I did, with ResEdit...this is a very odd extension. The 'INIT' resource appears to contain just raw data instead of typical INIT code. There are also ASCII names of several Open Transport routines (presumably, the ones being patched). But why put this into an INIT which can be disabled via Extensions Manager? Why not do what they did with the Font Manager Update for 8.6; patch the Extensions Manager prefs so that this obviously important piece of software can't be disabled easily? The code should be similar to the FMU code, so it souldn't be that hard to implement. Either that, or set it up as a 'scri' file, so it can't even be seen by EM (although it would then load before OT does, so maybe that's not such a good idea).
Also, as of this morning, this was still not available via Mac OS 9's built-in Software Update. I hope we aren't expected to all know to go to Apple's site and download the patch ourselves....
IIRC, the somewhat rotund Apple penguin first surfaced around the time of QuickDraw 3D's first release. I've also seen it attached to the MkLinux site, though.
Doesn't necessarily mean they'll be announced, though. The article indicates they'll be unveiled on stage, but it's also possible they may just be exhibited to a few select developers. Apple is already introducing (by all accounts) a new PowerBook along with updates on OS 9 and OS X. There's also the possibility of a new 17" iMac announcement, and the long-overdue G4/OS X Server machine will hopefully be ready at the same time. That's a lot for even a MacWorld Expo. The MP machines are more likely, IMO, to be announced later in the year at an Apple Event of some type. Unless Steve is looking for that perfect Columbo-esque "Oh, one more thing..." announcement for this Expo. Hey, it worked twice last year...
> you do know that all movies are already widescreen, right?
Sigh...um, yes, I know that. And have you ever watched the video version of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?" Check out the scene with Indy letting his father know where to begin the search for the Grail. You're supposed to be seeing them side-by-side, but the transfer cuts between their faces. The movie is widescreen, the transfer is what's not.
Be that as it may, you are correct about me being fucking brilliant. Now convince my employer in time for my next review....
> I don't know about the DVDs, but the VHS versions > are out now, THX remastered and letterboxed.
I've debated picking those up, but I'm holding out for the DVD version. Paramount seems to finally have caught on that people want more than just the movie on their DVDs, so hopefully they won't just rush out a quickie transfer but take the time to add the supplements as well.
They're among the most requested DVD tiitles (right up there w/ the original Star Wars movies and "The Princess Bride"), so there is hope. Maybe.
Then again, there's no public commitment to releasing either "Airplane!" or "Buckaroo Banzai," so I'm still bummin'.:-[
I would love nothing more than to smugly point out the superiority of QuickTime Streaming. But, due to the same kind of corporate shortsightedness that prevents us Mac users from having an up-to-date Java2 VM, there is no QuickTime 4 player for Linux/BSD. ARRRGH!!
OK, vent's over, nothing more to see here. It is oo bad that nobody's snuck the MoviePlayer.app out of Mac OS X DP2 and onto a LinuxPPC box to see if it'll run in binary-compatible mode...(hint-hint)
if you couldn't call your friend's house because they were using Microsoft Phone and you had AOL's You've Got A Phone. Sometimes standards are a good thing.
Apple was supposedly working with AOL to integrate AIM into the system at some level. I wonder whatever came of that...
>Does anyone have any information on the computing systems being used? > Come on, there have to be a few NIHers reading/.!;-)
I work as a Macintosh support tech over at NHLBI (the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) and interviewed recently for a position over at NHGRI (I didn't get it mainly due to non-competition agreements between the federal contractors who supply NIH). Like any good geek, I asked about the machines in use on the project. Apparently, while some processing is done here in Bethesda, a lot of it is done at other sites (universities and such) on Unix boxen, although my interviewer wasn't sure of the specific platform. At the institute itself there's a fairly large number of Macs used for graphic analysis of the data and both Macs and Wintel PCs for basic stuff like writing papers and reports.
I can tell you NHGRI is pretty well funded within NIH, right up there with the cancer institure and the infectious disease institute (which deals with things like AIDS and whatnot). They certainly have more translucent Macs than any other institute.:-]
And yes, they do use Linux there, although from what I gather, it's mostly being used by individuals experimenting with the system, and not for any actual rendering/mapping of gene data. Coincidentally, I took my first Linux support call a couple of weeks ago from somebody here who installed Caldera 2.2 and needed help setting up networking. Got him set up in only minutes, and soon he was enjoying NIH's 300kbps-and-up network connection. Makes watching MacWorld keynotes a lot more viable.
