's NO SUCH THING as a sub-notebook machine in Mac world. Those low-end iBooks (the "affordable" ones) are crappin' SLOW with OS X, in fact even slower than my old P3-600 slogging along with WinXP (quickly deleted, natch) AND the SINGLE-BUTTON trackpad is hands down the crummiest cursor-directive instrument I've ever handled. The button is virtually the size of the trackpad itself. Pile that atop the OS X dung heap and you've got a real winner, baby. /TROLL
When i lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba (somewhere in Canada, for all you Americans) they did the same thing to mosquitoes. Sterilize millions (males, mostly), send 'em out to mate (they mate only once) and then watch the population plummet. It's a trillion times safer than DDT and the other killer poisons they like to fill the air with during skeeter season.
You fell for that ploy a bit too easily. Your proposal is just what Billy G wants to happen, and you are now his willing pawn! More WinXP = even greater M$ control, which leads to even greater M$ leverage in the marketplace, and the resultant domino effect will (again) cripple the industry when M$ is revealed as the twin corporation of AOL/Time-Warner, and possibly the Beast. There's likely an obscure reference to the event somewhere in Revelations...
This trojan behaviour from Microsoft is not completely unexpected... but i'd like somebody to explain why the heck Morpheus and all the other Kazaa clients keep a permanent database of all downloads, stored in the Morpheus\Db folder as two little files - data1024.dbb and data256.dbb - since the super-nodes only need a list of CURRENT files, these files are unnecessary. Indeed, deleting them has no adverse effect whatsoever. They are simply created anew (minus old-ass data, of course).
If you doubt me, simply open up data1024.dbb with a text editor and peek-a-booty at records of ALL your deleted pr0n files, recorded for posterity from last year.
Explanations, anybody?? Surely this wouldn't be of use to anybody but parents.. or maybe kids, who want to blackmail their siblings/parents.
depending on source license && availabilit
on
Peek-a-Boo(ty)
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I believe that Peek-a-Booty will be GPL'd, or at least open-sourced.. in that case, one would simply distrust the binaries and compile (or DL from trusted site) the program locally. As far as it goes, however, Back Orifice is notable as one of the trickier trojays to ferret out.. it's a neat piece of code. Assuming the widely-heralded P-a-Booty is coded to the same high standards, I would very much like to get ahold of it.
I think you should admit that YOU were just as impressed with the big explosions in Afghanistan as the other Yanks. Seeing thousands of innocent people blown away is a small price to pay for the ultimate destruction of one evil man...
oh, wait - they still haven't got him, have they?
but they sure did waste a lot of people.
think i need another Guinness.
1) Approach a Spammer and punch him in the face - HARD.
2) Have a brief conversation along the lines of "This hurts me more than it hurts you"
3) Punch the spamming gobshite again, harder.
4) Laser the spammer's family and spamming friends
5) Move along to the next spammer, until all have been 'converted'
Since these babies will be totally useless for nuking terrorists (ie, one man suicide bombers, Unabombers, etc.) I propose that maybe it can take out a few SPAMMERs instead... hmm. See if the feds are serious about this crackdown on junk email.
"Little fuckers keep jumping IP blocks, but we'll get 'em!"
buy a white box, install whatever OS you want, and avoid the M$ OEM-tax. You can get a whole lot more bang for the buck than HP/Dell/Gateway will give you.
I've never bought a brand-name (aside from laptop) and never worried about shitty OEM restore CD's that dump all over my clean hard drive. I recommend www.pecanada.com if you live in British Columbia.
. I wonder if the recovery cds could be used to pirate windows XP, if so I suspect that is the real reason for their reluctance.
That's hardly the reason why the CD's aren't shipped: rather, the extra $0.09 per CD eats into Micro$oft profits. Imagine those pennies (at ~54 cents per HP computer) staying inside Micro$oft instead of providing perceived value to the customer, and note that many people won't complain no matter what happens. Then count the number of idiots who will go out and buy WinXP because they don't have any reasonable alternative (merits of free OS aside for the moment) - that's something like $200 a shot directly to MS.
Consider also the fact that the target market for these crippled, low end machines is the technologically impaired, and soon the question is "Why did they EVER provide rescue CD's?"
The answer to that question is, of course, the cost per megabyte of hard disk storage vs. cost per megabyte of CD.
In summary, the miniscule price of hard drive storage today has allowed Microsoft to pee on the customer while laying the blame squarely on HP. Rather neat, ain't it?
