Satan already invented Windows Media Player, so consumers can pay for a subscription to the privilege of listening to music. When the payments stop, your music all goes to hell.
www.folklore.org had a story about impatient Mac designers needing to pop a floppy disk interface card into an apple II that was running a prototype video setup for a mac, and they didn't want to restart the apple II to install the card.
They popped the card in and it kept working, enabling them to finish the test that night:
"Cliff told me that he could insert a disk controller card into Burrell's Apple II with the power still on, without glitching it out, a feat that I thought was miraculous - you'd have to be incredibly quick and steady not to short-circuit any of the contacts while you were inserting it, running the risk of burning out both the Apple II and the card. But Cliff said he'd done it many times before: all that was required was the confidence that you could actually do it. So I crossed my fingers as he approached Burrell's Apple like a samurai warrior, concentrating for a few seconds before holding his breath and slamming the disk card into the slot with a quick, stacatto thrust."
Plugged in, the Powerbook worked, the screen worked, but the backlight wires were ripped loose, so you could only make out a faint image. While using the machine hooked up to a monitor, the two wires shorted together inside the case and started spraying fiery sparks out the opening.
I freed the wires and later tried to rejoin them, but no luck. I still don't know if the backlight is broken or if the backlight's transformer got fried. The Powerbook works fine otherwise however, so I use it to drive a video projector to play DVDs on the wall.
Now I just need to find out what voltage I should be getting from the two wires driving the backlight, and if they are putting that out. It'd sure be nice to have a screen that lights up again.
Auntie Entity ran Barter Town off the methane from pig shit, in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Ewoks and Jar-Jar are to StarWars nearly what Kes was to Star Trek Voyager. Well not quite, but Jeri Ryan's (7of9) replacement of Jennifer Lien (Kes) was as welcomed as Jar-Jar's limited reappearance in SW2.
Haley Joel Osment got stabbed to death at the end of Pay it Forward, leaving an audience, that had just been uplifted in the story of hope for mankind, dashed to the ground. Even Jesus got to be early 30's before being nailed onto a stake. Everybody had to cry when they really wanted to feel good and go home : (
Thanks Chris, your witty reply almost made up for the ridiculous bullshit story for which it had to be written.
AppleTalk is not just a transport protocol; it's a suite of networking protocols. Much of the functionality of AppleTalk was in its auto configuration ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) and NBP (Name binding protocol) as well as discovery features. Other *Talks were simply AppleTalk over non LocalTalk cables (LocalTalk was the original serial cables used to network Macs).
So as simple LocalTalk cabling was replaced by Ethernet networks, Apple referred to AppleTalk over Ethernet as "EtherTalk". TokenTalk was AT over Token Ring. "PhoneTalk" was another vendor's replacement of LocalTalk with phone lines. All the Apple *Talks were AppleTalk. Not just a transport protocol, but a whole set of AppleTalk features available on whatever data link and physical layer you installed for it.
When TCP/IP started replacing local transport protocols (such as AppleTalk and Microsoft's NetBIOS / NetBEUI), Macs generally kept using AppleTalk in addition to TCP/IP, because AppleTalk provided features unavailable in TCP/IP. In fact, Apple has tried to get rid of AppleTalk in the transition to OS X, but recently returned to turning AppleTalk on by default in new installations of OS X.
Turn off AppleTalk for Mac OS 9 users and their super simple Chooser (for browsing printers and servers) stops working, and the Mac users get upset.
Apple migrated the benefits of AppleTalk to TCP/IP and in doing so basically invented ZeroConfig. They released the technology suite to the IETF intending to make it open standard. The Rendezvous marketing name was first applied to ZeroConfig as a principle feature in Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
They already had published ZeroConfig / Rendezvous as an open standard so anyone could implement the technology (as Tivo and several printer manufacturers have), but Apple has also actually written the code for POSIX and released it as open source so that Linux and Unix users could share the same benefits that Apple invented for AppleTalk over standard TCP/IP.
With that in mind, OpenTalk is a useful name to describe what ZeroConfig is and what it does. It's AppleTalk features applied to TCP/IP. Rendezvous was a mysterious marketing name that nobody seemed to get the point of without observing what some Rendezvous enabled app could do. In that sense, it was a lot like Expose: hard to explain, but instantly demonstrable.
I didn't think so. Putting power on every stroke (as opposed to every other stroke: breathe in/compress/burn/breathe out) does not make an engine "equivalent to" one with twice the cylinders, in any fashion.
It does make the engine louder tho.
Steam engines generally have two compression chambers on either end of power piston (in a single cylinder). Thats a far cry from driving a gasoline ICE piston from both ends, when one end is a oil crankcase.
Sheesh.
That would result in oil/water problems that "have to be addressed" in the same sense that putting feathers on your car to enable flight would result in a gravity/lift problem that needed to be addressed.
Further, how would converting gasoline generator-produced electricity to kinetic energy in a flywheel, back to electrical energy to power a motor to create kinetic energy... "eliminate most mechanical parts"?
And is replacing a simple driveshaft with 4 energy exchanges (each losing effeciency) and far more complex motors, flywheels, wires and signaling (and OMG, far more "moving parts") a worthy goal?
A startup company I worked for had set up offices quickly and used a friend-of-a-friend to do their electrical. We had various strange problems with equipment, and many of our circuits were overloaded with far more workstations than had been planned.
