Why not? They're big, they're powerful, they control the welfare of puny clueless ignorant users.. Why shouldn't they be as much a target in our society as our political system, our entertainment complex, or our governmental body?
They really haven't done anything for me to be appreciative of, so I don't praise them.
They tried to comandeer html and internet standards, they've tried to control the desktop graphics routine(OpenGL is still very much alive and well, thank you!), they try to sell shoddy software, bloated office packages...
Why should we give them a break? They can afford the heckling!
I hope this conversation is still relevant... The point is a 450MHz P2 has half speed cache against a Xeon at 450MHz... and clock for clock, the PowerPC still has better performance than a P2... Macs lose because they have much slower clocks than contemporary P2s, but his board has a 400MHz PowerPC, so I'm comparing against a 400MHz Xeon... with same size cache. Because, again, clock for clock the PPC is faster, it would be just as convenient to use the 400MHz 1mb cache Xeon, or the 450MHz Xeon with 512kb cache; I chose the 450MHz 512kb CPU to compare against because it's cheaper. The 400M 1mb cache would up the price by a good 2300$ already...
Again, someone else made the point that the 64bit 66MHz PCI is more than for graphics. Twinkie
That's like asking what does the Hubble Space Telescope or the Mars Rover mean to normal people. It's just another research tool, and if you value institutional research, you would be happy, and if you think research is a waste of money, you would be upset. It's up in the air how Internet2 and Internet will get connected, but even for the 50 charter Universities, there will be 2 separate networks, for now; I'm sure students without important reserach needs won't have Internet2, while labs and supercomputers and other important buildings will have direct access to Internet2.
It is a separate network, physically, though I would guess it shouldn't be hard to connect the Internet network with the Internet2...
Hey, research institutions are the reasons average people have titanium golf clubs, silicon transistors, pocket radios, cd-players, flat panel displays, pentium 2s, soda cans, plastic milk cartons...
See anything here? Sure, you may just be an anonymous troll, but research institutions, while spending millions on such crap as quantum mechanics, string theory, holographic imaging, particle accelerators, etc, do end up with usable, cool, noteworthythings... Heck, without the originial arpanet and universities needing a method of communication, where do you think the internet would have started in the first place?
BTW, quantum mechanics -> quantum computing, we hope, holographic imagining -> optical processing and storage, particle accelerators -> even more compact storage mediums than ultra dense hard drives... etc. And the kicker is we don't know how useful a research is until after the fact...
Any idea of OS's that use the CHrP whatever compliancy? Besides LinuxPPC(Soon if not now), and IBM's AIX on their machines, is there anything else? Or is it only Linux and AIX for the near future, if Apple doesn't heap OSX on it?
I know its not nice, but... I think you mean a little more force... Inertia is the physical, erm, force, to prevent you from moving, or keep you from stopping. So if the industry is to say, change directions, you would apply more force to act on the mass, which is displayed as inertia...
=) I'm a geek... Of course, I could be wrong too... Twinkie
What does the game have to do with it?
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FF8 Teaser Movie
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So what does the game Final Fantasy N have to do with the movie? Square is just leveraging the advertisement value of their games to achieve a good level of hype for a movie; its value has nothing to do with the games, unlike Mortal Kombat. The movie will succeed or fail on its own... First of all, the assumption is you have played the games, and understand that Square seems to be desparately trying to make interactive movies with its games... and is testing out new technology for its products, and a movie just happens to be one of them.
Heck, they could have called it the SquareSoft movie, for all it has to do with Final Fantasy games...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since when did the term "Free Software" mean no cost software?
Under GPL, I thought the point wasn't cost, but open-ness of source? Even if I don't entirely agree with it, if IBM or anyone else wants to do GPL business, there would be no problems to selling the software, selling the source, yadda yadda, but that in some sense the source had to be accessible. So if IBM supports Beowulf, Linux, Apache, and any other number of Open Source products/projects, they could charge whatever they wanted for the software and support, and make profit on it, just that the source had to be available...
Of course, without the proprietary hardware, the source is only useful when it is ported... And when ported to non-supported hardware, IBM still has to option to get profit from support and services without having to port themselves, if the Linux/Free software community wants to port it so badly. I don't know that this is a good or bad idea, but this is what I understood about "Free Software"...
I'm not sure of the value of CG movies trying to create reality; its power is in realistically creating fiction...
There are reasons today why animated media can have a strength, value, and power that filmed media do not. It's particualarly hard in real life to coordinate lighting, atmosphere, humidity, and weather to get great dramatic moments in particularly beautiful places... CG will help there. For more mundane situations, CG can hide, alter, mask, and transform an alley in LA into an alley on an alien world, with alien culture, trash, and citizens.
And CG people are very well suited for special effects that cannot or should not be done in real life, for stunts, for amazing transformations... For those who watch anime, a life-action Ranma film could be made with real actors and their CG counterparts stepping in at appropriate moments for transformations, as well as during battle scenes, chi-attacks, etc. T2 used CG, but they accepted the limitations and made it part of their look... Future tense, CG should be able to make the morphing of 2 individuals flawless, so that future Spielbergs, Lucases, and others can populate their worlds with changelings, dopplegangers, mutants, superheros, and things only dreamed of on paper and animated media...