They don't come right out and say it, so this summary might save some of y'all a few minutes:
"Slashdotting geeks, and lots of old women are well represented in the cross-section of EQ players sampled. We were constantly amazed at how often spontaneous/. references popped out while surveying this motley crowd."
What platform are you planning to develop for? Your description of the constraints imposed imply that the project itself is secondary in importance to the tools being used. Objective C might fit your bill with some adjustment, although C++ is also a pretty good fit and Python mostly meets your requirements. It sounds like you want to tie the project to a single language. . Does performance matter? What environment will you be running in, ie, large enterprise or hidden in a closet somewhere?
If my boss came at me with such vague requisites and no real game plan beyond what language to use, I'd give him a snooty lesson in computing science and good business practice, demand design parameters, then specify ASM for the job. Pointy-haired bosses deserve no respect.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say PhotoShop is a prime example of a bloated splash-screen. I don't mind little 'loading bars' but watching Photoshop load is just painful.
Side note: Speaking of Photoshop, I don't use even a fraction of the abilities of the program, and I'd appreciate the ability to take out the extraneous parts (ie, filters I'll never need, etc) that simply slow down loading. Since started using Paint Shop Pro 7 (I'm not a bitmap pro, what do I need PS for anyway???) things have been a lot nicer.. Hence my desire for SPEED and bare functionality...,.
Just because you don't know how to use it doesn't mean that the system is inferior.
I agree with that red herring completely.
DOS was better than Mac OS for my purposes, and I've never regretted that decision.
The necessitation of the tools you allude to is unfortunate; use of such things to obtain reasonable control of a system should be strictly optional, n'est-ce pas?
Develop a FAST, cleanly coded and preferably efficient app first with bare functionality, then you can add the usual bloat - or better, don't add it.
Avoid splash screens beyond the initial installation sequence (assuming Windows install). They detract from any product by their intrinsically intrusive nature - somewhat like pop-up ads, IMHO.
Clearly a workbook cannot be software, in the normal sense of the word. I hesitate to call a spreadsheet anything other than self-organizing, or perhaps scripted, data; however, "software" in the common vernacular denotes a functional program, which a workbook certainly isn't. Furthermore, there is no *requirement* for that data to be dynamically organized: often, it is static arrays of data.
You stole the words from my mouth. Symantec Corporate Edition is far and away the best anti-viral application on the market due to the following reasons:
1) Relatively light on resources
-server scans all transactions with little apparent performance hit, at least in my environment.
-client performance is very fast
2) It's completely different from the standard Norton sieve AV product for personal use
-I've seen Norton Personal squashed by crappy little kit viruses, but Corporate Ed. has killed them all.
3) Price is competitive for multi-license products of this nature
4) Auto update. Everything's automatic, and so far, entirely reliable. I still double-check it.
There's really no excuse for my sloppiness, and I realized this error only after you pointed it out. You have my sincerest apologies. Thank you for setting me straight.
N.
Now this may come as a shock to you, but professional work such as graphics and audio is *very expensive*
Aye, I'll vouch for that... however, it need not be so, and I've quoted you what I would pay for the equivalent of $2300 of Mac hardware.
Vanishingly few buyers in the target demographic are interested in a locally-bought machine put together with a view first-and-foremost to price
It seems that you are under the mistaken impression that price is the end of the road: rather, price is simply a baseline used to compare the relative value of two roughly equivalent machines. In other words, without sacrificing quality, I can obtain performance that will crush the Mac at the same price point.
Whoopsie, put 3000 for the Mac, shoulda been 2300 .. sorry. But the wholesale price is what every nerd and tech nut I know would pay for such a machine, so I stand by that figure.
It's good to know that you were able to overcome the natural Mac abstraction to tweak a little.. gives me some hope that someday the GUI won't get in my way if I ever, for any reason, have no alternative but to use a Mac again.
would be a tasty beer. Where there's Guinness, there you will find life.
Hope this doesn't spark a flame war with the Corona zealots
Let's do a price analysis of single-processor machines then, shall we?
t ml ... that takes care of my major annoyances with the OS X, at least.
Starting with the PowerMac G4, with:
933 MHz PowerPC G4 processor (not too bad...)
256 MB SDRAM (yes, i know the nineties are over, but seriously..)
60 GB of single disk storage
SuperDrive
NVidia GeForce4 MX
and a 56k modem...
total: USD$3000
This is from the Apple.com store. I'd imagine the price is 'competitive' by Apple standards.
