In unrelated news, SCO (formerly Caldera; NASDAQ: SCO) announced today that major sections of the Northeast, including all of New York, have had their license to use Electricity(tm) revoked. SCO accused Everyone(r) of using SCO-copyrighted methods of power grid scaling, and warned that without a license from SCO, use of Electricity(tm) could be in violation of the law. Darl McBride, of SCO, was repoted to have said, "Users of SCO Electricity(tm) will be happy to know that single-user licenses for Electricity(tm) can be purchased, no questions asked, for $699."
Re:I have nothing to contribute to this discussion
on
Mac OS X Power Tools
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You know, it comes and it goes with me. (My thoughts on that, not the vagina thing.)
Apple's got a strange hybrid going here. On one hand, there's this elegant "it just works" machine with a great UI and this feature and that feature for all of us, and on the other hand, there's bash and X11. Power-user tools for those who like to get down in the trenches and get their hands dirty, so to speak.
I think it's the best kind of computer, really--you can write Perl scripts and use Photoshop's healing tool side by side. Power for the rest of us, so to speak.
As for that sandy vagina thing, you might want to talk to a doctor about that.
Re:What is your fav OS X tool?
on
Mac OS X Power Tools
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I use OS X every day, and it's amazing.
Ten favourite things:
1. Without anything needing configuration or installation, I can save to PDF any window I can print normally.
2. Awesome GUI, mainstream apps like Photoshop and Office, and tcsh and bash when I need them.
3. iTunes. (All of the iApps, really. I won't separate them here for the sake of padding.:))
4. A great X11 setup from Apple. Easy to install, and piped through OGL. (For the most part, anyway.)
5. Lots of great command-line tools installed by default. cURL, lots of text editors, screen, as well as command-line Apple utilities like hdiutil. (I know lots of stuff comes with Linux distros, but it's nice to see that Apple followed suit.)
5. Everything in/Applications/Utilities. (Network Utility, a GUI front-end for a ton of CLI-based tools like traceroute, nslookup, and whois; Key Caps, the most awesome-est way to see what key does what when you hold which modifier; and Apple System Profiler, for seeing what's what in your rig when you need to, easily and all at once.)
6. AWESOME foriegn character output and input support. Unfrickingbelieve how nice it is.
7. Stickies. Can't live without 'em these days.
8. Calculator. Big frickin' whoop, most say, but it's nice to have sci functions, a paper tape record, measurement conversions, and updatable currency conversions in one/simple/ app without installing anything extra.
9. UI consistency. Apple's made it really easy to respect important aspects of the UI conventions they've come up with, and it shows. Camino, Transmit, OmniGraffle--these apps could have HORRIBLE interfaces, not feeling like any part of the OS itself, but they avoid screwing up entirely. Good developers, good Apple for giving them:
10. Awesome development tools. Project Builder and Interface Builder are insanely cool, the latter being the nicest way of creating UIs I've ever seen.
This is just OEM stuff, too, all part of the OS (save the apps I cited as examples). It's scratching the surface, really, because the more you use it, the more stuff you find.
Some of you are gonna reply and say that this OS or this distro does x feature, too, and to that I say, "Yeah, but OS X does it all, sans configuration, out of the box, without fail, and I only cited ten things like that. Linux rocks hard, but I'll happily pay Apple once every year or eighteen months for this kind of quality."
So please don't hit me with -1s, mods. Just answering a question;)
TextEdit isn't overkill. It's fast and small. BBEdit isn't really overkill if you're just typing, and if you suddenly need to add a line break or closing P to the end of a line, it takes two seconds.
Hydra is relevant because it does syntax highlighting just like OW does. It does everything OW does, I think.
Mozilla can block banner ads with a right-click, if you're not into/etc/hosts modification.
I write my posts, etc., in text editors first, and then paste things in. I find text editors are more stable (and manipulate text better) than Web browsers. (And OmniWeb does like to crash, you know.)
(3) Self Updating Bookmarks Through The Dock
What do you mean? Are you cluttering up your Dock with bookmarks? More info, please.:)
(4) Self-Fixing Bookmarks
I seem to recall typing "www.slashdot.org" for a bookmark and Camino asking if I wanted to redirect it permanently to "slashdot.org" once the URL resolved.
(5) Superior Cookie Management (Three Levels)
No more complex than Mozilla. Deny, accept, accept and discard at end of session. You can also whitelist/blacklist sites so you don't get cookies from anywhere you don't want to get them from.
