Sorry, where can one find internal DVD-R burners for a G5 with Lightscribe? I've seen the LaCie drives at NewEgg but they seem to be EIDE, and I am pretty sure the G5 (quad in my case) is a SATA, I believe. Can you give a source for these drives?
and I respect it, really. I have played with Ubuntu and am impressed with it, really. However, since I run a business, having access to tools such as Photoshop, Filemaker (I know I'll be laughed at for using it, but I built my business with Filemaker and a "Dummies" book and I'll never look back) as well as shareware/commercial utilities and what not is totally worth the "Mac Premium" that I pay. Having a choice of which program I need to get my work done, being able to know that the [whatever program] I've invested my time in using will be updated regularly because it's a part of the core of Apple's strategy (Mail, in this case, for me), and so on, are all worth the cost of buying my software, lock-in and all. Since I and my employees are all, you know, doing stuff that generates money, having even a 1% benefit in efficiency over a FOSS alternative easily pays back the cost of the Photoshop/OS X/Filemaker/whaever licenses. Of course, part of this comes from the fact that I am a long-time Mac user and can easily do what I need to do, compared to how slow I'd be if I had to do the same work in a Unix environment. (Well, you know what I mean.)
Another aspect to choosing Macs for my business is, I can take 1-2 hours a week to keep all our machiines running. If I'd chosen Windows, I'm sure I'd have neeed a full-time support person/admin to keep things going by now, and my sense is that this would probably be the case if I'd switched to Intel boxes running *Nix instead of OS X. It's simple math to calculate that, even if each Mac costs $1000 more than a PC running free software (which I disagree with), that person's salary would be far more than the amount of more expensive hardware. Again, this is partially the case because I happen to be an experienced Mac guy, so I might be off the mark.
I wonder if this trend holds up with others. Are most FOSS aficianados tending to be working for other companies or working for themselves on a small scale as contractors? How many people who run 20+ person companies would agree with your post, I wonder? I am not posting flamebait, just wondering what the correlation between "involved in a commercial enterprise making money" and "more of an enthusiast, not making money from my computer" aspects are.
I was giving a panel at Otakon, an anime convention, and we were talking about the games coming out in Japan, including some of those that don't normally make it over to the U.S. It was interesting that out of the a room of 200 or so, ***everyone*** raised their hand when I asked who was going to buy a Wii. 4-5 people maybe put their hands up when we brought up the PS3. Granted, these are younger gamers, all DS-toting, but I felt an incredible energy in the room. Shoulda bought some Nintendo stock based on that, bummer...
Um, computers have multiple cores. Unless I am on drugs, I don't think games are using the extra core(s) as much as they could, if at all. How about making one core in a dual core processor do the AI calculations, and the other core do the "main" stuff? Since cores are only going to increase, this seems logical to me. It's not like any kind of card you plug into your computer would ever be accepted by the market/developers.
One suggestion is, set up the XP VM with just 128 mb of memory. it's enough for XP, load/saving will be fast, and swapping seems to be minimal. It's only a problem for people who are doing things like, running all the Adobe apps alongside Parallels (like me, most of the time).
Honestly, Parallels is an *excellent* Windows emulator (virtualizer, whatever), and has all the features anyone could want except for games. The cost of this system (the same as Parallels, with only the Windows license) coupled with the "voodoo factor" of getting the product you want to work, means most people will probably not be that gung-ho for this. Windows is not that expensive, if you need it, and eventually Parallels will support booting from the Bootcamp volume, hence you could have one Windows license that could be used with both methods (Parallels in a window without the fancy game support, and Boot camp for real games).
I just got done reading Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer, a rather interesting read that basically says, what if there were a parallel universe where Neanderthals won out over Homo Sapiens and ran the world? What kind of world would they have? Besides not going to the moon, they hadn't killed off all the Mamoths and respected nature a lot more. They had computer units in their wrists that followed them wherever they went, and recorded what they did in the event that one commited a crime (very rare). The comparison between our world was interestig. Anyway, it was an interesting read.
Oh, I know that probably 99% of current paying customers started out "pirating" a game, and I'm okay with that -- I am a realistic person or I wouldn't have come this far, and I know that our games are interesting when you actually sit down and play them. And I don't expect some guy in Russia who downloads X-Change on a torrent would ever be a paying customer (supposedly, no one who used a computer in the 1990s failed to play Season of the Sakura in Russia, which is fine with me). But does that make the kind of wholesale theft that went on on Pirate Bay okay? If they can enable so much theft from me (and so many others) with supposedly the full support of everyone commenting, what if someone decided to directly steal from you in some way? Would you be forgiving if someone drained your bank account or used up your credit cards? At what point would you cry foul? I'd really like to know.
