There is a very nice exhibit like this at The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo. White and black billiard balls are used. The first 8 balls are the address (to different stations around the room), the next 8 balls are the character you want to send. A kid arranges the balls in one of the sending stations and then releases them into the internet. The balls flow through several 'routers' (contraptions that look like they are based on old telephone technology). The balls flow to the destination (to which the kid has run over to and is waiting for his balls to arrive) and then the character is displayed. My 6 year old played this for a long time and would have played it all day.
There is a picture here at the bottom of the page. There is also contact information. I'm sure you could get a detailed description of its construction if you wrote them an email.
I have a good friend who watched me use my 5 year old powerbook for the past two years. He struggled with his dell for ages and finally went whole hog and bought himself a Macbook pro 15" a couple of months ago (without any prompting from me). He pulled it out at a coffee shop after he bought it and I couldn't believe he had done it! He said that he had seen my efficient computer use and wanted to have that for himself. Well he was a very basic Windows user and only knew what he needed to know. He found the OS X interface confusing was not able to do the things that he knew he should be able to do and was quite frustrated. I offered to give him a hand and we spent a few hours together and he really seemed to be catching on and feeling good about his purchase. About that time, he had a family emergency and had to leave the city for several months.
I just saw him again last week. He had just completed a major examination and I asked him how his new computer was and whether it had performed up to expectations during his exam. He (rather sheepishly) said that he had had trouble getting his citation manager to work on OS X (not sure which one) and that Word ran slowly (emulation), that his preferred statistical software (SAS) didn't have an OS X version and that his research data had all been organized using Microsoft Access. Under the crunch of his exam, he chucked the Macbook and pulled out his old Dell so that he could 'get things done'. He had had all summer to become familiar with his new machine yet it didn't work out for him. Contrary to what you might be thinking, this person is amazingly intelligent. Has a degree from Harvard and will graduate #1 in our class in his advanced degree. I guess I'm trying to say two things. 1) In answer to your question, yes, there are some programs that aren't available for OSX. 2) Even when the right programs are available, some users are going to be so set in their ways that a new interface is truly more work than it is worth.
I felt bad that things didn't work out better. I will offer to help him again but I'm afraid that the frustration level may be just too high. Perhaps I should offer to buy the Mac from him as my machine is really getting old in the tooth (have been waiting for Apple's re-entry into the notebook computer category).
Just thought I'd voice my vote against Retrospect. I had had Retrospect since v4. Backed up some files from a research project onto CDs from my Mac 7100 603E PPC computer (200 MHz!). Lo and behold, last year (about 10 years after the project had been finished) someone writes and asks about the data. No problem, I said. Pulled out backup CD and fired up Retrospect. It complained that it couldn't restore because it couldn't read the catalog (the exact error, I don't recall). The disk was fine. It mounted and disk utilities didn't complain about anything. Thought that maybe the newest version would somehow help. Bought the latest version online only to have the same problem. Searched through all my old backups and thought I'd struck paydirt - found an old disk image that happened to have the same backups - alas, Retrospect coughed up the same error. I tried everything but there just wasn't any recovering those files. Luckily, I found some of the data files on an old zip disk (a miracle that thing still worked).
No, for me Retrospect had its chance and lost it. Since I'm dissing on it anyway, let me also complain about its infuriating interface. Nothing is intuitive - I seem to just go around and around in circles.
I currently pay for dot-mac due to the iphoto->web page simplicity (for the grandparents) so am using Backup. It has worked for the odd file here or there - have never had a catastrophic event requiring a full restore. Guess I should test that one of these days, your advice in that regard is right on. The thing that saved me was having multiple backups in different formats/media - enough redundancy and hopefully you're safe.
People are forgetting that Apple is a global company - the iTMS is supposed to open in Japan soon. My iPod has a range of music in it from Russia, Japan and Europe (all labels show correctly, BTW). I'd be mightily impressed if it could read/talk in all of these different languages.
It is just not a general solution and therefore Apple won't embrace it. Just MO.