While I myself have not dredged up the cash or time to grab one myself, it seems the perfect solution...
Its combination of real objects with behaviors and properties, and its programmable nature, combined with the joy of putting things together and seeing them do something, may just be what you're looking form.
Lego Mindstorms is a new type of kit where, besides standard passive blocks, there are active elements; motors, sensors, and a central brick which is programmable via PC (Soon others), which contains the code needed to run anything you build and attach to it. Examples of things already done with the Mindstorms technology; A photocopier, a optical punchcard reader, a robot that follows lines, etc. A cross between Logo, basic, and Lego!
Yes, I would like that MacOS GUI, with its ease of use and consistency, and its design considerations running atop Linux, with its power, flexibility, and open source.
If Apple did this, I would have no reservations buying an Apple as my next machine... I would gladly pay the OS tax, as it were, if it were an option to install Linux and place the MacOS GUI as some sort of window manager/desktop environment ala KDE or GNOME.
As for arguments to make your own, Apple already has an excellent one; why waste my time and effort when I could conceivably buy it from Apple? -Twink
MacOS UI pretty darn good at what it does...
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After Linux-Apple?
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Having looked into KDE myself, and Linux in general, the MacOS UI is pretty darn perfect for their target market...
I'm not sure why you say Apple isn't the last word on user interfaces, because things they do that make mucho sense: 1) one mouse button; no confusion about which button to click, and which one to double click... With 3 buttons that makes 6 choices for click and double click. Curse all you want the fact that you have to alt, ctrl, option click, but it is as intuitive as shift-a for A, for example. I don't see a reason why 2 or 3 buttons are better; more efficient and compact, yes, but better, no. One button limits user to just acting with the mouse, and modifiying actions with the keyboard, ala caps, shift, ctrl, and alt on most regular keyboards...
2)Acutally, cooperative-multitasking... Not because its slow, inefficent, etc, but because there exists a large portion of the population that would not know what to do with 7 different things at once; I browse 3 Netscape windows, telnet, mp3, ICQ, and RCA all at once, and usually can deal with all throwing data to me at once, but for people who have as much literacy around computers as I have around cars, point and click, and CPU focus are fine; I couldn't deal with it, but its ideal for my dad, for example.
3)One menu bar on top... Sure its limiting for those who don't use it... But its like having more than one book at a time, since you can only read one book. Why have several title bars available when you can only act on one at a time? Again, no big deal for computer literates, but for those who stare at a monitor and only see whatever they're working on, a second, third, or fourth menu bar would just confuse them.
4)Drag and drop functionality... Again, counter to the CLI user group, but for the visual, intuitive, and illiterate crowd. Akin to books with pictures and text for little kids, it gives them something to visualize and see while they learn to grasp the meaning of the text and language. In an OS, it gives them insights into such functionality as redirection, the separation between programs and data, the concept of locations and file organization on a computer, and the concept of a program as an executable, as a different outfit or tool that a computer can use.
There may be many others, but my rant is getting quite long =) -Twink
Hey, is the MacOS X really a modified NeXTStep layered atop BSD atop Mach?
Why could not someone mix and match the MacOSX GUI/WindowManager with Linux? Stranger things have happened...
So all of a sudden, the power and stability and reach of Linux, the power, the ease, the usability of MacOS... Boom! Instant accpetance?
I dunno, NeXT also ran on PCs, so I would assume that the MacOS GUI could also be ported to PCS, atop the BSD core again... And if this is the case, we could have MacOS on top of BSD or Linux running on PPC or x86... Imagine this far out combination: MacOS atop Linux, running on an AMD K7 using an EV6 motherboard, thereby bypassing all major monopolies, industries, and gaining the best of all possible worlds...
On the one hand, it may violate conservation of something; unless the energy gained by motion is equal somehow to mass loss/transform via energy density(or the energy lost in the fluctation of the mass)
At some point a photon transformed from mass to energy, and started to travel at c. If we could do a mass fluctuation large enough, the velocity gained would also be large, I think...
But the energy needed would also be stupendous... Would one 'launch' a propulsionless drive with some initial velocity, and have the drive actually kick in later to decellerate the ship? IE, launch it from space, the earth, or the moon, or an asteroid, so it itself would not need to, but onboard functions would deploy halfway or something to slow down and stop the ship...
Heck, I wonder if we could also bend spacetime into a well, drop a ship at the lip, and use boosters at the other side to complete the trip, ala a skateboard in a half-pipe =)
If anyone reads this, I'll be happy =) Anyway, from what I can find and read about the subject, commincations won't be faster because its chaotic; it will be faster because it's optic however. The value is that 1, data won't be encoded digitally, pulses, frequencies, or what not, so more data can be sent on the same signal; Phone lines for example are not digital, but analogue, and in that sense 'more' data is sent over them than can be done digitally; Think how much bandwidth it would take to send voice over a 33.6 phone line, since that is done in analogue, but nigh impossible in digital, without significant ammounts of compression and such.
