I'd say more like obvious . . . yeah, selling stuff sure is good for business. I could have told you iTMS is good for the music industry long before Fortune's article. Is there something wrong with making money selling people what they want? Nothing new here, move along . . .
More people would buy CDs if they were cheaper. The RIAA is dying all by themselves, the piracy thing is just a convenient scapegoat. This is what happens when you collude with all your competition to fix prices, especially for something so easily traded as digital music. Piracy is just a natural reaction to the price fixing the industry is perpetrating. The problem for them is, once everyone is used to getting their music online, and systems to deliver it become more convenient, people won't be going back to buying CDs, no matter what they lower the price to. It's fun to watch them shoot themselves in the foot, and to think that in my lifetime (I'm in my mid 20's), and possibly within the next decade, the RIAA will have become an insignificant force in the music industry, through no fault but their own.
Of course both parties are going to try to solidify their entrenchement. The question is what are WE (the voters) going to do about this? It's all going to go nowhere until we raise a big enough stink that it's politically advantageous for candidates to campaign against partisan redistricting. What we need is more media coverage, and possibly demonstrations and organization of voting against the worst offenders.
If you had bothered to read through the whole thing, you would have found several examples of democrats doing the same exact thing, along with a non-partisan alternative painted in a positive light. Some people (like the author of this article) really do care about freedom and liberty, and not just partisan nonsense. The article is disparaging the system as a whole, of letting political parties draw voting districts. In this time leading up to the Supreme Court hearing on the matter, it is crucial to make the public aware of the crap these people are pulling (at the expense of your and my vote's relevance). Hopefully, the media attention will be significant enough to make the Supreme Court feel that the public is feeling cheated by the status quo, and that they will do something about it. (insert deity or equivalent all-knowing entity here) only knows, no one else can tackle this issue in the US government. The two-party system in the US is a sham, robbing everyone of the clarity to see the big picture, and the actual result of their votes, along with the character of the people they're voting for. Vote for people because they're good people who you trust to make wise decisions (at least moreso than their opponents), not because they're towing the party line.
Who's the one who writes N/T after their text? Huh? Who's the dumbass now?:p I mean, in any version of OS X client (I don't know about Server), SSH is definitely off. If you go to your 'Sharing' system pref, services tab, "Remote Login" is unchecked by default. This checkbox turns on the SSH daemon (aka SSHD). Dumbass.
There's no way they could think that about episode 2 . . . it was pure garbage, and it didn't have Jar-Jar to keep the 5 year-olds happy. Episode 2 is destined to be forgotten, along with Jaws 2 (through 5 or whatever) and Home Alone 2. I'd rank them at about the same level. Episode 1 might be memorable to young viewers due to the young hero they can associate themselves with, but older ones will have forgotten it just as quickly as you can say "Jar-Jar". I don't think the second trilogy will have nearly the impact the original true trilogy had, and by the time our kids are discussing Matrix 5, the sequel to the prequel to the original Matrix trilogy, the 2nd SW trilogy will be all but forgotten (I hope). With the garbage Lucas is adding to the original trilogy, (Han Solo shot first damnit, and WTF is up w/ Jabba?) it's looking like that might be completely unwatchable and forgotten by then too. Grrrrrrrrrr!
Wow, that's some nice flamebait there. Perhaps people in the/. demographic don't want to have to sit through some cheesy formulaic rendition of what someone thinks romance is yet again, when all they wanted was some resolution of the story, or at least some insight into the portrayed reality alluded to. Cheesy love interests only serve to "broaden the target audience", and contribute nothing to the storyline, and are too cheesy to effectively develop the characters. This was the same problem with Star Wars 1 and 2 (especially 2). It's just so formulaic and unrealistic, that people can't help to be disgusted. Gratuitous love interests tacked onto a script are the bane of the movie industry, along with many other cliches that go into a formula movie. The original Matrix was blessedly lacking in these cliches, but unfortunately, they more than made up for it in the sequels.
