"BTW, does anyone know if this will spark more interest from the Adobe group to start portin their applications to Linux?"
I wouldn't expect Adobe to port anything to Linux for a long time. The last year or two has seen Adobe not even make their Mac products have the same features as their Windows versions, at least upon release.
For better or worse, Adobe seems primarily interested in the corporate market, which is dominated by Windows. InDesign was their hope to keep abreast on digital press and while that field is predominantly Macintosh, InDesign has been largely ignored by the professional community.
Besides, what do you want ported? Photoshop and Illustrator are about the only products worth using, Adobe having neglected GoLive, having canned the GoLive publishing system. Acrobat is primarily marketed as a business document solution and hasn't really advanced much over the last 18 months (although you may have to upgrade a bunch of printers cuz of Postscript L2 and L3 requirements - especialy if you are on a Mac). OpenType was supposed to have premiered in 1998, but I haven't heard much on that. LiveMotion is an expensive combo of ImageStyler (which hasn't been updated) and Flash and doesn't seem to have any advantage over Flash itself. ImageReady has been tacked onto Photoshop 5.5. The only thing coming down the pipe that looks interesting is Illustrator 9 which will support SVG. Too bad no browsers will support that for some time.
"Watch c-span; delve into political science, economics; obtain information from a variety of sources (various newspapers, the internet, books, whatever);
Then when person x actually has a clear picture, problems, and possible solutions - then a political movement would make sense - given others who share the same ideas."
Yep. I've done that for many years. Doesn't make me a genius or well informed, but the more I learned the more depressed and helpless I felt.
But I do agree wholeheartedly on the idea of self *education*, I just doubt the corporate media outlets are really going to provide anybody with anything meaningful or that could be used to challenge the status quo.
To steal a line form Dan Ackroyd: "Jon, you ignorant slut."
Individuals never change anything for the long run. It is only mass movements that affect lasting change. Put Rosa Parks in the front of a bus in the South by herself in the early 60s and she will be beaten. Unite her with a movement of people organized for a cause and stick a camera in front of her and she can be a powerful force.
Likewise, put Galileo in front of the Church and he will be punished and his work 'discredited'. Hell, the Catholic Church didn't let him out of jail until the 1980s. Yet, create a mass movement of people that values the quest for knowledge and ideas that arise and you will have a true change in society.
Jon's reliance on the individual smacks too much of Ayn Rand. And just as Rand's political philosophy attributes charaterisitics that an average person cannot possess so does Jon's essay.
Most 'individuals' today are symbols of a post modernist society rooted in Existentialism. Where meaning is not something objective, but rather subjective, a quest for identity that can be expressed by something as radical as pierced body parts, rock and roll, and profanity erupting form the mouths of babes. Such behavior is neither radical nor new, but rather the results of a commoditized rebellion, a product of the system that Jon somehow thinks individuals will somehow overcome.
I'm sorry to disappoint you Jon but people are just to lazy, ignorant, or powerless to make any changes on their own. They rely on others to overcome their anomie, to be able to work together for a common cause. This is more true to America than anywhere else.
Indeed, it is corporatism that has replaced mass movements, relegating them to little more than TV special interest segments. It's much easier to feel good temporarily by buying some fetishistic item of the minute rather than working on getting those drug dealers out of the neighborhood.
Don't ever expect people to be motivated by the high end of Maslow's pyramid.
No, if you want change I urge people to turn off their TV, put down their papers and meet together to discuss their concerns. Start with something small that a group of well organized people can overcome, something as small and local as getting Channel One out of their schools. Fight against the never ending encroachment of private property over community meeting spaces and segmentation of community into market demographics.
Or did you miss the "Million Mom March" because you saw it not as a mass movement, but a collection of individuals?
Now there is a place for leaders, and while leaders can be replaced or removed (why are leaders of left oriented and mass movements assassinated but not leaders of the right or reactionary movements?), it is the people behind them that make lasting change.
Examples in US history: women's suffrage Civil Rights movement (including racial and sexual preference oriented movements) Unions Anti-Vietnam movement etc
Movements that failed because of a reliance on individuals: AIM Black Panthers Reform party etc
People just don't get it. When ANY device becomes a commodity item PRICE is the determining factor for the mass market. Sure, design and fashion will account for some sales to a niche market, but the mass market is where the money is.
