Several months ago, there were some rumors floating around about Apple incorporating some sort of Handwriting input device into their portabale machines. The rumors got started after someone dug up a patent that Apple has on such an entry system... it was discussed here on SlashDot but I have not taken the time to look up the URL. If I remember correctly, it was sometime before the last MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.
You are correct in your statement about the handwriting recognition engine in the NewtonOS being code named "Rosetta".
It's a simple answer: there are tens of millions of MacOS users around the world. Those people are willing to buy software and, as a result, there are companies who will develop and sell software.
I think it is unlikely that Microsoft would ever create emulators for other console games.. I think they would see is as a subtle way of "discourging" X-Box developent. With their mentality, I see them trying as hard as they can to just get PC game companies to port their software to the X-Box or offering "incentives" for N64 or Sega developers to move to X-Box.
Sun has at least two engineers working at Apple alongside the Apple MRJ Team on the port of Java to MacOS X. It would be nice if Sun did all of the VM development work for platforms other than Solaris or Windows- but I tend to think that it better to leave that job to the people who created the "other platforms". I think that Apple engineers could do a better job of developing a Java VM for MacOS than a complete team of Sun engineers.
If you are interested, I have some information on Java and the Macintosh on my web site: The Outlaw Cafe
I have mixed feelings about stories like this. There is sort of a fine line between being a fan of something (tv shows, comuters, cars, etc) and copyright/trademark infringement. In this case, I think that Fuji Television is going a little overboard. It is hard to say for sure, however, without having seen the fan sites.
If you are truly unhappy about the situation, take the time to write a letter or send an e-mail to the Food Network as well as FujiTV and tell them that you wil no longer watch the show nor will you patronize any of the shows sponsors.
e-Commerce Not Collapsing
on
Boo No More
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· Score: 1
I do not this that this is the "beginning of the end" of e-Commerce. With something as new as the Internet Economy, it's only logical that there will be some casualties... comapnies will come and go and eventually those companies that are viable enough to survive will do so. I just hope that the "press" does not start pouncing on stories like this and start claiming the end of the internet world is coming.
I've got a medium-sized dining room table (about 72"x30")... did not have room for anything larger. It works very well for me, I've got a a Blue & White G3, two 17" monitors, a scanner, printer, and a couple of other externals on it. This works well for me.
I've been reading articles that talk about how "great" Microsoft is for consumers but I can not dismiss my own experienece with their software. I have used all the major version of Windows (Except for Win2K). I've used MS Office on Windows and MacOS. I still can not get over the impression that MS produces software that is "just good enough"- not excellent. That's the mentality of much of the US today, don't strive for excellence just do something that meets the bare minimum of expectations and put some flashy graphics up to make it look interesting, but do not go out of your way to do something that is outstanding.
I am beginning to think that breaking up the company would actually be a good thing. It might bring a breath of fresh air into a world and an industry that desperately needs it. That's one of the major reasons that I am a big fan of Apple.. they are willing to take risks and try to introduce change in th their industry- and are willing to deal with the flack (ie. all the complaints about the iMac, G3, G4, MacOS X, etc).
And before you dismiss me as an overzealous MacMarine, I do acknowledge the things that I believe Microsoft has done correctly- one of the most recent things being the Optical Intellimouse Explorer (I bought one for my G3 at home and also for my PeeCee at work)- it's a fantastic piece of hardware. I wish that all MS products were as well engineered as that mouse.
I also get kind of frustrated at reading the comments made by people that are saying the DOJ is wrecking their retirement portfolio. Folks, investing is a gamble - there are no guarantees. If you invest heavily into a single stock, then you should be smart enough to realize what will happen if the stock drops in value. If you are not, then you should probably not be investing in the stock market at all- until you educate yourself a little more. The same goes for the businesses that build their livelyhood soley around a single customer base- like well-to-do Microsoft employees.... you should be aware that there may come a time when your customer base dwindles or changes significantly. You need to be able to deal with it... and not complain to the newspaper and act shocked when it does happen to you.
