I've experienced lower quality as well, depending on the machine. My current Powerbook seems to have a stereo-mini plug that is not quite as long as many cables' plugs, so I wonder if it's making great contact.
BUT, the G5's have TOSlink built in for optical surround capability out of the box. Woo hoo, that changes everything.
I always find it amusing that people are so paranoid that the government wants to spy on them, as if it had the time and resources to check into their jaywalking.
Agencies have a limited budget (hard to believe for some) and are staffed by real people (harder to believe for some) and actually have BIG fish to fry (hard to understand for some). They don't give a rip about the small fry.
I guess it adds a certain meaning to an otherwise meaningless life to suspect that someone out there is interested enough in you to spy on you and maybe even arrest you for that naughty thing. But in reality, the government's not spying on you. They could care less about you.
I do. The Apple, though, not this me-too sledgehammer.
Sure I could get two large monitors, one for each end of the trip. But I still couldn't wander out to my deck to use it. I couldn't sit here in my comfy chair in the living room and use it.
The Apple 17" is light enough that it's no big deal to carry, yet it includes everything I need, even for video editing, audio editing, or other screen-realestate hogs. And the decent LCD monitor -- actually, outstanding LCD monitor -- comes along for the ride.
People are not who they represent themselves in EQ? If that's true, then maybe people on/. are representing themselves as humans because they get treated differently than off-worlders! That would explain a lot.
The vast majority of The Majority makes their choice based on ignorance (i.e. "it's what we have at work"), on what would most easily alloow pirating of software, or on lowest up-front price. Not on what "works best".
Actually, the opposite is true. Most Mac users adopt their platform because of informed decisions, knowing they're going against the grain.
Most PC users adopt the PC for one of three reasons: 1) they're technically ignorant and get what everyone else has or what they have at work, and/or 2) they want to get the cheapest thing possible, and/or 3) designing, building, and maintaining a computer is their hobby.
All three of these classes of users are threatened by Apple and the possibility that the alternative to PC might be superior. Class 1 because it reveals their ignorance, class 2 because maybe a low price of entry isn't the only measure of value, and class 3 because it's possible that a mass-market design is as good as their custom-crafted perfection.
Mac users catch crap from outspoken (and usually ignorant) PC users on a daily basis. Over time, this builds up and when a fool, like the "debunker" in question, makes a huge public spectacle of crapping in the middle of a parade, people vent on them.
I.e. Panther is beautiful and elegant (and based on our/. favorite OS) plus now the hardware kicks butt. Heck, even if it's not as fast as the competition, it's back in the ballpark and it has Apple's design + IBM's technology = momentum.
Wonder why all flu's start out in China? Because they breed pigs and ducks close together and in close proximity to humans. It turns out this ancient custom is in fact the oldest known instance of biological engineering to create WMD. Are we up to hundreds of millions dead from flu pandemics yet?
I don't know if anyone's reading this thread anymore, but I've watched the movie a second time and decided that the ending does not require a Matrix-within-a-Matrix (M-M) solution.
In fact, I think the M-M solution will inevitably lead to an unsatisfying ending ala 12 Monkeys (or was it 7 Monkeys), where you're back to square one and it's depressing.
The two strongest arguments for M-M are:
1. Agent Smith escapes to the real world.
2. Neo senses and can oppose the machines in the real world, much as in the Matrix.
But I think there's another alternative answer to these.
We already know there's an obvious real-world-Matrix link: the real-worlders can broadcast and hack into the Matrix, and the Matrix programs can manifest themselves in and communicate with physical machines, such as the sentinals.
We also know that the current Matrix is based on an equation that has an untidy remainder that the Architect can MOSTLY manage, but not entirely. (He admits this to Neo if you listen carefully.)
The machines believed that the small remainder could be managed, but I believe it's been pushed into a chaotic, unstable state and will explode.