If you check the Netcraft records for NHLBI, NIDDK (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), and NHGRI, you'll see that NIH is far from your typical NT government shop. Plus, the NHGRI main website has lots of info on the project and why it's a Good Thing.
BTW, slightly off-topic: there are 12 people in my support group, and of those, I'm the only full-time Mac tech, while two others are mostly PC techs with some Mac skills. Oddly enough, the PC people are always busier than me despite having roughly the same number of machines to support.....
>... it isn't the speed of the individual processors that was important > to them, but the speed PER CUBIC FOOT OF SPACE...
Man, that's my kind of problem. I wonder what their air-conditioning bill is per month...
Hey, Steve-o! When the hell are you going to convince your company to port Renderman to your other company's machines? Mmmmm...Renderman for G4...(drool)
Well, of the dozen or so computers in my house, all are either running Linux, NetBSD, Mac OS X Server, or Mac OS, so I think I'm covered. Only one machine is a concern, an ancient 486 whose motherboard may or may not be ready, but if it fails, I can always pick up a newer and faster board on ebay. In other words, no biggie.
At the National Institutes of Health (where I work), the local newsletter featured comments by scientists asked about their Y2K readiness. Most basically said "I'm busy researching something, don't bug me with this meaningless problem." Sigh...
IIRC, there was an article a couple of years ago comparing the estimated costs of fixing the Y2K "bug" versus the estimated cost of using an extra two bytes in all that source code over the years (in terms of storage and complexity), and found that by doing it all now, we're still saving money. Go figure.
Er, never mind. After doing some more research on the sites mentioned, I'm no longer certain I want this question answered by this individual. It appears (from what I can tell) that there's some serious questions as to his credibility which I was not aware of when I posted. My apologies for wasting the bandwidth; please do not moderate either of these posts beyond their current level.
Or, for those whose hardware doesn't come with a solid-color Apple logo on the side, when can I walk into a store and buy a PC with one of these on the motherboard?
Nobody seems to have commented on how these types of so-called "frivolous" projects wouldn't be possible without access to the original source code. See what open-source gets you? Really cool hacks like these which lead to other people saying "Hey, I have an idea for porting X to Y, maybe I should give it a whirl." What a change from only a few years ago.
You may think porting sendmail to a digital oven or automobile engine controller is ridiculous, but that's the kind of thing OS makes possible. Sometimes just because something can be done really does mean it should be done.
Er, just don't expect me to do it (at least, not until my coding improves to the point where it stops generating Mac OS Type 1, 2, 3, 10, and 11 errors at random intervals). As it is now, I couldn't port myself out of my chair.
Hmmmm. "First publicly-accepted PCs", eh? Gee, I guess that makes me a loser for having a TRS-80 in 1977, along with Apple for producing all those Apple II machines prior to 1981, not to mention all the other PC makers that were quite popular prior to IBM's first personal computer.
I mean, please. Phrases like "helped usher in the computer revolution nearly two decades ago" or "the market that it helped spark" could have just been cut and pasted from IBM's press release. (Or one of Apple's for that matter...)
Amazing that even though Microsoft directs the future of PCs more than any other single company, IBM still means "personal computer" to the average reporter. Then again, these are the same people who can't get the difference between hacker and cracker straingt in their heads.
Graphics acceleration isn't a primary focus of OS X Server, but it damned well better be at least a consideration when OS X itself ships next year. Apple needs to continue the (admittedly slight for now) momentum it's been building in the game community by pushing for better ATI drivers or working with companies like Nvidia or 3dfx to write drivers for their cards, and delivering on its promise of a system with the ease-of-use of a Mac and the ease-of-coding of NeXTSTEP. Hopefully John will revisit this issue when OS X is available--and hopefully he'll bend some ears at Apple to make sure they understand!
Ohhhh yes. If the service weren't so expensive, this would be a cool hack for the 7-series.
Actually, it might almost be playable on the larger screen of the last-generation Newton (The 2000/2100 models). They already have Ethernet support. Hmmmmm....
To grow up and be paid to play with both computers AND Lego Bricks? Oh, man. Heaven!
Two meters is pretty impressive for most any Lego structure. I wonder what types of bricks it used; long flats, long full-heights, or some combination? (Actually, this would be a good job for Duplo blocks, since they're designed to take abuse anyway and they work perfectly with "regular" Lego bricks too.)
I sure hope the computer was programmed to know the difference between imperial and metric measurements, though...
err, stop me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you just run cron job every night to get the latest upgrades and install them? Or, if you can't do that because you might be installing all sorts of updates not related to security, get RH to put security-related updates into a particular directory and do it that way.
