If anything, though, that should make it easier for the poster if he changes his mind and decides to put the drive in the case instead of snaking cables out the side. The Rev. A's CD-ROM was just a standard laptop drive, pretty common form factor these days for all sorts of CD flavors (-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD/CDRW, etc.)
Probably the best reference on the 'net for hacking your Mac is xlr8yourmac.com. For your little project, you'll probably want to check out the drive compatibility database. Do a search for "CDRW", "IDE" and "iMac" as computer type -- when I tried it, I got 18 hits from other people who had done something similar to you.
Of course, you didn't indicate whether you have one of the original iMacs or a slot-loading model, but it should be possible in either case.
Boy, I hope you're not in charge of forecasting at your place of employment.
As a Mac user (although not a zealot -- I'll use anything that helps me get my work done... Linux, Win, etc.) I'm always interested in what encourages people to switch platforms, especially those people who have been entrenched in their current selection for many years.
Friends and co-workers who I would have never predicted would buy a Mac are asking my advice on iMacs and the like (and buying them) specifically due to Apple's push into consumer-class DV editing. iMovie, iDVD and DVD burners *are* selling computers, hilariously enough. I never realized how many people own little DV camcorders, even among my friends.
Ironically, as a geek, I really don't see the appeal. But especially for families with small children, video editing really may be the killer app of the next 10 years.
Jeepers, those things are huge. And really ugly. I'm suddenly reminded of why living in a northern climate isn't such a bad thing -- winter kill prevents giant beasties like this from (hopefully) taking residence.
I can't imagine they have many natural enemies (other than coyotes, as mentioned in the article) -- I know I definitely wouldn't want to see the spider big enough to eat one of those monsters. I wonder what has kept their population from exploding like with most insects?
Regardless that this whole question should be marked as -1, Troll, I wonder if the person who asked the question bothered to do even the most basic research at all.
Mac OS X has UNIX at its heart, yes. But on top of that foundation are several proprietary layers (most notably "Aqua," the display-PDF based GUI) that have no equivalent in, for example, Linux. This is what makes OS X different than Yet Another UNIX + Window Manager. The worst part is, this has been covered on Slashdot over and over and over again. Not to mention that the Carbon/Cocoa API's have no equivalent outside of the Mac (Cocoa is BASED on NeXTSTEP, yes, but isn't exactly the same).
Secondly, Office V.X was announced almost a year ago, and has been on sale for a couple months now. Microsoft has indicated that they will no longer be developing Office 2001 (the last version that ran on Mac OS 9, released in 2000) and focusing on development of OS X-only products exclusively (in the Mac market, that is).
Well, they work on IE 5.1 (Mac OS X version of IE), AND they work in OmniWeb, a popular alternative browser for OS X.... which is interesting, since OmniWeb attempts to mimic Netscape 4.7's functionality, not IE.
OS X (10.0.4) runs pretty stealthy on my 867MHz G4 with half a gig of RAM. True, it's not as crisp as plain-old MacOS, but it's not as crufty as the public beta was, that's for sure.
Combined with the speed improvements that are supposedly coming with the 10.1 upgrade, I think any of the current model G4's should be able to run the Aqua UI at a completely usable speed. I'll agree with you, however, that it really pounds any G3-class machine. The iMacs won't be suitable OS X boxen until they have a G4.
Every Mac that has the ADC port also has a standard VGA port. You only have to buy the Apple-branded monitor if you want the features/style/etc. that it offers.
While high speed internet connections and the ability to link up to servers at work is sure convenient, the distinction between "workday" and "my day" seems to be blurring lately. I don't know if I spend all that much more than a standard eight hour day at the office, but I often find myself continuing to work on stuff at home late into the evening... maybe so I *can* only spend eight hours at the office.
Maybe it's because I get a hell of a lot more done at home? The work day has become meetings, face time, hand holding, crisis management, etc. while the evening is "getting shit done" time.
