Well, I don't think that WMP on OS X is amazingly ugly*, neither its preferred video codecs nor interface; but it is a wallowing hippo on slower machines, with no good reason (other players do fine). Stutters, audio dropouts, weird artifacts, interminable buffering, crashes. Hey, I'm not looking at the skinned interface, I'm looking at video. Or trying to. Even on faster G4's (haven't tried it on a G5 yet) it chokes. On a variety of machines, 4 times out of 10, it doesn't do what it needs to. It is either incompetent coding or sinister platform sabotage.
* bland, maybe, but at least it doesn't look like the WMP interface on XP [shudders][shudders again]
Most marriages have two spouses; a husband and a wife.
Furthermore, responding to what you meant, there are significant numbers of legal marriages where the husband has two to four wives simultaneously, in dozens of countries around the world.
Dude! I call 'intentional obtusity' on you!
The poster made an erudite observation that polygamy is generally a juggling act.
I would like to have the choice of using WMPlayer on OS X, but gawd it hurts when I try. I have to work with nearly all the streaming/compressed a/v formats, and don't really hate any of them, they all have their uses. Player software is anoth story, though; using WMP on a Mac just feels like getting suckered into an enema. I can't help thinking that this is intentional.
Actually, it's more like "what about non-combatants?"
Last time I looked, apart from noting that there were only specialized kits, I was disgusted to see that all the kits were either military designs or heavy industry.
There's nothing really gendered about those themes in our family, since there's an aunt who's a heavy equipment operator, another who's a firefighter, and plenty of females including friends tough enough to defend themselves.
It's just that the values implied by those themes are counter to our estimation of what's worth learning to build first. Great, get the kids ready for the military-industrial complex! (NOT)
I have a 6 and 3 year old, and we're moving from duplo to lego. I consider these essential toys.
It drives me nuts to go shopping and see only pre-determined model sets, with all kinds of non-generic parts that, once inevitably added to the bucket, will not be used as intended, and in fact will get misplaced into other toy boxes and barely used at all.
I don't appreciate paying the premium for a product design that comes broken in the box. The whole point of lego (in my 38 years of experience playing with it;-) ) is its interchangeability of pieces and flexibility. Their recent design and marketing trend suppressed its fundamental characteristic!
Lego is, in principle, back to basics, I'm happy to see them waking up to that again. I'll be one of the first to go and get a generic assortment box when I see them on the shelves again.
That's why media pros who need the compromises in the MiniDisc format (size, cost, flexibility, adequate quality, random access) use the HHB portable: USB transfer out, XLR mic/line jacks, and decent A/D conversion.
it is NOT the software that turns people away from buying Macs
No, it's compatibility FUD (I actually had an online banking support rep say to me "remember Betamax?") and a complete lack of understanding of ROI and the lifecycle of hardware. Not to mention lemming behaviour...
And I've heard more people than I can stomach who just need to use the internet and type some letters say that there isn't any software for the Mac, a salesperson told them so. (10K native apps plus VirtualPC and all those OS 9 apps, and counting.)
$1299 for just a box (WTF? which one? izzat $CDN?) that you'll use for 4 years as-is (after a third-party RAM upgrade) and can run semi-pro creative applications without geekery, viruses, or downtime--not bad at all, especially if you use it to make money.
You know, there's a really popular Mac website called Low End Mac. The old saw about Macs lasting forever really is true, those old SCSI hard drives keep chugging, and the build quality on those old machines gets them deployed in some surprising places. Add the typical Mac-nuttery you see in hobbyist fanboys and you've got a good reason to talk about poking around with old gear.
"Nobody cares. Nobody gains anything from the answer to the submitters's question."
The methods suggested for obtaining an answer to questions like this is of significant use to those of us who support low budget scenarios like schools or non-profits. One of the reasons Apple's market share is so apparently low is that their hidden installed user base contains quite a few 8-year-old machines running system 8.x.
Also,some of us like this kind of obscure nerdy challenge. It's a technomacho thing.
Sure, and add hair loss and time spent restarting the app after various crashes and general weirdness. I wish it were, but Audacity isn't there yet on OS X.
Frankly, we don't need advice from the Europeans on running a stable, pluralistic democracy.