Anyway, point 2, since chaotic communication isn't faster, its potentially more reliable and more secure. Anyone familiar with PGP? That may be a good example; if the two lasers could be kept in sync, or in a similar state, it then would be like continually applying a PGP encryption on the data stream; that and the fact that the PGP private and public keys change continuously because the lasers are chaotic, and not static, and are synced as well, so not only are they secure, but unpredictable. Another benefit is that applying a chaotic encryption automatically allows for the analogue transmission I mentioned earlier, so in that sense a chaotic transmission is faster.
For those arguments for noise and such, redundant and corrective data can always be sent across the wire, right? I mean, network packets are lost and retransmitted all the time now, on the internet! -Twink
This is an interesting response... See, being comfortable and competent with PhotoShop, I don't really try the alternatives very much, though I do look at them. Gimp interested me, but at its level of completeness, and the fact I currently(though probably not indefinitely) run WinNT, PhotoShop seems to be the better product. Are we even talking about the same things? I don't know or assume that we are; I'm still at v4.01, and I see 5 and see it has powerful history and layering and undo commands, as well as scripting, batching, and automating. I don't see the shortcomings because I've learned to use PhotoShop, and essentially work around them. I don't know that Gimp works under Windows, or that its goal is to work under Windows, so I can't compare... But Photopaint does, and I'm not familiar with it at all. On the other hand, if Photopaint gets ported to Linux, a direct comparison between Photopaint and Gimp can be drawn, much as a comparison exists between Gimp and Photoshop; right now, Photoshop is the path of least resistance for me, and in reality is worth the 400$ cost for its features and useability. If Gimp were to approach 3/4 of PhotoShop, under Windows, I would consider using it, even paying for it(if that is legal under GPL and OSS!) What are Corel's Photopaints strengths and weaknesses? I hear from the above post it has good scripting and remapping; what doesn't it do well, however?
And what are PhotoShop's weakness? It has a powerful plug-in architecture, a relatively intuitive and powerful layers function, the ability to store actions and scripts for repeated reuse, and powerful color matching/syncing capabilities.
How about Gimp? I don't think it runs under Windows, which requires I switch and re-learn Linux... What else? -Twink
I know alot about the advantages of OSS, including fix yourself, debug, update yourself, you can control your own needs and programs, etc, and not having someone else dictate to you what you need or want... (Anything else?)
But I also am curious to hear from people who actually think OSS products are better than non-OSS products; Windows vs Linux is one strong argument, but I don't know that Gimp is actually better product than Photoshop... Sure, its OSS, but is it a better product? I want to make an analogoy between buying a Toyota Camry and actually building your own car; some people I'm sure can make a better, faster, more fuel efficient, etc car, but most can't, so buying a Camry is perfectly reasonable and useful...
Is there a reason to use Gimp over Photoshop? Or GNU Yellow Vector Editor over Illustrator? Is it not enough to buy decent products with decent performance and functionality, over writing yourself and running freeware?
Or is the argument that OSS code is free code? Is free products better than non-free? I would gladly pay for something powerful and productive, ala Photoshop over Gimp, for example, especially with color matching and press production capabilities in Photoshop...
Not trying to start a flame war, but really curious, myself -Twink
Not trying to advocate NT here, I'm not a server or into placing heavy loads on my machine... It would seem that perhaps running on a K6-233 May be part of the problem here... It also helps immensely if you have a SCSI system, compared to an IDE drive w/o ultra DMA or whatever it's called. NT, being a resource hog, barely runs in 64MB itself without swapping, add in an open Netscape window, some telnet windows, and a copy of Word, and maybe WinAMP in the corner, and you will definitely creep past 64mb...
However, this is where the disc drive subsystem and the CPU come in; it can be argued either way that NT is a 32 bit OS, as opposed to 95/98/3.1, and relies heavily on an optimized 32bit CPU like the PPro, P2, and Celeron, or vice versa that the CPU was tailored specifically for 32bit compute operations, and that the old Pentium line, and cousins and such, just aren't up to it-don't ask me, I've only run NT on a PPro 200 with a SCSI disc subsystem, and for my usage of Word, Netscape, email, telnet, and VC++, it works fine. For similar performance and usage on older hardware, Linux really does seem to be the way to go.
A lot of people think that SCSI is a rip-off, and stupid for being so more expensive that IDE, except that it takes 30% or so less CPU resources than standard IDEs; that can mean a lot for a swap happy OS like NT. However, spending an additional 70$ for another 64mb might be all that's needed to stop those swap stops you mentioned. Don't quote back numbers to me about ultra DMA IDE drives, and their bus mastering efficiency; I have no experience with that, though I would appreciate being informed and not flamed =) -Twink louisjr@cco.caltech.edu
Luddites were a group of people during the industrial revolution that did not agree that progressed encompassed the acceptance and utilization of technology and machines, most notably mechanical clumsy ones. If I am not mistaken, the Luddites were violently disinclined to the usage of machinery; against the mechanized and 'soulless' looms of the early textile industry in England and Europe, among others. Funny to see that a altavista search for Luddite brings up this site for the first few hits... -Twink
And geeks wonder why geeks are shunned and ostracized by the populace at large! At least don't say things like that out loud, if you're trying to impress a girl =) Unless she's a geek too that thought DiCrapio didn't die soon enough... -Twink
One wonders if it would be legal just to buy the games and play them on the PC then... We'll see how Sony treats the VGS, and whether a raftload of Mac users add significantly to their user base.