(6) Programmable Address Bar Searches (Google, VersionTracker.. etc)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%s -- Create a new bookmark with that as the location and the title as "google". Type "google string" to search what you want from the URL bar, exactly like OmniWeb. Repeat for other sites with %s as your variable.
(7) Ad Blocking (And Yes OmniWeb Has Pop-up Blocking Too)
(16) Network Activity Monitor (Similar to Mail.app's)
What activity are you monitoring?
(17) Much More that I'm Overlooking
Uh-huh.
I'm not saying Omni is a bad browser. It isn't. I used it for a long time, and loved it, but honestly, it doesn't have anything worth $30 that other browsers or programs have for free or less money.
Have you played any of the Marathon games for Mac OS? (You can play 'em on Linux now with the open-source Marathon app, Aleph One, if you aren't a Mac user.)
It didn't use the "save menu" concept, either, and its save system was awesome: Walking through a level, you read complex computer terminals to get the story threads and information on completing levels. There are also other types of terminal panels--pattern buffers, in this case--that allow you to save your game by walking up to them and activating them. You name your saved game file and go right back to the game. It's pretty seamless, and does it without the standard save slot menu.
Not agreeing disagreeing with anything you said, just adding to it.
I'm fairly certain there are PC notebooks with 6-pin ports out there, but I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. Either way, there's no reason to use a 4-pin port.
PowerBook G4s are only an inch thick. It provides power to a FireWire device when one is attached.
You don't add a 1.5-amp power supply, since there's no power supply inside the computer to begin with. The power supply is external, for space and heat issues, out of the gate, so you're not adding anything but some routing on the logic board, the size of the FireWire port itself, and a FireWire controller chip.
If one computer company can do it, any company should be able to, right? As much as I like Apple, I don't think Apple's the only company out there capable of pulling this off.
My PowerBook is an inch thick, and I still have a 6-pin FireWire port on the back, no docking stations necessary. Most PC notebooks that have FireWire built-in use 4-pin ports, as well, which is also dumb for the same reasons as not including it at all, but including it on a docking station.
Like I said, if an iPod--a tiny device--can have a 6-pin port, anything short of a Zippo can.
QuickTime, market share woes aside, whips Windows Media. MPEG-4 streaming is/really/ nice, and AAC audio is also pretty killer once you've eclipsed the 160-200 Kbps mark. Makes for GREAT streams at 128 Kbps.
In fact, QuickTime was chosen as the basis for MPEG-4. It can't be THAT bad.;-)
The QuickTime container itself is also really great for enhanced multimedia (see the stuff on BMWfilms.com). Better than anything else I've seen yet.
Yeah, I got Slashdotted last month, and while it was a "whoa, this is cool as hell" experience, I was lucky it wasn't on the front page.
I guess it's an either/or situation for the story editors here: Either they post the news when they can, or they wait until (maybe) getting a response from a server admin and risk missing a good story for Slashdot readers.
Things like BitTorrent help with some things, but really, they won't solve the problem. I fear nothing can stop Slashdot and sites with the same power (Metafilter, Fark, etc.).
Hope you don't get into too much trouble, Weasel.:-)
Of course not. It doesn't need to be, since it's a FireWire storage device. (It's bootable, too. Install OS X on it and watch as you can boot your Mac with it.)
FireWire, strictly as a protocol, is much more interesting to me for a few reasons:
1. FireWire is isochronous. 2. FireWire is peer-to-peer, not master/slave (like USB). That means one could hook up a theoretical FireWire-eqipped TV and stream the DV footage you just shot of your day at the beach right to the screen, nothing else involved. 3. TCP/IP communication over FireWire, because of point number 2, is much more flexible than USB. (I don't know if USB supports TCP/IP communication at all. Just guessing that it does.) 4. FireWire can push 1.5 amps (versus less than a tenth of that for USB 2) to a device. That makes powering small notebook HDs or charging MP3 players quite easy to do.
The only thing that sucks is when a computer manufacturer puts a 4-pin FireWire port on a machine instead of a 6-pin port. (The difference being the two pins that perform termination power transfer.) I dunno why people ship 4-pin ports on computers when a device the size of a deck of cards has a 6-pin port. Go figure.