Frankly, I don't kneed my prty hosht telling me when I'm too drunk to drive.
I live in Canada. Things continue along their current trajectory, neocon "new America" corporatists will be stomping all over us for our oil and water, and drug laws. Things like 'homeland security' and other civil rights debacles like the war on drugs and the social weight of your prisons, ghettos, and "you're either with us or against us" don't seem very pluralistic, endless war that breeds endless enemies amongst an official plan for unchallenged global domination doesn't seem very stable.
You live in the most propagandized environment in history. (Well, so do I, but we have Canadian Content rules which puts a different slant on things.) Why would you think the election was rigged? If you care to look sideways through the media muck, you can start with corporate fraud-buster Greg Palast's investigation.
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
What is meta data if not just data?
What is salmon if not just a sockeye? What is insect if not just a beetle? What is a number if not just pi? What is a library card if not just a book?
Meta data is a subset of the larger set "data"--a very specific kind of data, data that results from the analysis of data, which in turn leads to analysis about the original analysis. Useful, and a useful distinction.
Well, the two histories are pretty parallel, though slavery played a much smaller and briefer role. Indentured labour of various kinds was more heavily used here.
The land theft issues are still very hot here, especially in the west where there is a large amount of unceded territory. Likewise, the issues of slavery's legacy, clearcutting, and other nasty labour practises are not yet resolved at home for your people either (boycott california produce, anyone? can you say 'Saipan sweatshops'?).
The "don't tell others how to stop making your own mistakes" argument is very tired and shortsighted. Ever been to an AA meeting? Mutual aid is necessary to get out of trouble.
Remember that globalization of capital brings with it a globalization of international solidarity and socio-political concerns. Unless you buy ONLY nationally made products, you are not 'leaving the rest of the world alone' in a material sense, you are actively supporting whatever is going on behind the product.
(although I still have to force quit an app once or twice a week, Apple doesn't go completely blameless here)
Force-quitting a crashed application generally means that the programmers of that particular application erred, so Apple may in fact be blameless in such an instance. More, if you've had to use pre-OS X macs, then you'll be grateful they moved to a stable platform that doesn't require reboots after a badly programmed app craps out. MSWord dies? Don't reboot, just run Word again... the difference is 3 seconds vs. 3 minutes (or 6 minutes if, like me, you have 13 applications open in the background).
in order to shift stock of their high-margin existing players
Unquestionably, riding the crest of popularity for awhile. Probably, also, they just couldn't make enough to sell... and they probably still can't, bet they're just ramping up. The design is probably in the can, though, and they'll be showing that off. They're trying for the US$100 price point, though as Jobs said in October to Steven Levy:
"Some think you wouldn't want to sell a $100 iPod because the profit margin would be so low.
What are you talking about? We'd love to have a $100 iPod! We just don't know how to do it right now. We're constantly trying to make cheaper iPods. We're working on the next step."
It's a pretty interesting interview... Apple's been thinking pretty hard about the music biz. The Rolling Stone interview from December 3rd is worth reading too, for his analysis of why the music industry's business model is broken.
I'd like an mp3/aac/wav/aiff player/recorder 'for the rest of us' -- one to replace my minidisc. I want to be able to record analog to aiff with a line/mic in, I want firewire external disk capability, I want iTunes ease and smart playlists, and I want to slap on accessories like fm transmitters (or a preamp, see above). I only need about 2 gb of storage and I only have about $200CDN to spend on a base unit.
Oh, and I want 12 hours of playtime out of two rechargeable AA batteries, like my minidisc (which also has a motor).
I don't believe in santa anymore so I'm praying to sainT Echno.
If you have any vertical and water on the property, look into an old Pelton wheel. I have friends who live off of one of these; an 8 inch pipe and 100 feet of vertical provides so much power they have to dump power (low tech setup, yeah) to the heater in the greenhouse; they run electric stoves, 3 freezers, a hot water tank, and many lights off of it. Oh, and a typical generic clone desktop with CRT. Too much power for the 4 buildings they inhabit; the only thing that can overdraw the system is all four burners and the oven simultaneously. Never got specific numbers from them. It's very low maintenance;
The whole system cost a couple thousand dollars (ok, they built the power shack from wood they milled themselves, and they didn't have to pay for the backhoe to dig the ditch). The turbine itself is military surplus (was cheap!), and is about 60 years old, the only things ever replaced were brushes, wiring, and a valve. Nice thing about creeks: so long as they don't dry up, they're always on, and so is the power.