At one point, a desktop UPS warning went off and then started smoking. I ran to unplug the UPS, but in a nod to "The Money Pit" I yanked the wrong cords, saving the pencil sharpener while the UPS stayed up long enough to billow out smoke. A 'surge protector' connected to the problem line welded itself together inside and blew a shower of sparks in celebration. I was under the desk where the fireworks were going off.
Beware of PowerBooks bearing bare wires
After being thrown off my motorcycle on the way home from a client, I not only broke my arm, but smashed the powerbook in my backpack, busting off one of the hinges. The screen still worked, just no backlighting. I disassembled the screen, pulled out the slack in the severed backlighting wires and tied them back together. I managed to first allow the two wires to short out (UNBELIEVABLE SHOWER OF SPARKS - THINK ROMAN CANDLE) then later on (since I left the wires exposed out the back) managed to electrocute myself shorting them through my hand.
Since Linux must be free as in no-cost, there aint any way for Apple to bring useful quicktime *content* to the platform, since stuff you'd want to see is likely encoded in Sorenson or other comercial codec. Better to create your own software for playing back QT content by reverse engineering QT's codecs. QT media files are straightforward to work with, so get started!
Why would you want Apple to bring all that old System 7 code that makes up the current version of QT (on both OS X and Windows)? Better to start afresh, or wait for Apple to bring out a clean version - which may never happen. In any case, Apple couldn't really open QuickTime without losing their technology at little benefit to their marketshare. Big Woop: 1000 Linux desktop users have a way to watch QT movies.
The masses were on Windows, so Apple ported QT there. Linux servers (not desktops) are a sensible market to target, so Apple has provided FREE and OPEN source for their Darwin Streaming Server.
Well you put in the CD and run the installer and then Software Update, and basically get:
Mail
Safari
iTunes
iMovie
iChat
iCal
iSync
iPhoto
I suppose you might want to install the Dev Tools option.
After that, you install REAL APPS! Imagine that..
Office X
iLife 04 = iDVD / GarageBand / iPhoto
Adobe Creative Suite
Macromedia MX maybe
Final Cut Pro / Soundtrack / LiveType
But of course, if you are reinstalling OS X, you are probably misinformed or rash. I'm using the same install I started with using 10.2, upgraded to 10.3 and updated over the last year and a half. And I just copied the whole thing over from my PowerBook to my new G5, which might not be optimal but it works flawlessly.
Who has time to install shit and dick around with 3rd party apps to get basic functionality (playing DVDs? Listening to music?)
Linux is like having a motorcycle from the 60's - you have to put it back together and rebuild it after every few rides. Windows is like a motorcycle from 20's - it burns your ass and tries to kill you at every turn. OS X is like a new motorcycle: you pay attention to the road and scenery and going fast rather than having to worry about bolts falling out the back end and how important they must be.
"Paying $300 to fix an $800 PC" would be a bad investment. However:
* spending $300 to recover $1000 of drop-dead important data has no relation to the value of the PC its on.
* spending $300 to get a group of digital animators back online and working is worth it when you are otherwise paying them to sit around.
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
For the same reason, I take my motorcycle to a mechanic to fix rather than do it myself, because my time is worth more than paying him to do it for me. Same with growing the wheat I eat, the cotton for the clothes I wear and the trees that my bed was made from. It's called an economy.
Broad brush simpleton columnists like to coin words, but not only is ditita..whatever a STUPID word that conveys no meaning, but it is not useful or necessary. We already have words: technician, assistant, specialist.
The problem with equating a 'trade' such as plumbing and electrical work with tech management is that it's far easier to teach anyone how to wire or plumb than to teach troubleshooting. It's much closer to being a mechanic. Plumbers often do things according to a plan. Only when the shit is two feet deep and rising is plumbing similar to crisis management in IT.
Would you Open Source /. people make up your minds
on
Stop! Website Thief!
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· Score: 2, Interesting
HTML design is inherently open source. The only way to 'close' your website to 'theft' is to render it in one big Flash animation.
Since it's possible to proprietize the web with horrible things like Flash, why not instead celebrate the forced openness of being able to examine and learn from other's web designs?
Wanting to destroy people who borrow wholesale from another's designs seems like the wrong stance from a group of people interested in replacing entrenched commercial operating systems with a community developed alternative.
And if you think theft of your sacrosanct 'ideas' regarding colors and layout is wrong, how can you also be against Disney demanding perpetual copyrights for their talking rat 'invention', or Amazon for their patent for clicking a button to make a purchase, or any number of similarly retarded things?
I'd be all in a frizzle if I saw someone had copied my websites verbatim, but I also learned everything I know about HTML by taking apart other's sites and seeing how things worked for them. I've also been known to copy other things I liked. So I'd just get over it.
The best thing about HTML is the fact that you can pick it up quickly and parse it fairly easily. When you see people doing fancy tricks, its fun to learn how they did it, without taking the $1000 weekend class or reading the $99 books.
Lets all hope that the web doesn't become the next proprietary, locked down, don't steal my idea DRM-sphere.
Next up: Microsoft SecurePages, DRM controlled IE-only executable.netWeb sites. Well are you fucking happy now you confused idiots? The world needs more collaboration and less legalistic profiteering based on who wrote up an idea first.
end rant.
Macromedia Studio MX 2004 uses this for DRM
on
Real's Reality
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· Score: 1
Its the same technology that Intuit tried and gave up on.
Macromedia writes outside your format, possibly risking the stability of your system and data. They team that with onerous verification, so if you do format your drive, you have to allocate a hour to deal with 'customer service' in order to reinstall your software.