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There is a very nice exhibit like this at The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo. White and black billiard balls are used. The first 8 balls are the address (to different stations around the room), the next 8 balls are the character you want to send. A kid arranges the balls in one of the sending stations and then releases them into the internet. The balls flow through several 'routers' (contraptions that look like they are based on old telephone technology). The balls flow to the destination (to which the kid has run over to and is waiting for his balls to arrive) and then the character is displayed. My 6 year old played this for a long time and would have played it all day.
There is a picture here at the bottom of the page. There is also contact information. I'm sure you could get a detailed description of its construction if you wrote them an email.
Good luck!
I thought she was happy right where she was. At least, I was always happy. Quick, Dr. Tiki, you'd better write a prescription!
in democracies, great men will eventually come to power at the times of need.
'Eventually' is starting to wear a little thin around here...
I have a good friend who watched me use my 5 year old powerbook for the past two years. He struggled with his dell for ages and finally went whole hog and bought himself a Macbook pro 15" a couple of months ago (without any prompting from me). He pulled it out at a coffee shop after he bought it and I couldn't believe he had done it! He said that he had seen my efficient computer use and wanted to have that for himself. Well he was a very basic Windows user and only knew what he needed to know. He found the OS X interface confusing was not able to do the things that he knew he should be able to do and was quite frustrated. I offered to give him a hand and we spent a few hours together and he really seemed to be catching on and feeling good about his purchase. About that time, he had a family emergency and had to leave the city for several months.
I just saw him again last week. He had just completed a major examination and I asked him how his new computer was and whether it had performed up to expectations during his exam. He (rather sheepishly) said that he had had trouble getting his citation manager to work on OS X (not sure which one) and that Word ran slowly (emulation), that his preferred statistical software (SAS) didn't have an OS X version and that his research data had all been organized using Microsoft Access. Under the crunch of his exam, he chucked the Macbook and pulled out his old Dell so that he could 'get things done'. He had had all summer to become familiar with his new machine yet it didn't work out for him. Contrary to what you might be thinking, this person is amazingly intelligent. Has a degree from Harvard and will graduate #1 in our class in his advanced degree. I guess I'm trying to say two things. 1) In answer to your question, yes, there are some programs that aren't available for OSX. 2) Even when the right programs are available, some users are going to be so set in their ways that a new interface is truly more work than it is worth.
I felt bad that things didn't work out better. I will offer to help him again but I'm afraid that the frustration level may be just too high. Perhaps I should offer to buy the Mac from him as my machine is really getting old in the tooth (have been waiting for Apple's re-entry into the notebook computer category).
Just thought I'd voice my vote against Retrospect. I had had Retrospect since v4. Backed up some files from a research project onto CDs from my Mac 7100 603E PPC computer (200 MHz!). Lo and behold, last year (about 10 years after the project had been finished) someone writes and asks about the data. No problem, I said. Pulled out backup CD and fired up Retrospect. It complained that it couldn't restore because it couldn't read the catalog (the exact error, I don't recall). The disk was fine. It mounted and disk utilities didn't complain about anything. Thought that maybe the newest version would somehow help. Bought the latest version online only to have the same problem. Searched through all my old backups and thought I'd struck paydirt - found an old disk image that happened to have the same backups - alas, Retrospect coughed up the same error. I tried everything but there just wasn't any recovering those files. Luckily, I found some of the data files on an old zip disk (a miracle that thing still worked).
No, for me Retrospect had its chance and lost it. Since I'm dissing on it anyway, let me also complain about its infuriating interface. Nothing is intuitive - I seem to just go around and around in circles.
I currently pay for dot-mac due to the iphoto->web page simplicity (for the grandparents) so am using Backup. It has worked for the odd file here or there - have never had a catastrophic event requiring a full restore. Guess I should test that one of these days, your advice in that regard is right on. The thing that saved me was having multiple backups in different formats/media - enough redundancy and hopefully you're safe.
It is just not a general solution and therefore Apple won't embrace it. Just MO.