The Atari 500ST was my Amiga wannabe. I never tried video, just some audio and great (for the time) print layout. Darn thing paid for itself in no time, and put me through an undergrad degree (though I still used the mainframe for my own papers). Not that I miss it, or the nasty dongled apps I was using.
What I do miss was my next computer: the Mac 512KE. Well, I don't miss it since it's still booting just fine when I pull it out of the closet; what I miss is its reliability and speed. Boots in 17sec, networks, runs MS Word (v.3)--imagine if it had a hard drive!
Hey man, it's no mystery, the Woz was a zen master of simplicity and efficiency. He saw the straightest path to the solution, and found the fewest chips to get in the way.
"I can build a Linux x86 machine for about half of what Apple"
You're new here, right? Apples are a good value compared to equivalent hardware from other tier 1 manufacturers, especially the G5 and the iBooks. You're a tinkerer, unlike "most people." You have time, but it's cheap... to build a box to the level of compatibility, ease, and quality in a typical Mac, and assemble the software etc., you'd be paying yourself a lousy wage. Don't forget that Macs are generally kept in productive use longer, which amortizes any cost difference and then some.
Motorola has had some kickass processors. The '040 line, and the G3, were fast and powerful. Maybe Motorola was making promises that it didn't keep? Perhaps you should look into the PPC consortium's history, Apple had obligations.
"Most people aren't creative, and couldn't care less about video editing."
Hmm, so digital camera sales are no indicator of interest? Well, aside from market indicators, think about how much media you consume. Someone has to make it, d'oh! What do they (we) want to use? the solution that 1) makes the most money for them 2) is the fastest production tool (CPU less important than quality/reliability/integration here) 3) is the least hassle.
What you're saying is like this: "typesetting and layout, who gives a damn? No one wants to publish print materials!"
Hardware speed generally loses to wetware speed unless you have a monster render task.
If you can make things quickly and reliably, with consistent interface features (like keyboard commands) across applications, and apps are well-integrated into the OS, then your computer is much faster regardless of GHz. If your computer doesn't need rebooting when an app goes down, it's faster. If your GUI uses infinite sized targets (i.e. stuff at the very edge of the screen), or you have to click twice in an obvious place instead of 12 times in obscure dialogue boxes, you get a speed boost. If you can set some render job to work then switch to project planning applications without a hiccup, your computer is faster.
If you can learn new software in a pinch, print without headaches, move big files around the network effortlessly, and generally manage the computing environment without annoyingly fussy administration, then your computer is faster. If you have a powerful familiar far-reaching command line and can use it properly, your computer is faster.
Tell me you're using all those cpu cycles efficiently, and I'll put you on a pedestal and proclaim that your P233 is the fastest computer on the block. Otherwise, pay attention to your productivity skills and the quality of your software and stop worrying about cpu percentage points.
Whew, what a nasty rush! You should see what it does to Firebird... I was a 'suspecting' victim, I can't imagine what it would do to a poor unsuspecting cubicle victim.
I think I'll skip trying it out on IE. Glad this isn't my regular computer. Enough of this digital masochism, back to work.
My spouse once had a job with a small political newsmagazine. She was the typesetter on an old obscure setup. Every word went through that machine. Since it was such a rare system, they needed her pretty badly to meet publication deadlines, and that meant that she had an editorial veto. She exercised it directly once: simply over the capitalization of an artist's name--who generally insisted that it be lowercase--and she demanded they respect his wishes. There was a standoff--editors backed down when they realized the stakes--they approached her to sound out controversial decisions after that. It helped that she was good at her job. The whole deal was a revelation for me.
This is gonna sound syndicalist (though it isn't, really, just basic strategy): the wielders of tools can exercise final power over those tools, even if they don't officially own them--because posession is more powerful than abstract ownership. Of course, being a social species, working in concert makes us far more powerful.
Slashdot Mirror
And I did not speak out
Because I was afraid of being accused of ethnic profiling
Then they came for my neighbors
And three thousand of them
Can no longer speak at all
Then we went for the children
And dropped more bombs
But they never had a voice anyway.
