The AirPort Express already offers a combination analog/optical digital output jack. Don't be too surprised if that widget makes its way into an iPod dock.
But I fail to understand why anybody would want it on the iPod itself. There are no optical digital headphones, and if there were you wouldn't want to carry them around. The dock connector provides a way to get digital audio in and out via the dock. Put the combo jack in the dock and you're done.
Or you could just pitch the MP3 format altogether and encode to MPEG-4 AAC instead. Much higher quality at 128 kbps, making it the optimum balance between quality and file size. And because it's built in to QuickTime, it works everywhere.
Zero clicks, zero drags: iTunes can automatically sync your music to your iPod. It's an optional feature, but a handy one.
My library is far too big to fit on my 20 GB iPod, so I use smart playlists. I took a bunch of albums and songs that I definitely want to have on my iPod and put them in a special playlist. Then I created a smart playlist that chooses 3,000 songs at random that I haven't heard in the past month. Then I created another smart playlist that selects all the top 1,500 newest songs in my library. Then I created another smart playlist that selects all my 4- and 5-star songs. Then I created a master playlist that selects all of the songs from all of those playlists, and iTunes syncs that master playlist to my iPod.
In your example, the new CD would auto-sync to my iPod the next time I plug my iPod in, because it would get picked up by the "newest music" smart playlist.
You were doing it wrong. This is a common problem. There are two different varieties of IRIX: the maintenance stream and the feature stream. If you try to install a feature update on a maintenance machine, you're going to get lots of conflicts.
You were just trying to install the wrong update, that's all. Remember: f goes with f and m goes with m.
I wouldn't look to military simultion for an example of a growth area.
Saab just gave SGI a commitment to spend millions on Onyx systems for their Gripen simulators.
Seriously, the press release hit my desk last week.
(Incidentally, FORTRAN is only used in things like engine simulation modules or airframe modules. A typical flight simulator developed in the US [other countries might have different habits] is going to be 90% standard C code, probably about 8% F77 or F90, and maybe 2% Ada 83 for legacy modules.)
No, that's really the opposite of what happened. "Rocket Rick" Belluzzo saw the shift in the market, but he reacted to it in precisely the wrong way. Rather than trying to develop subversive technologies to undermine the PC market shift, Belluzzo decided to try to outsource SGI's workstation business, turning it into just another PC manufacturer.
Right now, companies like ILM are tearing out SGI workstations and replacing them with ultra-cheap desktops. They're taking advantage of the ability to work with low-resolution proxies in real time and then render jobs overnight on the big iron. That's a good workflow for that environment.
SGI should have been their first. They had the big iron --nobody has bigger iron, even now; SGI's supercomputers are more scalable than anybody's. They should have developed software frameworks that facilitate remote rendering of graphics operations. How? I don't know; I'm not a graphics expert. But they should have been first on that block. Then SGI could have gone to a company like ILM and said, "We'll sell you a thousand server processors and a thousand one-processor desktops for five million bucks."
Instead, SGI said, "Fuck the desktop. The server business will boom forever!" Which was a huge mistake.
SGI's failure is that they tried to adapt to the dominant paradigm instead of recognizing its limits and engineering ways to get around them. They reacted instead of created. And they lost vast sums of money in the process.
There were hundreds of compositors at ILM during the Episode II show. Seriously: like 800 or 900 people. Throw a rock and you'll hit two of them.
And the interesting part is that practically none of them ever saw SGI gear. ILM's compositor, CompTime, runs on Linux now on ever-so-cheap desktops. It uses really low-resolution proxies that the Linux boxes can handle without choking, then hands off tasks to a render queue for overnight processing on the big SGI iron in the data center.
But what I found funniest of all about the article is the implication that if you get your hands on an Indy, you'll be able to break into Hollywood. This is an utterly clueless statement. Visual effects pros don't use computers, they use applications. Nobody gives a damn if you can find your way around an Indy. What people care about is how well you know Shake or Flame or SoftImage.