I'm not saying this Sony device will fly, but to hit a mass market (which is what Sony is aiming at) it'll be some combo of features and low price that will win the most $, not trendy design (which is instantly dated no matter how cool it is today).
On an unrelated note...
Now if you're a content producer as well as gadget provider you have additional incentive to integrate products. Will it work? We'll need to wait and see.
With all the usual ragging on MS I didn't see much mention here about MS's new approach to go against Palm: media playback.
Yeah MS Reader sucks, but being able to read books, playback MP3s and see A/V clips from places like Atom Films appears to be a new approach to taking on Palm. I'm not saying Palm does or doesn't have these features, but its not something I think of when I hear Palm Pilot.
I haven't seen the new interface and I don't understand the rationale behind reading web pages or Word docs on a tiny (color) screen, but I wonder if making a combo Rio Player and video playback device isn't a good move on MS's part. Reminds me of the Nuon approach to DVD players. I just wonder if MS will suffer the same fate.
Somebody tell me why these PDAs are actually useable on their own to input and read back files that need to display more than 20-30 characters a line. Once voice recognition and playback are really practical I can see PDAs taking off, but I just don't understand the fascination beyond "it's cool" for these things.
I think Tufte is more of an information designer than an interface designer. There's a fine line between the two. But yes, Tufte wrote the book on visual info graphics.
Even if everybody was an expert at UI design you still end up with a myriad of designs that people think look or work best and are unlikely to work within the context of other skinned applications. That's why until recently OS shells had consistency as a primary design goal.
Hey, I admitted I could easily be wrong on the postscript. and the dpi beating was deserved, but maybe a bit mean.:) (I'm replying to 3 posts here, not just yours).
as for native file formats (like postscript), you've got a point - postscript is a standard and standards are best. but i also remember the days when coreldraw (5-6) would output postscript that no service bureau could accept. and postscript is only as good as the software/driver maker is. why can't i print to epson printers on the mac InDesign, but I can on windows for example.
for better or worse, the de facto "standards" in the content arena are proprietary software: photoshop, premiere, director, xpress, freehand/illustrator, etc.
i know this goes beyond the linux thing, but when can i get a file format like photoshop format that saves layers, has editable text, text effects, and adjustment layers? and how rapidly will it be adopted? PNG is an open format and years later we have virtually no software that can display them properly. i'm a cynic and want to support open standards, but give me some options here for daily work.
in any event, i'm glad i am wrong about some things. but i still think linux itself, (and corel's new buys in particular if they port these to linux) has a long way to go before designers use linux daily. designers want the computer out of the way even more than the general consumer and i just see it being a while before linux can offer me as a designer the conveinence and abilities of a mac or even pc.
i do hope those apps get ported to linux and take off.
Sorry, I'm not moving to Linux for graphics apps for some time.
Until Linux has a consistent system wide OS appearence for all software apps, better postscript support, 72dpi screen resolution, consistent color support across a wide variety of hardware (scanner/monitor/printer), and support at the service bureau I doubt you'll see Linux in the hands of graphic designers/artists anytime soon.
Don't forget that in the content creation area suite integration (Indesign/Photoshop/Illustrator/Acrobat/GoLive or Flash/Freehand/Dreamweaver/Fireworks) has been the trend for the last 2 years or so. I don't see Corel able to compete against that. Likely, these will continue to stay niche market apps or transformed to consumer level apps.
I'll admit I may be wrong on some of these things like postscript/ghostscript but until Linux is as easy to use as a Mac and the service bureaus can accept files for output in native Linux format, I don't think Linux will be a viable DTP/web publishing system for *designers*. Heck, Be is probably better suited for designers and that has gone nowhere.
If Corel ports these apps to Linux it'll likely be akin to how they did CorelDraw on the Mac which means poorer performance than the Windows versions. Does there Linux run on PPC or x86 only?
Make no mistake, I'm happy Corel picked these apps over somebody like MS, or a Windows only software company, but we'll have to see what happens.
I suspect that Apple will very quietly position Darwin on Intel as a server OS only. MacOSX Server is going away to be replaced with a modified version of client from what I hear. They could try to keep Darwin on Intel as the basis of an Intel based server.