Well, I don't think that WMP on OS X is amazingly ugly*, neither its preferred video codecs nor interface; but it is a wallowing hippo on slower machines, with no good reason (other players do fine). Stutters, audio dropouts, weird artifacts, interminable buffering, crashes. Hey, I'm not looking at the skinned interface, I'm looking at video. Or trying to. Even on faster G4's (haven't tried it on a G5 yet) it chokes. On a variety of machines, 4 times out of 10, it doesn't do what it needs to. It is either incompetent coding or sinister platform sabotage.
* bland, maybe, but at least it doesn't look like the WMP interface on XP [shudders][shudders again]
Furthermore, responding to what you meant, there are significant numbers of legal marriages where the husband has two to four wives simultaneously, in dozens of countries around the world.
Dude! I call 'intentional obtusity' on you!
The poster made an erudite observation that polygamy is generally a juggling act.
What's up, mods, really! -1 Humourless
Yes, and have you used them? They Suck(TM).
I would like to have the choice of using WMPlayer on OS X, but gawd it hurts when I try. I have to work with nearly all the streaming/compressed a/v formats, and don't really hate any of them, they all have their uses. Player software is anoth story, though; using WMP on a Mac just feels like getting suckered into an enema. I can't help thinking that this is intentional.
Thank the Source for VLC...
Actually, it's more like "what about non-combatants?"
Last time I looked, apart from noting that there were only specialized kits, I was disgusted to see that all the kits were either military designs or heavy industry.
There's nothing really gendered about those themes in our family, since there's an aunt who's a heavy equipment operator, another who's a firefighter, and plenty of females including friends tough enough to defend themselves.
It's just that the values implied by those themes are counter to our estimation of what's worth learning to build first. Great, get the kids ready for the military-industrial complex! (NOT)
I have a 6 and 3 year old, and we're moving from duplo to lego. I consider these essential toys.
;-) ) is its interchangeability of pieces and flexibility. Their recent design and marketing trend suppressed its fundamental characteristic!
It drives me nuts to go shopping and see only pre-determined model sets, with all kinds of non-generic parts that, once inevitably added to the bucket, will not be used as intended, and in fact will get misplaced into other toy boxes and barely used at all.
I don't appreciate paying the premium for a product design that comes broken in the box. The whole point of lego (in my 38 years of experience playing with it
Lego is, in principle, back to basics, I'm happy to see them waking up to that again. I'll be one of the first to go and get a generic assortment box when I see them on the shelves again.
That's why media pros who need the compromises in the MiniDisc format (size, cost, flexibility, adequate quality, random access) use the HHB portable: USB transfer out, XLR mic/line jacks, and decent A/D conversion.
No, it's compatibility FUD (I actually had an online banking support rep say to me "remember Betamax?") and a complete lack of understanding of ROI and the lifecycle of hardware. Not to mention lemming behaviour...
And I've heard more people than I can stomach who just need to use the internet and type some letters say that there isn't any software for the Mac, a salesperson told them so. (10K native apps plus VirtualPC and all those OS 9 apps, and counting.)
$1299 for just a box (WTF? which one? izzat $CDN?) that you'll use for 4 years as-is (after a third-party RAM upgrade) and can run semi-pro creative applications without geekery, viruses, or downtime--not bad at all, especially if you use it to make money.
You know, there's a really popular Mac website called Low End Mac. The old saw about Macs lasting forever really is true, those old SCSI hard drives keep chugging, and the build quality on those old machines gets them deployed in some surprising places. Add the typical Mac-nuttery you see in hobbyist fanboys and you've got a good reason to talk about poking around with old gear.
"Nobody cares. Nobody gains anything from the answer to the submitters's question."
The methods suggested for obtaining an answer to questions like this is of significant use to those of us who support low budget scenarios like schools or non-profits. One of the reasons Apple's market share is so apparently low is that their hidden installed user base contains quite a few 8-year-old machines running system 8.x.
Also,some of us like this kind of obscure nerdy challenge. It's a technomacho thing.
Sure, and add hair loss and time spent restarting the app after various crashes and general weirdness. I wish it were, but Audacity isn't there yet on OS X.