FBC (Find By Content) is alive and well in MacOS X. Not that I've ever used it, since I keep my docs organized, and can always find the one I'm looking for by name (systematic naming schemes help a lot!), or sorting by date. It's up to the various document editing apps to have database functionality. Adobe is catching onto this with their File Viewer thing in Photoshop, and MS could do worse than to implement this into the various Office apps, possibly as an upgraded Open/Save dialog (or an option therein). How could a filesystem's database possibly be complex enough to handle all different kinds of files in any meaningful manner, and yet be practical to use and context-sensitive enough to be more productive than the status quo? I think Apple was spot-on with iTunes as a 'Music Management Solution'. What is needed are management solutions for other kinds of files. iPhoto is definitely not there for images as it is too hard to add pictures to the iPhoto library, and it seems focused on integrating with digital still cameras instead of all pictures. Movies are going to be tough with all the incompatible and proprietary formats in widespread use. Word processing documents are best handled by the app that created them, since they also commonly use proprietary formats (though this might become easier with XML-based word docs, as long as they aren't encrypted). This database-filesystem vaporware for Longhorn is obviously going to be a poorly-implemented hack that doesn't really solve any problems, as evidenced by Microsoft's track record in marketable features vs. usability enhancements.
I don't know why this got modded down, but I completely agree. I shed tears for the 1984 commercial, the original Think Different montage, and now this. They're the only commercials that moved me to tears, and strangely all have to do with computers. They do have much bigger implications on our values and a message of hope for the future, so I don't feel too geeky. This is truly an epic commercial. I wonder why they're not giving it the air time it deserves.
That can't be right . . . how come some of them display as interlaced and others as progressive when played on a computer monitor or HDTV? NTSC can be either progressive or interlaced, but most video is interlaced, as it will be watched on SD interlaced TV sets. Many DVDs, however, are progressive, and do not display the artifacting of interlaced high-motion scenes when played on a progressive display. This SW set, however, does show that artifacting on progressive displays.
I got the set from dvdmoviebox.com, Fed-Exed from Malaysia for about $30. Unfortunately, the quality isn't so hot, definitely not your standard DVD quality. There does appear to be surround sound, however, the image is interlaced, and the transfer and encoding are less than professional grade. They arrived in a flat document mailer, with the DVD sleeves and discs in a flat plastic sleeve, so you'll have to get your own DVD case. The image format is 4x3 letterboxed. The region is 0 (region free), and there is no CSS encryption (a sign of quality). In short, you get what you pay for, but I'll probably have to get the official set when that's released, just for the full DVD resolution and progressive image quality.
Wow, I feel very sorry for your students. Stick the the curriculum, buddy! There were many mass graves found in Serbia and Bosnia, and the "presumed war criminal" was the object of massive evidence displaying his guilt beyond a doubt of terrific attrocities. Maybe if you would leave the partisan BS behind, and achnowledge the character and intentions of our leaders, you could convey a more realistic World view to your students. The war in Iraq was started based on trumped up charges of WMD posession and acquisition, which have turned out to be based on shaky intelligence at best, and an outright lie at worst. We aren't in Iraq to liberate the subjects of a brutal dictator, but to secure access to their resources (hint: powers your car) with a friendly regime. In Bosnia/Serbia, there was no oil to fight over, and with the mix of cultures with ties to different major World powers (and was the site of events that triggered both World Wars), was a messy place to be involved in. In hindsite, there was no greedy goal for that war, besides possibly to allocate funds to the defense department and its contractors (though that is the extremely cynical view). In Iraq, however, with the dubious charges made to start the war, the timing of the war (in a recession, with oil prices on the rise, with Saddam was doing his thing as usual, as he has been for the last decade since the first Gulf War), and the way the country (Iraq, not the US) has been managed since the end of the war (all contracts going to a select group of powerful American companies who just happen to have contributed massive amounts of money to Bush's election fund, no real care given to the well-being of Iraqi citizens, money from Oil sales to ourselves going to pay for our expenditures there), it is easy to say that the motivation was not very honorable. Have you considered teaching history in North Korea, where all history is fabricated on a (politically motivated) whim, like yours?
Well, considering they don't use a north bridge, but instead a custom point-to-point ASIC codeveloped by Apple and IBM, maybe they could work out a deal for IBM's new ASICs when (if) they ship quad or oct processor 970 linux workstations. My guess is a cobranded workstation released by IBM, but partnered with Apple, and running MacOS X Panther Server, with a linux option for $500-$1k less (depending on the Panther Server license chosen).