Flash in the Plan
Macromedia didn't to 'a direct port to Unix' in any fashion when moving Flash from the classic Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.
Apple did the majority of the work by building a cleaned up version of the Mac APIs (Carbon) to run along side OpenStep (Cocoa). Both are so far above the BSD userland in OS X that there is no possible way to 'port' major OS X applications to Linux or any other Unix-like OS, even Darwin.
PLEASE stop asking to have Mac OS X apps ported to Linux "since both are Unix-variants." The only way to get commercial apps on Linux is using WINE or if Apple were to port Cocoa/OpenStep to the Linux kernel. Carbon wouldn't do much good, since it's tied to the Mac hardware. This won't happen though, sorry.
What you are thinking of is Mac OS X's ability to run most open source CLI software, and X11 apps. Since most of the value in Unix/open source software is based in server/utility/function code, most of it can be easily moved to OS X and given a graphic interface in Cocoa.
So Apple took the khtml engine to make Safari, but did their own interface. Safari can't be ported back to Unix/Linux as a graphic app, because its missing Cocoa/Carbon. All Apple can give back is code improvements to the khtml render engine.
Macromedia's use of WINE is analogous to their use of Apple's Carbon to port their existing legacy code to another platform with little effort. With Carbon, they produce a native OS X app that's integrated into the Mac's interface on every level. With WINE, they are simply making their Windows code run on top of Linux; it takes no advantage of Linux. In particular, it does not make it free.
The other critical difference is that with no effort to move their app to Linux, they have no investment to maintain and no commitment to selling a product. Which is fine, because Linux users don't buy commercial software (except for their Windows games).
Because anyone who looks at webstats knows that linux is not overtaking anything on the desktop, and certainly not Apple's share.
Your 'smart move' comment is also wrong for another reason.
The other critical difference between Mac users (the only other platform supported by most mainstream commercial developers) and Linux users, is that people who throw down all that extra cash to have a nice Mac instead of buying parts and putting together their own PC... ALSO PAY FOR SOFTWARE!
Imagine that. Who the hell is going to move major apps to linux to sell to people who have never bought anything beyond Windows games? How many Linux users are gonna drop $1200 for Adobe's Creative Suite CS or Studio MX 2004?
All these comments sound like senators in togas debating what a word like "terrorism" word means.
This isn't a trial or question of law. He's only been arrested.
Cops are not judges. They don't think a lot about Why, they just grab people doing what they see to be stupid or bad things and then find a reason to hold them until the courts either agree to lock them up or let them go.
So this guy was not only 'hacking' (something that bothers cop type people) he was also out-thinking stupid enemies (another thing that bothers and threatens cop type people) and worst, he was bothering the cops who answer 911.
As much as I ha..ve difficulty dealing with cops, I can certainly see why they would go nuts trying to find a law to lock this idiot up.
It's almost totally beside the point that 'terrorism' and 'freedom' are words that are getting abused into new nebulous and meaningless ideas.
Additionally, why did this retard have his script calling 911? That's about as stupid as crank calling someone and then starting a 3-way call with the cops. Or stopping off for doughnuts after robbing a bank.
The proper nerdy thing to do would be to have them dial up SCO. This would annoy idiots on both ends, and neither would know what's happening. That would be funny.
Unnecessarily calling 911 is as lame (and as dangerous to others) as not getting out of the way of an ambulance.
Cops wouldn't need to be arresting him on 'terrorism' charges if we simply had laws against being too stupid. Ever since America became the bastion and protectorate of all things stupid, the normal course of natural selection in weeding out idiots has been slowed to the point where society is choking to death on pure stupid-people-overload.
And so cop type people respond by retrenching into fascism, just as abstract thinkers retrench into pointless dialogues (like mine) and people who are neither really thinkers or really cops retrench into watching sports and shopping.
Waa, Apple is denying users a choice by giving iTunes exclusive access to your iPod. Or not. Using a sync device from two apps is retarded. You don't want that option if you've ever tried!
You can't sync your Palm to two sets of databases (not if you don't want everything hosed), or say have two conduits trying to use the same data. On windows, you can't even connect a serial Palm if something else is using your Com port/IRQ.
Apple is doing the best they can given Window's shitty architecture. The registry, hardware chaos, et all.
The fact that you can easily uninstall iTunes, and then install whatever else you want to use (free, commercial, whatever), is what makes it different from Internet Explorer blowing away potential rivals.
What a non issue piece of fluff. Linux users aren't familiar with applications and hardware that work seemlessly from the same vendor. Guess what? Its a good thing.
The Palm Pilot was great. New stuff is crap
on
Death of the PDA?
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· Score: 1
Palm's current models, trying to outdo WinCE stuff, has made the PDA less useful.
My original Palm Pilot, then a III, then a V and now a Vx, are simple, last a long time on battery, and easy to carry around.
Rather than either keeping it simple and making it cheaper, OR making it better in a useful way, they just added crap featuritus like movie playing (WTF would I want to play a crappy PDA movie for?), girth, less battery and moving parts (that look silly too).
Sorry, but the Tungsten line isn't making me want to upgrade. With 1/4 my Vx's battery life (dies in a week dead; I took my Vx to europe for a month, using it a lot, and didn't even need a charger, plus it turns off for weeks before it actually dies and loses your data), that goofy slide thing and its a bit spendy, especially considering how many V/505s there are out there. They should make a super cheap 505, but I spose there's no profit in that.