Next, let's take a look at a pre-built system from local wholesale outlet:
Athlon XP2000 processor (about 1.7 GHz, probably quite over-clockable)
256MB DDRAM (just to be fair, I'll stoop a bit)
2x40GB Maxtor 7200 rpm hard drives (safer and faster than a single unit)
1.44MB floppy (the power of legacy.. oh well)
nVidia GeForce4 MX 420
350 watt power supply (anemic, yes.. but more than comparable)
second case fan, a couple extra buttons on the mouse, some shitty speakers
total: USD$925
plus Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD burner: USD$1345
The math speaks for itself.
laptop survey ---
At last glance, there wasn't a single iBook or other portable Mac out there that is under 3 pounds, so there's no comparison for my intents and purposes. As much as I like big clunky PowerBooks, I'd rather spend that loose change on a pad of paper, due to size handicap.
total cost of ownership???
Here's the deal: I can upgrade my DDR-RAM, swap in a new graphics card, buy a few replacement DVD burners and maybe a printer/scanner or two while STILL saving HUGE dollar$ over your initial investment, so don't talk too loudly about TCO. As for reliability, all my machines (I have several) are rock solid. No (hardware) problems with a machine in three years, aside from standard gaming upgrades.
Your "better overall experience" is a load of tripe, unless you think of OS X as a revelation.. the old Mac OS was a buggy, crashing piece of unworthy shit that never gave me a peek into the vitals of the machine. I used that shit quite recently in school, and I'll never forget the pleasure of that "better overall experience," thank you very much. For a well-worn list of Dock peccadilloes you can read Tog's column at http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.h
I haven't the time to enlighten you any further. Please do some research of your own. Good night.
I'd like to see you upgrade one of those desk-lamp computers ;O)
show me a comparable *pre-built* PC (ie. Compaq/Dell) with a significantly lower price
I buy my PC hardware pre-assembled from a local whole-saler for ridiculously low prices. Windows is NOT included, and warranty=1 year. I've never seen a Mac that could touch my prices, and I never will because Apple doesn't sell affordably priced hardware for the masses. Heck, even an Apple flat panel display costs twice what I pay, for a comparable model (ie, same contrast ratio, viewable area, etc) so please don't try to convince me of the affordability of Apples unless you are prepared to lick my testicular appendages..
Apple sell a cheap line of computers (starting at $799) and a more expensive line? That doesn't seem unreasonable, and it also seems to contradict the rest of your argument
I'd say that for 800 bucks I can get a relatively decent Intel system, or a Fisher-Price piece of plastic that barely lugs along. In case you haven't noticed, those low-end iMac baubles are barely usable - in other words, severely underpowered and I don't call USD$800 cheap for such a device.
For triple that much, I can have a system that will eat your Mac's unborn babies at will, and I'll end up paying less for every upgrade than you do. You, on the other hand, will get robbed as soon as you walk in the store. No offense intended, but Mac's don't offer a great deal of power per dollar spent unless they come as donations.
I don't understand how anybody with a claim to a rational thought process can look me straight in the eye, and claim that Mac's are 'cheap, affordable, or reasonably priced' machines.
Rant? Troll? This is an opinion that evidence indicates I'm hardly alone in positing.
Mac price per unit of processing power (NOT just clock speed - I'm talking about actual work done from a user's perspective) is about triple what I pay for an Intel-based workstation.
For the price of a top of the line dual-G4+half-GB of RAM I can get 3 and a half loaded Athlon XP2000 powered beasts with a Gig of DDR apiece. In addition, relative to its Intel equivalent, every MacIntosh I've ever seen and tested (and sometimes even cussed at) has a severely limited range of reasonably-priced peripherals. This is understandable when one applies the immutable law of supply and demand, but my beef with the HW does not end here.
Mac laptops are insanely priced for the amount of horsepower available - and on top of that there's NO SUCH THING as a sub-notebook machine in Mac world. Those low-end iBooks (the "affordable" ones) are crappin' SLOW with OS X, in fact even slower than my old P3-600 slogging along with WinXP (quickly deleted, natch) AND the SINGLE-BUTTON trackpad is hands down the crummiest cursor-directive instrument I've ever handled. The button is virtually the size of the trackpad itself. Pile that atop the OS X dung heap and you've got a real winner, baby.
/TROLL
When i lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba (somewhere in Canada, for all you Americans) they did the same thing to mosquitoes. Sterilize millions (males, mostly), send 'em out to mate (they mate only once) and then watch the population plummet. It's a trillion times safer than DDT and the other killer poisons they like to fill the air with during skeeter season.