I don't think Apple will be directly supporting Darwin on Intel, but if they let WebObjects run on it they could keep development quietly moving forward.
I doubt anything will happen on Intel until the Cocoa/Yellow Box environment gets more support though. And that's likely 1-2 years away from heavy pushing. Right now Apple wants developers to carbonize their apps, but Cocoa is where the future lies.
No, I didn't mean to form the analogy that you supported drug use. Proper use of the analogy would say "so you are against laws against drug use" which is a lot different from saying you're advocating drug use.
And drug use is not an intellectual property right. To carry it further. "When there is no longer a viable means of preventing murder, it is time to let it go." And I'm sure you don't mean that!:)
But as I said, UCITA is designed nearly exclusively to protect IP rights. Whether or not there are ways to circumvent it is not the issue.
Your sample may have smaller rates for the one doing the selling, but the other guys will pay a premium since the additional bandwidth comes from another company. If company A needs additional bandwidth and company B has it, company A will likely charge more because they are going to get the additional bandwidth at a higher cost.
On the other hand, if company B has a future need for the bandwidth they'll either 1). raise the price on company A's sublease in order to decrease company A's use or 2). quit subletting it which means less bandwidth for A and higher prices.
And how is unused bandwidth in your example costing the company? Its a fixed cost for the owner, but not for the one doing the renting/leasing/whatever. Its not guaranteed the lower operating expenses will result in lower prices for the consumer. Its just as likely the additional money will end up in the owner's pockets.
I'm just asking questions, I'm not saying I have the answers. But it reminds me of the pollution level markets introduced under the Reagan regime.
Doesn't this mean we'll be paying more for devices that use these frequencies? If a company owns frequency x and they lease it to another compnay won't they be seeking a profit on the lease? And desn't that mean higher rpices for the end consumer?
And what are the effects of this? Sounds akin to domain squatting where those that were first will make money on a resource they don't even use.
And why should a third party company make money on top of another for a "public resource"? Am I the only one that sees this as a another money making venture for speculative capitol? I mean it used to be the government that would get the revenues on allocation of bandwidth. Now it is another company?
And what's with bandwidth that can change owners depending on time of day?!
"When there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a intellectual property right, it is time to let it go."
So what about UCITA? Its designed precisely to give control of IP to its (primarily corporate) owners. Would you then support it since it creates a means of enforcing intellectual property rights? Or are you advocating all non-physical goods such as IP are inherently impossible or exceedingly difficult to enforce rights?
The problem is the means to defend your rights rests with the law and the law is increasingly being written by and for corporate interests. Its not a simple question of enforcement or passing x number of laws and amendments.
"The danger comes in the form of more games for a single platform -Windows-. Will the games for the MS box run on a Mac or a Linux box? No."
This is already the case now. You can't play Sega or Sony games on PCs or Macs without an emulator. Its rare a PC game is ported to Mac adn when it is it usually makes a mockery of Mac UI standards.
What I think is more likely to happen is the PC game market will fragment.
Think about it. The PC game market suffers from continual hardware/software updates and the resulting conflicts. PC game developers continually push the envelope on the latest hardware and software. X-Box comes in and eliminates this problem (possibly!) because it is a consistent hardware and software setup.
Game developers can either continue to push the envelope like they do now on PCs or publish to X-Box. Likely they'd develop a base setup to run on X-Box and add enhancements for the current (at the time) PC hardware. But if its too much work developers have to make a decision as to which to support. And the answer will be based on the market.
The real danger to other computer platforms is MS's pushing of ActiveX and abandonment of OpenGL. If X-Box does not support OpenGl and if it becomes a hit, then we're less likely to see ports of PC games to Mac and Linux.
But remember, in video games exclusive licensing and properties are the main draw. You won't see Crash Bandicoot on X-Box nor will you see Mario. MS's challenge in this regard is to get developers and licenses unique to their platform. If X-Box is compatible with PCs this will be even harder to do.
You're a proponent of micropayments. You also claim advertising on the web doesn't work. Would micropayments then replace advertising as a means of advertisers tracking users' purchasing habits? Is micropayments any closer today than in 1998?