Palm dropped the ball long ago. And who needs a seperate device now, since my iPod carries all my data (+ gads more of everything) and my Sony Ericson phone lets me edit contacts and notes (not as handy, but Palm + grafitti is an extra thing to carry + ~$300 -- Not attractive.)
Dell has no history at creating new categories of hardware products or innovative, smart software.
Apple is an R&D lab that also makes hardware. Lately they've gotten all high fashion with their packaging and fit and finish. The new Powerbooks and the G5 are as high-end looking, feeling and functioning as any ultra high end electronics brand or luxury car.
Dell just handles the assembly and marketing of Walmart grade Windows PCs. They half-assedly slapped somebody else's Linux on a few boxes for a while. They pooped out a WinCE device as exciting as Gateway's. Big Whoop!
I've purchased and supported over a 100 Dell laptops. They are serviceable but nothing special. And after a year they fall apart.
Dell trying to brand themselves as a Brand (in TVs, handhelds and now music players) is laughable. I'm a geek but I'd be embarrased to have the Dell name on anything I owned that wasn't a bland (IT department issued) PC or laptop.
Imagine Ford introducing a supersport motorbike. Yawn.
The Wintel world has reduced IT to a commodity service. MSFT is advertising how cheap it is to find lowpaid workers for their platform. This is probably true.
America seems happy to sell off and outsource all their needs to the lowest bidder. The result will be that soon all Americans will be fat idiots wearing sweats and working at WalMart so they can afford their hourly dose of Pringles, smokes and a Super Big Gulp.
Well I can agree that "Security now is no different than before." We are not any more secure.
The difference is the insanity of long lines and extra empowerment of retarded security morons to hassle common people who are obviously no risk.
I fly through SFO, which is worse than smaller airports. The parking restrictions, the One-Way Silliness and the basic gestapo approach to pseudo-security are rediculous and all have zero effect on the ability of terrorists to cause major damage using planes or not.
You are obviously a middle american with a conservative twitch. "Everybody stand in line and do as we're told and it works best! The real problem is that Press!! Everything is great, hardly even an inconvenience to be searched."
But seriously, the stab taken to present Heightened Security is way over the top. If you aren't getting hassled, you probably don't know what being hassled is.
Like I said, try flying through a major airport, and for bonus effect, buy a one way ticket. And along the POINT I was making, bring a laptop and other electronics along with your website printout.
In the police state, you have no rights, so spare me the flag waving. The same government that failed to keep known terrorists out (INS) and has no idea where planes are (FAA) has simply let a bunch of morons loose to slow down air traffic and hassle people.
BTW: did you really mean to suggest that "bureaucrat information on a website" is NOT the same as "the official TSA website on what officially you are allowed?"
While your work looking up fun facts got you/. Karma points, your facts are meaningless in the face of reality.
Have you taken a flight in the last year?
Regardless of what might get listed by some bureaucrat as officious information on a website, the drooling morons who hold up American air traffic in the name of Security make plenty of their own executive decisions.
Try flying one-way. That targets you as a special threat, and involves the removal of shoes, extra body searching, and other bullshit.
Kindly shove your internet fun facts up your ass and get outside occasionally for a dose of reality. Your reply was really more annoying than the Spell Checking Nazis. What a pompous ass you are.
The biggest problem for Fuel Cell powered laptops is the army of pound foolish diptards that our great country has installed as a Security Force to prevent anyone for bringing toenail clippers aboard flights, or making it to the gate in less than 3 hours.
Counterpoint:
And if they do exempt fuel cell laptops, how safe is that? Does a 45 year old rent-a-cop with the primary work experience of standing at the door of an innercity McDonalds (and an IQ of 70) really have the ability to tell a power cell from an explosive cartridge?
They pass through anything that lights up. Boot up your laptop, it might be a bomb! Oh the lights came on? Carry on then! Sheesh.
I'd rather know I'm in slight danger jumping on a flight than be hassled to no end by humorless retards and still know I'm not safe.
I downloaded the NCSA Mosaic browser and had a wizzy 14.4 modem connection to the net via Delphi or GEnie. In anycase, it was before Compuserve or AOL had a real internet gateway for even email. At the time I thought, "this bandwidth problem is gonna have to change to make this www thing work out." I was graduating high school.
GS/OS, maxxed out at 8 MB or RAM (the realworld limit, it had 24 bit addressing). And yes while 640x200 only supported 4 bit color (everything was dithered; it printed out half height, so you didn't get what you saw on screen using AppleWorks GS.) there was a more useful 420x200 that supported hi bit color. You could trick it into doing a 4096 color palate per scan line, and effectivly have photographic images. It was pretty much only good for demos tho.
I played Defender of the Crown until my floppies wore out. Then after it was like 8 years old I sold it to some dumb schmuck for $800.
It was signed by WOZ. I had an accellerator card that amped it up to something like 6 or 8 Mhz, which made it approach the level of the Mac SE, but in color.
You could buy a $50 sound card and have it output stereo 16 voice polyphonic sound from the Ensonic sound chip and input for recording. Plus Apple finially released their Genlock for the apple II, so you could export any video you could gnerate on top of a video signal (it had composite video out built in.)
The IIGS was also the first machine from apple to have the platinum color scheme (rather than beige/brown IIe/Macs and the white IIc.) and had the first ADB keyboard/mouse. The SE and Mac II came out the next year with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Satan already invented Windows Media Player, so consumers can pay for a subscription to the privilege of listening to music. When the payments stop, your music all goes to hell.