On the other hand, Nintendo, or any other game company for that matter, would do well by hiring these two guys quick! Heck, even without N64 emulation, these guys could now release a Glide Game Spec/API close to but not the same for N64, the way MESA is close to, but not exactly GL, and in the process, cause every person with a Voodoo card to lose countless hours in sleep and productivity =)
So game companies, heck, any company with a limited lifespan product would probably not release their source; you can point to Id as an example of releasing source, but they darn well made sure they obsoleted their own products (Wolf3d->Doom->Quake->Quake3) before releasing any of their source... I would like to buy a Civ:CtP CD with binaries for Linux, Win32, Mac, Alpha, etc, and only buy one game, regardless of which machine I may run it on. So something Loki could do is sell for 5 dollars the binaries for Civ:CtP on a floppy (Heh, a use for floppies!) so I can play with any machine my 1 copie of Civ:CtP.
I would like that Option for Quake3:Arena, especially since they plan to support Mac, Win32, and Linux all at once, as well as various SGIs, VisualPCs, Alphas, and such. There are thus several overlapping but distinct ideologies involved... Open Source -> No company lock on the product Open Engine -> Pay for the game, not the technology, akin to buying a CD player for cheap and then picking and choosing your music Cross-Platform/Portable -> Game is not machine bound, nor OS bound
Linux is obviously Open Source and Cross Platform Civ2:MGE is not Open Source, is not Cross Platform, but is Open Engine, as you can modify the rules, graphics, landscape, and units to suit any taste. Quake2 is Open Engine and Cross Platform, allowing anyone with hardware acceleration(almost) to play almost any game with its open set of rules and rendering.
I guess jumping through flaming hoops is an exageration... But in a real sense, the only way to sell a game in a competative market is to sell something people want to play, and if we want to play Civ games, companies will produce Civ games... If we want to play Id games(ugh), companies will produce FPS...
But we do and can vote with our wallets; games that are no good, we don't buy, and games that are fun are snapped off the shelves (See Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy VIII as examples =)
So far the hubbub is over piracy of mainstream distributed music and labels, the Mariah Careys, Whitney Houstons, Elton Johns, etc. If the digital revolution and the internet is so empowering, where are the good homegrown music stars? The rock bands? The techno artists? This would be a good medium under which to get exposure and name recognition, right? I would think part of the 'problem' in embracing the MP3 music standard is the lack of people trying to use it in order to gain ground in an entrenched industry!
As such all the music I listen too is well represented on CD, and the only impetus to switch to MP3 is to store all my music on 1 or 2 CDs, as opposed to 10 or 15, but there are otherwise no real advantages; none in sound quality, none in value, none in pc friendliness, just convenience. Why would established artists even care about the MP3 standard if the current industry works for them? Only the disgruntled and the newcomers would care, and they don't have the resources or the 'quality' to be comfortable with the mainstream industry, because if they were, they wouldn't be trying to push MP3 or something...
Any comments? Is the garage band dead? Are there modern equivalents in this digital age? Midi Rock? =)
I pay for a good game, period; if your Open Source friends can make a better game than Activision, Microprose, iD, etc, for 50 dollars, I would pay them the 50 dollars, no questions asked. If they charged only 30, I would pay 30. I have no value for an Open Source game just because it is open source. What's the difference in feeding the Open Sourcers or Activision? If you're saying the FreeCiv group can give us a better product than Civ:CtP for a 50 dollar donation, then it would seem that would be a 50 dollars well spent. However, spending the money on Civ2:MGE for example, which is an Open Engine game, rathern than Open Source, we can compile our own scenarios, our own units, our own graphics, our own rules... So where is the advantage in 'buying' FreeCiv over Civ2:MGE?
Lets say we give the money to the FreeCiv guys and they produce something, say Civ2:MGE edition... except that MGE is already out; so we would choose to buy MGE instead. How about we be generous? Give them the money, and expect a better product from them than from Microprose, who would no doubt use the money from MGE to produce Civ3 or some future successor... Like CtP! So, Tim, if you're still reading, or someone else who likes to argue =), what is the value in supporting FreeCiv when we can get Microprose, Activision, and Firaxis to jump flaming hoops for us because we buy their games and vote with our wallets? I'm curious, because while I value the Open Source model for its flexibility, innovation, and stability, I don't know that it is the perfect or superior model in any situation. -Twinkie
Slashdot Mirror
Magic 6.4 is also evidently out for Linux, for those aspiring up and coming hardware designers among the Chic Geek crowd!
Check out the link below for more info...
Magic for Linux, BSD, etc.
Twinkie
Why not?