The iPod doesn't need a AAA battery. It gets 8-10 hours on its internal rechargeable battery. A couple of hours less and no wasting batteries. I can even recharge it by plugging it into my FireWire port while I'm using it.
I'd rather see Adobe improve their UI than Apple say to Adobe, "Screw you and Photoshop We don't need you." Final Cut Pro is better than Premiere, yeah, but Photoshop isn't even an industry standard--it/made/ the industry. Apple needs Photoshop, because a LOT of Mac users need it, too.
Yes, it's a generic troll message posted to every Apple story, but MP3s on a 604e isn't hard at all.
MacAmp wasn't TOO terrible, and SoundJam runs in 9. I think Audion does, too.
Those old Power Macs don't make bad MP3/stereo systems if you've an A/V card for it, and they're fairly cheap at thrift stores and the like. (A place up the street from me has a 9600 with a couple of HDs for $150, keyboard and mouse included. Not terrible at all. It's an MP machine, and I think (I THINK) YDL can utilize the extra CPU, so it's definitely worth $150.)
Slashdot Mirror
In unrelated news, SCO (formerly Caldera; NASDAQ: SCO) announced today that major sections of the Northeast, including all of New York, have had their license to use Electricity(tm) revoked. SCO accused Everyone(r) of using SCO-copyrighted methods of power grid scaling, and warned that without a license from SCO, use of Electricity(tm) could be in violation of the law. Darl McBride, of SCO, was repoted to have said, "Users of SCO Electricity(tm) will be happy to know that single-user licenses for Electricity(tm) can be purchased, no questions asked, for $699."
I got nothing.
Oh, sonofabitch. A typo in the freakin' subject. I previewed and everything!
SLASHDOT (to SCO)
When have you ever sold a license?
SCO
I've sold, lotsa times!
SLASHDOT
Name one!
SCO
The company lives in Canada, met it at
Niagara Falls. You wouldn't know
it.
Ah, indeed, I'm incorrect:
m l
;-)
http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbarnum.ht
Fairly obscure, so I'm not too upset that I didn't know.
P.T. Barnum called. He wants his cliche back.
You know, it comes and it goes with me. (My thoughts on that, not the vagina thing.)
Apple's got a strange hybrid going here. On one hand, there's this elegant "it just works" machine with a great UI and this feature and that feature for all of us, and on the other hand, there's bash and X11. Power-user tools for those who like to get down in the trenches and get their hands dirty, so to speak.
I think it's the best kind of computer, really--you can write Perl scripts and use Photoshop's healing tool side by side. Power for the rest of us, so to speak.
As for that sandy vagina thing, you might want to talk to a doctor about that.
I use OS X every day, and it's amazing.
:))
/Applications/Utilities. (Network Utility, a GUI front-end for a ton of CLI-based tools like traceroute, nslookup, and whois; Key Caps, the most awesome-est way to see what key does what when you hold which modifier; and Apple System Profiler, for seeing what's what in your rig when you need to, easily and all at once.)
/simple/ app without installing anything extra.
;)
Ten favourite things:
1. Without anything needing configuration or installation, I can save to PDF any window I can print normally.
2. Awesome GUI, mainstream apps like Photoshop and Office, and tcsh and bash when I need them.
3. iTunes. (All of the iApps, really. I won't separate them here for the sake of padding.
4. A great X11 setup from Apple. Easy to install, and piped through OGL. (For the most part, anyway.)
5. Lots of great command-line tools installed by default. cURL, lots of text editors, screen, as well as command-line Apple utilities like hdiutil. (I know lots of stuff comes with Linux distros, but it's nice to see that Apple followed suit.)
5. Everything in
6. AWESOME foriegn character output and input support. Unfrickingbelieve how nice it is.
7. Stickies. Can't live without 'em these days.
8. Calculator. Big frickin' whoop, most say, but it's nice to have sci functions, a paper tape record, measurement conversions, and updatable currency conversions in one
9. UI consistency. Apple's made it really easy to respect important aspects of the UI conventions they've come up with, and it shows. Camino, Transmit, OmniGraffle--these apps could have HORRIBLE interfaces, not feeling like any part of the OS itself, but they avoid screwing up entirely. Good developers, good Apple for giving them:
10. Awesome development tools. Project Builder and Interface Builder are insanely cool, the latter being the nicest way of creating UIs I've ever seen.
