There already is a fairly widespread musical notation format in use on the web. It's called ABC. There's even a Sourceforge site for it.
That said, ABC isn't perfect - it's evolved in many ambiguous and incompatible ways over the years, making it difficult to code a common parser. MusicXML might be better suited for that job, or for professional use.
While I think Linux's desktop is mostly ready for prime time (both KDE and Gnome could still use a lot of polish, though...), it's driver architecture is not. 2.6 is still suffering from a lot of old and poor architectural choices, making it difficult to develop drivers for new hardware quickly. I saw some discussion of changes which could go into 2.7/2.8 which might make it easier to correct this.
But until the driver architecture is fixed, you're going to have installation problems on newer machines. And until you have really smooth installation on newer machines, people aren't going to adopt Linux on the desktop. It has to be trivial to install or it won't fly.
As others have pointed out, El Dorado was a Dreamworks issue.
Another point, the Disney Florida studio (the one being closed) produced three films: Mulan, Lilo and Stitch, and Brother Bear. Each was a success in the theatre. And in fact, counting the international market and DVD sales, it appears that every Disney animated film (with perhaps the exception being Treasure Planet - a true disaster...) has made at least some profit, even if not a hit.
The real reason Disney has killed their Feature Animation (domestic) division is because their Television Animation division (which makes TV cartoons and direct to video sequels on the cheap by outsourcing the animation to other studios overseas) has shown it can make a higher percentage of profit on a film than they have been able to do recently from Feature Animation. (Of course, it doesn't help any that they've glutted the market with such products -- it used to be that each new Disney film was a big event.) (It also doesn't help any that Disney's average Feature Animation production costs have more than tripled in the last 10 years, way more than they should have done...)
Add that to the inane perception that 3D makes more money than 2D (thanks to recent hits such as Shrek and Ice Age and all of the Pixar films), and Disney management has decided to focus their efforts there.
IMHO, a truly stupid decision -- focusing on short term profits at the cost of savaging their future. It doesn't even make sense financially -- they merged everything into Burbank where it costs significantly more, instead of closing down Burbank and merging everyone into the Florida studio.
But hey, Disney management has been getting increasingly stupid lately -- they've lost any sort of real focus and foresight.
Yes, Tog has a number of good points. But he misses the fact that for every problem the UI changes to Mac OS X introduces, it *fixes* at least as many, if not more, problems that existed in previous iterations of Mac OS X.
Sheets are about the only area I do agree with, but they *do* need to be attached to their windows, otherwise there's no way to associate their functionality with the right document, espeically if you use lots of windows. I'd love to see a "roll up the sheet" button which would allow seeing what is underneath temporarily, but I wouldn't want them to detach. OTOH, I note that most Open dialogs *are* dialogs intstead of sheets. Which is as it should be.
The Dock has it's issues, but it also solves much more than the problems it caused. Particularly in the area of notifications and being able to drag documents to a specific application. (I don't even have it autohiding unless I'm starved for real estate, like on my laptop...)
As for Finder... Since 10.0, I got used to keeping two finder windows open all the time, side by side, in Column View, and it's awesome. I do almost everything in those two windows, and only occationally open another window (usually to show package contents...).
I'm not, however, fond of the Panther change to add the volumes and known folders to the left side of the window -- it eats up a column, and I'd rather have that stuff back in the toolbar. But I could switch to having my two windows positioned vertically -- it's not so much a problem as a change in user behavior.
Even though I disagree with Tog on these issues, I'll point out that he is mostly positive to Mac OS X, and is only being a squeaky wheel about those areas he's not fond of. Which is how it should be.
The advantage of open source is everyone can see it and modify it.
The disadvantage of open source is everyone can see it and modify it.
In order to create an operating system that works, you need to have *some* kind of central control over the core functionality of that OS. Without that, things fragment so much as everyone adds their own favorite feature in different ways. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1) The Linux way: You make the kernel open source and have certain specified people maintain the core kernel release and a central place to get that core kernel. And you hope everyone sticks to it, because there's *nothing* preventing someone from producing their own major open source variation of that kernel other than peer pressure. You still get umpteen jillion *minor* variations, however... we call them Distributions. This makes it very difficult for applications programmers, because you often need to be aware of the quirks of each distribution.
2) The Closed Source way: You don't give source to the core of your OS to anyone. This way you maintain your vision of what the OS is supposed to be, and don't have to worry about people changing it in incompatible ways. And people programming for your OS only have to worry about *one* variation, which simplifies their job immensely. The limitation here is you don't have oodles of people pouring over your source to add needed functionality and fix the problems in it, so you better have a very good development and debugging team, and plenty of time.
I'm not advocating one over the other. And I think you can accomplish very impressive things with a mix of the two schemes (as Apple has). But there *are* valid reasons for making a free OS closed source.
In defense of HP (what a weird position to be in...;), it's probably a very good move on their part, and it's an awesome boost for Apple.