That's right... NeXT's OS has essentially taken over and completely transformed the world's second-most popular Desktop operating system;-)
FWIW... a friend of mine recently attended an Apple-sponsored WebObjects Seminar in Nashville. The guys leading the seminar were all former NeXT employees who are now part of the Apple clan. They claim that Steve jokingly refers to the time when "NeXT Acquired Apple". I guess it is essentially true, when you look at the number of NeXT folks at the healm of the rejuvinated Apple.
As far as Be is concerned, I am not really sure that they can make it as a desktop OS vendor and would probably do much better by either going completely open-source and fostering a Linux-like developer network or concentrating on a slightly different market- such as the console/set-top box market.
My only experience with BeOS was with one of the beta versions for the PCI PowerMac. I installed it on a PM 9600 that I had at the time and played around with it for a little while. It was kind of neat, but was not really stable on my machine at that time. I bought a copy of the "first" Intel version, but have yet to get a PC on which to install it.
Seriously though, is there any compelling reason to choose BeOS over Linux, FreeBSD or any of the other "alternative" operating systems?
I have owned two difernt models of Newton MessagePads- a 120 and a 2000. The 120 would last for about a month under normal usage on 4 AA batteries. The 2000 would last a couple of weeks if you used the backlighting a lot, or about the same as the 120 if you kept the backlighting turned off. The Palm should be about the same or even better.
From all of the "Making of" shows I've seen... it loks like ILM uses a lot of SGI and Apple equipment. There were some articles about this back when Episode I came out. I remember one about a guy who spent a weekend removing the puppeteer that operated C3P0's skeletal body from several scenes. He was working on a high-end PowerBook.
As far as software, I've seen the ILM guys using PhotoShop (for manually painting and editing video frames) and what I believe was RenderMan (The software developed by Pixar).
Anyway, this is all from my memory of the "making of" shows I've seen. I could be wrong.
The first one is a summary of an announcement made by Apple, Matrox, and Pinnacle Systems concerning a new "Macintosh Only" uncompressed standard-definition (SD) and uncompressed high-definition (HD) video solutions. The second article describe the latest release of FInal Cut Pro.
I believe the Adobe demonstration was at a MacWorld Expo or a WWDC when Steve Jobs announced Carbon. The Adobe guy was a VP who had a working version of Photoshop that he had "Carbonized" over a period of one weekend. The application launched and ran. I can not remember what all he did with it though.
Who knows if all the bells and whistles were available and that all of the features of the software worked as they should, but it did demonstrate that the conversion of existing applications to Carbon could be done in a relatively short period of time and relatively easy.
I hope that Jason recovers from this accident. It is a great shame that these things happen.
A cousin of mine was killed by a Drunk Driver in 1981 which prompted my aunt to start a local chapter of MADD. This was just a couple of years after MADD was created and there was very little that could leagally be done to the guy (in Tennessee at least). I think that he spent a couple of weeks in jail and that was it (I was only 11, so I do not remember a lot about the whole thing).
It is a shame that even today, the penalty for drunk driving is relatively light considering the magnitude of the crime. If someone took a gun out in the street and started firing randomly and killed someone.. that person would go to jail for a long time. Drunk drivers who injure or kill people should be treated in the same manner as people who commit murder. It is negligence, pure and simple. These people make a conscious decision to drink until they are intoxicated and get behind the wheel.
I was hit by a 24 yr old drunk driver a few months ago, it was early in the evening and this guy was driving about 85 in rush hour traffic on the interstate (in a Geo Tracker) when he hit me. Fortunately I nor any of the other drivers on the road were injured by his negligence.
I am looking forward to this film. I like Tim Burton's style and am interested in seeing how he approaches this story. As much as I loathe Charlton Heston, "Planet of the Apes" is still a pretty cool movie. The Sci Fi channel played it over the Christmas holiday... watching it made me feel like an 8 yr old kid again.;-)
The Astro is not an iMac look-alike, well at least not in the same way as the eOne. The eOne could easily be mistaken for an iMac, the Astro may have a similar shape but its color is completely different. It does not copy the "trade dress" (or whatever the legalese term is) of the iMac.
The company I work for buys a LOT of hardware from Sun Microsystems. In my department, we're split about 50 50 between Sun machines and HP-UX machines.
