You bring up a great point, that with rare diseases/conditions, it is often impossible to know exactly how prevalant such a condition is. It becomes very difficult to tell if it is a condition that kills 1 in 100,000 or if it kills 0.0001 in 100,000 if you just have a handfull of recognized cases and no idea of what the denominator is especially if the sub-acute (ie. less serious) manifestations of this condition are so benign as to be indistinguishable from the common cold or a mild upper respiratory condition.
If I recall correctly, another problem arises when investigating these rare disease conditions: It becomes really hard to tell if your therapies are even really working. Did the patients get better because of the anti-virals and the corticosteroid/anti-inflammatory therapies or would they have gotten better with enough time? Hard to say b/c you just don't have a large enough treatment population (what 240 odd cases worldwide) and absolutely no idea what your denominator is. Can't even prove statistical significance here...
Ahhh...all those Epidemiology classes that I slept through are coming back to me now...zzzzzzzzzzz
You bring up a great point, that with rare diseases/conditions, it is often impossible to know exactly how prevalant such a condition is. It becomes very difficult to tell if it is a condition that kills 1 in 100,000 or if it kills 0.0001 in 100,000 if you just have a handfull of recognized cases and no idea of what the denominator is especially if the sub-acute (ie. less serious) manifestations of this condition are so benign as to be indistinguishable from the common cold or a mild upper respiratory condition.
If I recall correctly, another problem arises when investigating these rare disease conditions: It becomes really hard to tell if your therapies are even really working. Did the patients get better because of the anti-virals and the corticosteroid/anti-inflammatory therapies or would they have gotten better with enough time? Hard to say b/c you just don't have a large enough treatment population (what 240 odd cases worldwide) and absolutely no idea what your denominator is. Can't even prove statistical significance here...
Ahhh...all those Epidemiology classes that I slept through are coming back to me now...zzzzzzzzzzz
Yup, likey another case of the Media generating mass hysteria to sell air-time. But SARS does seem a bit deadlier than your average Pneumonia upon superficial analysis.
The total cases of SARS as reported by the World Health Organization is 219 cases with 4 deaths. Doing some rather inexact extrapolation that works out to about 1800 deaths per 100,000. Bear in mind, these numbers have very small and inexact "n" values in the denominator and probably can't be directly extrapolated to this high an incidence (per 100,000).
Who knows how many people had milder forms of this viral infection and didn't need to seek medical attention or recovered on their own, or how many others were now calssified as having SARS. I'm afraid that's the problem with these statistics: It's hard to derive a truly accurate denominator.
To give you some perspective, the plain old pneumonia/influenzena deaths as tallied up by the CDC worked out to about 10-12 per 100,000.
We'll see as the number of SARS cases continue to come in what a more accurate Mortality rate works out to being. I really doubt that this condition is 180 times more deadly than your typical pneumonia. But the media is sure treating it like that in it's daily search for sensationalism.
DaveC
Re:solid release...Some more Objective Numbers
on
Mac OS X 10.2.4 Is Out
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
OK, here's my anal retentive self doing rough stopwatch timings for various application launch times under 10.2.3 and 10.2.4
Yeah, I wanted to know if it was just my perceptions being fooled by my expectations after installing a OS upgrade or if this was indeed a real effect. Hardware: Powerbook G4 667 MHz Gigabit Ethernet,768 MB RAM, 30 GB HD
The shutdown time has definitely been trimmed, but most of us OS X users will not be enjoying this speed advantage much as...we just don't have to shut down that much when the sleep/wake state is so quick and stable to use unlike my WinBlows computers.
The following times are in seconds, timed from when icon clicked on in the Dock to when the application window was fully loaded and ready to go.