Another fact: when Smith talks to Neo in the courtyard, he reveals two things, assuming that Smith has been an Agent through previous cycles and that he has dealt with previous Ones: 1) previous Ones died and did not rise from the dead, and 2) previous Ones did not kill any Agents.
Put these together and you get a different twist: The Architect thinks he can manage the remainder of the equation because it is small, but unfortunately it is unstable and has been pushed over the edge by two events, one in the real world and one in the machine world:
In the real world, Trinity's love for Neo manages to bridge the gap into the Matrix and pull back Neo from the dead. This sets a chain of events into motion, which I'll talk about later.
In the machine world, more and more powerful programs are beginning to become more human and to operate their own agendas instead of the agendas of machine-kind. Examples include the Frenchman, the Frenchman's wife, the Oracle, and the most-unanticipated one: Smith.
These programs operating at cross-purposes to the Architect have begun to undermine things. Then the chain of events started by Trinity starts:
* Neo comes back from the dead, something that's not been done before.
* Neo kills Agent Smith, who becomes disconnected as an Agent but, having seen Neo resurrected, himself refuses to die.
* In killing Smith, Neo enters him and unexpectedly forges a connection: some kind of imprinting.
* This connection is able to cross the Matrix/real-world boundary outside of the normal "radio wave" interface that we accept. Call it "ESP" or something, but it happens.
So Neo zapped the sentinals at the end not because he is in another Matrix, but because he is, even in the real world, connected to the machine world. The explanation for how this link has occurred and how it works is beyond us now, but it happened somehow.
The alternative M-M concept is ultimately unstoppable. Once you've decided that Zion could be another Matrix, you can never be sure that you're ever in the Real World. So ultimately, any conjectures about how or why this or that works ultimately become meaningless, since it's all just a simulation. In fact, who says it's based on a Real World anywhere? We assume because it resembles our world, that there is a Real World basis for it, but that's just our assumption.
If you've read this far, here's a freebie twister: what if the Frenchman's wife and the Oracle are the same woman in a sort of Bruce Wayne/Batman kind of role?
1. Yes, the orgy scene was way too long. I'd have been happier with about 20 seconds of Neo/Trinity and 30 seconds of orgy. (Or less.)
But, did you notice that the orgy scene was very reminiscent of the club where Trinity first met Neo in the first Matrix? The same kind of panning and moves. And in the original, Neo and Trinity were so close they were practically kissing, but not quite. This time around, it's all a bit more, um, intimate.
I can't help but think there's a parallel and a message in that.
2. The French guy and cake. Seemed sloppy until I thought through the sequence again:
* The French guy spiked the woman's cake to send her to the (women's) bathroom. * The French guy then excuses himself to go to the men's room, but in fact goes to the women's room to seduce the woman. (Or maybe the cake was spiked in a way that it caused her to want him.) * The French guy's wife knows what he's up to and that's why she takes Neo, et al, to the men's room, where she has Neo kiss her. A parallel of sorts. * We know she knows what her husband has done from her command to the vampire she doesn't shoot, and from her conversation when her husband shows up.
Not sloppy at all!
In between all of this, we're told that free choice is an illusion fostered by the strong who are controlling the weak. Which ties in with the Oracle saying that Neo's already made the choice, but now needs to justify/explain it. Which also ties in with the French guy's remark that they know the how but not the why. Which ties in with Smith who's pissed because Neo destroyed his why, and now he's aimless.
This discussion has come up repeatedly in the Cinema4D discussion forum. (C4D is a cross-platform 3D app from Maxon.)
Athalons are so much cheaper and faster for rendering that the Mac isn't even arguable as a 3D platform based on bang-for-the-buck, and for rendering that is the entire argument. So people will occasionally say, "Hey, if you took advantage of AltiVec, the Mac would be competitive."
The official answer is that C4D (and most 3D apps) need 64-bit precision for rendering calculations and AltiVec is 32-bit so it's only useful for screen updates, etc, not for rendering. Evidently, you can use AltiVec to help with 64-bit numbers, but it requires enough additional work that you don't gain anything.