They popped the card in and it kept working, enabling them to finish the test that night:
"Cliff told me that he could insert a disk controller card into Burrell's Apple II with the power still on, without glitching it out, a feat that I thought was miraculous - you'd have to be incredibly quick and steady not to short-circuit any of the contacts while you were inserting it, running the risk of burning out both the Apple II and the card. But Cliff said he'd done it many times before: all that was required was the confidence that you could actually do it. So I crossed my fingers as he approached Burrell's Apple like a samurai warrior, concentrating for a few seconds before holding his breath and slamming the disk card into the slot with a quick, stacatto thrust."
Beyond snapping my left radius in an unusual mid bone break, the impact also busted the hinge off my Titanium Powerbook G4. My arm looked worse than the Powerbook.
Plugged in, the Powerbook worked, the screen worked, but the backlight wires were ripped loose, so you could only make out a faint image. While using the machine hooked up to a monitor, the two wires shorted together inside the case and started spraying fiery sparks out the opening.
I freed the wires and later tried to rejoin them, but no luck. I still don't know if the backlight is broken or if the backlight's transformer got fried. The Powerbook works fine otherwise however, so I use it to drive a video projector to play DVDs on the wall.
Now I just need to find out what voltage I should be getting from the two wires driving the backlight, and if they are putting that out. It'd sure be nice to have a screen that lights up again.
Oh I get it...
Auntie Entity ran Barter Town off the methane from pig shit, in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Ewoks and Jar-Jar are to StarWars nearly what Kes was to Star Trek Voyager. Well not quite, but Jeri Ryan's (7of9) replacement of Jennifer Lien (Kes) was as welcomed as Jar-Jar's limited reappearance in SW2.
Haley Joel Osment got stabbed to death at the end of Pay it Forward, leaving an audience, that had just been uplifted in the story of hope for mankind, dashed to the ground. Even Jesus got to be early 30's before being nailed onto a stake. Everybody had to cry when they really wanted to feel good and go home : (
Thanks Chris, your witty reply almost made up for the ridiculous bullshit story for which it had to be written.
AppleTalk is not just a transport protocol; it's a suite of networking protocols. Much of the functionality of AppleTalk was in its auto configuration ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) and NBP (Name binding protocol) as well as discovery features. Other *Talks were simply AppleTalk over non LocalTalk cables (LocalTalk was the original serial cables used to network Macs).
So as simple LocalTalk cabling was replaced by Ethernet networks, Apple referred to AppleTalk over Ethernet as "EtherTalk". TokenTalk was AT over Token Ring. "PhoneTalk" was another vendor's replacement of LocalTalk with phone lines. All the Apple *Talks were AppleTalk. Not just a transport protocol, but a whole set of AppleTalk features available on whatever data link and physical layer you installed for it.
When TCP/IP started replacing local transport protocols (such as AppleTalk and Microsoft's NetBIOS / NetBEUI), Macs generally kept using AppleTalk in addition to TCP/IP, because AppleTalk provided features unavailable in TCP/IP. In fact, Apple has tried to get rid of AppleTalk in the transition to OS X, but recently returned to turning AppleTalk on by default in new installations of OS X.
Turn off AppleTalk for Mac OS 9 users and their super simple Chooser (for browsing printers and servers) stops working, and the Mac users get upset.
Apple migrated the benefits of AppleTalk to TCP/IP and in doing so basically invented ZeroConfig. They released the technology suite to the IETF intending to make it open standard. The Rendezvous marketing name was first applied to ZeroConfig as a principle feature in Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
They already had published ZeroConfig / Rendezvous as an open standard so anyone could implement the technology (as Tivo and several printer manufacturers have), but Apple has also actually written the code for POSIX and released it as open source so that Linux and Unix users could share the same benefits that Apple invented for AppleTalk over standard TCP/IP.
With that in mind, OpenTalk is a useful name to describe what ZeroConfig is and what it does. It's AppleTalk features applied to TCP/IP. Rendezvous was a mysterious marketing name that nobody seemed to get the point of without observing what some Rendezvous enabled app could do. In that sense, it was a lot like Expose: hard to explain, but instantly demonstrable.
INSIGHTFUL? Yikes...
I didn't think so. Putting power on every stroke (as opposed to every other stroke: breathe in/compress/burn/breathe out) does not make an engine "equivalent to" one with twice the cylinders, in any fashion.
It does make the engine louder tho.
Steam engines generally have two compression chambers on either end of power piston (in a single cylinder). Thats a far cry from driving a gasoline ICE piston from both ends, when one end is a oil crankcase.
Sheesh.
That would result in oil/water problems that "have to be addressed" in the same sense that putting feathers on your car to enable flight would result in a gravity/lift problem that needed to be addressed.
Further, how would converting gasoline generator-produced electricity to kinetic energy in a flywheel, back to electrical energy to power a motor to create kinetic energy... "eliminate most mechanical parts"?
And is replacing a simple driveshaft with 4 energy exchanges (each losing effeciency) and far more complex motors, flywheels, wires and signaling (and OMG, far more "moving parts") a worthy goal?
Do it Yourself Power
A startup company I worked for had set up offices quickly and used a friend-of-a-friend to do their electrical. We had various strange problems with equipment, and many of our circuits were overloaded with far more workstations than had been planned.