(Task or App--10.2.3 1st run/Subsequent run--10.2.4 1st run/Subsequent run)
Safari----11.5/03.5--14.0/03.0
Chimera--12.0/5.1--11.0/05.2
Mail------05.5/03.5--05.3/02.2
Address--03.0/02.8--05.3/02.0
iCal------04.0/03.5--04.0/04.0
Sherlock--14.5/12.2--12.0/08.2
Word-----05.5/02.5--05.0/03.0
iTunes----05.2/02.2--04.5/02.0
iPhoto----05.8/04.2--05.2/04.0
QTPro----02.0/01.5--02.8/01.0
Sorry the formatting is so lousy,/. won't let me do a table. Also, the errors are like +/- 0.2-0.3 sec depending on if I was reaching for my beer during the timing and missed seeing the window pop up.
Sure it ain't scientific, but I think this update has gotten things moving along a tad faster, as have all the other.1,.2,.3 updates. Which is nice as many other OS's just seem to become more bloated with each iteration.
Try this key combination when you click on a link:
--
Opens the selected link in a background windows and loads the page. Then you can choose all you want from your open windows from the "Window" menu item or by Right Clicking/Ctrl Clicking Safari's Dock Icon.
If you could only select the - behavior to open a window in the background, I could actually live without tabs. Maybe I'm just lazy, but the 3 key combination is a bit of a chore.
Hmmm...interesting. I had previously modified my mainmenu.nib file so I had custom keyboard shortcuts that were more convienent for me than the factory settings from Apple, seems like updating through Software Update preserved these changes though the mainmenu.nib file appears to have been updated during the install process. Couldn't be that Apple decided to use MY keyboard shortcuts? Naw, doubt that.
The custom control buttons that I had installed using Safari Icon and my custom plist settings were overwritten back to Safari "Factory" defaults, but don't know why it kept my manmenu.nib changes.
Funny, but good in the end as I didn't have to re-create my own shortcuts.
DaveC
Drying the Sucker out...
on
Baked Apple
·
· Score: 1
I've heard of people dropping their old battery (non-rechargeable) powered Palm Pilots in the toilet when they leaned over to flush. The restoration process went something like this:
1) Remove batteries/power supply. 2) Disassemble Case. 3) Rinse everything out with Distilled water. 4) Put it all in a warm and dry environment for a few hours to dry everything out. (I think the original reccomendation was an Oven set at 100-150 F for 2-3 hours) 5) Reassemble and voila, all that nasty urine residue is gone and your PDA should continue to work.
You know, she probably got the darned thing drenched (spilled a soda or water on it, or perhaps left it out on the patio when it started raining) and wanted to dry it out before powering it up again. Unfortunately, screwing up on the Temperature setting ain't healthy for any laptop. Heck, anyone know what the max temperature a LCD scheme will tolerate?
Wow, Intel actually made a CPU that runs at a slower clock speed that keeps up just fine with one that is running 600 MHz faster. Tom does mention that this will cause it's marketing folks a bit of backpedaling, but he kinda just glosses over it at that.
Seems to me that the Pentium-M's approach is a bit like the AMD's and the G4's - Do more each clock cycle. As a Mac convert, it warms my heart to hear that Intel is admitting that this approach DOES in fact work.
Let's kill off that MHz myth once and for all shall we?
Safari Update 1.0 Beta (v51) 1-10-03 now available at Apple's Safari web page. The original version as relased a few days ago was v48 I believe.
Apple says:
Safari Update 1.0 Beta (v51) 1-10-03 This Safari Update is recommended for all Safari users.
They don't say specifically what they've fixed, but the rendering is apparently now at 96 DPI (fonts no longer are 25% too small for me) and I just printed out some stuff and my/tmp symlink to/private/tmp is alive and well.
Still like this browser alot, too bad about the lack of tabs (I liked being able to load a whole slew of pages simultaneously in one click) but it is fast enough that if you -- a link and open it in a window behind your current one, you can use your Windows menu just like a tabbed browser. Too bad the -- combination is a bit awkward, maybe if they give you the option like in Omniweb to open new windows in the background with -...