If you're going to respond, please give a little background about yourself by the way (i.e. 18 years old, earning $7.50 an hour, therefore pissed that anyone would ever expect you to pay for anything you found online, etc.). Just so I can put your comments into the right context.
Oh, I'm sure there will be people who will pirate the games and the images, just as there are people who will give us their "dollar votes" to encourage us to add staff and make more games. For the record, we have a good base of customers and our company is profitable. We will keep on making games and growing the bishoujo gaming genre in English. The massive rampant theft of our hard work, though, is what really burns me up.
I don't expect anyone here to agree with me, since this isn't the right type of crowd. But please...someday...start some kind of business, stay up til 2 am every night working on it...pour your heart into it...and then see if your opinions about people ripping you off don't change.
I am a licensor and translator of PC dating-sim games from Japan ("hentai games"), which were pirated in massive, massive numbers through the Pirate Bay. Seriously -- for every copy I sell, maybe 100 copies are being pirated through their site, according to the torrent download numbers, at least. I am overjoyed that they've been taken down and hope they stay down forever. Unlike "big pockets" movie studios, I am an independent software publisher to whom the rate of piracy will mean life or death. I am not sorry at all to see these guys gone.
I am an indies developer, licensing and translating PC dating-sim games from Japan. It's been difficult, creating a product that no major retailer will carry, and we've had to respond to this by creating our own distribution network to reach as many anime/comic shops as possible, and of course carrying our product directly to customers/bishoujo game fans through the direct channel. Are most "indies game developers" looking for publishers, I wonder, or are they looking for alternate channels to sell their product?
I will gladly buy Dell when they are so cheap that to do otherwise would be foolish. Monitors are really a commodity, so we switched from Apple to Dell for those even though J-List is an all-Mac company. I like how the Dell Japan store goes out of their way to compete with the U.S. store, usually giving us $100-200 off the cheapest U.S. price to build market share (er, or something like that). However, the company is disfunctional on many levels. Last time I checked, the Dell Japan site did...not...work...with...Safari. I know Mac users aren't exactly their target, but we buy routers etc. from them to use with our Macs.
Have you missed the fact that Apple made a (really excellent) mouse that has two buttons and also an innovative "scroll pea" that is far better than anything I've used in the past? Yes, the Macbooks will probably keep one button and control click to right click, but that's something I support -- those two buttons on PCs are dawg ugly. Much better to just use an external mouse if it's that much an issue to you.
There are two ways to run Windows on an Intel Mac. One is Boot Camp, best for games or for when you "really need a real PC." The other is Parallels, which is everything Virtual PC should have been, a really reliable, really compatible PC that's fully encapsulated in an enclosed environment. There seems to be no limit to what will be possible with Parallels, except that games might not be fast enough to be enjoyable. I mean, I run my iMac with the emulated Win2000 PC in full screen mode on my 2nd monitor, and it's da bomb for the software development and testing that I do. Just as the current video iPod gave "video" for free on top of the price of the iPod everyone was already buying (hence, not that many people cared that it wasn't widescreen), getting a Windows box for "free" with your elegant, camera-enabled, fast-as-heck Intel iMac is a fantastic bonus. Parallels cosr> ts a mere $49 ($39 now) too, a big bonus over VMWare.
(I have to say, installing Windows 2000 in the background while playing Unreal Tournament emulated a perfect speed in Rosetta, with 100 bots added for a fun kill-fest, was really enjoyable.)bBy the way, his putzy discussion about not being able to run legacy crap? Come on, if you're buying a new Intel Mac, the chances are you're not trying to hook a 1997-era SCSI scanner up to it. Jeez...
On Mac OS X, it's Mplayer all the way. It's fast, it plays everything without showing errors, and the "press left/right arrows to move 30 secs left or right" feature rules. If it would support dual audio tracks, that would be heaven.
I've lived in Japan for 15 years, and can say that vacation time is actually used now in almost all cases. Not in the case of workaholics, company owners or people who don't like their families, of course, but by and large employees take their time off all the time in Japan.