They're big, they're powerful, they control the welfare of puny clueless ignorant users..
Why shouldn't they be as much a target in our society as our political system, our entertainment complex, or our governmental body?
They really haven't done anything for me to be appreciative of, so I don't praise them.
They tried to comandeer html and internet standards, they've tried to control the desktop graphics routine(OpenGL is still very much alive and well, thank you!), they try to sell shoddy software, bloated office packages...
Why should we give them a break? They can afford the heckling!
Twinkie
I hope this conversation is still relevant...
The point is a 450MHz P2 has half speed cache against a Xeon at 450MHz... and clock for clock, the PowerPC still has better performance than a P2... Macs lose because they have much slower clocks than contemporary P2s, but his board has a 400MHz PowerPC, so I'm comparing against a 400MHz Xeon... with same size cache. Because, again, clock for clock the PPC is faster, it would be just as convenient to use the 400MHz 1mb cache Xeon, or the 450MHz Xeon with 512kb cache; I chose the 450MHz 512kb CPU to compare against because it's cheaper. The 400M 1mb cache would up the price by a good 2300$ already...
Again, someone else made the point that the 64bit 66MHz PCI is more than for graphics.
Twinkie
That's like asking what does the Hubble Space Telescope or the Mars Rover mean to normal people. It's just another research tool, and if you value institutional research, you would be happy, and if you think research is a waste of money, you would be upset. It's up in the air how Internet2 and Internet will get connected, but even for the 50 charter Universities, there will be 2 separate networks, for now; I'm sure students without important reserach needs won't have Internet2, while labs and supercomputers and other important buildings will have direct access to Internet2.
It is a separate network, physically, though I would guess it shouldn't be hard to connect the Internet network with the Internet2...
There are plenty good reasons to be excited.
Twinkie
Hey, research institutions are the reasons average people have titanium golf clubs, silicon transistors, pocket radios, cd-players, flat panel displays, pentium 2s, soda cans, plastic milk cartons...
See anything here? Sure, you may just be an anonymous troll, but research institutions, while spending millions on such crap as quantum mechanics, string theory, holographic imaging, particle accelerators, etc, do end up with usable, cool, noteworthythings... Heck, without the originial arpanet and universities needing a method of communication, where do you think the internet would have started in the first place?
BTW, quantum mechanics -> quantum computing, we hope, holographic imagining -> optical processing and storage, particle accelerators -> even more compact storage mediums than ultra dense hard drives... etc. And the kicker is we don't know how useful a research is until after the fact...
Twinkie
Any idea of OS's that use the CHrP whatever compliancy? Besides LinuxPPC(Soon if not now), and IBM's AIX on their machines, is there anything else? Or is it only Linux and AIX for the near future, if Apple doesn't heap OSX on it?
Twinkie
I know its not nice, but...
I think you mean a little more force... Inertia is the physical, erm, force, to prevent you from moving, or keep you from stopping. So if the industry is to say, change directions, you would apply more force to act on the mass, which is displayed as inertia...
=)
I'm a geek...
Of course, I could be wrong too...
Twinkie
So what does the game Final Fantasy N have to do with the movie? Square is just leveraging the advertisement value of their games to achieve a good level of hype for a movie; its value has nothing to do with the games, unlike Mortal Kombat. The movie will succeed or fail on its own... First of all, the assumption is you have played the games, and understand that Square seems to be desparately trying to make interactive movies with its games... and is testing out new technology for its products, and a movie just happens to be one of them.
Heck, they could have called it the SquareSoft movie, for all it has to do with Final Fantasy games...
Louis
louisjr@cco.caltech.edu
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since when did the term "Free Software" mean no cost software?
Under GPL, I thought the point wasn't cost, but open-ness of source? Even if I don't entirely agree with it, if IBM or anyone else wants to do GPL business, there would be no problems to selling the software, selling the source, yadda yadda, but that in some sense the source had to be accessible. So if IBM supports Beowulf, Linux, Apache, and any other number of Open Source products/projects, they could charge whatever they wanted for the software and support, and make profit on it, just that the source had to be available...
Of course, without the proprietary hardware, the source is only useful when it is ported... And when ported to non-supported hardware, IBM still has to option to get profit from support and services without having to port themselves, if the Linux/Free software community wants to port it so badly. I don't know that this is a good or bad idea, but this is what I understood about "Free Software"...
Louis
I'm not sure of the value of CG movies trying to create reality; its power is in realistically creating fiction...
There are reasons today why animated media can have a strength, value, and power that filmed media do not. It's particualarly hard in real life to coordinate lighting, atmosphere, humidity, and weather to get great dramatic moments in particularly beautiful places... CG will help there. For more mundane situations, CG can hide, alter, mask, and transform an alley in LA into an alley on an alien world, with alien culture, trash, and citizens.
And CG people are very well suited for special effects that cannot or should not be done in real life, for stunts, for amazing transformations... For those who watch anime, a life-action Ranma film could be made with real actors and their CG counterparts stepping in at appropriate moments for transformations, as well as during battle scenes, chi-attacks, etc. T2 used CG, but they accepted the limitations and made it part of their look... Future tense, CG should be able to make the morphing of 2 individuals flawless, so that future Spielbergs, Lucases, and others can populate their worlds with changelings, dopplegangers, mutants, superheros, and things only dreamed of on paper and animated media...