I left Safari open and running, browsing intermittently for about 9 hours; browsing opening new windows, closing them all down, downloading files, doing searches, etc. all afternoon. After putting my TiBook (667 MHz Gigabitethernet 768MB Ram and plenty of free disk space 16 Gigs, v10.2.3) to sleep for 20 minutes or so, when I reopened my TiBook and started browsing, the fan was chugging full blast within 10 minutes.
Checked with the "top" command and sure enough, Safari was suddenly using 85%+ of CPU time even when the browser was completely idle (not loading pages, not processing inputs, nada). Previously, it had stayed under 10-15% during normal browsing. Killing off Safari and restarting seemed to take care of this. CPU useage is like 5-7% while typing this post.
Just now closed the screen for a few minutes, Safari's CPU useage still below 7% while typing this 3rd paragraph, 0% when idle. Newly restarted Safari session about 1 hour old now.
Anyone else notice Safari ratcheting up its CPU useage with long sessions? Perhaps it was a waking up from sleep issue? Doesn't seem like it though, just slept again for 10 minutes, Safari is 5-7% while typing and 0% when idle. That's the problem with most software bugs, they are often inconsistent to reproduce and may very well be due to factors related to your system's particular setup or due to blend of software that you have running at the time.
I haven't been able to replicate the Print deletes "/tmp" bug at all yet (I'm using an admin privledged account too). Don't dare to try Option-Clicking until I get a chance to back up Users, but judging from the many posts that are saying the "delete my User directory" bug isn't occuring for them, I think it may not be a universal bug/problem but something more setup specific or maybe even completely unrelated to Safari.
Overall, I am quite impressed at Safari's stability and speed, it just needs a few more good features. And yes, I'm going to still use it as my primary browser for the time being.
Just tried printing a whole boatload of stuff and from an account w/ admin privledges, no problems,/tmp symlink to/private/tmp is still there and working well.
After I get a chance to backup my Users directories, I'll be trying to Option-Click all over the place and see if this can replicate the problem.
Maybe this is mass hysteria after all.
I for one like Safari. I did admittedly get rather hooked on Tabbed Browsing. It was really usefull for setting up standard set of pages I read every day to load all together rather than having to click each bookmark manually. It was also really nice having related search results and pages all linked to one bookmark that would open all the relavent pages in one window. Maybe Omniweb will go one better than Safari and build a tabbed interface onto the Safari rendering engine? There's a market niche.
DaveC
The only thing that would piss me off more...
on
HOWTO: Annoy a Spammer
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Man, I'd really hate to be in Ralsky's position. The guy might just have to move out of his house to escape all that junk mail. Don't know how he's actually getting any business done either.
He should just be glad that no one has been filling out all those Subscription cards in his name asking them to "Bill Me Later". Someone did this to me in college and our house got the most vile magazines/porn/crap for like 6 months. Luckily, it was just one person doing this to us and the damage was easily controlled. I can imagine what would happen if let's say 10,000 pissed off SysAdmin's and Hackers around the world all did this.
He might not even see the billing invoices and cancel the trials, man those bill collection agencies can be a real bitch too.
I'd been using the various free versions of PGP and GPG forever and you're right, now that PGP finally seems to be in better control of it's own desitny, I had no qualms about shelling out $39 for the Personal Desktop version (for OS X).
I'm no longer a student. I can afford this now and it's about time I contribute to the retirement fund of a really admirable man (Phil Zimmermann) who did after all suffer through some pretty arduous shit when lesser men would have just capitulated. PGP v8.0 for OS X is a GOOD SOLID program and I'm happy with my purchase.
Im running what is now considered fairly modest hardware (TiBook 667MHz, Gigabit Ethernet, 512 MB RAM) and I have not found the UI to be all slow at all. In fact, I can no longer stand to work on non-OS X computers as their GUI's are such eyesores in comparison (I'm thoroughly spoiled now). It's not that the OS X GUI is doing all that much besides sitting there most of the time, but it is just dammed nice to look at is really clean and efficient when you need to get something done.