Remember, all of these big computer hardware companies (HP, Dell, Apple, Sony, and so on...) are in the business of providing what their customers want. Traditionally, consumers stick with a brand - people who buy HP computers also tend to buy their other stuff from HP if available.
But it's bloody expensive to build hardware and compete in all the market sectors that exist. So what you do is focus on the sectors you are good at, and rebrand hardware from other manufacturers in the sectors you don't want to spend your R&D money on. Which is what HP is doing here with the iPod - they're simply having Apple make iPods for them with the HP logo and color scheme.
And both companies win -- HP provides the music player they need to keep their customers in the fold, and Apple sells lots more iPods without much effort on their part at all. HP probably also gets a big discount on the cost of the iPod (cutting Apple's profit margins a bit), but Apple gets a boatload of new iTunes, iTMS, and Quicktime users in the bargain.
Looks like a big win-win situation to me...
-->Zgwortz
iGrow tired of seeing comments like this. (Especially from iCowards...) iKeep seeing people mod up iComments as iFunny. iThink it's time to iMod them as the iTrolls they really are. (At least, after this one...;)
I guess you showed those Mac zealots a thing or three... Why, even I, running on my piece of crap G4 400Mhz Mac (It's only been running 3+ years without problems - must be ready to go any time now) with my 1 button mouse (with 4 buttons?!?) and sluggish Aqua interface (which somehow seems faster on my 400 Mhz G4 than KDE does on my 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 at home -- must be an illusion...) have been convinced. I've been using Linux at home and the Mac at work (and at home with my laptop) for a while now and hadn't seen the light about Linux superiority! So in response...
Linux Zealot Translator-o-matic
"Linux is everything Mac OS X wants to be."
"Despite the fact that Linux is pulled in numerous directions by various factions, contains an antique driver architecture, and is weighted down by the need to support a gazillion obsolete bits of hardware alongside of bleeding edge hardware made by manufacturers who refuse to release specs to the open source community, I truly believe it wants to be a lean, stable, easy to configure and use OS just like Mac OS X. Linux would love to rewrite itself from scratch to accomplish this."
"Linux Hardware is for real computer lovers"
"I can use ANY hardware I want to on my Linux machine, even this cool new motherboard I just boug... Okay, once I download the drivers I can use any hardware I... Hmph, okay, after I recompile my kernel and install new dri... Blast it all, after I upgrade to the latest test kernel and install the latest patches... *&^*&^ drivers -- Fine, after I *write* new drivers, maybe? Never mind -- I'll go back to my motherboard from 2 years ago - I know *that* one works, anyway. Mostly."
"KDE makes me so much more productive!"
"Yeah, it blows away that whole Aqua thing - I can render a web page in 3.2 seconds, which is a whole tenth of a second faster than they can on the Mac. And so what if Aqua can use hardware acceleration to composite the screen faster than I can draw three windows -- who needs more than one or two windows on screen anyway - they only clutter things up and slow things down, so I don't use that many. Besides, even when I do, I know where they all are anyway - don't need that Expose crap. And I've got glasses, so when I squint to make out the fonts, it won't hurt too much."
"Only Linux is *real* Open Source"
"Just because Apple provided open source to Darwin, doesn't mean it's really open source -- you need a couple thousand people working on it to count. And it's BSD based anyway -- who needs that? It's not like BSD is a real open source system either. We all know only Linux counts. (And those guys calling it GNU/Linux should learn that too...)"
"You get what you pay for with Linux hardware."
"Absolutely. Except for quality, ease of use, quick setup -- those cost extra. But I can certainly get cheap, low quality, hardware cheaper. I might even get it to work eventually."
"...blah blah MHz myth blah..."
"Although there's truth in x86 being more awkward, it isn't really that bad -- a top end Pentium 4 when overclocked (and water cooled) *almost* comes close to the top of the end 2.0 Ghz PPC G5 chip. Why, the Athlon 64 even does slightly better, at least until higher speed G5 chips come out next month. We'll cling doggedly to our current lead to show our superiority and show those Mac weenies who's boss..."
If you define flexibility as the amount of hardware the system currently runs on, well, yes, IOKit (the driver architecture used by Darwin and thus also OS X) only runs on very limited hardware. There are more drivers available for Darwin than are distributed with OS X, but even that pales behind the number of drivers already existant for Linux.
Of course, by those standards, Windows is more flexible than Linux, because companies with proprietary hardware tend to write to Windows first, and Linux is at best an afterthought. Just because an OS has prolific hardware support doesn't necessarily make it better in any way, IMHO.
So... Assuming flexible still in terms of hardware support, is it better defined by the*capability* of the driver architecture? Because there, IOKit (and thus Darwin and potentially OS X) has Linux beat hands down. IOKit has to be the best combination of power with ease of coding I've ever encountered, bar none. The Linux driver architecture is antiquated and kludgy as hell compared to it, and is the biggest single disadvantage Linux suffers. Again, IMHO.