I stopped reading news papers about 6 years ago. The main reason is that they insult me. The same thing goes for local and national news casts. I find it extremely infuriating when some reporter or an "anchor person" summarizes what a politician or some other person was saying.... I am intelligent enough to understand the original speaker, I do not need someone to summarize it for me. Also, the picking and choosing of quotes infuriates me. Of course, that is related to the second reason why I do not read news papers... they are too concerned with sensationalism.
Now, I realize that flashy headlines sell papers and get people's attention but the line between the tabliod press and the "serious" press has just about disappeared. The local news paper here in Memphis, "The Commercial Appeal" is very bad about printing articles that are one-sided or appear to be one-sided. They are extermely bad about taking quotes out of context and reporting only the information that they think will make the most sensational story... not the most informative story. Furthermore, they rarely finish a story. They only report the initial "sensational" parts of the story but never follow up with "the rest of the story" For example, they might report on a crime that occurred and someone getting arrested. They will never follow up with a story on whether the person was found guilty and if so, what the punisment was.
I also do not think that the majority of people writing for the popular press is qualified to write about technical topics. You have all seen examples when they have misrepresented facts or have reported information that is flat out wrong- simply because they did not understand what they were writing about.
I do not live in a news void, however. I get the majority of the news that I am interested in from the Internet... the fabulous thing about the internet is (as you all know) that you can get information on a particular topic from many many different sources and come to your own conclusions... not to the conclusions of some reporter. As far as local news, I listen to the headlines on the radio and that's about it. If there is something that catches my attention, I will try to find out more about it.
What can be done to get me to read a news paper... get rid of the sensationalism, start reporting COMPLETE stories. Stop "dumbing down" the information and stop taking quotes out of context. Also, put the whole paper online.
MS Devices, Keyboard Trays, & a Question
on
Ergonomic Keyboards
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· Score: 1
When I owned a PC, I bought one of the original MS Natural Keybaords and loved it. When I sold my PC, I loaned to keyboard to a buddy of mine to use at work.. he's still using it.
I have found that changing the type of mouse I use also helped with wrist/arm pain. After much debate, I bought one of the MS Intellimouse Explorers to use on my Blue&White G3. It's a great mouse, even if it does come from Microsoft. It seems to have helped a lot with the discomfort I feel after using the computer for a while. I recently replaced the mouse on the PC I use at work with the Intellimouse Explorer also (although I had to use a USB->PS/2 converter because of NT).
I also added a couple of keyboard trays to my desk at work, one is a Kensington EasyMount Undershelf II and the other is a similar model from Fellowes. Adjusting the height & position of keyboard makes a workspace a lot more comfortable... as many of you already know.
Now a question.... I have an HP C3000 HP-UX workstation here at work also.. the Keyboard and mouse are both USB. You think that there would be any problems with swapping the keyboard and mouse with other USB models? I really do not like the feel of the "stock" keyboard and the mouse is a bit too uncomfortable to use. I have been meaning to bring my Apple USB Keyboard form home to try out, just to see if it works, but not taken the time to do it yet.
I wish that fundamentalists would remember that this country was founded on the principals of religious freedom... that is freedom FOR and freedom FROM. It is simply sickening to see how ignorant people can be.
I saw this news item floating around a couple of days ago. The internet has changed my life over the past few years but I would not describe myself as lonely more lonlier than I was a few years ago. I watch very little television these days, probably less than 3 hours per week (which is a Good Thing). I get most of my news from the Internet, I stopped reading newspapers a couple of years ago and I never watch the local news broadcasts. I do catch local news from various radio programs that I listen to during the work day. I still spend a lot of time with my friends, in fact we talk much more now than we dis a couple of years ago. It's just easier to communicate via e-mail than it is to try and get someone on the phone. As far as "face to face" contact, i still hang out with my friends every weekend- as much as we did in the "pre-internet" days. I've also met some new friends, as I am sure that you all have, via the internet, some of whom live here in Memphis and have become "real" friends. I think that some people are just not wanting to accept that the world is changing. I suspect that the lonliest internet users are the same folks that used to spend all of their free time holed up in their apartment watching television. Now they spend their free time holed up in their apartment surfing the internet. Not much of a change.