Twink
It sounds like what you may be looking for...
While I myself have not dredged up the cash or time to grab one myself, it seems the perfect solution...
Its combination of real objects with behaviors and properties, and its programmable nature, combined with the joy of putting things together and seeing them do something, may just be what you're looking form.
Lego Mindstorms is a new type of kit where, besides standard passive blocks, there are active elements; motors, sensors, and a central brick which is programmable via PC (Soon others), which contains the code needed to run anything you build and attach to it. Examples of things already done with the Mindstorms technology; A photocopier, a optical punchcard reader, a robot that follows lines, etc. A cross between Logo, basic, and Lego!
-Twink
Gee, I may be first too!
Yes, I would like that MacOS GUI, with its ease of use and consistency, and its design considerations running atop Linux, with its power, flexibility, and open source.
If Apple did this, I would have no reservations buying an Apple as my next machine... I would gladly pay the OS tax, as it were, if it were an option to install Linux and place the MacOS GUI as some sort of window manager/desktop environment ala KDE or GNOME.
As for arguments to make your own, Apple already has an excellent one; why waste my time and effort when I could conceivably buy it from Apple?
-Twink
Having looked into KDE myself, and Linux in general, the MacOS UI is pretty darn perfect for their target market...
I'm not sure why you say Apple isn't the last word on user interfaces, because things they do that make mucho sense:
1) one mouse button; no confusion about which button to click, and which one to double click... With 3 buttons that makes 6 choices for click and double click. Curse all you want the fact that you have to alt, ctrl, option click, but it is as intuitive as shift-a for A, for example. I don't see a reason why 2 or 3 buttons are better; more efficient and compact, yes, but better, no. One button limits user to just acting with the mouse, and modifiying actions with the keyboard, ala caps, shift, ctrl, and alt on most regular keyboards...
2)Acutally, cooperative-multitasking...
Not because its slow, inefficent, etc, but because there exists a large portion of the population that would not know what to do with 7 different things at once; I browse 3 Netscape windows, telnet, mp3, ICQ, and RCA all at once, and usually can deal with all throwing data to me at once, but for people who have as much literacy around computers as I have around cars, point and click, and CPU focus are fine; I couldn't deal with it, but its ideal for my dad, for example.
3)One menu bar on top...
Sure its limiting for those who don't use it...
But its like having more than one book at a time, since you can only read one book. Why have several title bars available when you can only act on one at a time? Again, no big deal for computer literates, but for those who stare at a monitor and only see whatever they're working on, a second, third, or fourth menu bar would just confuse them.
4)Drag and drop functionality...
Again, counter to the CLI user group, but for the visual, intuitive, and illiterate crowd. Akin to books with pictures and text for little kids, it gives them something to visualize and see while they learn to grasp the meaning of the text and language. In an OS, it gives them insights into such functionality as redirection, the separation between programs and data, the concept of locations and file organization on a computer, and the concept of a program as an executable, as a different outfit or tool that a computer can use.
There may be many others, but my rant is getting quite long =)
-Twink
Hey, is the MacOS X really a modified NeXTStep layered atop BSD atop Mach?
Why could not someone mix and match the MacOSX GUI/WindowManager with Linux? Stranger things have happened...
So all of a sudden, the power and stability and reach of Linux, the power, the ease, the usability of MacOS... Boom! Instant accpetance?
I dunno, NeXT also ran on PCs, so I would assume that the MacOS GUI could also be ported to PCS, atop the BSD core again... And if this is the case, we could have MacOS on top of BSD or Linux running on PPC or x86... Imagine this far out combination:
MacOS atop Linux, running on an AMD K7 using an EV6 motherboard, thereby bypassing all major monopolies, industries, and gaining the best of all possible worlds...
Anyone want to comment?
-Twink
On the one hand, it may violate conservation of something; unless the energy gained by motion is equal somehow to mass loss/transform via energy density(or the energy lost in the fluctation of the mass)
At some point a photon transformed from mass to energy, and started to travel at c. If we could do a mass fluctuation large enough, the velocity gained would also be large, I think...
But the energy needed would also be stupendous...
Would one 'launch' a propulsionless drive with some initial velocity, and have the drive actually kick in later to decellerate the ship? IE, launch it from space, the earth, or the moon, or an asteroid, so it itself would not need to, but onboard functions would deploy halfway or something to slow down and stop the ship...
Heck, I wonder if we could also bend spacetime into a well, drop a ship at the lip, and use boosters at the other side to complete the trip, ala a skateboard in a half-pipe =)
-Twink
If anyone reads this, I'll be happy =)
Anyway, from what I can find and read about the subject, commincations won't be faster because its chaotic; it will be faster because it's optic however. The value is that 1, data won't be encoded digitally, pulses, frequencies, or what not, so more data can be sent on the same signal; Phone lines for example are not digital, but analogue, and in that sense 'more' data is sent over them than can be done digitally; Think how much bandwidth it would take to send voice over a 33.6 phone line, since that is done in analogue, but nigh impossible in digital, without significant ammounts of compression and such.