Outside of hardware support terms, you can't really claim Linux is more flexible in any area -- there's nothing I can imagine that you could do with Linux software wise that you couldn't do with Mac OS X. (And probably better, faster, and easier...)
-->Zgwortz
I know for a fact (having both a Kensington Saddlebag and most of WWDC bags produced over the last 10 years) that the WWDC bag is NOT a real Kensington Saddlebag, but in fact a very cheap (IMHO) knockoff.
My real Kensington Saddlebag, which I've had for as long as Kensington has been making them (7-8 years?) is so much more durable, rugged, and built to last than those cheap knockoffs, it's not worth the comparison. Just looking at the strap fittings (metal on the real bag, plastic on the fakes) is a clear indication of the difference between them. And *all* the materials of the real bag are better than the knockoffs.
-->Zgwortz
My Kensington Saddlebag is by far the best laptop bag I've ever used. It easily holds a 15" Powerbook -- it might actually be able to deal with a 17" as well, but I can't be sure.
I've seen oodles of similar designs (I'm not sure if they're copied from the Saddlebag design, or if the Saddlebag design is in itself a copy of another design...), but *none* come even close to the solid quality of the original Saddlebag. Mine has been thoroughly abused for years and is still in excellent condition.
Several of the WWDC giveaway bags over the years have been close copies of the Saddlebag although far inferior in quality -- if the original poster was using one of those, then the Kensington Saddlebag is probably the perfect replacement for what he had.
-->Zgwortz
Honestly, Microsoft trying to put a Windows GUI on top of BSD is probably a bad move for them. The problem, as is always the issue with new OSes, is drivers.
Apple was able to get away with Mac OS X on top of BSD, using their own modern driver architecture (IOKit) because they had a relatively small hardware subset that they had to support (and you'll note they didn't even *try* and support a whole bunch of their older machines...). And it still took them 4 years to get the first version out the door.
For Microsoft to to the same thing would be tons more complicated, given the ungodly amount of hardware they have to support.
(Drivers are the long term bane of Linux and BSD as well -- The Linux driver model is, IMHO, a horribly antiquated mess needing a complete tear out and replacement. It's not going to get that anytime soon for the same reasons outlined above - too many new drivers to support. I'm not familiar with the BSD model, but if it's anything like the over 20 year old UNIX device model, I'm *very* glad Apple chose to use IOKit instead...)
IMHO, if Microsoft wants to produce a truly stable OS, they need to tear their kernel development away from the rest of the OS, and put everything else (especially IE) in a nice isolated sandbox. I would say the vast majority of Windows security holes are there because MS tries to integrate way too much high level functionality into the core OS.
Of course, if they do that, then they risk people adding their own sandboxes on top of their core OS (like Java...) and losing control of the application developers who currently are slaved to that highly integrated high level functionality...
Re:"Works for me" is never a good answer.
on
Review of Mac OS X 10.3
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, it's not at all uncommon for software using *documented* APIs to break during a major new release of an OS. (And that applies to ALL OSes, Mac, Windows, Linux, you name it...) You don't need to be using something undocumented -- just uncommon. Also, new features in OSes can have unexpected side effects needing recoding.
For example, Mac OS X added support for Fast User Switching in 10.3. Anything talking to drivers or processes which are not login specific, but which need to have user specific settings, needs to have additional code under 10.3 to deal with the fact that the active user may now change without a logout or new login.
I myself had to make quite a variety of code changes to support 10.3. Many of those changes were fortunately compatible with 10.2 and 10.1. Knowing the types of things Quickeys does, I'd be surprsed if they *didn't* need to make changes, without even bringing undocumented APIs into it...
What's important is they got at least a new beta version out before 10.3 was released to the public. That's why OS manufacturers seed these things to developers for months before release. (And Apple is one of the best in this respect...)
I've been developing device drivers my entire career, on many platforms, including FLEX, Idris, UNIX, DOS, Windows (from 3.0 up), Mac OS and Mac OS X, and now finally I've started dabbling in Linux drivers.
And you know something - I was appalled to realize Linux was *still* using filesystem mapped device I/O, much of it still embedded in the kernel. C'mon, get out of the eighties, here!
At the minimum, the entire device hierarchy should be made totally modular. There is no excuse for a device driver to be compiled into the kernel -- sure you can keep them with the kernel sources and even in some rare cases require they get recompiled with new kernels, but they should never be compiled *into* the kernel. That's a good first step.
Then a new, modern driver architecture should be introduced. I personally like the IOKit architecture in Mac OS X, although it has it's own problems, and there are plenty of other approaches one could take. I hesitate to say it, but there are even a very small number of ideas in WDM which are worth considering. (Microsoft *can* come up with good ideas, occationally... They just can't implement them anywhere close to competently, or without throwing in some idiotic addition that ruins the original idea...)