Slashdot Mirror
Several months ago, there were some rumors floating around about Apple incorporating some sort of Handwriting input device into their portabale machines. The rumors got started after someone dug up a patent that Apple has on such an entry system... it was discussed here on SlashDot but I have not taken the time to look up the URL. If I remember correctly, it was sometime before the last MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.
You are correct in your statement about the handwriting recognition engine in the NewtonOS being code named "Rosetta".
It's a simple answer: there are tens of millions of MacOS users around the world. Those people are willing to buy software and, as a result, there are companies who will develop and sell software.
I think it is unlikely that Microsoft would ever create emulators for other console games.. I think they would see is as a subtle way of "discourging" X-Box developent. With their mentality, I see them trying as hard as they can to just get PC game companies to port their software to the X-Box or offering "incentives" for N64 or Sega developers to move to X-Box.
Here's a startup that will be delivering "online only" films... http://www.creativeforces.com .
Sun has at least two engineers working at Apple alongside the Apple MRJ Team on the port of Java to MacOS X. It would be nice if Sun did all of the VM development work for platforms other than Solaris or Windows- but I tend to think that it better to leave that job to the people who created the "other platforms". I think that Apple engineers could do a better job of developing a Java VM for MacOS than a complete team of Sun engineers.
If you are interested, I have some information on Java and the Macintosh on my web site: The Outlaw Cafe
I have mixed feelings about stories like this. There is sort of a fine line between being a fan of something (tv shows, comuters, cars, etc) and copyright/trademark infringement. In this case, I think that Fuji Television is going a little overboard. It is hard to say for sure, however, without having seen the fan sites.
If you are truly unhappy about the situation, take the time to write a letter or send an e-mail to the Food Network as well as FujiTV and tell them that you wil no longer watch the show nor will you patronize any of the shows sponsors.
I do not this that this is the "beginning of the end" of e-Commerce. With something as new as the Internet Economy, it's only logical that there will be some casualties... comapnies will come and go and eventually those companies that are viable enough to survive will do so. I just hope that the "press" does not start pouncing on stories like this and start claiming the end of the internet world is coming.
I've got a medium-sized dining room table (about 72"x30")... did not have room for anything larger. It works very well for me, I've got a a Blue & White G3, two 17" monitors, a scanner, printer, and a couple of other externals on it. This works well for me.
I've been reading articles that talk about how "great" Microsoft is for consumers but I can not dismiss my own experienece with their software. I have used all the major version of Windows (Except for Win2K). I've used MS Office on Windows and MacOS. I still can not get over the impression that MS produces software that is "just good enough"- not excellent. That's the mentality of much of the US today, don't strive for excellence just do something that meets the bare minimum of expectations and put some flashy graphics up to make it look interesting, but do not go out of your way to do something that is outstanding.
I am beginning to think that breaking up the company would actually be a good thing. It might bring a breath of fresh air into a world and an industry that desperately needs it. That's one of the major reasons that I am a big fan of Apple.. they are willing to take risks and try to introduce change in th their industry- and are willing to deal with the flack (ie. all the complaints about the iMac, G3, G4, MacOS X, etc).
And before you dismiss me as an overzealous MacMarine, I do acknowledge the things that I believe Microsoft has done correctly- one of the most recent things being the Optical Intellimouse Explorer (I bought one for my G3 at home and also for my PeeCee at work)- it's a fantastic piece of hardware. I wish that all MS products were as well engineered as that mouse.
I also get kind of frustrated at reading the comments made by people that are saying the DOJ is wrecking their retirement portfolio. Folks, investing is a gamble - there are no guarantees. If you invest heavily into a single stock, then you should be smart enough to realize what will happen if the stock drops in value. If you are not, then you should probably not be investing in the stock market at all- until you educate yourself a little more. The same goes for the businesses that build their livelyhood soley around a single customer base- like well-to-do Microsoft employees.... you should be aware that there may come a time when your customer base dwindles or changes significantly. You need to be able to deal with it... and not complain to the newspaper and act shocked when it does happen to you.
Ok, enough of my rambling.
That's right... NeXT's OS has essentially taken over and completely transformed the world's second-most popular Desktop operating system ;-)
FWIW... a friend of mine recently attended an Apple-sponsored WebObjects Seminar in Nashville. The guys leading the seminar were all former NeXT employees who are now part of the Apple clan. They claim that Steve jokingly refers to the time when "NeXT Acquired Apple". I guess it is essentially true, when you look at the number of NeXT folks at the healm of the rejuvinated Apple.