Although it's a series rather than a movie, Furicuri (FLCL or Fooly Cooly) is unwatchable in the dubbed version (once you've seen the subbed one). Quirky movies with an older (and therefore more articulate) target audience fare much, much better in subbed translations, as the can convey the original meaning rather than try to condense the dialogue to fit mouth movements. The only time I will play one of my anime DVDs in subbed mode is when one of my ADD friends wants to watch, as they could care less if the translation is accurate; all they want is the pretty animation. There are many movies that do ok subbed, but most of the ones I'm interested in have much better translations in the subs than in the English dubbed soundtrack. When you watch these movies as a reflection of Japanese culture, dubbed soundtracks are out of the question. Subs always give much more insight into the characters' mentality and local expressions.
That was probably a troll, and I hate to feed it, but had you read the documentation of the SPEC results Apple published, you would have seen that they used GCC to compile the SPEC tests on both the G5 and the P4s. This is not a lie, and this explains why the results were lower than Intel's published results, which used a binary compiled with the Intel compiler. None of the results are bogus, and no one is lying; it's just that they aren't using the same compiler. Regardless, OF COURSE Apple is going to publish results that make them look good, it's called marketing. People shouldn't have any respect for what the marketing departments of ANY company publish, hence the need for real-world comparisons done by independent parties with no agenda supporting either competitor. I think you're a little late with the supercomputer quip; that was soooo last generation . . . we're talking ultracomputers now;) By real world apps, I mean processor intensive apps that people commonly buy these machines for, including Photoshop, yes, but also 3d rendering, video compression, audio compression and synthesis, encryption, and even games. I don't know what your problem is with Photoshop, since it's a very common proc intensive app, optimized as much as Adobe can for both platforms, and graphics pros buy a computer largely based on PS performance. It's not like there's a conspiracy between Apple and Adobe to make the G5 look better at PS than the Intel and AMD chips. To the contrary, Adobe has an intere$t in making PS perform as well as it can on both platforms.
Well, since the Alpha had NT 4.0 WS available for it, that would definitely qualify as a 64 bit desktop offering, if fully supported as such (though the argument could be made for a workstation, whatever the difference there is). Of course Apple is lying (to a point) and distorting facts, as that is the very definition of marketing. As a shareholder, I would be disappointed with any less. Regardless, marketing drivel aside, the claim to 'first 64 bit desktop' is inconsequential to the actual performance of these machines. I personally don't care WHO was first (though I could see cases for either of the 64 bit offerings), but what matters is how these machines compete. Price is one factor, software availability (including OS) another, overall system performance, and finally user comfort and productivity. The only aspect that really needs to be put to the test is the performance, since the others will be subjective (or real easy to find out in the case of price). So OK, you've convinced me that the G5 was not the first 64 bit desktop in existance, but try telling that to Apple marketers, I'm sure they'll be able to add some fine print to narrow the definition enough to only include the G5. That is completely irrelevant, however, and does not excuse the flamebait quoted from the Tom's Hardware site. I'm sure AMD and Intel would make the same type of claims in a heartbeat in the same position, as they have in the past. That is marketing, plain and simple. Taking issue with Apple's marketing claims while ignoring other companies' is irresponsible and biased (makes the internet faster, anyone?). Marketing fluff should always be ignored, and a good way to make it irrelevant is to do some real world testing, something that is now possible. If Tom's site had showed some data supporting their view, and ommitted the biased flamebait, then maybe it would have been a decent article (along with all the other stupid biased comments Tom's is famous for), and maybe it could be taken seriously. The way it was written however demonstrates an agenda conflicting with the objective reporting of the capabilities of the latest hardware.