> * There is always a slight delay when using menus
Haven't seen this at all on my setup.
> * Resizing any window is incredibly slow to the point where it's very annoying
This does still lag a bit, but I tend to set my windows at the size I want and leave them alone. Switching between various windows by switching focus is instant for me. I have turned off the "Genie" windows minimization effect in favor of the quicker/more efficient "Scale" effect.
> * When switching between applications, there is a 1 or 2 second lag while the windows changes from unactive to active (the greyed out buttons etc) > * Scrolling is slow to the piont where you use the scroll wheel, and have to wait for the window to catch up
Nope, no lag there either, switching and scrolling are instantaneous for me.
> * All web browsers feel like I'm using on 14.4k modem (even though it does actually download fast, and Chimera/Mozilla process the page fast)
This was the case for me until I switched over to Chimera v0.5 and v0.6 have given huge leaps in performance and rendering speed. I think this is a case of the software evolving to the OS and catching up with the OS's potential.
>I understand why this is happening, and I understand that design of OS X's >window manager is good thing. But it still doesn't change the fact that you >need some grunt to run it.
This is true, the G3 hardware is probably barely enough (if you add more RAM) to do justice to OS X. However, this is the case for any OS: As it continues to evolve, it will make more demands on the available hardware at hand. Heck, we'd want it to rather than freezing all our hardware in its current state.
Man, I think I caused the poor guy to be/.'ed by posting information on his plugin on MacOSXHints. According to the author of the plugin (Jordan):
"The binary I put up was just a bug fix and a small performance enhancement. I posted the bug fix to sourceforge and mailed the author Steve Nicolai, but he was pretty busy and said he wouldn't get to it for some time. I put up the binary in the mean time."
Great job Jordan!!
The plugin is working well for me, aside from a brief delay on starting the playback of Ogg files (about 0.5 -1 sec, depending on CPU load. Due to switching to Quick Time internally to playback?) it is working flawlessly.
iTunes also can successfully read some of the information Tags embedded in the Ogg files as written by Ogg Drop (Track Name, Artist, Album, Genre) and thus organizes the Ogg files properly into your music collection. iTunes lists the file as a Quicktime Movie file rather than a Ogg Vorbis file and is unable to tell the bitrate of the file. Also, during playback, iTunes is unable to sample the sound output of the Ogg file so unfortunately no visualizations.
Hey, I'm happy, it was free after all. Maybe it is time to pull down the patch from Sourceforge and see if we can get the visualizaitons working?
Slashdot Mirror
DaveC
If I recall correctly, another problem arises when investigating these rare disease conditions: It becomes really hard to tell if your therapies are even really working. Did the patients get better because of the anti-virals and the corticosteroid/anti-inflammatory therapies or would they have gotten better with enough time? Hard to say b/c you just don't have a large enough treatment population (what 240 odd cases worldwide) and absolutely no idea what your denominator is. Can't even prove statistical significance here...
Ahhh...all those Epidemiology classes that I slept through are coming back to me now...zzzzzzzzzzz
DaveC
If I recall correctly, another problem arises when investigating these rare disease conditions: It becomes really hard to tell if your therapies are even really working. Did the patients get better because of the anti-virals and the corticosteroid/anti-inflammatory therapies or would they have gotten better with enough time? Hard to say b/c you just don't have a large enough treatment population (what 240 odd cases worldwide) and absolutely no idea what your denominator is. Can't even prove statistical significance here...
Ahhh...all those Epidemiology classes that I slept through are coming back to me now...zzzzzzzzzzz
DaveC
The total cases of SARS as reported by the World Health Organization is 219 cases with 4 deaths. Doing some rather inexact extrapolation that works out to about 1800 deaths per 100,000. Bear in mind, these numbers have very small and inexact "n" values in the denominator and probably can't be directly extrapolated to this high an incidence (per 100,000).