You fell for that ploy a bit too easily. Your proposal is just what Billy G wants to happen, and you are now his willing pawn! More WinXP = even greater M$ control, which leads to even greater M$ leverage in the marketplace, and the resultant domino effect will (again) cripple the industry when M$ is revealed as the twin corporation of AOL/Time-Warner, and possibly the Beast. There's likely an obscure reference to the event somewhere in Revelations...
This trojan behaviour from Microsoft is not completely unexpected... but i'd like somebody to explain why the heck Morpheus and all the other Kazaa clients keep a permanent database of all downloads, stored in the Morpheus\Db folder as two little files - data1024.dbb and data256.dbb - since the super-nodes only need a list of CURRENT files, these files are unnecessary. Indeed, deleting them has no adverse effect whatsoever. They are simply created anew (minus old-ass data, of course).
.. or maybe kids, who want to blackmail their siblings/parents.
If you doubt me, simply open up data1024.dbb with a text editor and peek-a-booty at records of ALL your deleted pr0n files, recorded for posterity from last year.
Explanations, anybody?? Surely this wouldn't be of use to anybody but parents
I believe that Peek-a-Booty will be GPL'd, or at least open-sourced.. in that case, one would simply distrust the binaries and compile (or DL from trusted site) the program locally. .. it's a neat piece of code. Assuming the widely-heralded P-a-Booty is coded to the same high standards, I would very much like to get ahold of it.
As far as it goes, however, Back Orifice is notable as one of the trickier trojays to ferret out
You're a genius! So what you're saying is, simply block HTTP and HTTPS and Peek-a-Booty is useless?? ;O)
Why didn't I think of that!
I think you should admit that YOU were just as impressed with the big explosions in Afghanistan as the other Yanks. Seeing thousands of innocent people blown away is a small price to pay for the ultimate destruction of one evil man...
oh, wait - they still haven't got him, have they?
but they sure did waste a lot of people.
think i need another Guinness.
1) Approach a Spammer and punch him in the face - HARD.
2) Have a brief conversation along the lines of "This hurts me more than it hurts you"
3) Punch the spamming gobshite again, harder.
4) Laser the spammer's family and spamming friends
5) Move along to the next spammer, until all have been 'converted'
Since these babies will be totally useless for nuking terrorists (ie, one man suicide bombers, Unabombers, etc.) I propose that maybe it can take out a few SPAMMERs instead ... hmm. See if the feds are serious about this crackdown on junk email.
"Little fuckers keep jumping IP blocks, but we'll get 'em!"
buy a white box, install whatever OS you want, and avoid the M$ OEM-tax. You can get a whole lot more bang for the buck than HP/Dell/Gateway will give you.
I've never bought a brand-name (aside from laptop) and never worried about shitty OEM restore CD's that dump all over my clean hard drive. I recommend www.pecanada.com if you live in British Columbia.
. I wonder if the recovery cds could be used to pirate windows XP, if so I suspect that is the real reason for their reluctance.
That's hardly the reason why the CD's aren't shipped: rather, the extra $0.09 per CD eats into Micro$oft profits. Imagine those pennies (at ~54 cents per HP computer) staying inside Micro$oft instead of providing perceived value to the customer, and note that many people won't complain no matter what happens. Then count the number of idiots who will go out and buy WinXP because they don't have any reasonable alternative (merits of free OS aside for the moment) - that's something like $200 a shot directly to MS.
Consider also the fact that the target market for these crippled, low end machines is the technologically impaired, and soon the question is "Why did they EVER provide rescue CD's?"
The answer to that question is, of course, the cost per megabyte of hard disk storage vs. cost per megabyte of CD.
In summary, the miniscule price of hard drive storage today has allowed Microsoft to pee on the customer while laying the blame squarely on HP. Rather neat, ain't it?
They don't come right out and say it, so this summary might save some of y'all a few minutes:
/. references popped out while surveying this motley crowd."
"Slashdotting geeks, and lots of old women are well represented in the cross-section of EQ players sampled. We were constantly amazed at how often spontaneous
There. Now go back to work.
What platform are you planning to develop for? Your description of the constraints imposed imply that the project itself is secondary in importance to the tools being used. Objective C might fit your bill with some adjustment, although C++ is also a pretty good fit and Python mostly meets your requirements. It sounds like you want to tie the project to a single language. . Does performance matter? What environment will you be running in, ie, large enterprise or hidden in a closet somewhere?
If my boss came at me with such vague requisites and no real game plan beyond what language to use, I'd give him a snooty lesson in computing science and good business practice, demand design parameters, then specify ASM for the job. Pointy-haired bosses deserve no respect.