This is kind of bizarre. Like, 30 minutes ago the Emperor was reorganizing the Republic into the Empire "for a safe and secure society"...
The poster who said "you get what you vote for" was dead on too. I mean, "we" (as in, stupid Americans, including stupid people from Florida) actually chose this???
Anyone remember when going to a pizza restaurant (like, gasp, Shakey's) was cool because they'd have video games there? I remember playing the original Atari Starship (think that's what it was called), and being amazed by the flashy Epilepsy-inducing graphics. Remember Space (two vector ships shooting at each other with a gravity star in the center of the screen). Remember the thrill of walking past a Berzerk machine and having it say "Coin detected in pocket!"
I've had this problem too, trying to learn a little more about OS X. I mean, I'm asking how to do a simple thing, and I don't really want to be told to read the MAN page...
Anyway, this is the opposite of what I've found with Mac users, who are usually happy to help, no doubt to help out a user in distress, or (when applicable) to convert a Windows user to the Mac fold. Honestly, I started my company with a Filemaker Pro for Dummies book and the web address for the old Filemaker list server, and between the two, a newbie like me was able to successfully build a real company, making heavy use of free help from helpful people online. It was exactly the right decision for me to make, and I'm very glad, looking back.
Good point. Unfortunately it means we're *&(#'ed in this particular situation. The states should give up ever getting more than $1.27 annually from other states for their coffers, then.
Oh, I'm from America, I just live in another country and can see things from the outside (you should try it sometime). America's system is terrible, and she's bleeding red ink, unwilling to create the taxes that are needed for what needs to be done (fighting wars, operating a functional nation, you know). Since a national sales might might possibly require a constitutional amendment (not sure about that, but income tax did), it's probably a non-starter...but the alternative is, the sales tax issue will always be here, we'll always be rewarded for buying from Amazon rather than the shop down the street, which is not really a good thing, when you think about it. (I mean, I love the Net too and all, but...). At least admit, if there were a single tax rate for the whole country, with no loss to states, it would be reasonable.
Seriously. I love America, but it can't seem to do anything right.
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Sorry, where can one find internal DVD-R burners for a G5 with Lightscribe? I've seen the LaCie drives at NewEgg but they seem to be EIDE, and I am pretty sure the G5 (quad in my case) is a SATA, I believe. Can you give a source for these drives?
and I respect it, really. I have played with Ubuntu and am impressed with it, really. However, since I run a business, having access to tools such as Photoshop, Filemaker (I know I'll be laughed at for using it, but I built my business with Filemaker and a "Dummies" book and I'll never look back) as well as shareware/commercial utilities and what not is totally worth the "Mac Premium" that I pay. Having a choice of which program I need to get my work done, being able to know that the [whatever program] I've invested my time in using will be updated regularly because it's a part of the core of Apple's strategy (Mail, in this case, for me), and so on, are all worth the cost of buying my software, lock-in and all. Since I and my employees are all, you know, doing stuff that generates money, having even a 1% benefit in efficiency over a FOSS alternative easily pays back the cost of the Photoshop/OS X/Filemaker/whaever licenses. Of course, part of this comes from the fact that I am a long-time Mac user and can easily do what I need to do, compared to how slow I'd be if I had to do the same work in a Unix environment. (Well, you know what I mean.)
Another aspect to choosing Macs for my business is, I can take 1-2 hours a week to keep all our machiines running. If I'd chosen Windows, I'm sure I'd have neeed a full-time support person/admin to keep things going by now, and my sense is that this would probably be the case if I'd switched to Intel boxes running *Nix instead of OS X. It's simple math to calculate that, even if each Mac costs $1000 more than a PC running free software (which I disagree with), that person's salary would be far more than the amount of more expensive hardware. Again, this is partially the case because I happen to be an experienced Mac guy, so I might be off the mark.
I wonder if this trend holds up with others. Are most FOSS aficianados tending to be working for other companies or working for themselves on a small scale as contractors? How many people who run 20+ person companies would agree with your post, I wonder? I am not posting flamebait, just wondering what the correlation between "involved in a commercial enterprise making money" and "more of an enthusiast, not making money from my computer" aspects are.
Don't hold back so much now. Tell us what you really think.
It doesn't matter what we do to the Earth. Jesus is coming for us all pretty son, and then human hisory will end, so nothing we do maters.
Ugh, scary, but some people really think this way. And they're all elected to the government right now.
Genius Point if you know the reference.