?^H?^p???^??a((b?$?Like it hot. I mean H-O-T. I've done some camping near Santa Fe and have driven south to ABQ a couple times... The other poster is right: best sunsets in the world, and some pretty amazing thunderstorms too. Be sure to spend time outside of the city -- really fantastic scenery and cool archeological/anthropological sites nearby.
I have a feeling you're missing one of the points of going to college in the first place.
Certainly, many job skills important to people in the tech industry are ether self-taught or better learned on the job or in freelance opportunities. But there's an entirely different purpose to higher leaning then just to act as a glorified trade school.
I graduated with a degree only marginally related to my job as a graphic designer and occasional systems tech; most of those skills I learned pursuing lifelong hobbies. What I DID leave college with, however, was a knowledge of words, art, and culture. I absorbed myself in history, sociology and literature courses in an attempt to round out my knowledge and give myself perspective on the world around me and the people I will likely encounter.
Certainly, there's nothing stopping me (or anyone) from going to amazon.com and buying all the classics and history books I can stuff into my virtual shopping cart. But the environment of peer review, discussion and collaboration that a university setting offers, in my opinion, enhances the learning of these subjects and encourages people to develop their opinions and thought processes beyond just as a storehouse of knowledge and facts.
This point doesn't even address the opportunity for people to develop socially in a college environment. Although as a borderline misanthrope, I never really enjoyed that part.:-)
Oh, I don't know... Fancy, converted warehouse space with exposed brick, cathedral ceilings and micro-teeny, impossibly bright halogen bulbs everywhere certainly looks very cool, but nothing aids my productivity better than a nice, solid, slammable *DOOR* and *WINDOWS THAT OPEN*.
Where I work, the office space is ridiculously spartan and cheap, and yet is perfectly functional: Think random 1970's dentist office architecture with lots of little offices and a large central "waiting room"-style common area with fridges, a large countertop, etc.; ancient, solid-metal government surplus desks (LOTS of drawers and pull-out work surfaces!), dozens of $30 Office Depot desk lamps and torchieres (we removed probably three quarters of the flourescent tubes from the overhead fixtures because everyone hated them so much)... and WINDOWS THAT OPEN! Oh sweet Mary. I'd die locked up in one of those solid-glass phaluses downtown.
Privacy and fresh air. The rest is just eye candy.
Aladdin's Castle! We had a couple of those in shopping malls here (Madison, WI.) I remember you could rent them out for birthday parties after the mall closed on weekends. What a blast! A couple dozen desperately over-sugared kids, wide-eyed and punch-drunk with unlimited tokens for an hour. Mmm... tokens.
One of them closed a few years back, but the other is still there, same place in the same mall. It's a lot different now, though: Bigger, with more games of chance -- skeeball, etc. -- which makes it feel more like a Chuck-E-Cheese than an arcade. The video games they have are all the "Kung Fu Kill Death Maim Axe Blood Fight DIE DIE DIE!!" variety anyway. Not a single "classic" to be found. All the other arcades in town have closed. Sad.
Let me just assure all of you that when the Onion Media Empire eventually expands to absorb VA Linux/Andover/Slashdot and Mr. Taco and his associates are positively swimming in the lucre of multi-merger mania, we will insist -- nay, demand! -- that they uphold the same strict standards of journalistic integrity, impartiality and morality that have guided the operations of Slashdot to this very day.
And I think most of my coworkers would agree with you, LB. It's by choice that we put the adults-only disclaimer at the top of our home page, not because of demands from our bandwidth provider or anyone else. At the risk of sounding like a tobacco company, we realize our product is for adults only and attempt to target that audience exclusively.
The original point of my comment (as poorly made is it was) was more or less an astonishment that SurfWatch saw fit to block us in multiple categories, a designation usually reserved for the net's worst examples of filth.