This is just OEM stuff, too, all part of the OS (save the apps I cited as examples). It's scratching the surface, really, because the more you use it, the more stuff you find.
Some of you are gonna reply and say that this OS or this distro does x feature, too, and to that I say, "Yeah, but OS X does it all, sans configuration, out of the box, without fail, and I only cited ten things like that. Linux rocks hard, but I'll happily pay Apple once every year or eighteen months for this kind of quality."
So please don't hit me with -1s, mods. Just answering a question
mikey% sudo echo "0.0.0.0 ads.slashdot.org" >> /etc/hosts
Mozilla has a composition component, too. If you're writing code, why not use a program that's designed for it, anyway? One app for one job.
Sorry, I should have assumed you'd done no research into other browsers before declaring all the things I need to pay for in a browser.
Little, if anything, OW does can't be had by other, less costly or free, and at least as easy to use programs.
TextEdit isn't overkill. It's fast and small. BBEdit isn't really overkill if you're just typing, and if you suddenly need to add a line break or closing P to the end of a line, it takes two seconds.
/etc/hosts modification.
Hydra is relevant because it does syntax highlighting just like OW does. It does everything OW does, I think.
Mozilla can block banner ads with a right-click, if you're not into
(2) Form Spell Check (I'm Soaking in it)
I write my posts, etc., in text editors first, and then paste things in. I find text editors are more stable (and manipulate text better) than Web browsers. (And OmniWeb does like to crash, you know.)
(3) Self Updating Bookmarks Through The Dock
What do you mean? Are you cluttering up your Dock with bookmarks? More info, please. :)
(4) Self-Fixing Bookmarks
I seem to recall typing "www.slashdot.org" for a bookmark and Camino asking if I wanted to redirect it permanently to "slashdot.org" once the URL resolved.
(5) Superior Cookie Management (Three Levels)
No more complex than Mozilla. Deny, accept, accept and discard at end of session. You can also whitelist/blacklist sites so you don't get cookies from anywhere you don't want to get them from.
(6) Programmable Address Bar Searches (Google, VersionTracker.. etc)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%s -- Create a new bookmark with that as the location and the title as "google". Type "google string" to search what you want from the URL bar, exactly like OmniWeb. Repeat for other sites with %s as your variable.
(7) Ad Blocking (And Yes OmniWeb Has Pop-up Blocking Too)
Hey.
(9) Extensive Source View, Edit, Publishing Capabilities
You haven't seen Hydra, I take it.
(10) Fully Voice Activated Interface and Link Navigation
Voice recognition sucks on computers, and you look dumb when you do it. Not a feature.
(11) Speakable Pages (Useful When Your Eyes Just Can't Read Anymore)
Other browsers do this, too, via the Services menu. Highlight text and click "Start Speaking".
(12) Browser Compatibility Settings
(13) JavaScript Compatibility Settings (Can Tie in or out With #11)
(14) JavaScript Bookmarklets
Don't even begin to pretend like other browsers don't have these features.
(15) Application Helper Settings For Downloads
This rocks harder.
(16) Network Activity Monitor (Similar to Mail.app's)
What activity are you monitoring?
(17) Much More that I'm Overlooking
Uh-huh.
I'm not saying Omni is a bad browser. It isn't. I used it for a long time, and loved it, but honestly, it doesn't have anything worth $30 that other browsers or programs have for free or less money.
What, what?
How does Mozilla (Camino included, since you didn't bother to distinguish) get a "not quite as awesome" rating?
If anything, Moz/Camino is just as good as Safari. (At least I can rearrange the toolbar in Camino.)
Shit. Good thing my girlfriend and I don't live in Texas. We'd be convicted as dealers and burned at the stake.
Have you played any of the Marathon games for Mac OS? (You can play 'em on Linux now with the open-source Marathon app, Aleph One, if you aren't a Mac user.)
It didn't use the "save menu" concept, either, and its save system was awesome: Walking through a level, you read complex computer terminals to get the story threads and information on completing levels. There are also other types of terminal panels--pattern buffers, in this case--that allow you to save your game by walking up to them and activating them. You name your saved game file and go right back to the game. It's pretty seamless, and does it without the standard save slot menu.
Not agreeing disagreeing with anything you said, just adding to it.
Second-after addendum:
I'm fairly certain there are PC notebooks with 6-pin ports out there, but I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. Either way, there's no reason to use a 4-pin port.
That's bullshit.