Anyway, point 2, since chaotic communication isn't faster, its potentially more reliable and more secure. Anyone familiar with PGP? That may be a good example; if the two lasers could be kept in sync, or in a similar state, it then would be like continually applying a PGP encryption on the data stream; that and the fact that the PGP private and public keys change continuously because the lasers are chaotic, and not static, and are synced as well, so not only are they secure, but unpredictable. Another benefit is that applying a chaotic encryption automatically allows for the analogue transmission I mentioned earlier, so in that sense a chaotic transmission is faster.
For those arguments for noise and such, redundant and corrective data can always be sent across the wire, right? I mean, network packets are lost and retransmitted all the time now, on the internet!
-Twink
This is an interesting response...
See, being comfortable and competent with PhotoShop, I don't really try the alternatives very much, though I do look at them. Gimp interested me, but at its level of completeness, and the fact I currently(though probably not indefinitely) run WinNT, PhotoShop seems to be the better product. Are we even talking about the same things? I don't know or assume that we are; I'm still at v4.01, and I see 5 and see it has powerful history and layering and undo commands, as well as scripting, batching, and automating. I don't see the shortcomings because I've learned to use PhotoShop, and essentially work around them. I don't know that Gimp works under Windows, or that its goal is to work under Windows, so I can't compare... But Photopaint does, and I'm not familiar with it at all. On the other hand, if Photopaint gets ported to Linux, a direct comparison between Photopaint and Gimp can be drawn, much as a comparison exists between Gimp and Photoshop; right now, Photoshop is the path of least resistance for me, and in reality is worth the 400$ cost for its features and useability. If Gimp were to approach 3/4 of PhotoShop, under Windows, I would consider using it, even paying for it(if that is legal under GPL and OSS!)
What are Corel's Photopaints strengths and weaknesses? I hear from the above post it has good scripting and remapping; what doesn't it do well, however?
And what are PhotoShop's weakness? It has a powerful plug-in architecture, a relatively intuitive and powerful layers function, the ability to store actions and scripts for repeated reuse, and powerful color matching/syncing capabilities.
How about Gimp? I don't think it runs under Windows, which requires I switch and re-learn Linux... What else?
-Twink
I know alot about the advantages of OSS, including fix yourself, debug, update yourself, you can control your own needs and programs, etc, and not having someone else dictate to you what you need or want... (Anything else?)
But I also am curious to hear from people who actually think OSS products are better than non-OSS products; Windows vs Linux is one strong argument, but I don't know that Gimp is actually better product than Photoshop... Sure, its OSS, but is it a better product? I want to make an analogoy between buying a Toyota Camry and actually building your own car; some people I'm sure can make a better, faster, more fuel efficient, etc car, but most can't, so buying a Camry is perfectly reasonable and useful...
Is there a reason to use Gimp over Photoshop? Or GNU Yellow Vector Editor over Illustrator? Is it not enough to buy decent products with decent performance and functionality, over writing yourself and running freeware?
Or is the argument that OSS code is free code? Is free products better than non-free? I would gladly pay for something powerful and productive, ala Photoshop over Gimp, for example, especially with color matching and press production capabilities in Photoshop...
Not trying to start a flame war, but really curious, myself
-Twink
Not trying to advocate NT here, I'm not a server or into placing heavy loads on my machine...
It would seem that perhaps running on a K6-233 May be part of the problem here... It also helps immensely if you have a SCSI system, compared to an IDE drive w/o ultra DMA or whatever it's called. NT, being a resource hog, barely runs in 64MB itself without swapping, add in an open Netscape window, some telnet windows, and a copy of Word, and maybe WinAMP in the corner, and you will definitely creep past 64mb...
However, this is where the disc drive subsystem and the CPU come in; it can be argued either way that NT is a 32 bit OS, as opposed to 95/98/3.1, and relies heavily on an optimized 32bit CPU like the PPro, P2, and Celeron, or vice versa that the CPU was tailored specifically for 32bit compute operations, and that the old Pentium line, and cousins and such, just aren't up to it-don't ask me, I've only run NT on a PPro 200 with a SCSI disc subsystem, and for my usage of Word, Netscape, email, telnet, and VC++, it works fine. For similar performance and usage on older hardware, Linux really does seem to be the way to go.
A lot of people think that SCSI is a rip-off, and stupid for being so more expensive that IDE, except that it takes 30% or so less CPU resources than standard IDEs; that can mean a lot for a swap happy OS like NT. However, spending an additional 70$ for another 64mb might be all that's needed to stop those swap stops you mentioned. Don't quote back numbers to me about ultra DMA IDE drives, and their bus mastering efficiency; I have no experience with that, though I would appreciate being informed and not flamed =)
-Twink
louisjr@cco.caltech.edu
Luddites were a group of people during the industrial revolution that did not agree that progressed encompassed the acceptance and utilization of technology and machines, most notably mechanical clumsy ones. If I am not mistaken, the Luddites were violently disinclined to the usage of machinery; against the mechanized and 'soulless' looms of the early textile industry in England and Europe, among others. Funny to see that a altavista search for Luddite brings up this site for the first few hits...