So if they add 64-bit AltiVec, the Mac could jump into the lead as a 3D rendering machine.
The audio can be burned to an unlimited number of discs.
As far as I can tell, it's just straightforward, open standard AAC encoding, which is a Good Thing. (Or would you rather have a format with REAL DRM, like MS's?)
Yes, iTunes doesn't run on PCs (yet) or Linux. But anyone who can read the MPEG-4 standard can create a player, so go and do it Mr. Slashdotter.
Ever heard the chirp-chirp of a Nextel when the user was within, say, 20 feet of your speakers? It happens to me all the time (I edit video) and I've heard the chirp leak into CNN and other broadcasts as well.
Maybe it only interferes with audio equipment and maybe it's only "cosmetic" interference, but it certainly does happen.
1. GUI design and esthetics. Windows has a cluttered, poorly-organized GUI, IMHO.
2. Windows has historically been poorly designed in terms of workflow. I doubt it's still in there, but my favorite example is how WIndows would allow you to drag a folder that's too large to fit onto another drive and it would blindly copy until it filled the disk and failed. MacOS has always pre-calculated how large the moved files are to make sure they fit. Which is what a computer should do.
NT/XP have come a long way, but it's more like a blind man painting a wall than a design process that considers workflow, ease of use, flexibility, etc.
3. Quicktime, etc. Windows is finally -- on something like the 8th revision -- getting its media (video, etc) act together but why use a system hacked together over such a long time by people who so obviously don't have a clue?
4. MacOS X is more flexible and powerful than Windows. As a small, but fresh, example: last night we were trying to install an 802.11g card in my roommate's Dell running XP. My Mac was up in a matter of minutes, but it took hours for the PC.
Why? Hmm, let me count the ways. XP evidently can't handle Shared Key Authentication. XP evidently can't connect without seeing an SSID broadcast. XP doesn't give you any immediate, meaningful error feedback or status indicators when you're trying to get it all to work.
MacOS X did all of these things. And that's not even mentioning the fragmented XP control panels that you use to attempt to configure wireless. (Another example of item #2, above.)
A month back, we were installing 802.11g at work and ran into a problem, this time at the receiving end, so we needed to implement an "expedient measure" to get people up. On the Mac -- from the GUI -- I could choose "DHCP with manual IP", pick an IP and got them online. On the XP side, we never found a similar option.
5. I work in a creative field, so why should I want to choose the "no bean counter ever got fired for buying MS/Dell" machine just like everyone else?
6. PCs are butt-ugly and poorly designed. Dell, for example, evidently thinks that industrial design involves coloring ugly boxes BLACK. And they evidently believe that turning a PC on its side to work on it is a good idea.
In the Finder, press CMD-K and up pops a nice network mounting interface that shows local SMB as well as Apple servers. Way simpler than Chooser. And it actually makes sense, unlike the overloaded Chooser which was meant to choose printers back when people had, say, two choices.
No technology is needed at all. The GPS info goes to a gulf state (Qatar?) and all it takes is one Iraqi sympathizer in the sat. phone company who has access to the info and can make a call from home each evening.
I ran into this XP "feature" yesterday on a co-worker's XP machine. Running an application, closed the (last) window thinking I could then create another. Silly me, closing the (last) window exits the app and I have to poke around and relaunch it.
Not very intuitive or convenient. Especially since it depends on me keeping track of how many windows I have open in the application and knowing that the last one acts differently than the others.
To add insult to injury, my coworker had also managed to remove the app from the START menu -- where I though all apps live on an XP machine -- and I basically couldn't find the stupid application to launch it again. So much for that supposed advantage over MacOS X. (I'm not bitter, mind you...)
1) Why are we sending robots to comets to fetch material when we could just send one to L4? The article mentions that cometary dust and space junk will gather there.