Actually, it seems you're correct, that MacOS X 10.2.7, and forthcoming 10.3 will not support >32 bit virtual address space, though it seems the kernel can address >4GB of RAM. Applications using some special hack mentioned in the Register article can address >4GB of RAM for a single process, though it seems they have to do some special trickery. During the WWDC demo, for example, the CEO of Wolfram Research indicated that Mathematica was using 6GB of RAM on the G5. So, it seems that yes, it is possible for a single process to address > 4GB RAM, and yes, it is a dirty hack. Not quite as dirty of a hack as PAE, however, that limits the amount of RAM to allocate to a single process to 4 GB (or actually 2 GB of contiguous memory). This is not a limitation in the G5's hardware, however, and future versions of the MacOS, or Linux64 will be able to address >4 GB natively. More info here: OS News Discussion, check the comments too. Apple/. discussion with some info on the subject. LinuxPPC64 run by IBM
I'm not saying I believe anything Apple is saying, I'm just trying to rationalize their claim that the G5 is the first 64 bit desktop (which is a silly, but highly marketable claim). If a consumer wants to go buy a personal computer right now, and not build their own, the G5 is likely to be the only 64 bit system they would consider. The others are either in expensive server hardware, or need to be assembled from parts. But there definitely is a case for saying that the G5 is the first consumer desktop to use a 64 bit proc. As far as the classifications, of course you're right that it's meaningless, but I would tend to define consumer desktop hardware as that being capable of running a consumer desktop OS, such as Windows or MacOS in a fully supported setup. Itanium fails this definition, though there is definitely a case for the Opteron. The only missing part is the 'fully supported' aspect, since no major manufacturers have anything on store shelves with a 64 bit CPU and consumer, pro, or any non-server OS besides Apple. Price is definitely a very important factor what classifying a computer, but that price must include support for the hardware and software, along with assembly of the components, since most people are not knowledgeable enough to do that themselves. Zealots and fundamentalists are a problem no matter what group you look at, and I agree with you that they are stupid closed-minded fucks; but such is life, and you have to learn to ignore these people, since they obviously are too closed-minded to be helped, short of an intensive brainwashing and re-education. Back to the topic, I would say there's a pretty good case for the G5 being the first 64 bit desktop on the market, but it doesn't matter. It's just a trick to get people to think the G5 is twice as good as a P4 because it has twice the bits. You know that, I know that, and the ones who don't can't be helped; they are bound to be conned by one company or another. I say it might as well be Apple; since they are clueless, they might have an easier time of computing on a Mac.
Those are hardly consumer desktops, and would be better classified as workstations or small servers. Remember that a desktop also has to be running a consumer desktop OS, or it doesn't count.
Yes, I am sure, as I've read reports of apps using >4GB under OS 10.2.7 on a G5. The only references I could dig up right now are a brief blurb on ZDNet here: ZDNet Story and at the Register here: Register Story, though the register mistakingly says that the G5s use a 64 bit memory address space. A more detailed and accurate report of the G5 is available here: SoundOnSound Story. That last one really has all the info on this matter, though it doesn't mention 10.2.7's memory address capabilities specifically. You better believe, however, that Apple isn't shipping systems with 8 GB or RAM that can only address 4 GB, or the outcry would be quite palpable.
You claim to have been using 64 bit x86 CPUs for over a year (Itanium) as well as from AMD (Opteron), but what you fail to realize is that Apple is claiming first 64 bit DESKTOP. The Itanium and Opteron chips are not desktop CPUs, but server and workstation chips. This is just silly semantics, and anyone who believes marketing drivel should have their head examined. But to simply dismiss a whole platform for these stupid marketing claims is ridiculous. The 1.6 and 1.8 GHz G5s have been in the marketplace with a final version of MacOS X 10.2.7 for over a month, making them the first viable 64 bit DESKTOP solution available in my book, since they run a final, stable version of MacOS X which is as tuned as it needs to be for 64 bit operation (mostly 42 bit memory address space support and a few 64 bit math libs), and a good consumer user experience. Someone trying to use Windows XP 64 right now had better be an expert user, to deal with all the problems with missing drivers. If you want to argue that the opteron was a desktop CPU or had desktop solutions (since it can run Win32), that might be a valid argument, but you can't fault Apple's marketing department for trying to cash in on the 64bit buzz, especially since most people who watch those commercials have never heard of an opteron.
As for benchmarks, it's silly to omit the G5s from the comparison for religious reasons, and people want to see how they stack up. The only way to counter Apple's marketing drivel is to do actual real-world benchmarking using cross platform apps and benches. The 'slow' Xeon chips Apple compared the G5 to were the fastest available at the time from Intel. I don't know why they didn't compare themselves to the Opterons, but them's the breaks. What we need now is for all these PC tech sites to get some dual G5s and compare them to what they think is the top of the line on the x86 platform. FUD and hostility will only make people see these sources as biased and unprofessional. Objective comparisons between G5s, Athlon64 FX and P4 EE will drive lots of page hits, since people are starved for this info right now (due in part to Apple's excessive marketing claims). So, either put up or shut up, and be happy that Apple's marketing claims drove so much interest in G5 comparisons w/ x86 offerings.