Re:Aqua is a catastrophe
on
MacOS X DP3
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· Score: 1
No need to build two seperate OSs. Simply make a real "theme" that turns off all your complaints with a checkbox. I don't know if this is a screenshot that would only apply in the classic.app or whether such an option is available in Quartz/OSX as well.
I've heard rumors that Apple will make different "themes" of Aqua similar to the iMacs and IE5 beta.
I agree with your concerns, but frankly until I can try it in person I am trying to hold off judgement as much as possible.
Re:Compatible with X windows
on
MacOS X DP3
·
· Score: 1
I believe Jon Carmack ported XWindows to MacOSX Server. His intention is to port it to Darwin next. So it *should* run on Darwin, which is the low level MacOSX, but whether it actually runs in the MacOSX client is something I doubt will happen.
Why doesn't anyone address the real nice outcome from this merger... open access to cable infrastructure is almost guaranteed thanks to this.
How does this work? What's to prevent AOL/TW from only allowing their content on the cable lines? AOL was only screaming for open access because it had no high bandwidth pipes. Now with Road Runner and At Home they do.
Besides, hasn't the FCC essentially discouraged any local initiative to open access on cable lines?
And wasn't the movie industry restricted from owning the theaters and distribution channels for their own movies in the 50s? That helped further erode the Hollywood movie studios' power over the then dominant entertainment medium.
Its for single window mode. If it is active you can only have open window open at a time. Opening a new window will close the current one.
The window attribute icons are only color reactive for background windows. Background windows have their buttons greyed until moused over. Then they color and grow.
The foreground buttons will expand slightly and have the following symbols appear on them "x - +"
Slashdot Mirror
I heard (and forgot) about Framemaker. But how many etch writers use Linux? Its a good sign, but I'm still sceptical.
"BTW, does anyone know if this will spark more interest from the Adobe group to start portin their applications to Linux?"
I wouldn't expect Adobe to port anything to Linux for a long time. The last year or two has seen Adobe not even make their Mac products have the same features as their Windows versions, at least upon release.
For better or worse, Adobe seems primarily interested in the corporate market, which is dominated by Windows. InDesign was their hope to keep abreast on digital press and while that field is predominantly Macintosh, InDesign has been largely ignored by the professional community.
Besides, what do you want ported? Photoshop and Illustrator are about the only products worth using, Adobe having neglected GoLive, having canned the GoLive publishing system. Acrobat is primarily marketed as a business document solution and hasn't really advanced much over the last 18 months (although you may have to upgrade a bunch of printers cuz of Postscript L2 and L3 requirements - especialy if you are on a Mac). OpenType was supposed to have premiered in 1998, but I haven't heard much on that. LiveMotion is an expensive combo of ImageStyler (which hasn't been updated) and Flash and doesn't seem to have any advantage over Flash itself. ImageReady has been tacked onto Photoshop 5.5. The only thing coming down the pipe that looks interesting is Illustrator 9 which will support SVG. Too bad no browsers will support that for some time.
"Watch c-span;
delve into political science, economics;
obtain information from a variety of sources (various newspapers, the internet, books, whatever);
Then when person x actually has a clear picture, problems, and possible solutions - then a political movement would make sense - given others who share the same ideas."
Yep. I've done that for many years. Doesn't make me a genius or well informed, but the more I learned the more depressed and helpless I felt.
But I do agree wholeheartedly on the idea of self *education*, I just doubt the corporate media outlets are really going to provide anybody with anything meaningful or that could be used to challenge the status quo.
To steal a line form Dan Ackroyd: "Jon, you ignorant slut."
Individuals never change anything for the long run. It is only mass movements that affect lasting change. Put Rosa Parks in the front of a bus in the South by herself in the early 60s and she will be beaten. Unite her with a movement of people organized for a cause and stick a camera in front of her and she can be a powerful force.
Likewise, put Galileo in front of the Church and he will be punished and his work 'discredited'. Hell, the Catholic Church didn't let him out of jail until the 1980s. Yet, create a mass movement of people that values the quest for knowledge and ideas that arise and you will have a true change in society.
Jon's reliance on the individual smacks too much of Ayn Rand. And just as Rand's political philosophy attributes charaterisitics that an average person cannot possess so does Jon's essay.