Let debris from all over come to us. Sort of like Men in Black, where they confiscate alien technology at a single port of entry. Deep space exploration from the comfort of your own (planetary) home.
2) The article mentions that a killer asteroid was riding the "rails" and the earth stepped out onto the tracks in front of it and got hit. Which makes me wonder if future asteroids on a collision course -- not necessarily on one of these low-velocity tracks -- could be deflected with smaller forces that previously envisioned? Throw some switches on the tracks, as it were.
Very solid program that is cross-platform, and done by a company that's been on the Mac for years and likes the Mac. Other cross-platform alternatives are done by companies that are PC-centric and port to the Mac. (Usually either late or non-Macish ports.)
Igor is more expensive than (just) graphing programs, since it is a full-blown scientific analysis program with scripting and real-time data acquisition capabilities. So it lets you manipulate and analyze data, then gives you nice graphs that are highly customizable.
A big plus you won't see on any comparison chart is the email list. Totally professional and helpful with the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any list I've seen.
It's not whining to ask that Apple's installer be non-braindamaged and honor links and mounts. That's one of the foundational concepts of UNIX, for crying out loud: you can mount anything anywhere and it looks like it's part of a unified file system.
For example, I ran out of space for Applications, so created an Applications partition and mounted it to/Applications. This should be TRANSPARENT to any application that rises as high as "dim-witted", much less a well-written installation program.
I've lost track of which installers are stupid and which are not. Apple's has been, but might now work properly. I know I still get messages from some installers/updaters that the partition I'm installing to must have a System folder. Stupid.
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I've experienced lower quality as well, depending on the machine. My current Powerbook seems to have a stereo-mini plug that is not quite as long as many cables' plugs, so I wonder if it's making great contact.
BUT, the G5's have TOSlink built in for optical surround capability out of the box. Woo hoo, that changes everything.
I always find it amusing that people are so paranoid that the government wants to spy on them, as if it had the time and resources to check into their jaywalking.
Agencies have a limited budget (hard to believe for some) and are staffed by real people (harder to believe for some) and actually have BIG fish to fry (hard to understand for some). They don't give a rip about the small fry.
I guess it adds a certain meaning to an otherwise meaningless life to suspect that someone out there is interested enough in you to spy on you and maybe even arrest you for that naughty thing. But in reality, the government's not spying on you. They could care less about you.
I do. The Apple, though, not this me-too sledgehammer.
Sure I could get two large monitors, one for each end of the trip. But I still couldn't wander out to my deck to use it. I couldn't sit here in my comfy chair in the living room and use it.
The Apple 17" is light enough that it's no big deal to carry, yet it includes everything I need, even for video editing, audio editing, or other screen-realestate hogs. And the decent LCD monitor -- actually, outstanding LCD monitor -- comes along for the ride.
People are not who they represent themselves in EQ? If that's true, then maybe people on /. are representing themselves as humans because they get treated differently than off-worlders! That would explain a lot.
It was foldable until you attempted to unfold it...
Even at that time, I guess it was still technically "foldable", but not necessarily "usable" after the first folding.
The vast majority of The Majority makes their choice based on ignorance (i.e. "it's what we have at work"), on what would most easily alloow pirating of software, or on lowest up-front price. Not on what "works best".
Actually, the opposite is true. Most Mac users adopt their platform because of informed decisions, knowing they're going against the grain.
Most PC users adopt the PC for one of three reasons: 1) they're technically ignorant and get what everyone else has or what they have at work, and/or 2) they want to get the cheapest thing possible, and/or 3) designing, building, and maintaining a computer is their hobby.
All three of these classes of users are threatened by Apple and the possibility that the alternative to PC might be superior. Class 1 because it reveals their ignorance, class 2 because maybe a low price of entry isn't the only measure of value, and class 3 because it's possible that a mass-market design is as good as their custom-crafted perfection.