As far as Be is concerned, I am not really sure that they can make it as a desktop OS vendor and would probably do much better by either going completely open-source and fostering a Linux-like developer network or concentrating on a slightly different market- such as the console/set-top box market.
My only experience with BeOS was with one of the beta versions for the PCI PowerMac. I installed it on a PM 9600 that I had at the time and played around with it for a little while. It was kind of neat, but was not really stable on my machine at that time. I bought a copy of the "first" Intel version, but have yet to get a PC on which to install it.
Seriously though, is there any compelling reason to choose BeOS over Linux, FreeBSD or any of the other "alternative" operating systems?
I have owned two difernt models of Newton MessagePads- a 120 and a 2000. The 120 would last for about a month under normal usage on 4 AA batteries. The 2000 would last a couple of weeks if you used the backlighting a lot, or about the same as the 120 if you kept the backlighting turned off. The Palm should be about the same or even better.
From all of the "Making of" shows I've seen... it loks like ILM uses a lot of SGI and Apple equipment. There were some articles about this back when Episode I came out. I remember one about a guy who spent a weekend removing the puppeteer that operated C3P0's skeletal body from several scenes. He was working on a high-end PowerBook.
As far as software, I've seen the ILM guys using PhotoShop (for manually painting and editing video frames) and what I believe was RenderMan (The software developed by Pixar).
Anyway, this is all from my memory of the "making of" shows I've seen. I could be wrong.
There are a couple of relevant articles on MacCentral today. Check them out: http://maccentral.com/news/0004/ 10.apple2.shtml and http://maccentral.com/news/000 4/10.finalcut.shtml .
The first one is a summary of an announcement made by Apple, Matrox, and Pinnacle Systems concerning a new "Macintosh Only" uncompressed standard-definition (SD) and uncompressed high-definition (HD) video solutions. The second article describe the latest release of FInal Cut Pro.
I believe the Adobe demonstration was at a MacWorld Expo or a WWDC when Steve Jobs announced Carbon. The Adobe guy was a VP who had a working version of Photoshop that he had "Carbonized" over a period of one weekend. The application launched and ran. I can not remember what all he did with it though.
Who knows if all the bells and whistles were available and that all of the features of the software worked as they should, but it did demonstrate that the conversion of existing applications to Carbon could be done in a relatively short period of time and relatively easy.
Cool! Thanks for posting that screenshot!
no message
I hope that Jason recovers from this accident. It is a great shame that these things happen.
A cousin of mine was killed by a Drunk Driver in 1981 which prompted my aunt to start a local chapter of MADD. This was just a couple of years after MADD was created and there was very little that could leagally be done to the guy (in Tennessee at least). I think that he spent a couple of weeks in jail and that was it (I was only 11, so I do not remember a lot about the whole thing).
It is a shame that even today, the penalty for drunk driving is relatively light considering the magnitude of the crime. If someone took a gun out in the street and started firing randomly and killed someone.. that person would go to jail for a long time. Drunk drivers who injure or kill people should be treated in the same manner as people who commit murder. It is negligence, pure and simple. These people make a conscious decision to drink until they are intoxicated and get behind the wheel.
I was hit by a 24 yr old drunk driver a few months ago, it was early in the evening and this guy was driving about 85 in rush hour traffic on the interstate (in a Geo Tracker) when he hit me. Fortunately I nor any of the other drivers on the road were injured by his negligence.
I am looking forward to this film. I like Tim Burton's style and am interested in seeing how he approaches this story. As much as I loathe Charlton Heston, "Planet of the Apes" is still a pretty cool movie. The Sci Fi channel played it over the Christmas holiday... watching it made me feel like an 8 yr old kid again. ;-)
The Astro is not an iMac look-alike, well at least not in the same way as the eOne. The eOne could easily be mistaken for an iMac, the Astro may have a similar shape but its color is completely different. It does not copy the "trade dress" (or whatever the legalese term is) of the iMac.
The company I work for buys a LOT of hardware from Sun Microsystems. In my department, we're split about 50 50 between Sun machines and HP-UX machines.