Ahh, but now what's to stop somebody from spoofing the RH update site and installing a job that unlocks your machine just as effectively as it would if the updates were never applied?
One of the hidden problems with things like Apple's QuickTime 4 installer or Windows 98's Windows Update is that there's no way to really be sure where your data's coming from. After all, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean nobody's trying to screw you...
What is the point to all these crack-my-box tests? Every day, this sort of thing goes on in the real world; that's where the real testing goes on. This whole artificial set-up-a-box-and-leave-it methodology is not analogous to the real-life version of setting up a secure webserver, patching holes in security, applying maintenance updates, and all the rest of the work that goes into it.
My webadmin experience is limited to Apple's Personal Web Sharing (only serves 10 connections at once but it's perfect for testing your personal site's HTML links), a default Red Hat 6/Apache combo at work that pretty much only serves two pages (three if you count the default "It worked!" page), and a just-installed copy of Mac OS X Server on my iMac at home; obviously, I'm not what you'd call a fully-qualified expert on the subject. But even I know there's much more to webadmin than what these tests show. It's an ongoing process, not something that can be decided in a week's worth of testing. Anybody basing their webserver or OS decisions on these tests doesn't deserve their own parking space and thousands in stock options, because they're not doing their job.
That said, if PC Week was out to prove which OS can be hacked easiest, X Server would have been an interesting third choice. It ships with almost every service disabled by default, forcing admins to explicitly choose which ones they activate, and it does a fair job of warning when something isn't secure (like storing your server on an HFS+ disk instead of UFS or something equally silly). Hell, if WebStar on plain old Mac OS is good enough for the US Army, BSD-based X Server should have at least been mentioned. Then again, as others have pointed out, the magazine's name is PC Week, not OS Week.
Testing this stuff isn't like running Whetstone on two different versions of the same chip. It involves more work than picking the winner of an artificial and impossible-to-quantify "test".
Or am I just bitter because I work in the black hole of the seventh hell that is tech support and not on the thirty-eighth floor as a golden child of the IS department with a window, a phone that never rings, and a job that involves nothing more than reading PC Week?:-]
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D'oh! I just looked at it again more closely; there's the 'Joy!' identifier...PowerPC native code.
:-[
Sigh. Never mind.
(See, that's what you get for always building homemade INITs as 68K code segments!)
I did, with ResEdit...this is a very odd extension. The 'INIT' resource appears to contain just raw data instead of typical INIT code. There are also ASCII names of several Open Transport routines (presumably, the ones being patched). But why put this into an INIT which can be disabled via Extensions Manager? Why not do what they did with the Font Manager Update for 8.6; patch the Extensions Manager prefs so that this obviously important piece of software can't be disabled easily? The code should be similar to the FMU code, so it souldn't be that hard to implement. Either that, or set it up as a 'scri' file, so it can't even be seen by EM (although it would then load before OT does, so maybe that's not such a good idea).
Also, as of this morning, this was still not available via Mac OS 9's built-in Software Update. I hope we aren't expected to all know to go to Apple's site and download the patch ourselves....
IIRC, the somewhat rotund Apple penguin first surfaced around the time of QuickDraw 3D's first release. I've also seen it attached to the MkLinux site, though.
Doesn't necessarily mean they'll be announced, though. The article indicates they'll be unveiled on stage, but it's also possible they may just be exhibited to a few select developers. Apple is already introducing (by all accounts) a new PowerBook along with updates on OS 9 and OS X. There's also the possibility of a new 17" iMac announcement, and the long-overdue G4/OS X Server machine will hopefully be ready at the same time. That's a lot for even a MacWorld Expo. The MP machines are more likely, IMO, to be announced later in the year at an Apple Event of some type. Unless Steve is looking for that perfect Columbo-esque "Oh, one more thing..." announcement for this Expo. Hey, it worked twice last year...
Mmmmmm...new PowerBook. (makes Homer-ish drool sound)
"Now would be a good time for some phrases. A man murdered. Flag on the moon. A woman's purse. I'll get back to you." -- Tom Servo
Keep circulating the tapes.
Sigh...um, yes, I know that. And have you ever watched the video version of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?" Check out the scene with Indy letting his father know where to begin the search for the Grail. You're supposed to be seeing them side-by-side, but the transfer cuts between their faces. The movie is widescreen, the transfer is what's not.
Be that as it may, you are correct about me being fucking brilliant. Now convince my employer in time for my next review....
> I don't know about the DVDs, but the VHS versions
:-[
> are out now, THX remastered and letterboxed.