Mac users catch crap from outspoken (and usually ignorant) PC users on a daily basis. Over time, this builds up and when a fool, like the "debunker" in question, makes a huge public spectacle of crapping in the middle of a parade, people vent on them.
1994 + 1999 + UNIX = WOW
/. favorite OS) plus now the hardware kicks butt. Heck, even if it's not as fast as the competition, it's back in the ballpark and it has Apple's design + IBM's technology = momentum.
I.e. Panther is beautiful and elegant (and based on our
A great recommendation. It would give wonderfully-graphic feedback: very fulfilling as long as they were just wanting to learn.
My only cavaet would be how much of a framework they need to understand to make things work.
Wonder why all flu's start out in China? Because they breed pigs and ducks close together and in close proximity to humans. It turns out this ancient custom is in fact the oldest known instance of biological engineering to create WMD. Are we up to hundreds of millions dead from flu pandemics yet?
I don't know if anyone's reading this thread anymore, but I've watched the movie a second time and decided that the ending does not require a Matrix-within-a-Matrix (M-M) solution.
In fact, I think the M-M solution will inevitably lead to an unsatisfying ending ala 12 Monkeys (or was it 7 Monkeys), where you're back to square one and it's depressing.
The two strongest arguments for M-M are:
1. Agent Smith escapes to the real world.
2. Neo senses and can oppose the machines in the real world, much as in the Matrix.
But I think there's another alternative answer to these.
We already know there's an obvious real-world-Matrix link: the real-worlders can broadcast and hack into the Matrix, and the Matrix programs can manifest themselves in and communicate with physical machines, such as the sentinals.
We also know that the current Matrix is based on an equation that has an untidy remainder that the Architect can MOSTLY manage, but not entirely. (He admits this to Neo if you listen carefully.)
The machines believed that the small remainder could be managed, but I believe it's been pushed into a chaotic, unstable state and will explode.
Another fact: when Smith talks to Neo in the courtyard, he reveals two things, assuming that Smith has been an Agent through previous cycles and that he has dealt with previous Ones: 1) previous Ones died and did not rise from the dead, and 2) previous Ones did not kill any Agents.
Put these together and you get a different twist: The Architect thinks he can manage the remainder of the equation because it is small, but unfortunately it is unstable and has been pushed over the edge by two events, one in the real world and one in the machine world:
In the real world, Trinity's love for Neo manages to bridge the gap into the Matrix and pull back Neo from the dead. This sets a chain of events into motion, which I'll talk about later.
In the machine world, more and more powerful programs are beginning to become more human and to operate their own agendas instead of the agendas of machine-kind. Examples include the Frenchman, the Frenchman's wife, the Oracle, and the most-unanticipated one: Smith.
These programs operating at cross-purposes to the Architect have begun to undermine things. Then the chain of events started by Trinity starts:
* Neo comes back from the dead, something that's not been done before.
* Neo kills Agent Smith, who becomes disconnected as an Agent but, having seen Neo resurrected, himself refuses to die.
* In killing Smith, Neo enters him and unexpectedly forges a connection: some kind of imprinting.
* This connection is able to cross the Matrix/real-world boundary outside of the normal "radio wave" interface that we accept. Call it "ESP" or something, but it happens.
So Neo zapped the sentinals at the end not because he is in another Matrix, but because he is, even in the real world, connected to the machine world. The explanation for how this link has occurred and how it works is beyond us now, but it happened somehow.
The alternative M-M concept is ultimately unstoppable. Once you've decided that Zion could be another Matrix, you can never be sure that you're ever in the Real World. So ultimately, any conjectures about how or why this or that works ultimately become meaningless, since it's all just a simulation. In fact, who says it's based on a Real World anywhere? We assume because it resembles our world, that there is a Real World basis for it, but that's just our assumption.
If you've read this far, here's a freebie twister: what if the Frenchman's wife and the Oracle are the same woman in a sort of Bruce Wayne/Batman kind of role?