Most 'individuals' today are symbols of a post modernist society rooted in Existentialism. Where meaning is not something objective, but rather subjective, a quest for identity that can be expressed by something as radical as pierced body parts, rock and roll, and profanity erupting form the mouths of babes. Such behavior is neither radical nor new, but rather the results of a commoditized rebellion, a product of the system that Jon somehow thinks individuals will somehow overcome.
I'm sorry to disappoint you Jon but people are just to lazy, ignorant, or powerless to make any changes on their own. They rely on others to overcome their anomie, to be able to work together for a common cause. This is more true to America than anywhere else.
Indeed, it is corporatism that has replaced mass movements, relegating them to little more than TV special interest segments. It's much easier to feel good temporarily by buying some fetishistic item of the minute rather than working on getting those drug dealers out of the neighborhood.
Don't ever expect people to be motivated by the high end of Maslow's pyramid.
No, if you want change I urge people to turn off their TV, put down their papers and meet together to discuss their concerns. Start with something small that a group of well organized people can overcome, something as small and local as getting Channel One out of their schools. Fight against the never ending encroachment of private property over community meeting spaces and segmentation of community into market demographics.
Or did you miss the "Million Mom March" because you saw it not as a mass movement, but a collection of individuals?
Now there is a place for leaders, and while leaders can be replaced or removed (why are leaders of left oriented and mass movements assassinated but not leaders of the right or reactionary movements?), it is the people behind them that make lasting change.
Examples in US history:
women's suffrage
Civil Rights movement (including racial and sexual preference oriented movements)
Unions
Anti-Vietnam movement
etc
Movements that failed because of a reliance on individuals:
AIM
Black Panthers
Reform party
etc
People just don't get it. When ANY device becomes a commodity item PRICE is the determining factor for the mass market. Sure, design and fashion will account for some sales to a niche market, but the mass market is where the money is.
I'm not saying this Sony device will fly, but to hit a mass market (which is what Sony is aiming at) it'll be some combo of features and low price that will win the most $, not trendy design (which is instantly dated no matter how cool it is today).
On an unrelated note...
Now if you're a content producer as well as gadget provider you have additional incentive to integrate products. Will it work? We'll need to wait and see.
Still doesn't answer my post. Merely restates what others have said. Remember, the same was said of Netscape.
oh well.
With all the usual ragging on MS I didn't see much mention here about MS's new approach to go against Palm: media playback.
Yeah MS Reader sucks, but being able to read books, playback MP3s and see A/V clips from places like Atom Films appears to be a new approach to taking on Palm. I'm not saying Palm does or doesn't have these features, but its not something I think of when I hear Palm Pilot.
I haven't seen the new interface and I don't understand the rationale behind reading web pages or Word docs on a tiny (color) screen, but I wonder if making a combo Rio Player and video playback device isn't a good move on MS's part. Reminds me of the Nuon approach to DVD players. I just wonder if MS will suffer the same fate.
Somebody tell me why these PDAs are actually useable on their own to input and read back files that need to display more than 20-30 characters a line. Once voice recognition and playback are really practical I can see PDAs taking off, but I just don't understand the fascination beyond "it's cool" for these things.
I think Tufte is more of an information designer than an interface designer. There's a fine line between the two. But yes, Tufte wrote the book on visual info graphics.
Even if everybody was an expert at UI design you still end up with a myriad of designs that people think look or work best and are unlikely to work within the context of other skinned applications. That's why until recently OS shells had consistency as a primary design goal.
Hey, I admitted I could easily be wrong on the postscript. and the dpi beating was deserved, but maybe a bit mean. :) (I'm replying to 3 posts here, not just yours).
as for native file formats (like postscript), you've got a point - postscript is a standard and standards are best. but i also remember the days when coreldraw (5-6) would output postscript that no service bureau could accept. and postscript is only as good as the software/driver maker is. why can't i print to epson printers on the mac InDesign, but I can on windows for example.
for better or worse, the de facto "standards" in the content arena are proprietary software: photoshop, premiere, director, xpress, freehand/illustrator, etc.
i know this goes beyond the linux thing, but when can i get a file format like photoshop format that saves layers, has editable text, text effects, and adjustment layers? and how rapidly will it be adopted? PNG is an open format and years later we have virtually no software that can display them properly. i'm a cynic and want to support open standards, but give me some options here for daily work.
in any event, i'm glad i am wrong about some things. but i still think linux itself, (and corel's new buys in particular if they port these to linux) has a long way to go before designers use linux daily. designers want the computer out of the way even more than the general consumer and i just see it being a while before linux can offer me as a designer the conveinence and abilities of a mac or even pc.
i do hope those apps get ported to linux and take off.