Who knows how many people had milder forms of this viral infection and didn't need to seek medical attention or recovered on their own, or how many others were now calssified as having SARS. I'm afraid that's the problem with these statistics: It's hard to derive a truly accurate denominator.
To give you some perspective, the plain old pneumonia/influenzena deaths as tallied up by the CDC worked out to about 10-12 per 100,000.
We'll see as the number of SARS cases continue to come in what a more accurate Mortality rate works out to being. I really doubt that this condition is 180 times more deadly than your typical pneumonia. But the media is sure treating it like that in it's daily search for sensationalism.
DaveC
Yeah, I wanted to know if it was just my perceptions being fooled by my expectations after installing a OS upgrade or if this was indeed a real effect. Hardware: Powerbook G4 667 MHz Gigabit Ethernet,768 MB RAM, 30 GB HD
10.2.3 => Cold Boot = 1:06, Shutdown 0:45, Login 5-7sec, Logout 6-15sec
10.2.4 => Cold Boot = 1:07, Shutdown 0:15, Login 6sec, Logout 5sec
The shutdown time has definitely been trimmed, but most of us OS X users will not be enjoying this speed advantage much as...we just don't have to shut down that much when the sleep/wake state is so quick and stable to use unlike my WinBlows computers.
The following times are in seconds, timed from when icon clicked on in the Dock to when the application window was fully loaded and ready to go.
(Task or App--10.2.3 1st run/Subsequent run--10.2.4 1st run/Subsequent run)
Safari----11.5/03.5--14.0/03.0
Chimera--12.0/5.1--11.0/05.2
Mail------05.5/03.5--05.3/02.2
Address--03.0/02.8--05.3/02.0
iCal------04.0/03.5--04.0/04.0
Sherlock--14.5/12.2--12.0/08.2
Word-----05.5/02.5--05.0/03.0
iTunes----05.2/02.2--04.5/02.0
iPhoto----05.8/04.2--05.2/04.0
QTPro----02.0/01.5--02.8/01.0
Sorry the formatting is so lousy, /. won't let me do a table. Also, the errors are like +/- 0.2-0.3 sec depending on if I was reaching for my beer during the timing and missed seeing the window pop up.
Sure it ain't scientific, but I think this update has gotten things moving along a tad faster, as have all the other .1, .2, .3 updates. Which is nice as many other OS's just seem to become more bloated with each iteration.
DaveC
Ooops, the key combo description got mangled despite selecting "Plain Old Text" option.
The Open in a Window behind Current Window key combi is:
(Shift)-(Command)-(Click)
DaveC
Try this key combination when you click on a link:
--
Opens the selected link in a background windows and loads the page. Then you can choose all you want from your open windows from the "Window" menu item or by Right Clicking/Ctrl Clicking Safari's Dock Icon.
If you could only select the - behavior to open a window in the background, I could actually live without tabs. Maybe I'm just lazy, but the 3 key combination is a bit of a chore.
DaveC
Hmmm...interesting. I had previously modified my mainmenu.nib file so I had custom keyboard shortcuts that were more convienent for me than the factory settings from Apple, seems like updating through Software Update preserved these changes though the mainmenu.nib file appears to have been updated during the install process. Couldn't be that Apple decided to use MY keyboard shortcuts? Naw, doubt that.
The custom control buttons that I had installed using Safari Icon and my custom plist settings were overwritten back to Safari "Factory" defaults, but don't know why it kept my manmenu.nib changes.
Funny, but good in the end as I didn't have to re-create my own shortcuts.
DaveC
I've heard of people dropping their old battery (non-rechargeable) powered Palm Pilots in the toilet when they leaned over to flush. The restoration process went something like this:
1) Remove batteries/power supply.
2) Disassemble Case.
3) Rinse everything out with Distilled water.
