What I hate most about Windows apps, and linux programmers like to use it too in their apps, is the fact that all dialogs end with confusing 'yes' 'no' questions.
e.g. on a Windows box, closing an unsaved document in Office asks:
Do you want to save changes to Document1? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]
But other programs have different and sometimes elaborate questions:
"Closing this window will cause you to loose changes. Are you sure you want to loose your changes?
[Yes] [No] [Cancel]
Now I have to read the WHOLE dialog to be sure nothing bad happens, because if I click [Yes] here, I WILL loose my changes.
On the Mac there are also 3 buttons.
The default button, the one pressed by entering return is always the savest choice, sits always on the right side of the dialog and is marked differently from the rest. e.g.:
"Do you want to save changes to this document before closing?"
[Don't Save] . . . . . . . . . [Cancel] [Save]
You may call this eye candy, but IMHO and that of real GUI designers this is a huge timesaver and prevents anger, hi-blood pressures and other comfort issues.
The close button, one of my other 'favorites'. Sometimes the outermost close button closes the inner window, but sometimes it closes the whole application. This is not so bad for quick-starting apps, like Office. But slow as hell if you have to go through login screens. e.g. HP Openview.
So, imho, I am more productive with clear & concise dialogs.
However, since a lot of personal computers predate the IBM 'PC' by several years, it is in fact IBM who used a common term for their own marketing purposes.
Apple II, TRS-80, Atari, Commodore PET, BBC Micro, Newbrain etc. were all personal computers in those days.
> How about a mouse with a mouse wheel instead of all that screen real-estate wasted on scroll bars?
Oh, the joy of knowing everything in retrospect! The mousewheel was not invented until 15 years later. This is like saying: "The eniac sucked, it didn't have a gui and didn't support OpenGL".
Squeak is the modern Smalltalk implementation. It supports opengl, quicktime, widgets, networking etc. It is cross platform and runs on Windoze, Linux, other unices, Mac OS X, PDAs etc.
http://www.squeak.org/
There's nothing wrong with SCSI! It's just bloody expensive compared to (S)ATA. It also has higher performance, but most people do not want to pay a premium for lower capacity drives. Let's take an example from a Dutch online store:
SCSI: 36 GB Maxtor Atlas 10 krpm, ultra 320 scsi costs 175 euro
ATA: 200 GB WD 7200 rpm, ATA/100, 139 euro
The SCSI disc is not only faster, but is also 7 times more expensive!
If it's only space that matters and not transaction/database speed, I know what I would buy. With the right ATA Raid controller -see previous post- the performance difference for file servers is negligible. IMHO.
I've been using a couple of 3Ware hardware RAID cards in my FreeBSD servers. More expensive than the onboard crap, but Very Nice. Full hardware RAID 0,1,10,5,50, remote control, hot swap, hot spare, email notification on failure, the works.
You can configure your RAID remotely while your server is running. (But always be careful with your boot disc;-) Or you can install your OS while the RAID is building in the background.
Works with Linux & Windows as well, unfortunately not with MacOS X.
But for MacOS X (& linux) geeks, the XRaid RuleZ!
Pfah! You youngsters had removable disk packs. I always brought along a pack of punchcards with my special Algol 68 utilities. That was bliss. Before that you had to toggle your utilities in binary using the switches on the front.:-)
I recently bought the Phlink telecom adapter , which seems to have the functionality of the old Geoport adapter. The accompanying software can recognise DTMF codes and can sample sound (i.e. an answering machine), which it can send to you by email.
I do not know if the developer Ovolab has plans for fax functionality, but maybe it can supply an Apple event structure to 'wake' the built-in fax server for Panther if it detects a fax tone.
Axel
Last week I received my $0 Sony/Ericsson T610, part of my new mobile subscription. It rocks with bluetooth! I pair it with my Powerbook once, and after that I can: sync my telephone list with my Mac sync my calendar with my phone use the internet while the phone is in my pocket. up & download pictures with the phone.
and best of all: using Salling's Clicker software, I can use my phone to control a slideshow, my iTunes mp3 player, even steer the mouse around on the screen.
It works great & transparent.