As a temporary measure, the old device mechanism could be emulated through higher level drivers in the new device architecture for a year or three - that way existing programs won't break, and we have time to convert them over to the new mechanism.
Not that I expect this to happen anytime soon -- it's too radical a change. But given how much device hell I've suffered and seen others suffer recently, I think it's necessary...
I read True Names many years back (in an illustrated trade paperback edition), and it remains one of my favorite novellas. Even though I it's fairly short, is somewhat technically dated by now, and has been upstaged by books like Snow Crash, it's a cool story and has some still relevant (perhaps even moreso then when originally written...) commentary on global network anonymity.
It's been a few years since I gave this one another read -- I think it's far past time I did so...
As a side note for people looking for Vinge's books - The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime can also be found in a single combined volume called Beyond Realtime. I believe the paperback edition of this combined volume had a short story in it inbetween the two books, but the hardback edition (which I have) did not.
What makes this item of real interest to me is that it's an entry point for HD camcorders in the pro-sumer market, not so much what it does or how it does it. Although I've been following this news now for quite some time, and am suitably impressed that they managed to do this without requiring a new tape format, what this *really* signals is the opening of a new market segment for the electronics companies to fight over...
Next year, there will be several more companies competing in this market, the cheapest at just under $2000, the most expensive being 3 CCD models good enough to make any pro-sumer switch.
Within 3 years, you'll see the first HD consumer camcorder under $1000, and the prosumer market will already be entirely HD. I don't think current the current resolution camcorders will live on much beyond that, except in the dirt-cheap market.
(Does this seem fast to you? Why does this cost $3K right now? Not the lens - it's nice, but not much better than in current camcorders costing half the price or less. Not the CCD - it's not even very high resolution compared to those in even a $500 digital camera. Nothing mechanical -- the tape mechanism and other mechanics are effectively the same as on much cheaper camcorders. The ONLY expensive bit in these cameras is the fast compressor/decompressor chip, and you know that's gonna drop in price...)
I've been shopping for a camcorder for personal use a while now, and the decision of getting a cheap one to last me 2-3 years, or an expensive one to last longer is effectively made because of this camera and it's implications. Cheap now, HD later...
Actually, I seriously doubt the Post Office has actually lost or stolen these movies. I've been using Netflix for a year and a half now, and have NEVER had a movie lost on it's way to me, but have had 5 lost on the way back, including two that were mailed back on the same day. If it were the Post Office losing these, I'd suspect losses in both directions.
It's my suspicion that most, if not all of the "lost" movies are more likely lost at Netflix itself, either not processed correctly when received, or whole bags of incoming that get messed up in some fashion. IMHO.
And there will be a large expansion slot on the front where you insert your pizza, and it is cooked by the heat from those *very* warm Apple motherboards.
Actually, the meaningful content is the change of date to the WWDC, although that's already been covered by another Slashdot article.
A lot of the people who've never been to a WWDC might be saying "big deal" to that, but it becomes incredibly significant when you realize that Apple has been holding their developer conferences in the same place (San Jose Conference Center) in roughly the same time of year (mid-May) for a *very* long time now.
For them to change that date and location, *especially* after already announcing a different date and location (a lot of people already had flights and hotel reservations that will have to change...) is a huge deal. It's clear this is a fairly recent change - otherwise they'd never have announced the original WWDC dates. Also, the logistics involved in moving this conference on such short notice are massive -- it's probably costing Apple quite a bundle to make the shift, not counting the higher rental cost for the Moscone Center.
All of this says to me that either Apple had a serious falling out with the SJCC people that forced them to relocate the conference on short notice, or they've got something planned that, at least in Apple's view, is incredibly important.
Delaying it so we can get a better preview of Panther just doesn't fit "incredibly important", IMHO. Either Panther is going to include something out of left field that *nobody* expects, or there's going to be significant hardware announcements as well. (PPC 970 maybe, or maybe the long rumored reentry into the PDA market -- who knows?)
This is one of those complaints that's bothered me ever since I first heard about it -- maybe you can clarify it.
Does the word "Laputa" mean The Whore, or is that "La Puta"? There is a world of difference that space makes.
For example, in english, "Therapist", and "The Rapist" are completely different things. Nobody in their right minds is going to confuse the two.
I even think it's pronounced differently. "Laputa" is usually pronounced with the "a" as in "pat" and the "pu" as "pyoo". "La Puta", is pronounced with the "a" as in in "father" (ie. the old "la la la"), and the "Pu" as in "poo", I believe.
So personally, I don't see why all the fuss has been made over the name...
Slashdot Mirror
Typical. Next thing you know, they'll be claiming some country has Weapons of Mass Destruction as a pretext to start a war.
Oops. Too late.
There already is a fairly widespread musical notation format in use on the web. It's called ABC. There's even a Sourceforge site for it.