Wow, I guess I just assumed that all of us geeks were programmers at one point or another. What other species of geek are there?
1. Yes, the orgy scene was way too long. I'd have been happier with about 20 seconds of Neo/Trinity and 30 seconds of orgy. (Or less.)
But, did you notice that the orgy scene was very reminiscent of the club where Trinity first met Neo in the first Matrix? The same kind of panning and moves. And in the original, Neo and Trinity were so close they were practically kissing, but not quite. This time around, it's all a bit more, um, intimate.
I can't help but think there's a parallel and a message in that.
2. The French guy and cake. Seemed sloppy until I thought through the sequence again:
* The French guy spiked the woman's cake to send her to the (women's) bathroom.
* The French guy then excuses himself to go to the men's room, but in fact goes to the women's room to seduce the woman. (Or maybe the cake was spiked in a way that it caused her to want him.)
* The French guy's wife knows what he's up to and that's why she takes Neo, et al, to the men's room, where she has Neo kiss her. A parallel of sorts.
* We know she knows what her husband has done from her command to the vampire she doesn't shoot, and from her conversation when her husband shows up.
Not sloppy at all!
In between all of this, we're told that free choice is an illusion fostered by the strong who are controlling the weak. Which ties in with the Oracle saying that Neo's already made the choice, but now needs to justify/explain it. Which also ties in with the French guy's remark that they know the how but not the why. Which ties in with Smith who's pissed because Neo destroyed his why, and now he's aimless.
Whew!
This discussion has come up repeatedly in the Cinema4D discussion forum. (C4D is a cross-platform 3D app from Maxon.)
Athalons are so much cheaper and faster for rendering that the Mac isn't even arguable as a 3D platform based on bang-for-the-buck, and for rendering that is the entire argument. So people will occasionally say, "Hey, if you took advantage of AltiVec, the Mac would be competitive."
The official answer is that C4D (and most 3D apps) need 64-bit precision for rendering calculations and AltiVec is 32-bit so it's only useful for screen updates, etc, not for rendering. Evidently, you can use AltiVec to help with 64-bit numbers, but it requires enough additional work that you don't gain anything.
So if they add 64-bit AltiVec, the Mac could jump into the lead as a 3D rendering machine.
Not necessarily fact, but an additional input: BBC Article on cellphone interference
Please repeat after me: This is not DRM.
Your right to use the songs doesn't expire.
The audio is not encrypted.
The audio isn't tied to a single CPU.
The audio can be downloaded to your iPod.
The audio can be burned to an unlimited number of discs.
As far as I can tell, it's just straightforward, open standard AAC encoding, which is a Good Thing. (Or would you rather have a format with REAL DRM, like MS's?)
Yes, iTunes doesn't run on PCs (yet) or Linux. But anyone who can read the MPEG-4 standard can create a player, so go and do it Mr. Slashdotter.
Ever heard the chirp-chirp of a Nextel when the user was within, say, 20 feet of your speakers? It happens to me all the time (I edit video) and I've heard the chirp leak into CNN and other broadcasts as well.
Maybe it only interferes with audio equipment and maybe it's only "cosmetic" interference, but it certainly does happen.
Some reasons:
1. GUI design and esthetics. Windows has a cluttered, poorly-organized GUI, IMHO.
2. Windows has historically been poorly designed in terms of workflow. I doubt it's still in there, but my favorite example is how WIndows would allow you to drag a folder that's too large to fit onto another drive and it would blindly copy until it filled the disk and failed. MacOS has always pre-calculated how large the moved files are to make sure they fit. Which is what a computer should do.
NT/XP have come a long way, but it's more like a blind man painting a wall than a design process that considers workflow, ease of use, flexibility, etc.
3. Quicktime, etc. Windows is finally -- on something like the 8th revision -- getting its media (video, etc) act together but why use a system hacked together over such a long time by people who so obviously don't have a clue?