That's not relevant for either Powerbooks (your example) or iMacs (the topic), as these computers can't be equipped with more than 2 GB of RAM. That's only relevant for the Xserve and the Power Mac G5.
And that objection will vanish in about six months, more or less.
Like whom, and why? And please, let's not even bother hearing answers like "Mac OS X is ugly" or "Linux is what I'm used to." Let's talk about real reasons, not closed-minded foolishness.
As a matter of fact, they are. One of the biggest complaints about Photoshop 8 (the whole CS series, in fact) is that launch times are too long even on the fastest hardware. That wouldn't be so bad, because on a Mac the user can launch Photoshop then toggle over to some other application to keep working for the ten seconds or whatever it takes. But the giant floating splash screen gets in the way.
So yeah, basically the Gimp guys took the thing most Photoshop users are most unhappy with and went "Pretty! Must have now!"
But how legitimate is the consent of the people when it is obtained under threat of violence?
Suggestion: Go take a freshman-level political science class. You're lacking the basic working knowledge of the discipline to have a useful discussion. The fact that you don't understand the difference, in terms of political philosophy, between an elected government and a gangster tells me that you've got so far to go before you grasp the basic concepts here that it's not even worth getting into it with you.
No offense, but it's like you barged into a calculus class and demanded to know what "x" and "y" mean. There's required background here, you know?
Bigger. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, for instance, launched more stuff into the atmosphere than all human activity during the 19th and 20th centuries combined. It had the effect of reducing ozone levels in the tropics significantly, even creating a 20% reduction in the temperate region of the northern hemisphere.
Wow. It just goes to show you that Google has done more to enable disinformation and falsehood than any other force in recent memory. Hell, maybe going back to the printing press.
You don't understand the numbers you cited. They don't say what you want them to say.
I know you're just trying to be a shithead, but you've blindly stumbled upon one of the key topics in political science. How is government different from thuggery?
The answer is consent. In the United States, the government exists with the consent of the governed. We express that consent through elections, but also implicitly through not exercising our right to call a new Constitutional Convention in any state or in the country as a whole. And, for that matter, by not exercising our right of revolution.
That's the difference between a government and a bad of thugs: consent.
Okay, how about this: we impose punitive taxes on SUVs, and convert coal burning power plants to the latest failsafe nuclear power plants?
Love it, except there's basically no such thing as a fail-safe nuclear power plant. It's a consequence of the way nuclear power works that it's can't fail safe. If it fails, it fails dangerous.
A better idea would be to levy a tax on gasoline and use it to fund research into new motor and generator designs that actually can fail safe.
Oh, gee! What do you know? That's exactly what the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative did.
Basically, yeah. Greed is the natural human condition. Our society depends on individual self-interest --"greed," if you prefer that term --to function. It's the motivator, the engine.
The first tax passed by the first Congress was a freakin estate tax, you moron
And the moral difference between a tax passed by an elected Congress and a policy of "wealth redistribution" instituted by a non-sovereign, supranational group comprised of appointed ministers is...? Anyone?
Hint: The rallying slogan of the American revolution was, "Taxation without representation is tyranny." Does that help?
know you cockmunching libertarians
You haven't the foggiest idea who I am, do you? I'm about a libertarian as I am communist.
Die a swift and violent death, fucktwat.
Good to see that your side of the argument still holds the monopoly on reasoned discourse. Well done.
To beg a question means to assume the truth of something that's part of the thing being decided. So yes, this whole discussion does, in fact, beg the question.
Slashdot Mirror
Audiophiles have plenty of other excuses for not buying iPods, most of them, as near as I can tell, made up out of thin air.
The AirPort Express already offers a combination analog/optical digital output jack. Don't be too surprised if that widget makes its way into an iPod dock.
But I fail to understand why anybody would want it on the iPod itself. There are no optical digital headphones, and if there were you wouldn't want to carry them around. The dock connector provides a way to get digital audio in and out via the dock. Put the combo jack in the dock and you're done.
I have 1,149 CDs in iTunes. My library is about 62 GB.
Step one: Don't use 160 kbps AACs. You can't hear the difference anyway.