That said, ABC isn't perfect - it's evolved in many ambiguous and incompatible ways over the years, making it difficult to code a common parser. MusicXML might be better suited for that job, or for professional use.
For casual use, though, ABC is tough to beat.
Now *that* has got to be a great car to have in traffic jams. With just one click, Expose will move all the other cars out of your way...
While I think Linux's desktop is mostly ready for prime time (both KDE and Gnome could still use a lot of polish, though...), it's driver architecture is not. 2.6 is still suffering from a lot of old and poor architectural choices, making it difficult to develop drivers for new hardware quickly. I saw some discussion of changes which could go into 2.7/2.8 which might make it easier to correct this. But until the driver architecture is fixed, you're going to have installation problems on newer machines. And until you have really smooth installation on newer machines, people aren't going to adopt Linux on the desktop. It has to be trivial to install or it won't fly.
As others have pointed out, El Dorado was a Dreamworks issue.
Another point, the Disney Florida studio (the one being closed) produced three films: Mulan, Lilo and Stitch, and Brother Bear. Each was a success in the theatre. And in fact, counting the international market and DVD sales, it appears that every Disney animated film (with perhaps the exception being Treasure Planet - a true disaster...) has made at least some profit, even if not a hit.
The real reason Disney has killed their Feature Animation (domestic) division is because their Television Animation division (which makes TV cartoons and direct to video sequels on the cheap by outsourcing the animation to other studios overseas) has shown it can make a higher percentage of profit on a film than they have been able to do recently from Feature Animation. (Of course, it doesn't help any that they've glutted the market with such products -- it used to be that each new Disney film was a big event.) (It also doesn't help any that Disney's average Feature Animation production costs have more than tripled in the last 10 years, way more than they should have done...)
Add that to the inane perception that 3D makes more money than 2D (thanks to recent hits such as Shrek and Ice Age and all of the Pixar films), and Disney management has decided to focus their efforts there.
IMHO, a truly stupid decision -- focusing on short term profits at the cost of savaging their future. It doesn't even make sense financially -- they merged everything into Burbank where it costs significantly more, instead of closing down Burbank and merging everyone into the Florida studio.
But hey, Disney management has been getting increasingly stupid lately -- they've lost any sort of real focus and foresight.
Old news, that. Actually, they destroyed all their sets last year and outsourced their production to WETA Digital.
I've used every single Mac OS since the Lisa. :-)
Yes, Tog has a number of good points. But he misses the fact that for every problem the UI changes to Mac OS X introduces, it *fixes* at least as many, if not more, problems that existed in previous iterations of Mac OS X.
Sheets are about the only area I do agree with, but they *do* need to be attached to their windows, otherwise there's no way to associate their functionality with the right document, espeically if you use lots of windows. I'd love to see a "roll up the sheet" button which would allow seeing what is underneath temporarily, but I wouldn't want them to detach. OTOH, I note that most Open dialogs *are* dialogs intstead of sheets. Which is as it should be.
The Dock has it's issues, but it also solves much more than the problems it caused. Particularly in the area of notifications and being able to drag documents to a specific application. (I don't even have it autohiding unless I'm starved for real estate, like on my laptop...)
As for Finder... Since 10.0, I got used to keeping two finder windows open all the time, side by side, in Column View, and it's awesome. I do almost everything in those two windows, and only occationally open another window (usually to show package contents...).
I'm not, however, fond of the Panther change to add the volumes and known folders to the left side of the window -- it eats up a column, and I'd rather have that stuff back in the toolbar. But I could switch to having my two windows positioned vertically -- it's not so much a problem as a change in user behavior.
Even though I disagree with Tog on these issues, I'll point out that he is mostly positive to Mac OS X, and is only being a squeaky wheel about those areas he's not fond of. Which is how it should be.
-->Zgwortz
The advantage of open source is everyone can see it and modify it.
The disadvantage of open source is everyone can see it and modify it.
In order to create an operating system that works, you need to have *some* kind of central control over the core functionality of that OS. Without that, things fragment so much as everyone adds their own favorite feature in different ways. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1) The Linux way: You make the kernel open source and have certain specified people maintain the core kernel release and a central place to get that core kernel. And you hope everyone sticks to it, because there's *nothing* preventing someone from producing their own major open source variation of that kernel other than peer pressure. You still get umpteen jillion *minor* variations, however... we call them Distributions. This makes it very difficult for applications programmers, because you often need to be aware of the quirks of each distribution.
2) The Closed Source way: You don't give source to the core of your OS to anyone. This way you maintain your vision of what the OS is supposed to be, and don't have to worry about people changing it in incompatible ways. And people programming for your OS only have to worry about *one* variation, which simplifies their job immensely. The limitation here is you don't have oodles of people pouring over your source to add needed functionality and fix the problems in it, so you better have a very good development and debugging team, and plenty of time.