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I'd say more like obvious . . . yeah, selling stuff sure is good for business. I could have told you iTMS is good for the music industry long before Fortune's article. Is there something wrong with making money selling people what they want? Nothing new here, move along . . .
More people would buy CDs if they were cheaper. The RIAA is dying all by themselves, the piracy thing is just a convenient scapegoat. This is what happens when you collude with all your competition to fix prices, especially for something so easily traded as digital music. Piracy is just a natural reaction to the price fixing the industry is perpetrating. The problem for them is, once everyone is used to getting their music online, and systems to deliver it become more convenient, people won't be going back to buying CDs, no matter what they lower the price to. It's fun to watch them shoot themselves in the foot, and to think that in my lifetime (I'm in my mid 20's), and possibly within the next decade, the RIAA will have become an insignificant force in the music industry, through no fault but their own.
Of course both parties are going to try to solidify their entrenchement. The question is what are WE (the voters) going to do about this? It's all going to go nowhere until we raise a big enough stink that it's politically advantageous for candidates to campaign against partisan redistricting. What we need is more media coverage, and possibly demonstrations and organization of voting against the worst offenders.
If you had bothered to read through the whole thing, you would have found several examples of democrats doing the same exact thing, along with a non-partisan alternative painted in a positive light. Some people (like the author of this article) really do care about freedom and liberty, and not just partisan nonsense. The article is disparaging the system as a whole, of letting political parties draw voting districts. In this time leading up to the Supreme Court hearing on the matter, it is crucial to make the public aware of the crap these people are pulling (at the expense of your and my vote's relevance). Hopefully, the media attention will be significant enough to make the Supreme Court feel that the public is feeling cheated by the status quo, and that they will do something about it. (insert deity or equivalent all-knowing entity here) only knows, no one else can tackle this issue in the US government. The two-party system in the US is a sham, robbing everyone of the clarity to see the big picture, and the actual result of their votes, along with the character of the people they're voting for. Vote for people because they're good people who you trust to make wise decisions (at least moreso than their opponents), not because they're towing the party line.
Who's the one who writes N/T after their text? Huh? Who's the dumbass now? :p I mean, in any version of OS X client (I don't know about Server), SSH is definitely off. If you go to your 'Sharing' system pref, services tab, "Remote Login" is unchecked by default. This checkbox turns on the SSH daemon (aka SSHD). Dumbass.
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There's no way they could think that about episode 2 . . . it was pure garbage, and it didn't have Jar-Jar to keep the 5 year-olds happy. Episode 2 is destined to be forgotten, along with Jaws 2 (through 5 or whatever) and Home Alone 2. I'd rank them at about the same level. Episode 1 might be memorable to young viewers due to the young hero they can associate themselves with, but older ones will have forgotten it just as quickly as you can say "Jar-Jar". I don't think the second trilogy will have nearly the impact the original true trilogy had, and by the time our kids are discussing Matrix 5, the sequel to the prequel to the original Matrix trilogy, the 2nd SW trilogy will be all but forgotten (I hope). With the garbage Lucas is adding to the original trilogy, (Han Solo shot first damnit, and WTF is up w/ Jabba?) it's looking like that might be completely unwatchable and forgotten by then too. Grrrrrrrrrr!
Wow, that's some nice flamebait there. Perhaps people in the /. demographic don't want to have to sit through some cheesy formulaic rendition of what someone thinks romance is yet again, when all they wanted was some resolution of the story, or at least some insight into the portrayed reality alluded to. Cheesy love interests only serve to "broaden the target audience", and contribute nothing to the storyline, and are too cheesy to effectively develop the characters. This was the same problem with Star Wars 1 and 2 (especially 2). It's just so formulaic and unrealistic, that people can't help to be disgusted. Gratuitous love interests tacked onto a script are the bane of the movie industry, along with many other cliches that go into a formula movie. The original Matrix was blessedly lacking in these cliches, but unfortunately, they more than made up for it in the sequels.