At one point, a desktop UPS warning went off and then started smoking. I ran to unplug the UPS, but in a nod to "The Money Pit" I yanked the wrong cords, saving the pencil sharpener while the UPS stayed up long enough to billow out smoke. A 'surge protector' connected to the problem line welded itself together inside and blew a shower of sparks in celebration. I was under the desk where the fireworks were going off.
Beware of PowerBooks bearing bare wires
After being thrown off my motorcycle on the way home from a client, I not only broke my arm, but smashed the powerbook in my backpack, busting off one of the hinges. The screen still worked, just no backlighting. I disassembled the screen, pulled out the slack in the severed backlighting wires and tied them back together. I managed to first allow the two wires to short out (UNBELIEVABLE SHOWER OF SPARKS - THINK ROMAN CANDLE) then later on (since I left the wires exposed out the back) managed to electrocute myself shorting them through my hand.
Since Linux must be free as in no-cost, there aint any way for Apple to bring useful quicktime *content* to the platform, since stuff you'd want to see is likely encoded in Sorenson or other comercial codec. Better to create your own software for playing back QT content by reverse engineering QT's codecs. QT media files are straightforward to work with, so get started!
Why would you want Apple to bring all that old System 7 code that makes up the current version of QT (on both OS X and Windows)? Better to start afresh, or wait for Apple to bring out a clean version - which may never happen. In any case, Apple couldn't really open QuickTime without losing their technology at little benefit to their marketshare. Big Woop: 1000 Linux desktop users have a way to watch QT movies.
The masses were on Windows, so Apple ported QT there. Linux servers (not desktops) are a sensible market to target, so Apple has provided FREE and OPEN source for their Darwin Streaming Server.
Well you put in the CD and run the installer and then Software Update, and basically get:
Mail
Safari
iTunes
iMovie
iChat
iCal
iSync
iPhoto
I suppose you might want to install the Dev Tools option.
After that, you install REAL APPS! Imagine that..
Office X
iLife 04 = iDVD / GarageBand / iPhoto
Adobe Creative Suite
Macromedia MX maybe
Final Cut Pro / Soundtrack / LiveType
But of course, if you are reinstalling OS X, you are probably misinformed or rash. I'm using the same install I started with using 10.2, upgraded to 10.3 and updated over the last year and a half. And I just copied the whole thing over from my PowerBook to my new G5, which might not be optimal but it works flawlessly.
Who has time to install shit and dick around with 3rd party apps to get basic functionality (playing DVDs? Listening to music?)
Linux is like having a motorcycle from the 60's - you have to put it back together and rebuild it after every few rides. Windows is like a motorcycle from 20's - it burns your ass and tries to kill you at every turn. OS X is like a new motorcycle: you pay attention to the road and scenery and going fast rather than having to worry about bolts falling out the back end and how important they must be.
"Paying $300 to fix an $800 PC" would be a bad investment. However:
* spending $300 to recover $1000 of drop-dead important data has no relation to the value of the PC its on.
* spending $300 to get a group of digital animators back online and working is worth it when you are otherwise paying them to sit around.
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
For the same reason, I take my motorcycle to a mechanic to fix rather than do it myself, because my time is worth more than paying him to do it for me. Same with growing the wheat I eat, the cotton for the clothes I wear and the trees that my bed was made from. It's called an economy.
Broad brush simpleton columnists like to coin words, but not only is ditita..whatever a STUPID word that conveys no meaning, but it is not useful or necessary. We already have words: technician, assistant, specialist.
The problem with equating a 'trade' such as plumbing and electrical work with tech management is that it's far easier to teach anyone how to wire or plumb than to teach troubleshooting. It's much closer to being a mechanic. Plumbers often do things according to a plan. Only when the shit is two feet deep and rising is plumbing similar to crisis management in IT.
HTML design is inherently open source. The only way to 'close' your website to 'theft' is to render it in one big Flash animation.
.netWeb sites. Well are you fucking happy now you confused idiots? The world needs more collaboration and less legalistic profiteering based on who wrote up an idea first.
Since it's possible to proprietize the web with horrible things like Flash, why not instead celebrate the forced openness of being able to examine and learn from other's web designs?
Wanting to destroy people who borrow wholesale from another's designs seems like the wrong stance from a group of people interested in replacing entrenched commercial operating systems with a community developed alternative.
And if you think theft of your sacrosanct 'ideas' regarding colors and layout is wrong, how can you also be against Disney demanding perpetual copyrights for their talking rat 'invention', or Amazon for their patent for clicking a button to make a purchase, or any number of similarly retarded things?
I'd be all in a frizzle if I saw someone had copied my websites verbatim, but I also learned everything I know about HTML by taking apart other's sites and seeing how things worked for them. I've also been known to copy other things I liked. So I'd just get over it.
The best thing about HTML is the fact that you can pick it up quickly and parse it fairly easily. When you see people doing fancy tricks, its fun to learn how they did it, without taking the $1000 weekend class or reading the $99 books.
Lets all hope that the web doesn't become the next proprietary, locked down, don't steal my idea DRM-sphere.
Next up: Microsoft SecurePages, DRM controlled IE-only executable
end rant.
Its the same technology that Intuit tried and gave up on. Macromedia writes outside your format, possibly risking the stability of your system and data. They team that with onerous verification, so if you do format your drive, you have to allocate a hour to deal with 'customer service' in order to reinstall your software. Flash in the Plan
Macromedia didn't to 'a direct port to Unix' in any fashion when moving Flash from the classic Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.