PowerBook G4s are only an inch thick. It provides power to a FireWire device when one is attached.
You don't add a 1.5-amp power supply, since there's no power supply inside the computer to begin with. The power supply is external, for space and heat issues, out of the gate, so you're not adding anything but some routing on the logic board, the size of the FireWire port itself, and a FireWire controller chip.
If one computer company can do it, any company should be able to, right? As much as I like Apple, I don't think Apple's the only company out there capable of pulling this off.
Docking station?
WHY? (Other than port duplication.)
My PowerBook is an inch thick, and I still have a 6-pin FireWire port on the back, no docking stations necessary. Most PC notebooks that have FireWire built-in use 4-pin ports, as well, which is also dumb for the same reasons as not including it at all, but including it on a docking station.
Like I said, if an iPod--a tiny device--can have a 6-pin port, anything short of a Zippo can.
I beg to differ.
/really/ nice, and AAC audio is also pretty killer once you've eclipsed the 160-200 Kbps mark. Makes for GREAT streams at 128 Kbps.
;-)
QuickTime, market share woes aside, whips Windows Media. MPEG-4 streaming is
In fact, QuickTime was chosen as the basis for MPEG-4. It can't be THAT bad.
The QuickTime container itself is also really great for enhanced multimedia (see the stuff on BMWfilms.com). Better than anything else I've seen yet.
Yeah, I got Slashdotted last month, and while it was a "whoa, this is cool as hell" experience, I was lucky it wasn't on the front page.
:-)
I guess it's an either/or situation for the story editors here: Either they post the news when they can, or they wait until (maybe) getting a response from a server admin and risk missing a good story for Slashdot readers.
Things like BitTorrent help with some things, but really, they won't solve the problem. I fear nothing can stop Slashdot and sites with the same power (Metafilter, Fark, etc.).
Hope you don't get into too much trouble, Weasel.
A story about Halo fan videos and we got by without getting Slashdotted!
Bungie.org: 1
Slashdot: . . . Well, more than 1.
Fine, Slashdot. You still win, but we're gonna get you one day! HahahHAHAHAhaHAhAhaha! Ha.
Of course not. It doesn't need to be, since it's a FireWire storage device. (It's bootable, too. Install OS X on it and watch as you can boot your Mac with it.)
FireWire, strictly as a protocol, is much more interesting to me for a few reasons:
1. FireWire is isochronous.
2. FireWire is peer-to-peer, not master/slave (like USB). That means one could hook up a theoretical FireWire-eqipped TV and stream the DV footage you just shot of your day at the beach right to the screen, nothing else involved.
3. TCP/IP communication over FireWire, because of point number 2, is much more flexible than USB. (I don't know if USB supports TCP/IP communication at all. Just guessing that it does.)
4. FireWire can push 1.5 amps (versus less than a tenth of that for USB 2) to a device. That makes powering small notebook HDs or charging MP3 players quite easy to do.
The only thing that sucks is when a computer manufacturer puts a 4-pin FireWire port on a machine instead of a 6-pin port. (The difference being the two pins that perform termination power transfer.) I dunno why people ship 4-pin ports on computers when a device the size of a deck of cards has a 6-pin port. Go figure.
The iPod doesn't need a AAA battery. It gets 8-10 hours on its internal rechargeable battery. A couple of hours less and no wasting batteries. I can even recharge it by plugging it into my FireWire port while I'm using it.
I'll take the iPod on this point.
I'd rather see Adobe improve their UI than Apple say to Adobe, "Screw you and Photoshop We don't need you." Final Cut Pro is better than Premiere, yeah, but Photoshop isn't even an industry standard--it /made/ the industry. Apple needs Photoshop, because a LOT of Mac users need it, too.
Because there are more games for the Cray than the Mac.
(I'm a Mac user. I get to make this joke.)
Yes, it's a generic troll message posted to every Apple story, but MP3s on a 604e isn't hard at all.
MacAmp wasn't TOO terrible, and SoundJam runs in 9. I think Audion does, too.
Those old Power Macs don't make bad MP3/stereo systems if you've an A/V card for it, and they're fairly cheap at thrift stores and the like. (A place up the street from me has a 9600 with a couple of HDs for $150, keyboard and mouse included. Not terrible at all. It's an MP machine, and I think (I THINK) YDL can utilize the extra CPU, so it's definitely worth $150.)