4) Put it all in a warm and dry environment for a few hours to dry everything out. (I think the original reccomendation was an Oven set at 100-150 F for 2-3 hours)
5) Reassemble and voila, all that nasty urine residue is gone and your PDA should continue to work.
You know, she probably got the darned thing drenched (spilled a soda or water on it, or perhaps left it out on the patio when it started raining) and wanted to dry it out before powering it up again. Unfortunately, screwing up on the Temperature setting ain't healthy for any laptop. Heck, anyone know what the max temperature a LCD scheme will tolerate?
DaveC
Wow, Intel actually made a CPU that runs at a slower clock speed that keeps up just fine with one that is running 600 MHz faster. Tom does mention that this will cause it's marketing folks a bit of backpedaling, but he kinda just glosses over it at that.
Seems to me that the Pentium-M's approach is a bit like the AMD's and the G4's - Do more each clock cycle. As a Mac convert, it warms my heart to hear that Intel is admitting that this approach DOES in fact work.
Let's kill off that MHz myth once and for all shall we?
DaveC
Apple says:
- Safari Update 1.0 Beta (v51) 1-10-03
They don't say specifically what they've fixed, but the rendering is apparently now at 96 DPI (fonts no longer are 25% too small for me) and I just printed out some stuff and myThis Safari Update is recommended for all Safari users.
Still like this browser alot, too bad about the lack of tabs (I liked being able to load a whole slew of pages simultaneously in one click) but it is fast enough that if you -- a link and open it in a window behind your current one, you can use your Windows menu just like a tabbed browser. Too bad the -- combination is a bit awkward, maybe if they give you the option like in Omniweb to open new windows in the background with -...
DaveC
I left Safari open and running, browsing intermittently for about 9 hours; browsing opening new windows, closing them all down, downloading files, doing searches, etc. all afternoon. After putting my TiBook (667 MHz Gigabitethernet 768MB Ram and plenty of free disk space 16 Gigs, v10.2.3) to sleep for 20 minutes or so, when I reopened my TiBook and started browsing, the fan was chugging full blast within 10 minutes.
Checked with the "top" command and sure enough, Safari was suddenly using 85%+ of CPU time even when the browser was completely idle (not loading pages, not processing inputs, nada). Previously, it had stayed under 10-15% during normal browsing. Killing off Safari and restarting seemed to take care of this. CPU useage is like 5-7% while typing this post.
Just now closed the screen for a few minutes, Safari's CPU useage still below 7% while typing this 3rd paragraph, 0% when idle. Newly restarted Safari session about 1 hour old now.
Anyone else notice Safari ratcheting up its CPU useage with long sessions? Perhaps it was a waking up from sleep issue? Doesn't seem like it though, just slept again for 10 minutes, Safari is 5-7% while typing and 0% when idle. That's the problem with most software bugs, they are often inconsistent to reproduce and may very well be due to factors related to your system's particular setup or due to blend of software that you have running at the time.
I haven't been able to replicate the Print deletes "/tmp" bug at all yet (I'm using an admin privledged account too). Don't dare to try Option-Clicking until I get a chance to back up Users, but judging from the many posts that are saying the "delete my User directory" bug isn't occuring for them, I think it may not be a universal bug/problem but something more setup specific or maybe even completely unrelated to Safari.
Overall, I am quite impressed at Safari's stability and speed, it just needs a few more good features. And yes, I'm going to still use it as my primary browser for the time being.
DaveC
Just tried printing a whole boatload of stuff and from an account w/ admin privledges, no problems, /tmp symlink to /private/tmp is still there and working well.
After I get a chance to backup my Users directories, I'll be trying to Option-Click all over the place and see if this can replicate the problem.
Maybe this is mass hysteria after all.
I for one like Safari. I did admittedly get rather hooked on Tabbed Browsing. It was really usefull for setting up standard set of pages I read every day to load all together rather than having to click each bookmark manually. It was also really nice having related search results and pages all linked to one bookmark that would open all the relavent pages in one window. Maybe Omniweb will go one better than Safari and build a tabbed interface onto the
Safari rendering engine? There's a market niche.