Apple did the majority of the work by building a cleaned up version of the Mac APIs (Carbon) to run along side OpenStep (Cocoa). Both are so far above the BSD userland in OS X that there is no possible way to 'port' major OS X applications to Linux or any other Unix-like OS, even Darwin.
PLEASE stop asking to have Mac OS X apps ported to Linux "since both are Unix-variants." The only way to get commercial apps on Linux is using WINE or if Apple were to port Cocoa/OpenStep to the Linux kernel. Carbon wouldn't do much good, since it's tied to the Mac hardware. This won't happen though, sorry.
What you are thinking of is Mac OS X's ability to run most open source CLI software, and X11 apps. Since most of the value in Unix/open source software is based in server/utility/function code, most of it can be easily moved to OS X and given a graphic interface in Cocoa.
So Apple took the khtml engine to make Safari, but did their own interface. Safari can't be ported back to Unix/Linux as a graphic app, because its missing Cocoa/Carbon. All Apple can give back is code improvements to the khtml render engine.
Macromedia's use of WINE is analogous to their use of Apple's Carbon to port their existing legacy code to another platform with little effort. With Carbon, they produce a native OS X app that's integrated into the Mac's interface on every level. With WINE, they are simply making their Windows code run on top of Linux; it takes no advantage of Linux. In particular, it does not make it free.
The other critical difference is that with no effort to move their app to Linux, they have no investment to maintain and no commitment to selling a product. Which is fine, because Linux users don't buy commercial software (except for their Windows games).
Because anyone who looks at webstats knows that linux is not overtaking anything on the desktop, and certainly not Apple's share.
Your 'smart move' comment is also wrong for another reason.
The other critical difference between Mac users (the only other platform supported by most mainstream commercial developers) and Linux users, is that people who throw down all that extra cash to have a nice Mac instead of buying parts and putting together their own PC... ALSO PAY FOR SOFTWARE! Imagine that. Who the hell is going to move major apps to linux to sell to people who have never bought anything beyond Windows games? How many Linux users are gonna drop $1200 for Adobe's Creative Suite CS or Studio MX 2004?
Also recall that Macromedia has started DRMing MX 2004 apps.
All these comments sound like senators in togas debating what a word like "terrorism" word means.
This isn't a trial or question of law. He's only been arrested.
Cops are not judges. They don't think a lot about Why, they just grab people doing what they see to be stupid or bad things and then find a reason to hold them until the courts either agree to lock them up or let them go.
So this guy was not only 'hacking' (something that bothers cop type people) he was also out-thinking stupid enemies (another thing that bothers and threatens cop type people) and worst, he was bothering the cops who answer 911.
As much as I ha..ve difficulty dealing with cops, I can certainly see why they would go nuts trying to find a law to lock this idiot up.
It's almost totally beside the point that 'terrorism' and 'freedom' are words that are getting abused into new nebulous and meaningless ideas.
Additionally, why did this retard have his script calling 911? That's about as stupid as crank calling someone and then starting a 3-way call with the cops. Or stopping off for doughnuts after robbing a bank.
The proper nerdy thing to do would be to have them dial up SCO. This would annoy idiots on both ends, and neither would know what's happening. That would be funny.
Unnecessarily calling 911 is as lame (and as dangerous to others) as not getting out of the way of an ambulance.
Cops wouldn't need to be arresting him on 'terrorism' charges if we simply had laws against being too stupid. Ever since America became the bastion and protectorate of all things stupid, the normal course of natural selection in weeding out idiots has been slowed to the point where society is choking to death on pure stupid-people-overload.
And so cop type people respond by retrenching into fascism, just as abstract thinkers retrench into pointless dialogues (like mine) and people who are neither really thinkers or really cops retrench into watching sports and shopping.
Waa, Apple is denying users a choice by giving iTunes exclusive access to your iPod. Or not. Using a sync device from two apps is retarded. You don't want that option if you've ever tried!
You can't sync your Palm to two sets of databases (not if you don't want everything hosed), or say have two conduits trying to use the same data. On windows, you can't even connect a serial Palm if something else is using your Com port/IRQ.
Apple is doing the best they can given Window's shitty architecture. The registry, hardware chaos, et all.
The fact that you can easily uninstall iTunes, and then install whatever else you want to use (free, commercial, whatever), is what makes it different from Internet Explorer blowing away potential rivals.
What a non issue piece of fluff. Linux users aren't familiar with applications and hardware that work seemlessly from the same vendor. Guess what? Its a good thing.
Palm's current models, trying to outdo WinCE stuff, has made the PDA less useful.
My original Palm Pilot, then a III, then a V and now a Vx, are simple, last a long time on battery, and easy to carry around.
Rather than either keeping it simple and making it cheaper, OR making it better in a useful way, they just added crap featuritus like movie playing (WTF would I want to play a crappy PDA movie for?), girth, less battery and moving parts (that look silly too). Sorry, but the Tungsten line isn't making me want to upgrade. With 1/4 my Vx's battery life (dies in a week dead; I took my Vx to europe for a month, using it a lot, and didn't even need a charger, plus it turns off for weeks before it actually dies and loses your data), that goofy slide thing and its a bit spendy, especially considering how many V/505s there are out there. They should make a super cheap 505, but I spose there's no profit in that.
Palm dropped the ball long ago. And who needs a seperate device now, since my iPod carries all my data (+ gads more of everything) and my Sony Ericson phone lets me edit contacts and notes (not as handy, but Palm + grafitti is an extra thing to carry + ~$300 -- Not attractive.)