Frankly, I don't kneed my prty hosht telling me when I'm too drunk to drive.
I live in Canada. Things continue along their current trajectory, neocon "new America" corporatists will be stomping all over us for our oil and water, and drug laws. Things like 'homeland security' and other civil rights debacles like the war on drugs and the social weight of your prisons, ghettos, and "you're either with us or against us" don't seem very pluralistic, endless war that breeds endless enemies amongst an official plan for unchallenged global domination doesn't seem very stable.
You live in the most propagandized environment in history. (Well, so do I, but we have Canadian Content rules which puts a different slant on things.) Why would you think the election was rigged? If you care to look sideways through the media muck, you can start with corporate fraud-buster Greg Palast's investigation.
What is salmon if not just a sockeye? What is insect if not just a beetle? What is a number if not just pi? What is a library card if not just a book?
Meta data is a subset of the larger set "data"--a very specific kind of data, data that results from the analysis of data, which in turn leads to analysis about the original analysis. Useful, and a useful distinction.
Well, the two histories are pretty parallel, though slavery played a much smaller and briefer role. Indentured labour of various kinds was more heavily used here.
The land theft issues are still very hot here, especially in the west where there is a large amount of unceded territory. Likewise, the issues of slavery's legacy, clearcutting, and other nasty labour practises are not yet resolved at home for your people either (boycott california produce, anyone? can you say 'Saipan sweatshops'?).
The "don't tell others how to stop making your own mistakes" argument is very tired and shortsighted. Ever been to an AA meeting? Mutual aid is necessary to get out of trouble.
Remember that globalization of capital brings with it a globalization of international solidarity and socio-political concerns. Unless you buy ONLY nationally made products, you are not 'leaving the rest of the world alone' in a material sense, you are actively supporting whatever is going on behind the product.
Force-quitting a crashed application generally means that the programmers of that particular application erred, so Apple may in fact be blameless in such an instance. More, if you've had to use pre-OS X macs, then you'll be grateful they moved to a stable platform that doesn't require reboots after a badly programmed app craps out. MSWord dies? Don't reboot, just run Word again... the difference is 3 seconds vs. 3 minutes (or 6 minutes if, like me, you have 13 applications open in the background).
Unquestionably, riding the crest of popularity for awhile. Probably, also, they just couldn't make enough to sell... and they probably still can't, bet they're just ramping up. The design is probably in the can, though, and they'll be showing that off. They're trying for the US$100 price point, though as Jobs said in October to Steven Levy:
"Some think you wouldn't want to sell a $100 iPod because the profit margin would be so low.
What are you talking about? We'd love to have a $100 iPod! We just don't know how to do it right now. We're constantly trying to make cheaper iPods. We're working on the next step."
It's a pretty interesting interview... Apple's been thinking pretty hard about the music biz. The Rolling Stone interview from December 3rd is worth reading too, for his analysis of why the music industry's business model is broken.
I'd like an mp3/aac/wav/aiff player/recorder 'for the rest of us' -- one to replace my minidisc. I want to be able to record analog to aiff with a line/mic in, I want firewire external disk capability, I want iTunes ease and smart playlists, and I want to slap on accessories like fm transmitters (or a preamp, see above). I only need about 2 gb of storage and I only have about $200CDN to spend on a base unit.
Oh, and I want 12 hours of playtime out of two rechargeable AA batteries, like my minidisc (which also has a motor).
I don't believe in santa anymore so I'm praying to sainT Echno.
If you have any vertical and water on the property, look into an old Pelton wheel. I have friends who live off of one of these; an 8 inch pipe and 100 feet of vertical provides so much power they have to dump power (low tech setup, yeah) to the heater in the greenhouse; they run electric stoves, 3 freezers, a hot water tank, and many lights off of it. Oh, and a typical generic clone desktop with CRT. Too much power for the 4 buildings they inhabit; the only thing that can overdraw the system is all four burners and the oven simultaneously. Never got specific numbers from them. It's very low maintenance;
The whole system cost a couple thousand dollars (ok, they built the power shack from wood they milled themselves, and they didn't have to pay for the backhoe to dig the ditch). The turbine itself is military surplus (was cheap!), and is about 60 years old, the only things ever replaced were brushes, wiring, and a valve. Nice thing about creeks: so long as they don't dry up, they're always on, and so is the power.