DaveC
He should just be glad that no one has been filling out all those Subscription cards in his name asking them to "Bill Me Later". Someone did this to me in college and our house got the most vile magazines/porn/crap for like 6 months. Luckily, it was just one person doing this to us and the damage was easily controlled. I can imagine what would happen if let's say 10,000 pissed off SysAdmin's and Hackers around the world all did this.
He might not even see the billing invoices and cancel the trials, man those bill collection agencies can be a real bitch too.
That would suck almost as much as spam.
DaveC
I'm no longer a student. I can afford this now and it's about time I contribute to the retirement fund of a really admirable man (Phil Zimmermann) who did after all suffer through some pretty arduous shit when lesser men would have just capitulated. PGP v8.0 for OS X is a GOOD SOLID program and I'm happy with my purchase.
DaveC
Im running what is now considered fairly modest hardware (TiBook 667MHz, Gigabit Ethernet, 512 MB RAM) and I have not found the UI to be all slow at all. In fact, I can no longer stand to work on non-OS X computers as their GUI's are such eyesores in comparison (I'm thoroughly spoiled now). It's not that the OS X GUI is doing all that much besides sitting there most of the time, but it is just dammed nice to look at is really clean and efficient when you need to get something done.
> * There is always a slight delay when using menus
Haven't seen this at all on my setup.
> * Resizing any window is incredibly slow to the point where it's very annoying
This does still lag a bit, but I tend to set my windows at the size I want and leave them alone. Switching between various windows by switching focus is instant for me. I have turned off the "Genie" windows minimization effect in favor of the quicker/more efficient "Scale" effect.
> * When switching between applications, there is a 1 or 2 second lag while the windows changes from unactive to active (the greyed out buttons etc)
> * Scrolling is slow to the piont where you use the scroll wheel, and have to wait for the window to catch up
Nope, no lag there either, switching and scrolling are instantaneous for me.
> * All web browsers feel like I'm using on 14.4k modem (even though it does actually download fast, and Chimera/Mozilla process the page fast)
This was the case for me until I switched over to Chimera v0.5 and v0.6 have given huge leaps in performance and rendering speed. I think this is a case of the software evolving to the OS and catching up with the OS's potential.
>I understand why this is happening, and I understand that design of OS X's >window manager is good thing. But it still doesn't change the fact that you >need some grunt to run it.
This is true, the G3 hardware is probably barely enough (if you add more RAM) to do justice to OS X. However, this is the case for any OS: As it continues to evolve, it will make more demands on the available hardware at hand. Heck, we'd want it to rather than freezing all our hardware in its current state.
DaveC
Man, I think I caused the poor guy to be /.'ed by posting information on his plugin on MacOSXHints. According to the author of the plugin (Jordan):
"The binary I put up was just a bug fix and a small performance enhancement. I posted the bug fix to sourceforge and mailed the author Steve Nicolai, but he was pretty busy and said he wouldn't get to it for some time. I put up the binary in the mean time."
Great job Jordan!!
The plugin is working well for me, aside from a brief delay on starting the playback of Ogg files (about 0.5 -1 sec, depending on CPU load. Due to switching to Quick Time internally to playback?) it is working flawlessly.
iTunes also can successfully read some of the information Tags embedded in the Ogg files as written by Ogg Drop (Track Name, Artist, Album, Genre) and thus organizes the Ogg files properly into your music collection. iTunes lists the file as a Quicktime Movie file rather than a Ogg Vorbis file and is unable to tell the bitrate of the file. Also, during playback, iTunes is unable to sample the sound output of the Ogg file so unfortunately no visualizations.
Hey, I'm happy, it was free after all. Maybe it is time to pull down the patch from Sourceforge and see if we can get the visualizaitons working?
DaveC