A couple years ago, a good friend of mine worked at Spyglass, the part company of SurfWatch. Part of her job was spent endlessly surfing the web, checking out suspect URLs for inclusion in the SurfWatch database.
I remember she called me all excited one day... they'd gotten a request from a SurfWatch user to block our site (www.theonion.com). Sensing her inability to make an impartial judgement, my friend passed the request along to her supervisor who reviewed the site and promptly ordered it blocked it in THREE out of the four top level SurfWatch categories! (I believe "gambling" was the only commandment we didn't desecrate). It appears running a "satire" publication places you among the soiled, feculent ranks of hardcore pope abusers and distributors of goat porn.
We didn't know whether to celebrate our dubious achievement or shake our heads in wonder.
I was going to post a message stating a lot of the same points you did... I think your way of looking at this question is right on.
We (www.theonion.com) have co-located our ever-growing herd of servers at a local, medium-sized ISP ever since the inception of our on-line presence in 1996. They're small enough that we're among their largest customers (our site traffic is similar to Slashdot's), but large enough to have the finances and resources to accommodate our ever increasing needs.
Perhaps the best advantage to choosing a "medium" sized local ISP, however, is that my staff and I have been able to develop a close relationship with the actual sysadmins and network geeks that are paid to watch our boxes. We take them out to lunch, send over free boxes of stuff every once in a while... anything we can do to keep us foremost in their minds and attentive to our ever-growing needs. This way, when we DO have some sort of crisis, I know I can call someone at home on or on a private cell line and get immediate attention, rather than wading through a service department phone tree and hoping someone's around at 11pm on a Sunday night.
You're right! And I'm an idiot for relying on my memory to recall what platforms MESS supports. My other mistake was to say there's a WIN32 version. There's none (yet).
Now when my home is overrun by all my loser friends on movie night, I can force 'em to rent those crappy plastic headphones ("Sanitized for your comfort...") and make a handy, airline-style profit!
By downloading illegally-distributed music in MP3 format, I may be forced to watch to harrowing scenes of pert-breasted, small-nosed, ripe, nubile teenaged nymphettes, engaged in delightfully vigorous acts of coitus, all in the comfort of my office, server closet or budoir?
Once again, for clarity -- this is a problem... how?
I'm also glad to see Apple listened, but as to your comment "I doubted they could really be stupid enough to pull a stunt like that..." Some of us have been here before.
Around April of this year (I think? Maybe earlier...) Apple issued a bug fix/maintenance release of their AppleShareIP small office file/web/mail/print server suite (version 6.2). These maintenance releases had always been free, until this one which they wanted $499 for.
Needless to say, a lot of us Apple admins bitched very loudly. Within a week, they had done a similar reversal and the update became free for all of us that had 6.0 or 6.1. A much more equitable solution.
I'm glad Apple did the right thing with the G4 processor squeeze and I remain that most rare of slashdotters, a relatively content Apple user:-). But I'm sensing a trend here of testing customers and pulling back only if it looks like the water's too cold.
Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain. The Apple Store will honor existing orders for the previous configurations at the previous prices. People who ordered the G4/500 model that cannot be produced due to Motorola's production issues, will be offered a choice of the original G4/450 configuration at the original price or a discount on their G4/500 configuration, as if it had been ordered custom-built with a 450-MHz processor selected. Once Motorola production has ramped up to the level that Apple expected - anticipated to take an extra three months or so - processor speeds should again rise to the level initially announced. (Answering another question among readers, IBM will be manufacturing the same G4 currently produced by Motorola, with AltiVec functions included.)
...which is EXACTLY what Apple should've done in the first place. Do we offer half-credit for making the right decision 24 hours later?
Slashdot Mirror
If anything, though, that should make it easier for the poster if he changes his mind and decides to put the drive in the case instead of snaking cables out the side. The Rev. A's CD-ROM was just a standard laptop drive, pretty common form factor these days for all sorts of CD flavors (-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD/CDRW, etc.)
-A.