Step two: There is no step two.
iRiver beats apple in many ways including style
Further proof, if any were needed, that some people just have no taste.
Or you could just pitch the MP3 format altogether and encode to MPEG-4 AAC instead. Much higher quality at 128 kbps, making it the optimum balance between quality and file size. And because it's built in to QuickTime, it works everywhere.
Zero clicks, zero drags: iTunes can automatically sync your music to your iPod. It's an optional feature, but a handy one.
My library is far too big to fit on my 20 GB iPod, so I use smart playlists. I took a bunch of albums and songs that I definitely want to have on my iPod and put them in a special playlist. Then I created a smart playlist that chooses 3,000 songs at random that I haven't heard in the past month. Then I created another smart playlist that selects all the top 1,500 newest songs in my library. Then I created another smart playlist that selects all my 4- and 5-star songs. Then I created a master playlist that selects all of the songs from all of those playlists, and iTunes syncs that master playlist to my iPod.
In your example, the new CD would auto-sync to my iPod the next time I plug my iPod in, because it would get picked up by the "newest music" smart playlist.
Zero clicks, zero drags.
You were doing it wrong. This is a common problem. There are two different varieties of IRIX: the maintenance stream and the feature stream. If you try to install a feature update on a maintenance machine, you're going to get lots of conflicts.
You were just trying to install the wrong update, that's all. Remember: f goes with f and m goes with m.
I wouldn't look to military simultion for an example of a growth area.
Saab just gave SGI a commitment to spend millions on Onyx systems for their Gripen simulators.
Seriously, the press release hit my desk last week.
(Incidentally, FORTRAN is only used in things like engine simulation modules or airframe modules. A typical flight simulator developed in the US [other countries might have different habits] is going to be 90% standard C code, probably about 8% F77 or F90, and maybe 2% Ada 83 for legacy modules.)
No, that's really the opposite of what happened. "Rocket Rick" Belluzzo saw the shift in the market, but he reacted to it in precisely the wrong way. Rather than trying to develop subversive technologies to undermine the PC market shift, Belluzzo decided to try to outsource SGI's workstation business, turning it into just another PC manufacturer.
Right now, companies like ILM are tearing out SGI workstations and replacing them with ultra-cheap desktops. They're taking advantage of the ability to work with low-resolution proxies in real time and then render jobs overnight on the big iron. That's a good workflow for that environment.
SGI should have been their first. They had the big iron --nobody has bigger iron, even now; SGI's supercomputers are more scalable than anybody's. They should have developed software frameworks that facilitate remote rendering of graphics operations. How? I don't know; I'm not a graphics expert. But they should have been first on that block. Then SGI could have gone to a company like ILM and said, "We'll sell you a thousand server processors and a thousand one-processor desktops for five million bucks."
Instead, SGI said, "Fuck the desktop. The server business will boom forever!" Which was a huge mistake.
SGI's failure is that they tried to adapt to the dominant paradigm instead of recognizing its limits and engineering ways to get around them. They reacted instead of created. And they lost vast sums of money in the process.
There were hundreds of compositors at ILM during the Episode II show. Seriously: like 800 or 900 people. Throw a rock and you'll hit two of them.
And the interesting part is that practically none of them ever saw SGI gear. ILM's compositor, CompTime, runs on Linux now on ever-so-cheap desktops. It uses really low-resolution proxies that the Linux boxes can handle without choking, then hands off tasks to a render queue for overnight processing on the big SGI iron in the data center.
But what I found funniest of all about the article is the implication that if you get your hands on an Indy, you'll be able to break into Hollywood. This is an utterly clueless statement. Visual effects pros don't use computers, they use applications. Nobody gives a damn if you can find your way around an Indy. What people care about is how well you know Shake or Flame or SoftImage.
That's not relevant for either Powerbooks (your example) or iMacs (the topic), as these computers can't be equipped with more than 2 GB of RAM. That's only relevant for the Xserve and the Power Mac G5.
And that objection will vanish in about six months, more or less.