FBC (Find By Content) is alive and well in MacOS X. Not that I've ever used it, since I keep my docs organized, and can always find the one I'm looking for by name (systematic naming schemes help a lot!), or sorting by date. It's up to the various document editing apps to have database functionality. Adobe is catching onto this with their File Viewer thing in Photoshop, and MS could do worse than to implement this into the various Office apps, possibly as an upgraded Open/Save dialog (or an option therein). How could a filesystem's database possibly be complex enough to handle all different kinds of files in any meaningful manner, and yet be practical to use and context-sensitive enough to be more productive than the status quo? I think Apple was spot-on with iTunes as a 'Music Management Solution'. What is needed are management solutions for other kinds of files. iPhoto is definitely not there for images as it is too hard to add pictures to the iPhoto library, and it seems focused on integrating with digital still cameras instead of all pictures. Movies are going to be tough with all the incompatible and proprietary formats in widespread use. Word processing documents are best handled by the app that created them, since they also commonly use proprietary formats (though this might become easier with XML-based word docs, as long as they aren't encrypted). This database-filesystem vaporware for Longhorn is obviously going to be a poorly-implemented hack that doesn't really solve any problems, as evidenced by Microsoft's track record in marketable features vs. usability enhancements.
I don't know why this got modded down, but I completely agree. I shed tears for the 1984 commercial, the original Think Different montage, and now this. They're the only commercials that moved me to tears, and strangely all have to do with computers. They do have much bigger implications on our values and a message of hope for the future, so I don't feel too geeky. This is truly an epic commercial. I wonder why they're not giving it the air time it deserves.
That can't be right . . . how come some of them display as interlaced and others as progressive when played on a computer monitor or HDTV? NTSC can be either progressive or interlaced, but most video is interlaced, as it will be watched on SD interlaced TV sets. Many DVDs, however, are progressive, and do not display the artifacting of interlaced high-motion scenes when played on a progressive display. This SW set, however, does show that artifacting on progressive displays.
Someone already has. And that was from the laserdisc release with surround sound...
It seems the dvdmoviebox.com address isn't working at the moment, hewever, you can use vcdmoviebox.com as well, and that seems to be working.
I got the set from dvdmoviebox.com, Fed-Exed from Malaysia for about $30. Unfortunately, the quality isn't so hot, definitely not your standard DVD quality. There does appear to be surround sound, however, the image is interlaced, and the transfer and encoding are less than professional grade. They arrived in a flat document mailer, with the DVD sleeves and discs in a flat plastic sleeve, so you'll have to get your own DVD case. The image format is 4x3 letterboxed. The region is 0 (region free), and there is no CSS encryption (a sign of quality). In short, you get what you pay for, but I'll probably have to get the official set when that's released, just for the full DVD resolution and progressive image quality.
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Wow, I feel very sorry for your students. Stick the the curriculum, buddy! There were many mass graves found in Serbia and Bosnia, and the "presumed war criminal" was the object of massive evidence displaying his guilt beyond a doubt of terrific attrocities. Maybe if you would leave the partisan BS behind, and achnowledge the character and intentions of our leaders, you could convey a more realistic World view to your students. The war in Iraq was started based on trumped up charges of WMD posession and acquisition, which have turned out to be based on shaky intelligence at best, and an outright lie at worst. We aren't in Iraq to liberate the subjects of a brutal dictator, but to secure access to their resources (hint: powers your car) with a friendly regime. In Bosnia/Serbia, there was no oil to fight over, and with the mix of cultures with ties to different major World powers (and was the site of events that triggered both World Wars), was a messy place to be involved in. In hindsite, there was no greedy goal for that war, besides possibly to allocate funds to the defense department and its contractors (though that is the extremely cynical view). In Iraq, however, with the dubious charges made to start the war, the timing of the war (in a recession, with oil prices on the rise, with Saddam was doing his thing as usual, as he has been for the last decade since the first Gulf War), and the way the country (Iraq, not the US) has been managed since the end of the war (all contracts going to a select group of powerful American companies who just happen to have contributed massive amounts of money to Bush's election fund, no real care given to the well-being of Iraqi citizens, money from Oil sales to ourselves going to pay for our expenditures there), it is easy to say that the motivation was not very honorable. Have you considered teaching history in North Korea, where all history is fabricated on a (politically motivated) whim, like yours?
Well, considering they don't use a north bridge, but instead a custom point-to-point ASIC codeveloped by Apple and IBM, maybe they could work out a deal for IBM's new ASICs when (if) they ship quad or oct processor 970 linux workstations. My guess is a cobranded workstation released by IBM, but partnered with Apple, and running MacOS X Panther Server, with a linux option for $500-$1k less (depending on the Panther Server license chosen).