I'm not advocating one over the other. And I think you can accomplish very impressive things with a mix of the two schemes (as Apple has). But there *are* valid reasons for making a free OS closed source.
IMHO.
In defense of HP (what a weird position to be in... ;), it's probably a very good move on their part, and it's an awesome boost for Apple.
Remember, all of these big computer hardware companies (HP, Dell, Apple, Sony, and so on...) are in the business of providing what their customers want. Traditionally, consumers stick with a brand - people who buy HP computers also tend to buy their other stuff from HP if available.
But it's bloody expensive to build hardware and compete in all the market sectors that exist. So what you do is focus on the sectors you are good at, and rebrand hardware from other manufacturers in the sectors you don't want to spend your R&D money on. Which is what HP is doing here with the iPod - they're simply having Apple make iPods for them with the HP logo and color scheme.
And both companies win -- HP provides the music player they need to keep their customers in the fold, and Apple sells lots more iPods without much effort on their part at all. HP probably also gets a big discount on the cost of the iPod (cutting Apple's profit margins a bit), but Apple gets a boatload of new iTunes, iTMS, and Quicktime users in the bargain.
Looks like a big win-win situation to me...
-->Zgwortz
iGrow tired of seeing comments like this. (Especially from iCowards...) iKeep seeing people mod up iComments as iFunny. iThink it's time to iMod them as the iTrolls they really are. (At least, after this one... ;)
I guess you showed those Mac zealots a thing or three... Why, even I, running on my piece of crap G4 400Mhz Mac (It's only been running 3+ years without problems - must be ready to go any time now) with my 1 button mouse (with 4 buttons?!?) and sluggish Aqua interface (which somehow seems faster on my 400 Mhz G4 than KDE does on my 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 at home -- must be an illusion...) have been convinced. I've been using Linux at home and the Mac at work (and at home with my laptop) for a while now and hadn't seen the light about Linux superiority! So in response...
Linux Zealot Translator-o-matic
"Linux is everything Mac OS X wants to be."
"Despite the fact that Linux is pulled in numerous directions by various factions, contains an antique driver architecture, and is weighted down by the need to support a gazillion obsolete bits of hardware alongside of bleeding edge hardware made by manufacturers who refuse to release specs to the open source community, I truly believe it wants to be a lean, stable, easy to configure and use OS just like Mac OS X. Linux would love to rewrite itself from scratch to accomplish this."
"Linux Hardware is for real computer lovers"
"I can use ANY hardware I want to on my Linux machine, even this cool new motherboard I just boug... Okay, once I download the drivers I can use any hardware I... Hmph, okay, after I recompile my kernel and install new dri... Blast it all, after I upgrade to the latest test kernel and install the latest patches... *&^*&^ drivers -- Fine, after I *write* new drivers, maybe? Never mind -- I'll go back to my motherboard from 2 years ago - I know *that* one works, anyway. Mostly."
"KDE makes me so much more productive!"
"Yeah, it blows away that whole Aqua thing - I can render a web page in 3.2 seconds, which is a whole tenth of a second faster than they can on the Mac. And so what if Aqua can use hardware acceleration to composite the screen faster than I can draw three windows -- who needs more than one or two windows on screen anyway - they only clutter things up and slow things down, so I don't use that many. Besides, even when I do, I know where they all are anyway - don't need that Expose crap. And I've got glasses, so when I squint to make out the fonts, it won't hurt too much."
"Only Linux is *real* Open Source"
"Just because Apple provided open source to Darwin, doesn't mean it's really open source -- you need a couple thousand people working on it to count. And it's BSD based anyway -- who needs that? It's not like BSD is a real open source system either. We all know only Linux counts. (And those guys calling it GNU/Linux should learn that too...)"
"You get what you pay for with Linux hardware."
"Absolutely. Except for quality, ease of use, quick setup -- those cost extra. But I can certainly get cheap, low quality, hardware cheaper. I might even get it to work eventually."
"...blah blah MHz myth blah..."
"Although there's truth in x86 being more awkward, it isn't really that bad -- a top end Pentium 4 when overclocked (and water cooled) *almost* comes close to the top of the end 2.0 Ghz PPC G5 chip. Why, the Athlon 64 even does slightly better, at least until higher speed G5 chips come out next month. We'll cling doggedly to our current lead to show our superiority and show those Mac weenies who's boss..."