Of course, you didn't indicate whether you have one of the original iMacs or a slot-loading model, but it should be possible in either case.
Good luck!
-A.
Boy, I hope you're not in charge of forecasting at your place of employment.
As a Mac user (although not a zealot -- I'll use anything that helps me get my work done... Linux, Win, etc.) I'm always interested in what encourages people to switch platforms, especially those people who have been entrenched in their current selection for many years.
Friends and co-workers who I would have never predicted would buy a Mac are asking my advice on iMacs and the like (and buying them) specifically due to Apple's push into consumer-class DV editing. iMovie, iDVD and DVD burners *are* selling computers, hilariously enough. I never realized how many people own little DV camcorders, even among my friends.
Ironically, as a geek, I really don't see the appeal. But especially for families with small children, video editing really may be the killer app of the next 10 years.
-A.
Jeepers, those things are huge. And really ugly. I'm suddenly reminded of why living in a northern climate isn't such a bad thing -- winter kill prevents giant beasties like this from (hopefully) taking residence.
I can't imagine they have many natural enemies (other than coyotes, as mentioned in the article) -- I know I definitely wouldn't want to see the spider big enough to eat one of those monsters. I wonder what has kept their population from exploding like with most insects?
-A.
Regardless that this whole question should be marked as -1, Troll, I wonder if the person who asked the question bothered to do even the most basic research at all.
Mac OS X has UNIX at its heart, yes. But on top of that foundation are several proprietary layers (most notably "Aqua," the display-PDF based GUI) that have no equivalent in, for example, Linux. This is what makes OS X different than Yet Another UNIX + Window Manager. The worst part is, this has been covered on Slashdot over and over and over again. Not to mention that the Carbon/Cocoa API's have no equivalent outside of the Mac (Cocoa is BASED on NeXTSTEP, yes, but isn't exactly the same).
Secondly, Office V.X was announced almost a year ago, and has been on sale for a couple months now. Microsoft has indicated that they will no longer be developing Office 2001 (the last version that ran on Mac OS 9, released in 2000) and focusing on development of OS X-only products exclusively (in the Mac market, that is).
-A.
Well, they work on IE 5.1 (Mac OS X version of IE), AND they work in OmniWeb, a popular alternative browser for OS X.... which is interesting, since OmniWeb attempts to mimic Netscape 4.7's functionality, not IE.
-A.
OS X (10.0.4) runs pretty stealthy on my 867MHz G4 with half a gig of RAM. True, it's not as crisp as plain-old MacOS, but it's not as crufty as the public beta was, that's for sure.
Combined with the speed improvements that are supposedly coming with the 10.1 upgrade, I think any of the current model G4's should be able to run the Aqua UI at a completely usable speed. I'll agree with you, however, that it really pounds any G3-class machine. The iMacs won't be suitable OS X boxen until they have a G4.
-A.
I'd almost forgotten about Syquest. I still have one of those giant 44MB 5.25" cartridges around here somewhere...
-A.
Every Mac that has the ADC port also has a standard VGA port. You only have to buy the Apple-branded monitor if you want the features/style/etc. that it offers.
-A.
While high speed internet connections and the ability to link up to servers at work is sure convenient, the distinction between "workday" and "my day" seems to be blurring lately. I don't know if I spend all that much more than a standard eight hour day at the office, but I often find myself continuing to work on stuff at home late into the evening... maybe so I *can* only spend eight hours at the office.
Maybe it's because I get a hell of a lot more done at home? The work day has become meetings, face time, hand holding, crisis management, etc. while the evening is "getting shit done" time.
-A.
?^H?^p???^??a((b?$?Like it hot. I mean H-O-T. I've done some camping near Santa Fe and have driven south to ABQ a couple times... The other poster is right: best sunsets in the world, and some pretty amazing thunderstorms too. Be sure to spend time outside of the city -- really fantastic scenery and cool archeological/anthropological sites nearby.