Although it's a series rather than a movie, Furicuri (FLCL or Fooly Cooly) is unwatchable in the dubbed version (once you've seen the subbed one). Quirky movies with an older (and therefore more articulate) target audience fare much, much better in subbed translations, as the can convey the original meaning rather than try to condense the dialogue to fit mouth movements. The only time I will play one of my anime DVDs in subbed mode is when one of my ADD friends wants to watch, as they could care less if the translation is accurate; all they want is the pretty animation. There are many movies that do ok subbed, but most of the ones I'm interested in have much better translations in the subs than in the English dubbed soundtrack. When you watch these movies as a reflection of Japanese culture, dubbed soundtracks are out of the question. Subs always give much more insight into the characters' mentality and local expressions.
That was probably a troll, and I hate to feed it, but had you read the documentation of the SPEC results Apple published, you would have seen that they used GCC to compile the SPEC tests on both the G5 and the P4s. This is not a lie, and this explains why the results were lower than Intel's published results, which used a binary compiled with the Intel compiler. None of the results are bogus, and no one is lying; it's just that they aren't using the same compiler. Regardless, OF COURSE Apple is going to publish results that make them look good, it's called marketing. People shouldn't have any respect for what the marketing departments of ANY company publish, hence the need for real-world comparisons done by independent parties with no agenda supporting either competitor. I think you're a little late with the supercomputer quip; that was soooo last generation . . . we're talking ultracomputers now ;) By real world apps, I mean processor intensive apps that people commonly buy these machines for, including Photoshop, yes, but also 3d rendering, video compression, audio compression and synthesis, encryption, and even games. I don't know what your problem is with Photoshop, since it's a very common proc intensive app, optimized as much as Adobe can for both platforms, and graphics pros buy a computer largely based on PS performance. It's not like there's a conspiracy between Apple and Adobe to make the G5 look better at PS than the Intel and AMD chips. To the contrary, Adobe has an intere$t in making PS perform as well as it can on both platforms.
Well, since the Alpha had NT 4.0 WS available for it, that would definitely qualify as a 64 bit desktop offering, if fully supported as such (though the argument could be made for a workstation, whatever the difference there is). Of course Apple is lying (to a point) and distorting facts, as that is the very definition of marketing. As a shareholder, I would be disappointed with any less. Regardless, marketing drivel aside, the claim to 'first 64 bit desktop' is inconsequential to the actual performance of these machines. I personally don't care WHO was first (though I could see cases for either of the 64 bit offerings), but what matters is how these machines compete. Price is one factor, software availability (including OS) another, overall system performance, and finally user comfort and productivity. The only aspect that really needs to be put to the test is the performance, since the others will be subjective (or real easy to find out in the case of price). So OK, you've convinced me that the G5 was not the first 64 bit desktop in existance, but try telling that to Apple marketers, I'm sure they'll be able to add some fine print to narrow the definition enough to only include the G5. That is completely irrelevant, however, and does not excuse the flamebait quoted from the Tom's Hardware site. I'm sure AMD and Intel would make the same type of claims in a heartbeat in the same position, as they have in the past. That is marketing, plain and simple. Taking issue with Apple's marketing claims while ignoring other companies' is irresponsible and biased (makes the internet faster, anyone?). Marketing fluff should always be ignored, and a good way to make it irrelevant is to do some real world testing, something that is now possible. If Tom's site had showed some data supporting their view, and ommitted the biased flamebait, then maybe it would have been a decent article (along with all the other stupid biased comments Tom's is famous for), and maybe it could be taken seriously. The way it was written however demonstrates an agenda conflicting with the objective reporting of the capabilities of the latest hardware.
Actually, it seems you're correct, that MacOS X 10.2.7, and forthcoming 10.3 will not support >32 bit virtual address space, though it seems the kernel can address >4GB of RAM. Applications using some special hack mentioned in the Register article can address >4GB of RAM for a single process, though it seems they have to do some special trickery. During the WWDC demo, for example, the CEO of Wolfram Research indicated that Mathematica was using 6GB of RAM on the G5. So, it seems that yes, it is possible for a single process to address > 4GB RAM, and yes, it is a dirty hack. Not quite as dirty of a hack as PAE, however, that limits the amount of RAM to allocate to a single process to 4 GB (or actually 2 GB of contiguous memory). This is not a limitation in the G5's hardware, however, and future versions of the MacOS, or Linux64 will be able to address >4 GB natively. More info here: /. discussion with some info on the subject.
OS News Discussion, check the comments too.