I was giving a panel at Otakon, an anime convention, and we were talking about the games coming out in Japan, including some of those that don't normally make it over to the U.S. It was interesting that out of the a room of 200 or so, ***everyone*** raised their hand when I asked who was going to buy a Wii. 4-5 people maybe put their hands up when we brought up the PS3. Granted, these are younger gamers, all DS-toting, but I felt an incredible energy in the room. Shoulda bought some Nintendo stock based on that, bummer...
Um, computers have multiple cores. Unless I am on drugs, I don't think games are using the extra core(s) as much as they could, if at all. How about making one core in a dual core processor do the AI calculations, and the other core do the "main" stuff? Since cores are only going to increase, this seems logical to me. It's not like any kind of card you plug into your computer would ever be accepted by the market/developers.
One suggestion is, set up the XP VM with just 128 mb of memory. it's enough for XP, load/saving will be fast, and swapping seems to be minimal. It's only a problem for people who are doing things like, running all the Adobe apps alongside Parallels (like me, most of the time).
Honestly, Parallels is an *excellent* Windows emulator (virtualizer, whatever), and has all the features anyone could want except for games. The cost of this system (the same as Parallels, with only the Windows license) coupled with the "voodoo factor" of getting the product you want to work, means most people will probably not be that gung-ho for this. Windows is not that expensive, if you need it, and eventually Parallels will support booting from the Bootcamp volume, hence you could have one Windows license that could be used with both methods (Parallels in a window without the fancy game support, and Boot camp for real games).
Actually the word is "foolproof". Just FYI.
I just got done reading Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer, a rather interesting read that basically says, what if there were a parallel universe where Neanderthals won out over Homo Sapiens and ran the world? What kind of world would they have? Besides not going to the moon, they hadn't killed off all the Mamoths and respected nature a lot more. They had computer units in their wrists that followed them wherever they went, and recorded what they did in the event that one commited a crime (very rare). The comparison between our world was interestig. Anyway, it was an interesting read.
Oh, I know that probably 99% of current paying customers started out "pirating" a game, and I'm okay with that -- I am a realistic person or I wouldn't have come this far, and I know that our games are interesting when you actually sit down and play them. And I don't expect some guy in Russia who downloads X-Change on a torrent would ever be a paying customer (supposedly, no one who used a computer in the 1990s failed to play Season of the Sakura in Russia, which is fine with me). But does that make the kind of wholesale theft that went on on Pirate Bay okay? If they can enable so much theft from me (and so many others) with supposedly the full support of everyone commenting, what if someone decided to directly steal from you in some way? Would you be forgiving if someone drained your bank account or used up your credit cards? At what point would you cry foul? I'd really like to know.
If you're going to respond, please give a little background about yourself by the way (i.e. 18 years old, earning $7.50 an hour, therefore pissed that anyone would ever expect you to pay for anything you found online, etc.). Just so I can put your comments into the right context.
Oh, I'm sure there will be people who will pirate the games and the images, just as there are people who will give us their "dollar votes" to encourage us to add staff and make more games. For the record, we have a good base of customers and our company is profitable. We will keep on making games and growing the bishoujo gaming genre in English. The massive rampant theft of our hard work, though, is what really burns me up.
I don't expect anyone here to agree with me, since this isn't the right type of crowd. But please...someday...start some kind of business, stay up til 2 am every night working on it...pour your heart into it...and then see if your opinions about people ripping you off don't change.
I am a licensor and translator of PC dating-sim games from Japan ("hentai games"), which were pirated in massive, massive numbers through the Pirate Bay. Seriously -- for every copy I sell, maybe 100 copies are being pirated through their site, according to the torrent download numbers, at least. I am overjoyed that they've been taken down and hope they stay down forever. Unlike "big pockets" movie studios, I am an independent software publisher to whom the rate of piracy will mean life or death. I am not sorry at all to see these guys gone.
http://www.jastusa.com
I am an indies developer, licensing and translating PC dating-sim games from Japan. It's been difficult, creating a product that no major retailer will carry, and we've had to respond to this by creating our own distribution network to reach as many anime/comic shops as possible, and of course carrying our product directly to customers/bishoujo game fans through the direct channel. Are most "indies game developers" looking for publishers, I wonder, or are they looking for alternate channels to sell their product?