Then I hooked up a Belkin bluetooth adapter with little external antenna, and the range extended from 10 meters to about 80. I wonder what's the use in that, but it's cool!
Oh, and the wireless Apple Mouse is pretty handy for presentations: you can walk around during lectures, just like with a ir remote, but you don't have to point to click.
All in all: I'm happy Bluetooth is finally usefull.
The list with Limitations of NAT Traversal is funny, were it not that this will open a cornucopia of new virus possibilities.
NAT Traversal is one of the possible solutions in a UPnP device: NAT Traversal technology has been created to enable network applications to detect the presence of a local NAT device. Once detected, the application can then configure the NAT, defining the appropriate mappings to solve their compatibility issues.
So far so good. However: * NAT traversal has an open trust model. This means that all application on the private network have access to all the port mappings on a NAT. This allows for a great amount of flexibility of multiple points of administration, but applications do not have exclusive ownership of their mappings.
Oh goody, Open Trust, sounds like an MSFT technology enhancement!
* Conflict resolution is the responsibility of applications. If an application tries to map a port that is already mapped to another client, it is up to the application to either find another port or overwrite the application.
This means that if a rogue email client wants the smtp port redirected to its office machine, the real email server doesn't get any mail, because it is the responsibility of the rogue application!
* Applications are responsible for cleaning up after themselves when they are done with a port mapping. Static mappings persist indefinitely and are most appropriately used by services that intend to listen on well-known ports for the life of the application.
This means that on top of memory leaks, we can have portmap leaks: applications that are not written correctly will 'hog' the UPnP router ports, spoiling it for others.
I first encountered this UPnP thingy when a colleague of mine couldn't use video chat with his MSN Messenger client. It seems MSN wants to have UDP portmaps from, 5004 - 65535 mapped to the PC it is using. Funny that. Most other video clients only use 2 ports, at most. Instead of improving their MSN protocol to play nice with other network clients, MSFT invents a new, Universal Plug & Play standard!
I recently had to give a technical training for supporting MacOS X and MacOS 9 to seasoned Windows administrators. Two of them also had Solaris experience. My problems were "where to start" and "what book to offer".
See, they had ample experience with the other OS, but none with MacOS special niceties. I did not want to bore them with the otherwise excellent Missing Manual series, since these cover mostly user apps. I needed a book that briefly touches the Mac user experience, Finder, windows, menus etc. and then quickly moves on to more advanced subjects. Account configuration, networking, servers, scripting. Also, I didn't want a humongous 1000+ pages book.
Needless to say, I could not find such a book. In the end I settled for "Mac OS X Version 10.2 Jaguar Little Black Book" by Steinberg. It covers some basics and moves on to system admin tasks. Every chapter has a troubleshooting section. Also the book has a mere 560 pages and is well written.
By the way, the Windows people enjoyed the MacOS X training & experience very much. But I doubt that the one day training made them into Macintosh service engineers & troubleshooters.
Solaris, for example, can use local files, DNS, NIS, NIS+, and LDAP for the hosts database.
I didn't know that.
MacOS X 10.2 uses a similar mechanism to look up system information, like hostnames, printers, users, groups, mountpoints. The information can reside in BSD-like/etc/ files, LDAP, NIS or SLP databases, or obtained via Rendezvous or SMB. The system finds the information it needs in the selected items. See the utility "Directory Access" for more (albeit minimal) info.
NaN, the company that Blender owned, had 40 people working for it. I don't know what you know about basic accounting, but 100000 euro's can barely pay the salaries for one month. It's more a token to any claims by bankers, tax agencies and like vultures, that 'company assets' were 'sold' to a foundation.
Slashdot Mirror
Great utility. I tried calculating it myself, but 15 years after uni I got a bit rusty in the furlong business.
thanks.
That's not the speed of light in imperial standards. What is it?
These nerdy books were highly recommended by my cat:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/axello/69859723/
What I hate most about Windows apps, and linux programmers like to use it too in their apps, is the fact that all dialogs end with confusing 'yes' 'no' questions. e.g. on a Windows box, closing an unsaved document in Office asks:
Do you want to save changes to Document1?