I've debated picking those up, but I'm holding out for the DVD version. Paramount seems to finally have caught on that people want more than just the movie on their DVDs, so hopefully they won't just rush out a quickie transfer but take the time to add the supplements as well.
They're among the most requested DVD tiitles (right up there w/ the original Star Wars movies and "The Princess Bride"), so there is hope. Maybe.
Then again, there's no public commitment to releasing either "Airplane!" or "Buckaroo Banzai," so I'm still bummin'.
It was rumored that all three Indy films would be out by next April. Is this still the case?
I'd rather see those remastered, letterboxed, and supplemented before I go out and pick up TPM.
"Those people are trying to kill us!" "I know, Dad!" "Well, it's a new experience for me." "Happens to me all the time..."
I would love nothing more than to smugly point out the superiority of QuickTime Streaming. But, due to the same kind of corporate shortsightedness that prevents us Mac users from having an up-to-date Java2 VM, there is no QuickTime 4 player for Linux/BSD. ARRRGH!!
OK, vent's over, nothing more to see here. It is oo bad that nobody's snuck the MoviePlayer.app out of Mac OS X DP2 and onto a LinuxPPC box to see if it'll run in binary-compatible mode...(hint-hint)
if you couldn't call your friend's house because they were using Microsoft Phone and you had AOL's You've Got A Phone. Sometimes standards are a good thing.
Apple was supposedly working with AOL to integrate AIM into the system at some level. I wonder whatever came of that...
> Come on, there have to be a few NIHers reading
I work as a Macintosh support tech over at NHLBI (the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) and interviewed recently for a position over at NHGRI (I didn't get it mainly due to non-competition agreements between the federal contractors who supply NIH). Like any good geek, I asked about the machines in use on the project. Apparently, while some processing is done here in Bethesda, a lot of it is done at other sites (universities and such) on Unix boxen, although my interviewer wasn't sure of the specific platform. At the institute itself there's a fairly large number of Macs used for graphic analysis of the data and both Macs and Wintel PCs for basic stuff like writing papers and reports.
I can tell you NHGRI is pretty well funded within NIH, right up there with the cancer institure and the infectious disease institute (which deals with things like AIDS and whatnot). They certainly have more translucent Macs than any other institute.
And yes, they do use Linux there, although from what I gather, it's mostly being used by individuals experimenting with the system, and not for any actual rendering/mapping of gene data. Coincidentally, I took my first Linux support call a couple of weeks ago from somebody here who installed Caldera 2.2 and needed help setting up networking. Got him set up in only minutes, and soon he was enjoying NIH's 300kbps-and-up network connection. Makes watching MacWorld keynotes a lot more viable.
If you check the Netcraft records for NHLBI, NIDDK (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), and NHGRI, you'll see that NIH is far from your typical NT government shop. Plus, the NHGRI main website has lots of info on the project and why it's a Good Thing.
BTW, slightly off-topic: there are 12 people in my support group, and of those, I'm the only full-time Mac tech, while two others are mostly PC techs with some Mac skills. Oddly enough, the PC people are always busier than me despite having roughly the same number of machines to support.....
> ... it isn't the speed of the individual processors that was important
> to them, but the speed PER CUBIC FOOT OF SPACE...
Man, that's my kind of problem. I wonder what their air-conditioning bill is per month...
Hey, Steve-o! When the hell are you going to convince your company to port Renderman to your other company's machines? Mmmmm...Renderman for G4...(drool)
#include "stdcarmackpraise.h"
(apologies to Flavor Flav)
Well, of the dozen or so computers in my house, all are either running Linux, NetBSD, Mac OS X Server, or Mac OS, so I think I'm covered. Only one machine is a concern, an ancient 486 whose motherboard may or may not be ready, but if it fails, I can always pick up a newer and faster board on ebay. In other words, no biggie.
At the National Institutes of Health (where I work), the local newsletter featured comments by scientists asked about their Y2K readiness. Most basically said "I'm busy researching something, don't bug me with this meaningless problem." Sigh...
IIRC, there was an article a couple of years ago comparing the estimated costs of fixing the Y2K "bug" versus the estimated cost of using an extra two bytes in all that source code over the years (in terms of storage and complexity), and found that by doing it all now, we're still saving money. Go figure.
Er, never mind. After doing some more research on the sites mentioned, I'm no longer certain I want this question answered by this individual. It appears (from what I can tell) that there's some serious questions as to his credibility which I was not aware of when I posted. My apologies for wasting the bandwidth; please do not moderate either of these posts beyond their current level.