Yes, I stand corrected! 1985 was a long time ago...
The Atari 500ST was my Amiga wannabe. I never tried video, just some audio and great (for the time) print layout. Darn thing paid for itself in no time, and put me through an undergrad degree (though I still used the mainframe for my own papers). Not that I miss it, or the nasty dongled apps I was using.
What I do miss was my next computer: the Mac 512KE. Well, I don't miss it since it's still booting just fine when I pull it out of the closet; what I miss is its reliability and speed. Boots in 17sec, networks, runs MS Word (v.3)--imagine if it had a hard drive!
Hey man, it's no mystery, the Woz was a zen master of simplicity and efficiency. He saw the straightest path to the solution, and found the fewest chips to get in the way.
This is trollish, but I'll bite.
"I can build a Linux x86 machine for about half of what Apple"
You're new here, right? Apples are a good value compared to equivalent hardware from other tier 1 manufacturers, especially the G5 and the iBooks. You're a tinkerer, unlike "most people." You have time, but it's cheap... to build a box to the level of compatibility, ease, and quality in a typical Mac, and assemble the software etc., you'd be paying yourself a lousy wage. Don't forget that Macs are generally kept in productive use longer, which amortizes any cost difference and then some.
Motorola has had some kickass processors. The '040 line, and the G3, were fast and powerful. Maybe Motorola was making promises that it didn't keep? Perhaps you should look into the PPC consortium's history, Apple had obligations.
"Most people aren't creative, and couldn't care less about video editing."
Hmm, so digital camera sales are no indicator of interest? Well, aside from market indicators, think about how much media you consume. Someone has to make it, d'oh! What do they (we) want to use? the solution that 1) makes the most money for them 2) is the fastest production tool (CPU less important than quality/reliability/integration here) 3) is the least hassle.
What you're saying is like this: "typesetting and layout, who gives a damn? No one wants to publish print materials!"
Hardware speed generally loses to wetware speed unless you have a monster render task.
If you can make things quickly and reliably, with consistent interface features (like keyboard commands) across applications, and apps are well-integrated into the OS, then your computer is much faster regardless of GHz. If your computer doesn't need rebooting when an app goes down, it's faster. If your GUI uses infinite sized targets (i.e. stuff at the very edge of the screen), or you have to click twice in an obvious place instead of 12 times in obscure dialogue boxes, you get a speed boost. If you can set some render job to work then switch to project planning applications without a hiccup, your computer is faster.
If you can learn new software in a pinch, print without headaches, move big files around the network effortlessly, and generally manage the computing environment without annoyingly fussy administration, then your computer is faster. If you have a powerful familiar far-reaching command line and can use it properly, your computer is faster.
Tell me you're using all those cpu cycles efficiently, and I'll put you on a pedestal and proclaim that your P233 is the fastest computer on the block. Otherwise, pay attention to your productivity skills and the quality of your software and stop worrying about cpu percentage points.
Whew, what a nasty rush! You should see what it does to Firebird... I was a 'suspecting' victim, I can't imagine what it would do to a poor unsuspecting cubicle victim.
I think I'll skip trying it out on IE. Glad this isn't my regular computer. Enough of this digital masochism, back to work.
Maybe when you buy that mini-HD cam in early 2005 you'll be glad you have 8GB of RAM waiting for you...
"One of these days" seems to come quickly in digital video land.
My spouse once had a job with a small political newsmagazine. She was the typesetter on an old obscure setup. Every word went through that machine. Since it was such a rare system, they needed her pretty badly to meet publication deadlines, and that meant that she had an editorial veto. She exercised it directly once: simply over the capitalization of an artist's name--who generally insisted that it be lowercase--and she demanded they respect his wishes. There was a standoff--editors backed down when they realized the stakes--they approached her to sound out controversial decisions after that. It helped that she was good at her job. The whole deal was a revelation for me.
This is gonna sound syndicalist (though it isn't, really, just basic strategy): the wielders of tools can exercise final power over those tools, even if they don't officially own them--because posession is more powerful than abstract ownership. Of course, being a social species, working in concert makes us far more powerful.