Sorry, I'm not moving to Linux for graphics apps for some time.
Until Linux has a consistent system wide OS appearence for all software apps, better postscript support, 72dpi screen resolution, consistent color support across a wide variety of hardware (scanner/monitor/printer), and support at the service bureau I doubt you'll see Linux in the hands of graphic designers/artists anytime soon.
Don't forget that in the content creation area suite integration (Indesign/Photoshop/Illustrator/Acrobat/GoLive or Flash/Freehand/Dreamweaver/Fireworks) has been the trend for the last 2 years or so. I don't see Corel able to compete against that. Likely, these will continue to stay niche market apps or transformed to consumer level apps.
I'll admit I may be wrong on some of these things like postscript/ghostscript but until Linux is as easy to use as a Mac and the service bureaus can accept files for output in native Linux format, I don't think Linux will be a viable DTP/web publishing system for *designers*. Heck, Be is probably better suited for designers and that has gone nowhere.
If Corel ports these apps to Linux it'll likely be akin to how they did CorelDraw on the Mac which means poorer performance than the Windows versions. Does there Linux run on PPC or x86 only?
Make no mistake, I'm happy Corel picked these apps over somebody like MS, or a Windows only software company, but we'll have to see what happens.
-- A former CorelDraw/Windows user
I suspect that Apple will very quietly position Darwin on Intel as a server OS only. MacOSX Server is going away to be replaced with a modified version of client from what I hear. They could try to keep Darwin on Intel as the basis of an Intel based server.
I don't think Apple will be directly supporting Darwin on Intel, but if they let WebObjects run on it they could keep development quietly moving forward.
I doubt anything will happen on Intel until the Cocoa/Yellow Box environment gets more support though. And that's likely 1-2 years away from heavy pushing. Right now Apple wants developers to carbonize their apps, but Cocoa is where the future lies.
No, I didn't mean to form the analogy that you supported drug use. Proper use of the analogy would say "so you are against laws against drug use" which is a lot different from saying you're advocating drug use.
:)
And drug use is not an intellectual property right. To carry it further. "When there is no longer a viable means of preventing murder, it is time to let it go." And I'm sure you don't mean that!
But as I said, UCITA is designed nearly exclusively to protect IP rights. Whether or not there are ways to circumvent it is not the issue.
Your sample may have smaller rates for the one doing the selling, but the other guys will pay a premium since the additional bandwidth comes from another company. If company A needs additional bandwidth and company B has it, company A will likely charge more because they are going to get the additional bandwidth at a higher cost.
On the other hand, if company B has a future need for the bandwidth they'll either 1). raise the price on company A's sublease in order to decrease company A's use or 2). quit subletting it which means less bandwidth for A and higher prices.
And how is unused bandwidth in your example costing the company? Its a fixed cost for the owner, but not for the one doing the renting/leasing/whatever. Its not guaranteed the lower operating expenses will result in lower prices for the consumer. Its just as likely the additional money will end up in the owner's pockets.
I'm just asking questions, I'm not saying I have the answers. But it reminds me of the pollution level markets introduced under the Reagan regime.
Doesn't this mean we'll be paying more for devices that use these frequencies? If a company owns frequency x and they lease it to another compnay won't they be seeking a profit on the lease? And desn't that mean higher rpices for the end consumer?
And what are the effects of this? Sounds akin to domain squatting where those that were first will make money on a resource they don't even use.
And why should a third party company make money on top of another for a "public resource"? Am I the only one that sees this as a another money making venture for speculative capitol? I mean it used to be the government that would get the revenues on allocation of bandwidth. Now it is another company?
And what's with bandwidth that can change owners depending on time of day?!
"When there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a intellectual property right, it is time to let it go."
So what about UCITA? Its designed precisely to give control of IP to its (primarily corporate) owners. Would you then support it since it creates a means of enforcing intellectual property rights? Or are you advocating all non-physical goods such as IP are inherently impossible or exceedingly difficult to enforce rights?