-Twink
And geeks wonder why geeks are shunned and ostracized by the populace at large! At least don't say things like that out loud, if you're trying to impress a girl =)
Unless she's a geek too that thought DiCrapio didn't die soon enough...
-Twink
One wonders if it would be legal just to buy the games and play them on the PC then...
We'll see how Sony treats the VGS, and whether a raftload of Mac users add significantly to their user base.
On the other hand, Nintendo, or any other game company for that matter, would do well by hiring these two guys quick! Heck, even without N64 emulation, these guys could now release a Glide Game Spec/API close to but not the same for N64, the way MESA is close to, but not exactly GL, and in the process, cause every person with a Voodoo card to lose countless hours in sleep and productivity =)
Score one for the programmers here!
-Twinkie
So game companies, heck, any company with a limited lifespan product would probably not release their source; you can point to Id as an example of releasing source, but they darn well made sure they obsoleted their own products (Wolf3d->Doom->Quake->Quake3) before releasing any of their source... I would like to buy a Civ:CtP CD with binaries for Linux, Win32, Mac, Alpha, etc, and only buy one game, regardless of which machine I may run it on. So something Loki could do is sell for 5 dollars the binaries for Civ:CtP on a floppy (Heh, a use for floppies!) so I can play with any machine my 1 copie of Civ:CtP.
I would like that Option for Quake3:Arena, especially since they plan to support Mac, Win32, and Linux all at once, as well as various SGIs, VisualPCs, Alphas, and such. There are thus several overlapping but distinct ideologies involved...
Open Source -> No company lock on the product
Open Engine -> Pay for the game, not the technology, akin to buying a CD player for cheap and then picking and choosing your music
Cross-Platform/Portable -> Game is not machine bound, nor OS bound
Linux is obviously Open Source and Cross Platform
Civ2:MGE is not Open Source, is not Cross Platform, but is Open Engine, as you can modify the rules, graphics, landscape, and units to suit any taste.
Quake2 is Open Engine and Cross Platform, allowing anyone with hardware acceleration(almost) to play almost any game with its open set of rules and rendering.
I guess jumping through flaming hoops is an exageration... But in a real sense, the only way to sell a game in a competative market is to sell something people want to play, and if we want to play Civ games, companies will produce Civ games... If we want to play Id games(ugh), companies will produce FPS...
But we do and can vote with our wallets; games that are no good, we don't buy, and games that are fun are snapped off the shelves (See Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy VIII as examples =)
Twinkie
So far the hubbub is over piracy of mainstream distributed music and labels, the Mariah Careys, Whitney Houstons, Elton Johns, etc. If the digital revolution and the internet is so empowering, where are the good homegrown music stars? The rock bands? The techno artists? This would be a good medium under which to get exposure and name recognition, right? I would think part of the 'problem' in embracing the MP3 music standard is the lack of people trying to use it in order to gain ground in an entrenched industry!
As such all the music I listen too is well represented on CD, and the only impetus to switch to MP3 is to store all my music on 1 or 2 CDs, as opposed to 10 or 15, but there are otherwise no real advantages; none in sound quality, none in value, none in pc friendliness, just convenience. Why would established artists even care about the MP3 standard if the current industry works for them? Only the disgruntled and the newcomers would care, and they don't have the resources or the 'quality' to be comfortable with the mainstream industry, because if they were, they wouldn't be trying to push MP3 or something...
Any comments? Is the garage band dead? Are there modern equivalents in this digital age? Midi Rock? =)
-Twinkie
I pay for a good game, period; if your Open Source friends can make a better game than Activision, Microprose, iD, etc, for 50 dollars, I would pay them the 50 dollars, no questions asked. If they charged only 30, I would pay 30. I have no value for an Open Source game just because it is open source. What's the difference in feeding the Open Sourcers or Activision? If you're saying the FreeCiv group can give us a better product than Civ:CtP for a 50 dollar donation, then it would seem that would be a 50 dollars well spent. However, spending the money on Civ2:MGE for example, which is an Open Engine game, rathern than Open Source, we can compile our own scenarios, our own units, our own graphics, our own rules... So where is the advantage in 'buying' FreeCiv over Civ2:MGE?
Lets say we give the money to the FreeCiv guys and they produce something, say Civ2:MGE edition... except that MGE is already out; so we would choose to buy MGE instead. How about we be generous? Give them the money, and expect a better product from them than from Microprose, who would no doubt use the money from MGE to produce Civ3 or some future successor... Like CtP! So, Tim, if you're still reading, or someone else who likes to argue =), what is the value in supporting FreeCiv when we can get Microprose, Activision, and Firaxis to jump flaming hoops for us because we buy their games and vote with our wallets? I'm curious, because while I value the Open Source model for its flexibility, innovation, and stability, I don't know that it is the perfect or superior model in any situation.
-Twinkie