Like whom, and why? And please, let's not even bother hearing answers like "Mac OS X is ugly" or "Linux is what I'm used to." Let's talk about real reasons, not closed-minded foolishness.
If your software can't be installed by dragging and dropping a single package to any folder anywhere, it's broken.
We're talking about Macs here. Raise your standards.
As a matter of fact, they are. One of the biggest complaints about Photoshop 8 (the whole CS series, in fact) is that launch times are too long even on the fastest hardware. That wouldn't be so bad, because on a Mac the user can launch Photoshop then toggle over to some other application to keep working for the ten seconds or whatever it takes. But the giant floating splash screen gets in the way.
So yeah, basically the Gimp guys took the thing most Photoshop users are most unhappy with and went "Pretty! Must have now!"
the social contract ...people don't think a contract should be binding
Somewhere in there you lost sight of what the word "metaphor" means.
Seriously: Go take Intro to Poli Sci or something. These questions are neither interesting nor insightful.
But how legitimate is the consent of the people when it is obtained under threat of violence?
Suggestion: Go take a freshman-level political science class. You're lacking the basic working knowledge of the discipline to have a useful discussion. The fact that you don't understand the difference, in terms of political philosophy, between an elected government and a gangster tells me that you've got so far to go before you grasp the basic concepts here that it's not even worth getting into it with you.
No offense, but it's like you barged into a calculus class and demanded to know what "x" and "y" mean. There's required background here, you know?
Bigger. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, for instance, launched more stuff into the atmosphere than all human activity during the 19th and 20th centuries combined. It had the effect of reducing ozone levels in the tropics significantly, even creating a 20% reduction in the temperate region of the northern hemisphere.
Wow. It just goes to show you that Google has done more to enable disinformation and falsehood than any other force in recent memory. Hell, maybe going back to the printing press.
You don't understand the numbers you cited. They don't say what you want them to say.
Silly rabbit.
I know you're just trying to be a shithead, but you've blindly stumbled upon one of the key topics in political science. How is government different from thuggery?
The answer is consent. In the United States, the government exists with the consent of the governed. We express that consent through elections, but also implicitly through not exercising our right to call a new Constitutional Convention in any state or in the country as a whole. And, for that matter, by not exercising our right of revolution.
That's the difference between a government and a bad of thugs: consent.
Okay, how about this: we impose punitive taxes on SUVs, and convert coal burning power plants to the latest failsafe nuclear power plants?
Love it, except there's basically no such thing as a fail-safe nuclear power plant. It's a consequence of the way nuclear power works that it's can't fail safe. If it fails, it fails dangerous.
A better idea would be to levy a tax on gasoline and use it to fund research into new motor and generator designs that actually can fail safe.
Oh, gee! What do you know? That's exactly what the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative did.
Amazing, huh?
If that principle held true, our language would have splintered into hundreds of incompatible dialects by now.
It hasn't.
Language does change, yes. But very, very slowly. The language you speak every day is basically identical to a language spoken four hundred years ago.
Most often, people use the "language evolves, get over it" thing as a way of covering up the fact that they're lazy and don't want to learn the rules.
Basically, yeah. Greed is the natural human condition. Our society depends on individual self-interest --"greed," if you prefer that term --to function. It's the motivator, the engine.
So yeah. I mean greed.
The first tax passed by the first Congress was a freakin estate tax, you moron
And the moral difference between a tax passed by an elected Congress and a policy of "wealth redistribution" instituted by a non-sovereign, supranational group comprised of appointed ministers is...? Anyone?
Hint: The rallying slogan of the American revolution was, "Taxation without representation is tyranny." Does that help?
know you cockmunching libertarians
You haven't the foggiest idea who I am, do you? I'm about a libertarian as I am communist.
Die a swift and violent death, fucktwat.
Good to see that your side of the argument still holds the monopoly on reasoned discourse. Well done.
To beg a question means to assume the truth of something that's part of the thing being decided. So yes, this whole discussion does, in fact, beg the question.
Welcome to English, indeed.
No, groupthinking like pi= 3 and the Earth is flat.