-A.
I have a feeling you're missing one of the points of going to college in the first place.
:-)
Certainly, many job skills important to people in the tech industry are ether self-taught or better learned on the job or in freelance opportunities. But there's an entirely different purpose to higher leaning then just to act as a glorified trade school.
I graduated with a degree only marginally related to my job as a graphic designer and occasional systems tech; most of those skills I learned pursuing lifelong hobbies. What I DID leave college with, however, was a knowledge of words, art, and culture. I absorbed myself in history, sociology and literature courses in an attempt to round out my knowledge and give myself perspective on the world around me and the people I will likely encounter.
Certainly, there's nothing stopping me (or anyone) from going to amazon.com and buying all the classics and history books I can stuff into my virtual shopping cart. But the environment of peer review, discussion and collaboration that a university setting offers, in my opinion, enhances the learning of these subjects and encourages people to develop their opinions and thought processes beyond just as a storehouse of knowledge and facts.
This point doesn't even address the opportunity for people to develop socially in a college environment. Although as a borderline misanthrope, I never really enjoyed that part.
-A.
---
Oh, I don't know... Fancy, converted warehouse space with exposed brick, cathedral ceilings and micro-teeny, impossibly bright halogen bulbs everywhere certainly looks very cool, but nothing aids my productivity better than a nice, solid, slammable *DOOR* and *WINDOWS THAT OPEN*.
... and WINDOWS THAT OPEN! Oh sweet Mary. I'd die locked up in one of those solid-glass phaluses downtown.
Where I work, the office space is ridiculously spartan and cheap, and yet is perfectly functional: Think random 1970's dentist office architecture with lots of little offices and a large central "waiting room"-style common area with fridges, a large countertop, etc.; ancient, solid-metal government surplus desks (LOTS of drawers and pull-out work surfaces!), dozens of $30 Office Depot desk lamps and torchieres (we removed probably three quarters of the flourescent tubes from the overhead fixtures because everyone hated them so much)
Privacy and fresh air. The rest is just eye candy.
-A.
---
Aladdin's Castle! We had a couple of those in shopping malls here (Madison, WI.) I remember you could rent them out for birthday parties after the mall closed on weekends. What a blast! A couple dozen desperately over-sugared kids, wide-eyed and punch-drunk with unlimited tokens for an hour. Mmm... tokens.
One of them closed a few years back, but the other is still there, same place in the same mall. It's a lot different now, though: Bigger, with more games of chance -- skeeball, etc. -- which makes it feel more like a Chuck-E-Cheese than an arcade. The video games they have are all the "Kung Fu Kill Death Maim Axe Blood Fight DIE DIE DIE!!" variety anyway. Not a single "classic" to be found. All the other arcades in town have closed. Sad.
-A.
---
Let me just assure all of you that when the Onion Media Empire eventually expands to absorb VA Linux/Andover/Slashdot and Mr. Taco and his associates are positively swimming in the lucre of multi-merger mania, we will insist -- nay, demand! -- that they uphold the same strict standards of journalistic integrity, impartiality and morality that have guided the operations of Slashdot to this very day.
-A.
---
And I think most of my coworkers would agree with you, LB. It's by choice that we put the adults-only disclaimer at the top of our home page, not because of demands from our bandwidth provider or anyone else. At the risk of sounding like a tobacco company, we realize our product is for adults only and attempt to target that audience exclusively.
The original point of my comment (as poorly made is it was) was more or less an astonishment that SurfWatch saw fit to block us in multiple categories, a designation usually reserved for the net's worst examples of filth.
-A.
A couple years ago, a good friend of mine worked at Spyglass, the part company of SurfWatch. Part of her job was spent endlessly surfing the web, checking out suspect URLs for inclusion in the SurfWatch database.