4. MacOS X is more flexible and powerful than Windows. As a small, but fresh, example: last night we were trying to install an 802.11g card in my roommate's Dell running XP. My Mac was up in a matter of minutes, but it took hours for the PC.
Why? Hmm, let me count the ways. XP evidently can't handle Shared Key Authentication. XP evidently can't connect without seeing an SSID broadcast. XP doesn't give you any immediate, meaningful error feedback or status indicators when you're trying to get it all to work.
MacOS X did all of these things. And that's not even mentioning the fragmented XP control panels that you use to attempt to configure wireless. (Another example of item #2, above.)
A month back, we were installing 802.11g at work and ran into a problem, this time at the receiving end, so we needed to implement an "expedient measure" to get people up. On the Mac -- from the GUI -- I could choose "DHCP with manual IP", pick an IP and got them online. On the XP side, we never found a similar option.
5. I work in a creative field, so why should I want to choose the "no bean counter ever got fired for buying MS/Dell" machine just like everyone else?
6. PCs are butt-ugly and poorly designed. Dell, for example, evidently thinks that industrial design involves coloring ugly boxes BLACK. And they evidently believe that turning a PC on its side to work on it is a good idea.
In the Finder, press CMD-K and up pops a nice network mounting interface that shows local SMB as well as Apple servers. Way simpler than Chooser. And it actually makes sense, unlike the overloaded Chooser which was meant to choose printers back when people had, say, two choices.
No technology is needed at all. The GPS info goes to a gulf state (Qatar?) and all it takes is one Iraqi sympathizer in the sat. phone company who has access to the info and can make a call from home each evening.
I ran into this XP "feature" yesterday on a co-worker's XP machine. Running an application, closed the (last) window thinking I could then create another. Silly me, closing the (last) window exits the app and I have to poke around and relaunch it.
Not very intuitive or convenient. Especially since it depends on me keeping track of how many windows I have open in the application and knowing that the last one acts differently than the others.
To add insult to injury, my coworker had also managed to remove the app from the START menu -- where I though all apps live on an XP machine -- and I basically couldn't find the stupid application to launch it again. So much for that supposed advantage over MacOS X. (I'm not bitter, mind you...)
Two thoughts from the interesting article:
1) Why are we sending robots to comets to fetch material when we could just send one to L4? The article mentions that cometary dust and space junk will gather there.
Let debris from all over come to us. Sort of like Men in Black, where they confiscate alien technology at a single port of entry. Deep space exploration from the comfort of your own (planetary) home.
2) The article mentions that a killer asteroid was riding the "rails" and the earth stepped out onto the tracks in front of it and got hit. Which makes me wonder if future asteroids on a collision course -- not necessarily on one of these low-velocity tracks -- could be deflected with smaller forces that previously envisioned? Throw some switches on the tracks, as it were.
Very solid program that is cross-platform, and done by a company that's been on the Mac for years and likes the Mac. Other cross-platform alternatives are done by companies that are PC-centric and port to the Mac. (Usually either late or non-Macish ports.)
Igor is more expensive than (just) graphing programs, since it is a full-blown scientific analysis program with scripting and real-time data acquisition capabilities. So it lets you manipulate and analyze data, then gives you nice graphs that are highly customizable.
A big plus you won't see on any comparison chart is the email list. Totally professional and helpful with the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any list I've seen.
It's not whining to ask that Apple's installer be non-braindamaged and honor links and mounts. That's one of the foundational concepts of UNIX, for crying out loud: you can mount anything anywhere and it looks like it's part of a unified file system.
/Applications. This should be TRANSPARENT to any application that rises as high as "dim-witted", much less a well-written installation program.
For example, I ran out of space for Applications, so created an Applications partition and mounted it to
I've lost track of which installers are stupid and which are not. Apple's has been, but might now work properly. I know I still get messages from some installers/updaters that the partition I'm installing to must have a System folder. Stupid.