If you define flexibility as the amount of hardware the system currently runs on, well, yes, IOKit (the driver architecture used by Darwin and thus also OS X) only runs on very limited hardware. There are more drivers available for Darwin than are distributed with OS X, but even that pales behind the number of drivers already existant for Linux. Of course, by those standards, Windows is more flexible than Linux, because companies with proprietary hardware tend to write to Windows first, and Linux is at best an afterthought. Just because an OS has prolific hardware support doesn't necessarily make it better in any way, IMHO. So... Assuming flexible still in terms of hardware support, is it better defined by the*capability* of the driver architecture? Because there, IOKit (and thus Darwin and potentially OS X) has Linux beat hands down. IOKit has to be the best combination of power with ease of coding I've ever encountered, bar none. The Linux driver architecture is antiquated and kludgy as hell compared to it, and is the biggest single disadvantage Linux suffers. Again, IMHO. Outside of hardware support terms, you can't really claim Linux is more flexible in any area -- there's nothing I can imagine that you could do with Linux software wise that you couldn't do with Mac OS X. (And probably better, faster, and easier...) -->Zgwortz
I know for a fact (having both a Kensington Saddlebag and most of WWDC bags produced over the last 10 years) that the WWDC bag is NOT a real Kensington Saddlebag, but in fact a very cheap (IMHO) knockoff. My real Kensington Saddlebag, which I've had for as long as Kensington has been making them (7-8 years?) is so much more durable, rugged, and built to last than those cheap knockoffs, it's not worth the comparison. Just looking at the strap fittings (metal on the real bag, plastic on the fakes) is a clear indication of the difference between them. And *all* the materials of the real bag are better than the knockoffs. -->Zgwortz
My Kensington Saddlebag is by far the best laptop bag I've ever used. It easily holds a 15" Powerbook -- it might actually be able to deal with a 17" as well, but I can't be sure. I've seen oodles of similar designs (I'm not sure if they're copied from the Saddlebag design, or if the Saddlebag design is in itself a copy of another design...), but *none* come even close to the solid quality of the original Saddlebag. Mine has been thoroughly abused for years and is still in excellent condition. Several of the WWDC giveaway bags over the years have been close copies of the Saddlebag although far inferior in quality -- if the original poster was using one of those, then the Kensington Saddlebag is probably the perfect replacement for what he had. -->Zgwortz
Honestly, Microsoft trying to put a Windows GUI on top of BSD is probably a bad move for them. The problem, as is always the issue with new OSes, is drivers.
Apple was able to get away with Mac OS X on top of BSD, using their own modern driver architecture (IOKit) because they had a relatively small hardware subset that they had to support (and you'll note they didn't even *try* and support a whole bunch of their older machines...). And it still took them 4 years to get the first version out the door.
For Microsoft to to the same thing would be tons more complicated, given the ungodly amount of hardware they have to support.
(Drivers are the long term bane of Linux and BSD as well -- The Linux driver model is, IMHO, a horribly antiquated mess needing a complete tear out and replacement. It's not going to get that anytime soon for the same reasons outlined above - too many new drivers to support. I'm not familiar with the BSD model, but if it's anything like the over 20 year old UNIX device model, I'm *very* glad Apple chose to use IOKit instead...)
IMHO, if Microsoft wants to produce a truly stable OS, they need to tear their kernel development away from the rest of the OS, and put everything else (especially IE) in a nice isolated sandbox. I would say the vast majority of Windows security holes are there because MS tries to integrate way too much high level functionality into the core OS.
Of course, if they do that, then they risk people adding their own sandboxes on top of their core OS (like Java...) and losing control of the application developers who currently are slaved to that highly integrated high level functionality...
Actually, it's not at all uncommon for software using *documented* APIs to break during a major new release of an OS. (And that applies to ALL OSes, Mac, Windows, Linux, you name it...) You don't need to be using something undocumented -- just uncommon. Also, new features in OSes can have unexpected side effects needing recoding.
For example, Mac OS X added support for Fast User Switching in 10.3. Anything talking to drivers or processes which are not login specific, but which need to have user specific settings, needs to have additional code under 10.3 to deal with the fact that the active user may now change without a logout or new login.
I myself had to make quite a variety of code changes to support 10.3. Many of those changes were fortunately compatible with 10.2 and 10.1. Knowing the types of things Quickeys does, I'd be surprsed if they *didn't* need to make changes, without even bringing undocumented APIs into it...
What's important is they got at least a new beta version out before 10.3 was released to the public. That's why OS manufacturers seed these things to developers for months before release. (And Apple is one of the best in this respect...)
-->Zgwortz
I've been developing device drivers my entire career, on many platforms, including FLEX, Idris, UNIX, DOS, Windows (from 3.0 up), Mac OS and Mac OS X, and now finally I've started dabbling in Linux drivers.
And you know something - I was appalled to realize Linux was *still* using filesystem mapped device I/O, much of it still embedded in the kernel. C'mon, get out of the eighties, here!
At the minimum, the entire device hierarchy should be made totally modular. There is no excuse for a device driver to be compiled into the kernel -- sure you can keep them with the kernel sources and even in some rare cases require they get recompiled with new kernels, but they should never be compiled *into* the kernel. That's a good first step.