I will gladly buy Dell when they are so cheap that to do otherwise would be foolish. Monitors are really a commodity, so we switched from Apple to Dell for those even though J-List is an all-Mac company. I like how the Dell Japan store goes out of their way to compete with the U.S. store, usually giving us $100-200 off the cheapest U.S. price to build market share (er, or something like that). However, the company is disfunctional on many levels. Last time I checked, the Dell Japan site did...not...work...with...Safari. I know Mac users aren't exactly their target, but we buy routers etc. from them to use with our Macs.
Have you missed the fact that Apple made a (really excellent) mouse that has two buttons and also an innovative "scroll pea" that is far better than anything I've used in the past? Yes, the Macbooks will probably keep one button and control click to right click, but that's something I support -- those two buttons on PCs are dawg ugly. Much better to just use an external mouse if it's that much an issue to you.
There are two ways to run Windows on an Intel Mac. One is Boot Camp, best for games or for when you "really need a real PC." The other is Parallels, which is everything Virtual PC should have been, a really reliable, really compatible PC that's fully encapsulated in an enclosed environment. There seems to be no limit to what will be possible with Parallels, except that games might not be fast enough to be enjoyable. I mean, I run my iMac with the emulated Win2000 PC in full screen mode on my 2nd monitor, and it's da bomb for the software development and testing that I do. Just as the current video iPod gave "video" for free on top of the price of the iPod everyone was already buying (hence, not that many people cared that it wasn't widescreen), getting a Windows box for "free" with your elegant, camera-enabled, fast-as-heck Intel iMac is a fantastic bonus. Parallels cosr>
ts a mere $49 ($39 now) too, a big bonus over VMWare.
(I have to say, installing Windows 2000 in the background while playing Unreal Tournament emulated a perfect speed in Rosetta, with 100 bots added for a fun kill-fest, was really enjoyable.)bBy the way, his putzy discussion about not being able to run legacy crap? Come on, if you're buying a new Intel Mac, the chances are you're not trying to hook a 1997-era SCSI scanner up to it. Jeez...
On Mac OS X, it's Mplayer all the way. It's fast, it plays everything without showing errors, and the "press left/right arrows to move 30 secs left or right" feature rules. If it would support dual audio tracks, that would be heaven.
I've lived in Japan for 15 years, and can say that vacation time is actually used now in almost all cases. Not in the case of workaholics, company owners or people who don't like their families, of course, but by and large employees take their time off all the time in Japan.
This is kind of bizarre. Like, 30 minutes ago the Emperor was reorganizing the Republic into the Empire "for a safe and secure society"...
The poster who said "you get what you vote for" was dead on too. I mean, "we" (as in, stupid Americans, including stupid people from Florida) actually chose this???
Anyone remember when going to a pizza restaurant (like, gasp, Shakey's) was cool because they'd have video games there? I remember playing the original Atari Starship (think that's what it was called), and being amazed by the flashy Epilepsy-inducing graphics. Remember Space (two vector ships shooting at each other with a gravity star in the center of the screen). Remember the thrill of walking past a Berzerk machine and having it say "Coin detected in pocket!"
Ah, I'm geeking out here...
I've had this problem too, trying to learn a little more about OS X. I mean, I'm asking how to do a simple thing, and I don't really want to be told to read the MAN page...
Anyway, this is the opposite of what I've found with Mac users, who are usually happy to help, no doubt to help out a user in distress, or (when applicable) to convert a Windows user to the Mac fold. Honestly, I started my company with a Filemaker Pro for Dummies book and the web address for the old Filemaker list server, and between the two, a newbie like me was able to successfully build a real company, making heavy use of free help from helpful people online. It was exactly the right decision for me to make, and I'm very glad, looking back.
Good point. Unfortunately it means we're *&(#'ed in this particular situation. The states should give up ever getting more than $1.27 annually from other states for their coffers, then.
Oh, I'm from America, I just live in another country and can see things from the outside (you should try it sometime). America's system is terrible, and she's bleeding red ink, unwilling to create the taxes that are needed for what needs to be done (fighting wars, operating a functional nation, you know). Since a national sales might might possibly require a constitutional amendment (not sure about that, but income tax did), it's probably a non-starter...but the alternative is, the sales tax issue will always be here, we'll always be rewarded for buying from Amazon rather than the shop down the street, which is not really a good thing, when you think about it. (I mean, I love the Net too and all, but...). At least admit, if there were a single tax rate for the whole country, with no loss to states, it would be reasonable. Seriously. I love America, but it can't seem to do anything right.