[Yes] [No] [Cancel]
But other programs have different and sometimes elaborate questions:
"Closing this window will cause you to loose changes. Are you sure you want to loose your changes?
[Yes] [No] [Cancel]
Now I have to read the WHOLE dialog to be sure nothing bad happens, because if I click [Yes] here, I WILL loose my changes.
On the Mac there are also 3 buttons. The default button, the one pressed by entering return is always the savest choice, sits always on the right side of the dialog and is marked differently from the rest. e.g.:
"Do you want to save changes to this document before closing?"
[Don't Save] . . . . . . . . . [Cancel] [Save]
You may call this eye candy, but IMHO and that of real GUI designers this is a huge timesaver and prevents anger, hi-blood pressures and other comfort issues.
The close button, one of my other 'favorites'. Sometimes the outermost close button closes the inner window, but sometimes it closes the whole application. This is not so bad for quick-starting apps, like Office. But slow as hell if you have to go through login screens. e.g. HP Openview.
So, imho, I am more productive with clear & concise dialogs.
However, since a lot of personal computers predate the IBM 'PC' by several years, it is in fact IBM who used a common term for their own marketing purposes. Apple II, TRS-80, Atari, Commodore PET, BBC Micro, Newbrain etc. were all personal computers in those days.
> How about a mouse with a mouse wheel instead of all that screen real-estate wasted on scroll bars?
Oh, the joy of knowing everything in retrospect! The mousewheel was not invented until 15 years later.
This is like saying: "The eniac sucked, it didn't have a gui and didn't support OpenGL".
Squeak is the modern Smalltalk implementation. It supports opengl, quicktime, widgets, networking etc. It is cross platform and runs on Windoze, Linux, other unices, Mac OS X, PDAs etc. http://www.squeak.org/
I have, as a matter of FACT, the installers for MS Word 3.0 and 4.0. They both appeared on the Macintosh. Way before Winword 2.0 for the PC.
There's nothing wrong with SCSI! It's just bloody expensive compared to (S)ATA. It also has higher performance, but most people do not want to pay a premium for lower capacity drives.
Let's take an example from a Dutch online store:
SCSI: 36 GB Maxtor Atlas 10 krpm, ultra 320 scsi costs 175 euro
ATA: 200 GB WD 7200 rpm, ATA/100, 139 euro
The SCSI disc is not only faster, but is also 7 times more expensive! If it's only space that matters and not transaction/database speed, I know what I would buy. With the right ATA Raid controller -see previous post- the performance difference for file servers is negligible. IMHO.
I've been using a couple of 3Ware hardware RAID cards in my FreeBSD servers. More expensive than the onboard crap, but Very Nice. Full hardware RAID 0,1,10,5,50, remote control, hot swap, hot spare, email notification on failure, the works. ;-) Or you can install your OS while the RAID is building in the background.
Works with Linux & Windows as well, unfortunately not with MacOS X.
You can configure your RAID remotely while your server is running. (But always be careful with your boot disc
But for MacOS X (& linux) geeks, the XRaid RuleZ!
As mentioned somewhere above, and in the article, HFS+ does defragging on the fly when files are opened if they are LESS THAN 20MB.
I highly doubt your FCP files are less than 20 MB.
Pfah! You youngsters had removable disk packs. I always brought along a pack of punchcards with my special Algol 68 utilities. That was bliss. Before that you had to toggle your utilities in binary using the switches on the front. :-)
I recently bought the Phlink telecom adapter , which seems to have the functionality of the old Geoport adapter. The accompanying software can recognise DTMF codes and can sample sound (i.e. an answering machine), which it can send to you by email. I do not know if the developer Ovolab has plans for fax functionality, but maybe it can supply an Apple event structure to 'wake' the built-in fax server for Panther if it detects a fax tone. Axel
Last week I received my $0 Sony/Ericsson T610, part of my new mobile subscription. It rocks with bluetooth! I pair it with my Powerbook once, and after that I can:
sync my telephone list with my Mac
sync my calendar with my phone
use the internet while the phone is in my pocket.
up & download pictures with the phone.
and best of all: using Salling's Clicker software, I can use my phone to control a slideshow, my iTunes mp3 player, even steer the mouse around on the screen.