Then a new, modern driver architecture should be introduced. I personally like the IOKit architecture in Mac OS X, although it has it's own problems, and there are plenty of other approaches one could take. I hesitate to say it, but there are even a very small number of ideas in WDM which are worth considering. (Microsoft *can* come up with good ideas, occationally... They just can't implement them anywhere close to competently, or without throwing in some idiotic addition that ruins the original idea...)
As a temporary measure, the old device mechanism could be emulated through higher level drivers in the new device architecture for a year or three - that way existing programs won't break, and we have time to convert them over to the new mechanism.
Not that I expect this to happen anytime soon -- it's too radical a change. But given how much device hell I've suffered and seen others suffer recently, I think it's necessary...
IMHO,
-->Zgwortz
I read True Names many years back (in an illustrated trade paperback edition), and it remains one of my favorite novellas. Even though I it's fairly short, is somewhat technically dated by now, and has been upstaged by books like Snow Crash, it's a cool story and has some still relevant (perhaps even moreso then when originally written...) commentary on global network anonymity.
;)
It's been a few years since I gave this one another read -- I think it's far past time I did so...
As a side note for people looking for Vinge's books - The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime can also be found in a single combined volume called Beyond Realtime. I believe the paperback edition of this combined volume had a short story in it inbetween the two books, but the hardback edition (which I have) did not.
-->Zgwortz (*not* my True Name...
What makes this item of real interest to me is that it's an entry point for HD camcorders in the pro-sumer market, not so much what it does or how it does it. Although I've been following this news now for quite some time, and am suitably impressed that they managed to do this without requiring a new tape format, what this *really* signals is the opening of a new market segment for the electronics companies to fight over... Next year, there will be several more companies competing in this market, the cheapest at just under $2000, the most expensive being 3 CCD models good enough to make any pro-sumer switch. Within 3 years, you'll see the first HD consumer camcorder under $1000, and the prosumer market will already be entirely HD. I don't think current the current resolution camcorders will live on much beyond that, except in the dirt-cheap market. (Does this seem fast to you? Why does this cost $3K right now? Not the lens - it's nice, but not much better than in current camcorders costing half the price or less. Not the CCD - it's not even very high resolution compared to those in even a $500 digital camera. Nothing mechanical -- the tape mechanism and other mechanics are effectively the same as on much cheaper camcorders. The ONLY expensive bit in these cameras is the fast compressor/decompressor chip, and you know that's gonna drop in price...) I've been shopping for a camcorder for personal use a while now, and the decision of getting a cheap one to last me 2-3 years, or an expensive one to last longer is effectively made because of this camera and it's implications. Cheap now, HD later...
Actually, I seriously doubt the Post Office has actually lost or stolen these movies. I've been using Netflix for a year and a half now, and have NEVER had a movie lost on it's way to me, but have had 5 lost on the way back, including two that were mailed back on the same day. If it were the Post Office losing these, I'd suspect losses in both directions. It's my suspicion that most, if not all of the "lost" movies are more likely lost at Netflix itself, either not processed correctly when received, or whole bags of incoming that get messed up in some fashion. IMHO.
And there will be a large expansion slot on the front where you insert your pizza, and it is cooked by the heat from those *very* warm Apple motherboards.
Actually, the meaningful content is the change of date to the WWDC, although that's already been covered by another Slashdot article.
A lot of the people who've never been to a WWDC might be saying "big deal" to that, but it becomes incredibly significant when you realize that Apple has been holding their developer conferences in the same place (San Jose Conference Center) in roughly the same time of year (mid-May) for a *very* long time now.
For them to change that date and location, *especially* after already announcing a different date and location (a lot of people already had flights and hotel reservations that will have to change...) is a huge deal. It's clear this is a fairly recent change - otherwise they'd never have announced the original WWDC dates. Also, the logistics involved in moving this conference on such short notice are massive -- it's probably costing Apple quite a bundle to make the shift, not counting the higher rental cost for the Moscone Center.
All of this says to me that either Apple had a serious falling out with the SJCC people that forced them to relocate the conference on short notice, or they've got something planned that, at least in Apple's view, is incredibly important.
Delaying it so we can get a better preview of Panther just doesn't fit "incredibly important", IMHO. Either Panther is going to include something out of left field that *nobody* expects, or there's going to be significant hardware announcements as well. (PPC 970 maybe, or maybe the long rumored reentry into the PDA market -- who knows?)
This is one of those complaints that's bothered me ever since I first heard about it -- maybe you can clarify it. Does the word "Laputa" mean The Whore, or is that "La Puta"? There is a world of difference that space makes. For example, in english, "Therapist", and "The Rapist" are completely different things. Nobody in their right minds is going to confuse the two. I even think it's pronounced differently. "Laputa" is usually pronounced with the "a" as in "pat" and the "pu" as "pyoo". "La Puta", is pronounced with the "a" as in in "father" (ie. the old "la la la"), and the "Pu" as in "poo", I believe. So personally, I don't see why all the fuss has been made over the name...