Dell has no history at creating new categories of hardware products or innovative, smart software.
Apple is an R&D lab that also makes hardware. Lately they've gotten all high fashion with their packaging and fit and finish. The new Powerbooks and the G5 are as high-end looking, feeling and functioning as any ultra high end electronics brand or luxury car.
Dell just handles the assembly and marketing of Walmart grade Windows PCs. They half-assedly slapped somebody else's Linux on a few boxes for a while. They pooped out a WinCE device as exciting as Gateway's. Big Whoop!
I've purchased and supported over a 100 Dell laptops. They are serviceable but nothing special. And after a year they fall apart.
Dell trying to brand themselves as a Brand (in TVs, handhelds and now music players) is laughable. I'm a geek but I'd be embarrased to have the Dell name on anything I owned that wasn't a bland (IT department issued) PC or laptop.
Imagine Ford introducing a supersport motorbike. Yawn.
The Wintel world has reduced IT to a commodity service. MSFT is advertising how cheap it is to find lowpaid workers for their platform. This is probably true.
America seems happy to sell off and outsource all their needs to the lowest bidder. The result will be that soon all Americans will be fat idiots wearing sweats and working at WalMart so they can afford their hourly dose of Pringles, smokes and a Super Big Gulp.
But corporate profits will be high.
Oh wait, we're already there.
dun-ta-dah... Imperial!
like buttah an elephant never forgets
Well I can agree that "Security now is no different than before." We are not any more secure.
The difference is the insanity of long lines and extra empowerment of retarded security morons to hassle common people who are obviously no risk.
I fly through SFO, which is worse than smaller airports. The parking restrictions, the One-Way Silliness and the basic gestapo approach to pseudo-security are rediculous and all have zero effect on the ability of terrorists to cause major damage using planes or not.
You are obviously a middle american with a conservative twitch. "Everybody stand in line and do as we're told and it works best! The real problem is that Press!! Everything is great, hardly even an inconvenience to be searched."
Yeah but where do you fly? Six Flags?
But seriously, the stab taken to present Heightened Security is way over the top. If you aren't getting hassled, you probably don't know what being hassled is.
Like I said, try flying through a major airport, and for bonus effect, buy a one way ticket. And along the POINT I was making, bring a laptop and other electronics along with your website printout.
In the police state, you have no rights, so spare me the flag waving. The same government that failed to keep known terrorists out (INS) and has no idea where planes are (FAA) has simply let a bunch of morons loose to slow down air traffic and hassle people.
BTW: did you really mean to suggest that "bureaucrat information on a website" is NOT the same as "the official TSA website on what officially you are allowed?"
Ha! You are a funny man.
While your work looking up fun facts got you /. Karma points, your facts are meaningless in the face of reality.
Have you taken a flight in the last year?
Regardless of what might get listed by some bureaucrat as officious information on a website, the drooling morons who hold up American air traffic in the name of Security make plenty of their own executive decisions.
Try flying one-way. That targets you as a special threat, and involves the removal of shoes, extra body searching, and other bullshit.
Kindly shove your internet fun facts up your ass and get outside occasionally for a dose of reality. Your reply was really more annoying than the Spell Checking Nazis. What a pompous ass you are.
The biggest problem for Fuel Cell powered laptops is the army of pound foolish diptards that our great country has installed as a Security Force to prevent anyone for bringing toenail clippers aboard flights, or making it to the gate in less than 3 hours.
Counterpoint:
And if they do exempt fuel cell laptops, how safe is that? Does a 45 year old rent-a-cop with the primary work experience of standing at the door of an innercity McDonalds (and an IQ of 70) really have the ability to tell a power cell from an explosive cartridge?
They pass through anything that lights up. Boot up your laptop, it might be a bomb! Oh the lights came on? Carry on then! Sheesh.
I'd rather know I'm in slight danger jumping on a flight than be hassled to no end by humorless retards and still know I'm not safe.
But enough about that.
I downloaded the NCSA Mosaic browser and had a wizzy 14.4 modem connection to the net via Delphi or GEnie. In anycase, it was before Compuserve or AOL had a real internet gateway for even email. At the time I thought, "this bandwidth problem is gonna have to change to make this www thing work out." I was graduating high school. GS/OS, maxxed out at 8 MB or RAM (the realworld limit, it had 24 bit addressing). And yes while 640x200 only supported 4 bit color (everything was dithered; it printed out half height, so you didn't get what you saw on screen using AppleWorks GS.) there was a more useful 420x200 that supported hi bit color. You could trick it into doing a 4096 color palate per scan line, and effectivly have photographic images. It was pretty much only good for demos tho. I played Defender of the Crown until my floppies wore out. Then after it was like 8 years old I sold it to some dumb schmuck for $800. It was signed by WOZ. I had an accellerator card that amped it up to something like 6 or 8 Mhz, which made it approach the level of the Mac SE, but in color. You could buy a $50 sound card and have it output stereo 16 voice polyphonic sound from the Ensonic sound chip and input for recording. Plus Apple finially released their Genlock for the apple II, so you could export any video you could gnerate on top of a video signal (it had composite video out built in.) The IIGS was also the first machine from apple to have the platinum color scheme (rather than beige/brown IIe/Macs and the white IIc.) and had the first ADB keyboard/mouse. The SE and Mac II came out the next year with them.