It works great & transparent.
Then I hooked up a Belkin bluetooth adapter with little external antenna, and the range extended from 10 meters to about 80. I wonder what's the use in that, but it's cool!
Oh, and the wireless Apple Mouse is pretty handy for presentations: you can walk around during lectures, just like with a ir remote, but you don't have to point to click.
All in all: I'm happy Bluetooth is finally usefull.
On http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWSXP/pro/techinfo/pl anning/networking/nattraversal.asp there is a rather interesting article explaining the basics & problems associated with NAT. For beginners. At the end they explain the Windows API for UPnP.
The list with Limitations of NAT Traversal is funny, were it not that this will open a cornucopia of new virus possibilities. NAT Traversal is one of the possible solutions in a UPnP device:
NAT Traversal technology has been created to enable network applications to detect the presence of a local NAT device. Once detected, the application can then configure the NAT, defining the appropriate mappings to solve their compatibility issues.
So far so good. However:
* NAT traversal has an open trust model. This means that all application on the private network have access to all the port mappings on a NAT. This allows for a great amount of flexibility of multiple points of administration, but applications do not have exclusive ownership of their mappings.
Oh goody, Open Trust, sounds like an MSFT technology enhancement!
* Conflict resolution is the responsibility of applications. If an application tries to map a port that is already mapped to another client, it is up to the application to either find another port or overwrite the application.
This means that if a rogue email client wants the smtp port redirected to its office machine, the real email server doesn't get any mail, because it is the responsibility of the rogue application!
* Applications are responsible for cleaning up after themselves when they are done with a port mapping. Static mappings persist indefinitely and are most appropriately used by services that intend to listen on well-known ports for the life of the application.
This means that on top of memory leaks, we can have portmap leaks: applications that are not written correctly will 'hog' the UPnP router ports, spoiling it for others.
I first encountered this UPnP thingy when a colleague of mine couldn't use video chat with his MSN Messenger client. It seems MSN wants to have UDP portmaps from, 5004 - 65535 mapped to the PC it is using. Funny that. Most other video clients only use 2 ports, at most. Instead of improving their MSN protocol to play nice with other network clients, MSFT invents a new, Universal Plug & Play standard!
I think I'll stick with iChat.
I recently had to give a technical training for supporting MacOS X and MacOS 9 to seasoned Windows administrators. Two of them also had Solaris experience. My problems were "where to start" and "what book to offer".
See, they had ample experience with the other OS, but none with MacOS special niceties. I did not want to bore them with the otherwise excellent Missing Manual series, since these cover mostly user apps. I needed a book that briefly touches the Mac user experience, Finder, windows, menus etc. and then quickly moves on to more advanced subjects. Account configuration, networking, servers, scripting. Also, I didn't want a humongous 1000+ pages book.
Needless to say, I could not find such a book. In the end I settled for "Mac OS X Version 10.2 Jaguar Little Black Book" by Steinberg. It covers some basics and moves on to system admin tasks. Every chapter has a troubleshooting section. Also the book has a mere 560 pages and is well written.
By the way, the Windows people enjoyed the MacOS X training & experience very much. But I doubt that the one day training made them into Macintosh service engineers & troubleshooters.
Solaris, for example, can use local files, DNS, NIS, NIS+, and LDAP for the hosts database.
/etc/ files, LDAP, NIS or SLP databases, or obtained via Rendezvous or SMB. The system finds the information it needs in the selected items. See the utility "Directory Access" for more (albeit minimal) info.
I didn't know that. MacOS X 10.2 uses a similar mechanism to look up system information, like hostnames, printers, users, groups, mountpoints. The information can reside in BSD-like
NaN, the company that Blender owned, had 40 people working for it. I don't know what you know about basic accounting, but 100000 euro's can barely pay the salaries for one month. It's more a token to any claims by bankers, tax agencies and like vultures, that 'company assets' were 'sold' to a foundation.
See the film Gattaca. It's an intriguing story of what could happen to society when biometrics is ubiquitous and cheap.