What's your opinion on the security of wireless standards like 802.11? Are devices like the AirPort secure enough, and if so, for how long?
i.e. when can I buy a G4 with one? :-]
Or, for those whose hardware doesn't come with a solid-color Apple logo on the side, when can I walk into a store and buy a PC with one of these on the motherboard?
OK, so it's similar to FreeBSD, but hey, it runs great on PowerPC hardware. Either that or NetBSD's new (as of 1.4) PowerPC port.
Mind you, that assumes the machine(s) in question contain a PowerPC to begin with.
Nobody seems to have commented on how these types of so-called "frivolous" projects wouldn't be possible without access to the original source code. See what open-source gets you? Really cool hacks like these which lead to other people saying "Hey, I have an idea for porting X to Y, maybe I should give it a whirl." What a change from only a few years ago.
You may think porting sendmail to a digital oven or automobile engine controller is ridiculous, but that's the kind of thing OS makes possible. Sometimes just because something can be done really does mean it should be done.
Er, just don't expect me to do it (at least, not until my coding improves to the point where it stops generating Mac OS Type 1, 2, 3, 10, and 11 errors at random intervals). As it is now, I couldn't port myself out of my chair.
I mean, please. Phrases like "helped usher in the computer revolution nearly two decades ago" or "the market that it helped spark" could have just been cut and pasted from IBM's press release. (Or one of Apple's for that matter...)
Amazing that even though Microsoft directs the future of PCs more than any other single company, IBM still means "personal computer" to the average reporter. Then again, these are the same people who can't get the difference between hacker and cracker straingt in their heads.
Graphics acceleration isn't a primary focus of OS X Server, but it damned well better be at least a consideration when OS X itself ships next year. Apple needs to continue the (admittedly slight for now) momentum it's been building in the game community by pushing for better ATI drivers or working with companies like Nvidia or 3dfx to write drivers for their cards, and delivering on its promise of a system with the ease-of-use of a Mac and the ease-of-coding of NeXTSTEP. Hopefully John will revisit this issue when OS X is available--and hopefully he'll bend some ears at Apple to make sure they understand!
Ohhhh yes. If the service weren't so expensive, this would be a cool hack for the 7-series.
Actually, it might almost be playable on the larger screen of the last-generation Newton (The 2000/2100 models). They already have Ethernet support. Hmmmmm....
Anybody remember NewtonQuake?
To grow up and be paid to play with both computers AND Lego Bricks? Oh, man. Heaven!
Two meters is pretty impressive for most any Lego structure. I wonder what types of bricks it used; long flats, long full-heights, or some combination? (Actually, this would be a good job for Duplo blocks, since they're designed to take abuse anyway and they work perfectly with "regular" Lego bricks too.)
I sure hope the computer was programmed to know the difference between imperial and metric measurements, though...
Ahh, but now what's to stop somebody from spoofing the RH update site and installing a job that unlocks your machine just as effectively as it would if the updates were never applied?
One of the hidden problems with things like Apple's QuickTime 4 installer or Windows 98's Windows Update is that there's no way to really be sure where your data's coming from. After all, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean nobody's trying to screw you...
My webadmin experience is limited to Apple's Personal Web Sharing (only serves 10 connections at once but it's perfect for testing your personal site's HTML links), a default Red Hat 6/Apache combo at work that pretty much only serves two pages (three if you count the default "It worked!" page), and a just-installed copy of Mac OS X Server on my iMac at home; obviously, I'm not what you'd call a fully-qualified expert on the subject. But even I know there's much more to webadmin than what these tests show. It's an ongoing process, not something that can be decided in a week's worth of testing. Anybody basing their webserver or OS decisions on these tests doesn't deserve their own parking space and thousands in stock options, because they're not doing their job.
That said, if PC Week was out to prove which OS can be hacked easiest, X Server would have been an interesting third choice. It ships with almost every service disabled by default, forcing admins to explicitly choose which ones they activate, and it does a fair job of warning when something isn't secure (like storing your server on an HFS+ disk instead of UFS or something equally silly). Hell, if WebStar on plain old Mac OS is good enough for the US Army, BSD-based X Server should have at least been mentioned. Then again, as others have pointed out, the magazine's name is PC Week, not OS Week.
Testing this stuff isn't like running Whetstone on two different versions of the same chip. It involves more work than picking the winner of an artificial and impossible-to-quantify "test".
Or am I just bitter because I work in the black hole of the seventh hell that is tech support and not on the thirty-eighth floor as a golden child of the IS department with a window, a phone that never rings, and a job that involves nothing more than reading PC Week? :-]
Arrest Jon Katz before he writes an article on the subject!