The problem is the means to defend your rights rests with the law and the law is increasingly being written by and for corporate interests. Its not a simple question of enforcement or passing x number of laws and amendments.
"The danger comes in the form of more games for a single platform -Windows-. Will the games for the MS box run on a Mac or a Linux box? No."
This is already the case now. You can't play Sega or Sony games on PCs or Macs without an emulator. Its rare a PC game is ported to Mac adn when it is it usually makes a mockery of Mac UI standards.
What I think is more likely to happen is the PC game market will fragment.
Think about it. The PC game market suffers from continual hardware/software updates and the resulting conflicts. PC game developers continually push the envelope on the latest hardware and software. X-Box comes in and eliminates this problem (possibly!) because it is a consistent hardware and software setup.
Game developers can either continue to push the envelope like they do now on PCs or publish to X-Box. Likely they'd develop a base setup to run on X-Box and add enhancements for the current (at the time) PC hardware. But if its too much work developers have to make a decision as to which to support. And the answer will be based on the market.
The real danger to other computer platforms is MS's pushing of ActiveX and abandonment of OpenGL. If X-Box does not support OpenGl and if it becomes a hit, then we're less likely to see ports of PC games to Mac and Linux.
But remember, in video games exclusive licensing and properties are the main draw. You won't see Crash Bandicoot on X-Box nor will you see Mario. MS's challenge in this regard is to get developers and licenses unique to their platform. If X-Box is compatible with PCs this will be even harder to do.
Because the OS will be a Win2K derivative. We all know how long it takes MS to build an OS.
Because it is unlikely Intel will be able to provide enough 600mghtz chips in the short run.
Because MS needs to work with hardware vendors to maximize the OS to the hardware specs.
Because it will use a custom Nvidia chip.
Because they need to push developers to develop for an unspecified hardware/software system.
And finally...
Because this hardware will be much cheaper in Q3 2001 which means it will be priced much more competitively in the market.
So, no OS, no firmed-up graphics (the Nvidia deal is recent too), no chipsets, no boards, no hardware reference design - so can you blame them?
Jakob:
You're a proponent of micropayments. You also claim advertising on the web doesn't work. Would micropayments then replace advertising as a means of advertisers tracking users' purchasing habits? Is micropayments any closer today than in 1998?
No need to build two seperate OSs. Simply make a real "theme" that turns off all your complaints with a checkbox. I don't know if this is a screenshot that would only apply in the classic.app or whether such an option is available in Quartz/OSX as well.
I've heard rumors that Apple will make different "themes" of Aqua similar to the iMacs and IE5 beta.
I agree with your concerns, but frankly until I can try it in person I am trying to hold off judgement as much as possible.
I believe Jon Carmack ported XWindows to MacOSX Server. His intention is to port it to Darwin next. So it *should* run on Darwin, which is the low level MacOSX, but whether it actually runs in the MacOSX client is something I doubt will happen.
See www.xappeal.org for more info.
No. They won't do things that don't make a profit. Things like:
border patrol
national defense
subsidized postal system
safety and health enforcement (like EPA, FDA etc)
Some may argue there's profit in these, but only because a captive tax base pays the overpriced bill.
www.onion.com
smells likes it namesake. makes you cry from laughing AND the smell.
My bad. thanks.
I thought there was another one TW gobbled up though.
Why doesn't anyone address the real nice outcome from this merger... open access to cable infrastructure is almost guaranteed thanks to this.
How does this work? What's to prevent AOL/TW from only allowing their content on the cable lines? AOL was only screaming for open access because it had no high bandwidth pipes. Now with Road Runner and At Home they do.
Besides, hasn't the FCC essentially discouraged any local initiative to open access on cable lines?
And wasn't the movie industry restricted from owning the theaters and distribution channels for their own movies in the 50s? That helped further erode the Hollywood movie studios' power over the then dominant entertainment medium.
Its for single window mode. If it is active you can only have open window open at a time. Opening a new window will close the current one.
The window attribute icons are only color reactive for background windows. Background windows have their buttons greyed until moused over. Then they color and grow.
The foreground buttons will expand slightly and have the following symbols appear on them "x - +"