Apple
LinuxPPC64 run by IBM
I'm not saying I believe anything Apple is saying, I'm just trying to rationalize their claim that the G5 is the first 64 bit desktop (which is a silly, but highly marketable claim). If a consumer wants to go buy a personal computer right now, and not build their own, the G5 is likely to be the only 64 bit system they would consider. The others are either in expensive server hardware, or need to be assembled from parts. But there definitely is a case for saying that the G5 is the first consumer desktop to use a 64 bit proc. As far as the classifications, of course you're right that it's meaningless, but I would tend to define consumer desktop hardware as that being capable of running a consumer desktop OS, such as Windows or MacOS in a fully supported setup. Itanium fails this definition, though there is definitely a case for the Opteron. The only missing part is the 'fully supported' aspect, since no major manufacturers have anything on store shelves with a 64 bit CPU and consumer, pro, or any non-server OS besides Apple. Price is definitely a very important factor what classifying a computer, but that price must include support for the hardware and software, along with assembly of the components, since most people are not knowledgeable enough to do that themselves. Zealots and fundamentalists are a problem no matter what group you look at, and I agree with you that they are stupid closed-minded fucks; but such is life, and you have to learn to ignore these people, since they obviously are too closed-minded to be helped, short of an intensive brainwashing and re-education. Back to the topic, I would say there's a pretty good case for the G5 being the first 64 bit desktop on the market, but it doesn't matter. It's just a trick to get people to think the G5 is twice as good as a P4 because it has twice the bits. You know that, I know that, and the ones who don't can't be helped; they are bound to be conned by one company or another. I say it might as well be Apple; since they are clueless, they might have an easier time of computing on a Mac.
Those are hardly consumer desktops, and would be better classified as workstations or small servers. Remember that a desktop also has to be running a consumer desktop OS, or it doesn't count.
Yes, I am sure, as I've read reports of apps using >4GB under OS 10.2.7 on a G5. The only references I could dig up right now are a brief blurb on ZDNet here: ZDNet Story and at the Register here: Register Story, though the register mistakingly says that the G5s use a 64 bit memory address space. A more detailed and accurate report of the G5 is available here: SoundOnSound Story. That last one really has all the info on this matter, though it doesn't mention 10.2.7's memory address capabilities specifically. You better believe, however, that Apple isn't shipping systems with 8 GB or RAM that can only address 4 GB, or the outcry would be quite palpable.
You claim to have been using 64 bit x86 CPUs for over a year (Itanium) as well as from AMD (Opteron), but what you fail to realize is that Apple is claiming first 64 bit DESKTOP. The Itanium and Opteron chips are not desktop CPUs, but server and workstation chips. This is just silly semantics, and anyone who believes marketing drivel should have their head examined. But to simply dismiss a whole platform for these stupid marketing claims is ridiculous. The 1.6 and 1.8 GHz G5s have been in the marketplace with a final version of MacOS X 10.2.7 for over a month, making them the first viable 64 bit DESKTOP solution available in my book, since they run a final, stable version of MacOS X which is as tuned as it needs to be for 64 bit operation (mostly 42 bit memory address space support and a few 64 bit math libs), and a good consumer user experience. Someone trying to use Windows XP 64 right now had better be an expert user, to deal with all the problems with missing drivers. If you want to argue that the opteron was a desktop CPU or had desktop solutions (since it can run Win32), that might be a valid argument, but you can't fault Apple's marketing department for trying to cash in on the 64bit buzz, especially since most people who watch those commercials have never heard of an opteron.
As for benchmarks, it's silly to omit the G5s from the comparison for religious reasons, and people want to see how they stack up. The only way to counter Apple's marketing drivel is to do actual real-world benchmarking using cross platform apps and benches. The 'slow' Xeon chips Apple compared the G5 to were the fastest available at the time from Intel. I don't know why they didn't compare themselves to the Opterons, but them's the breaks. What we need now is for all these PC tech sites to get some dual G5s and compare them to what they think is the top of the line on the x86 platform. FUD and hostility will only make people see these sources as biased and unprofessional. Objective comparisons between G5s, Athlon64 FX and P4 EE will drive lots of page hits, since people are starved for this info right now (due in part to Apple's excessive marketing claims). So, either put up or shut up, and be happy that Apple's marketing claims drove so much interest in G5 comparisons w/ x86 offerings.