I remember she called me all excited one day... they'd gotten a request from a SurfWatch user to block our site (www.theonion.com). Sensing her inability to make an impartial judgement, my friend passed the request along to her supervisor who reviewed the site and promptly ordered it blocked it in THREE out of the four top level SurfWatch categories! (I believe "gambling" was the only commandment we didn't desecrate). It appears running a "satire" publication places you among the soiled, feculent ranks of hardcore pope abusers and distributors of goat porn.
We didn't know whether to celebrate our dubious achievement or shake our heads in wonder.
The world is insane.
-A.
I was going to post a message stating a lot of the same points you did... I think your way of looking at this question is right on.
We (www.theonion.com) have co-located our ever-growing herd of servers at a local, medium-sized ISP ever since the inception of our on-line presence in 1996. They're small enough that we're among their largest customers (our site traffic is similar to Slashdot's), but large enough to have the finances and resources to accommodate our ever increasing needs.
Perhaps the best advantage to choosing a "medium" sized local ISP, however, is that my staff and I have been able to develop a close relationship with the actual sysadmins and network geeks that are paid to watch our boxes. We take them out to lunch, send over free boxes of stuff every once in a while... anything we can do to keep us foremost in their minds and attentive to our ever-growing needs. This way, when we DO have some sort of crisis, I know I can call someone at home on or on a private cell line and get immediate attention, rather than wading through a service department phone tree and hoping someone's around at 11pm on a Sunday night.
-A.
----
You're right! And I'm an idiot for relying on my memory to recall what platforms MESS supports. My other mistake was to say there's a WIN32 version. There's none (yet).
:-)
Not that it matters.
-A.
---
The long-neglected (but recently renewed!) MESS emulator, little sister to MAME, also emulates a PDP-1 and Spacewar.
Executables and source are available for Mac, DOS, Windows and some Unix flavors, I believe.
Check it out: http://mess.emuverse.com
-A.
---
Oh, this is awesome!
Now when my home is overrun by all my loser friends on movie night, I can force 'em to rent those crappy plastic headphones ("Sanitized for your comfort...") and make a handy, airline-style profit!
Thanks, Slashdot!
-A.
Let me get this straight.
By downloading illegally-distributed music in MP3 format, I may be forced to watch to harrowing scenes of pert-breasted, small-nosed, ripe, nubile teenaged nymphettes, engaged in delightfully vigorous acts of coitus, all in the comfort of my office, server closet or budoir?
Once again, for clarity -- this is a problem... how?
(IT'S A JOKE, relax.)
-A.
----
I'm also glad to see Apple listened, but as to your comment "I doubted they could really be stupid enough to pull a stunt like that..." Some of us have been here before.
:-). But I'm sensing a trend here of testing customers and pulling back only if it looks like the water's too cold.
Around April of this year (I think? Maybe earlier...) Apple issued a bug fix/maintenance release of their AppleShareIP small office file/web/mail/print server suite (version 6.2). These maintenance releases had always been free, until this one which they wanted $499 for.
Needless to say, a lot of us Apple admins bitched very loudly. Within a week, they had done a similar reversal and the update became free for all of us that had 6.0 or 6.1. A much more equitable solution.
I'm glad Apple did the right thing with the G4 processor squeeze and I remain that most rare of slashdotters, a relatively content Apple user
-A.
From Macintouch:
Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain. The Apple Store will honor existing orders for the previous configurations at the previous prices. People who ordered the G4/500 model that cannot be produced due to Motorola's production issues, will be offered a choice of the original G4/450 configuration at the original price or a discount on their G4/500 configuration, as if it had been ordered custom-built with a 450-MHz processor selected. Once Motorola production has ramped up to the level that Apple expected - anticipated to take an extra three months or so - processor speeds should again rise to the level initially announced. (Answering another question among readers, IBM will be manufacturing the same G4 currently produced by Motorola, with AltiVec functions included.)
...which is EXACTLY what Apple should've done in the first place. Do we offer half-credit for making the right decision 24 hours later?
-A.