This is a great victory. Congratulations to everyone involved!
I stopped reading news papers about 6 years ago. The main reason is that they insult me. The same thing goes for local and national news casts. I find it extremely infuriating when some reporter or an "anchor person" summarizes what a politician or some other person was saying.... I am intelligent enough to understand the original speaker, I do not need someone to summarize it for me. Also, the picking and choosing of quotes infuriates me. Of course, that is related to the second reason why I do not read news papers... they are too concerned with sensationalism.
Now, I realize that flashy headlines sell papers and get people's attention but the line between the tabliod press and the "serious" press has just about disappeared. The local news paper here in Memphis, "The Commercial Appeal" is very bad about printing articles that are one-sided or appear to be one-sided. They are extermely bad about taking quotes out of context and reporting only the information that they think will make the most sensational story... not the most informative story. Furthermore, they rarely finish a story. They only report the initial "sensational" parts of the story but never follow up with "the rest of the story" For example, they might report on a crime that occurred and someone getting arrested. They will never follow up with a story on whether the person was found guilty and if so, what the punisment was.
I also do not think that the majority of people writing for the popular press is qualified to write about technical topics. You have all seen examples when they have misrepresented facts or have reported information that is flat out wrong- simply because they did not understand what they were writing about.
I do not live in a news void, however. I get the majority of the news that I am interested in from the Internet... the fabulous thing about the internet is (as you all know) that you can get information on a particular topic from many many different sources and come to your own conclusions... not to the conclusions of some reporter. As far as local news, I listen to the headlines on the radio and that's about it. If there is something that catches my attention, I will try to find out more about it.
What can be done to get me to read a news paper... get rid of the sensationalism, start reporting COMPLETE stories. Stop "dumbing down" the information and stop taking quotes out of context. Also, put the whole paper online.
When I owned a PC, I bought one of the original MS Natural Keybaords and loved it. When I sold my PC, I loaned to keyboard to a buddy of mine to use at work.. he's still using it.
I have found that changing the type of mouse I use also helped with wrist/arm pain. After much debate, I bought one of the MS Intellimouse Explorers to use on my Blue&White G3. It's a great mouse, even if it does come from Microsoft. It seems to have helped a lot with the discomfort I feel after using the computer for a while. I recently replaced the mouse on the PC I use at work with the Intellimouse Explorer also (although I had to use a USB->PS/2 converter because of NT).
I also added a couple of keyboard trays to my desk at work, one is a Kensington EasyMount Undershelf II and the other is a similar model from Fellowes. Adjusting the height & position of keyboard makes a workspace a lot more comfortable... as many of you already know.
Now a question.... I have an HP C3000 HP-UX workstation here at work also.. the Keyboard and mouse are both USB. You think that there would be any problems with swapping the keyboard and mouse with other USB models? I really do not like the feel of the "stock" keyboard and the mouse is a bit too uncomfortable to use. I have been meaning to bring my Apple USB Keyboard form home to try out, just to see if it works, but not taken the time to do it yet.
I wish that fundamentalists would remember that this country was founded on the principals of religious freedom... that is freedom FOR and freedom FROM. It is simply sickening to see how ignorant people can be.
I saw this news item floating around a couple of days ago. The internet has changed my life over the past few years but I would not describe myself as lonely more lonlier than I was a few years ago. I watch very little television these days, probably less than 3 hours per week (which is a Good Thing). I get most of my news from the Internet, I stopped reading newspapers a couple of years ago and I never watch the local news broadcasts. I do catch local news from various radio programs that I listen to during the work day.
I still spend a lot of time with my friends, in fact we talk much more now than we dis a couple of years ago. It's just easier to communicate via e-mail than it is to try and get someone on the phone. As far as "face to face" contact, i still hang out with my friends every weekend- as much as we did in the "pre-internet" days.
I've also met some new friends, as I am sure that you all have, via the internet, some of whom live here in Memphis and have become "real" friends.
I think that some people are just not wanting to accept that the world is changing. I suspect that the lonliest internet users are the same folks that used to spend all of their free time holed up in their apartment watching television. Now they spend their free time holed up in their apartment surfing the internet. Not much of a change.