Warp drive doesn't isolate the ship from surrounding space (it isn't really an Alcubierre-type drive but a "grab a wet soap bar and press until it shoots out your grip" drive, with extra apparent mass reduction effects), so the deflector beam must be active while at warp, as the warp bubble is permeable to external matter.
The "Star Trek The Next Generation" guys, when doing the series' bible and the "science" behind the show, certainly did a good job at spotting the most obvious issues and formulating adequate treknobabble. That ST:TNG Technical Manual is a delight for science fiction aficionados.
One problem with any scientist or science journalist that tries to har har at the series is that the people doing it had some scientific knowledge or knew who to consult. Of course, Trek's science is pants, mostly, but they acknowledge its problems even if just by plugging the holes with some dandy buzzword.
So, anyway, there we go: the show's version of Warp Drive implies that the "subspace" bubble that propulsively distorts spacetime and also lowers the apparent mass of the ship to avoid a relativistic snafu is permeable to external particles in the way. So the navigational deflector pushes them out of the way or, if too big, the ship alters course and avoids them. That has been so since the original series.
About the Bussard Ramscoops: they are there to collect interestellar hydrogen but they are not Bussard Ramjet engines at all. The idea is to collect matter and feed part of it into a matter-to-antimatter converter. Its efficiency is terrible, but as a M/AM reaction is the only means to feed the warp engines, the ramscoops are the only way to collect fuel if you run out of antihydrogen and have not enough hidrogen left to convert (one can imagine lots of nitpicks here, but…).
I think they have never been used as intended in the show, really, but they have been featured here and there as some means to escape some tricky situations.
I love technology-fiction, and I collect spacedrives as others do coins or stamps. I also happen to not have a life, sad anorak that I am.
Go visit any artistic forum (2D, 3D, music, etc.) and check their Mac vs. PC statistivs: you'll see people producing incredible art without a Mac and without problems.
And, anyway, the iPad isn't a Mac and lacks its flexibility.
(after a couple of decades being a Mac user and owner, one develops RDF inmunity. Frustrations are a great vaccine)
"…because 64-bit operation is the default modus operandi under Snow Leopard…"
What do you mean by that, exactly? As far as I know, Snow Leopard behaves just like Leopard, supporting 32bit and 64bit apps. Also, for now it defaults to booting in 32bit kernel mode.
If it is a true update disc, that's what will happen. But most retail editions of OS X are full installers that don't demand any previous OS install to exist, and the last known "update disc" (Snow Leopard) happened to be a full installer too.
Our current Leftoid government is a master at throwing this kind of moral outrage silliness targets to its Rightish opposition, so that it does its usual foaming mouth act and gets both distracted and painted as retrograde. Abortion law reform, euthanasia, etc., now this. Please don't see it as another idiotic act from government: the dosage is too precisely measured. You could argue good reasons behind every initiative of those, but they usually are all too well designed to push the Right's right buttons. It doesn't help that the Right has too many of those, plus its eagerness to froth at the mouth whatever the real level of offense.
Yes, being a Spaniard IS fun these days.
The manual, by the way, is a simple sexuality Q&A guide covering everything from masturbation to peer pressure, A bit disorganized and faux-hip, but nothing to worry about.
Because the shuttle was and is a bad idea: its cargo capability is not that great,its dead weight wings don't contribute lift during ascent, its placement in the stack produces off-axis loads, subjects it to fuel tank pieces impacts and makes emergency separations problematic, uses uncontrollable solid fuel rockets, and above all, has a deadly track record.
Getting a heavy loads launcher is more interesting and flexible, I think.
This is mostly spacebattles-related, though it covers the physics of laser weapons quite well, including all the little things that make them so complicated, expensive and rather inefficient. Some USAF laser-turret Jumbo data there, too.
"...Linux would do well to copy where Apple have gone, as a massive amount of research and development has gone into, what many consider to be, the best Desktop experience bar none..."
That could be said of Apple during the classic Mac OS era: they had an Humane Interface Group doung actual UI development and testing back then. Nowadays, OS X' desktop is a mess, with lots of glitzy things band-aiding the user experience.
Well, no: we kill them for "art" and manliness' sake.
And half of us would like this idiocy prohibited, because of what it says about us. Also, we've had seven deaths, including a minor's, quite recently. We crucify driving under the influence but then when an idiot gets trampled by a bull we homage him and declare a birthplace-wide mourning day. Pure Darwin Awards material.
"...On one hand, she was a practicing Muslim following Muslim law, and knew that drinking alcohol was illegal. She knew full well that she would be tried as a Muslim if caught..."
One could argue that she has no choice but be a practicing Muslim, or else.
And, law-wise, how do international laws work in a case such as this?
Spotlight, as a Search anything, is horrible enough on the desktop (try doing a semicomplex query, have fun). As an Internet Search Engine it surely would run afoul of the Geneva Convention (and the Helvetica Treaty, and the Frutiger Accord, the Dingbats Flashmob and...)
Weeeellll... First of all, no, we don't go abuse-happy at nobody unless, one, we know each other enough to understand we are being a bit playful or brash and all is in good humor, or two, we are reeeeally furious.
Also, in context, many brutal pejoratives express admiration, actually: "de puta madre", "el puto amo", "de cojones", etc ("puto" this and "puta" that, although the term is the short and brutal for "prostitute", would translate better as "fucking" this or that).
It is not that different to swearing in English, really, and the same rules apply: you don't even try unless the context allows it or you are about to bust a blood vessel in ire.
Add to the ugly the fact that Apple's OpenCL implementation supports lots of nVidia GPUs but just two recent ATI models, so most "best" Mac configurations are unsupported, including many of the towers. First gen Mac Pros have no officially supported upgrade paths (there is some ATI card which has 32/64bit EFI support and has been tested to run well on these). Several one year or less Mac models are out of the equation, too. There's been no clarification about the possibility of more drivers becoming available later or this being it.
The same goes for hardware-accelerated h.264 decoding: nVidia-only.
After seeing that documentary in which a well-endowed girl told her all too laughing girlfriends "ok, now just put this couple of weighted sacks over yours all day and we'll see how you enjoy your lower back pain", I get her point.
What bad press? The "it has a web browser so your child inevitably can surf extreme porn sites" or the "it has access to Project Gutemberg so your boy could, you know, read a book now and then, if he or you pay for the relevant iPhone application"?
For a long while Apple iBooks had hardware able to do extended desktops over two monitors but no firmware to allow it: desktop mirroring only... until some guy distributed the required enabler hack.
"By Michael Hawkes Posted Tuesday 5th May 2009 15:25 GMT
Reading the article, it reminded me of Orwell, Big Brother, and 1984, then I remembered the commercial Apple used to launch the Macintosh. Have they become what they once mocked?"
That TV spot was just a fine product of their Ministry of Truth, actually, announcing openness by selling a completely closed product (at the time), the antithesis of the Apple II.
Remember that incoherence in a commie dictatorship is not a byproduct: it is a requirement and a tool. Hence Apple's policies :D
Should we factor hackintoshing into the equation? I would make things far funnier. For all my MacMartyrdom (to avoid WinMartyrdom: to each one their own) rants, I know there is a MacBook Mini (EeeMac, Macspire, Makoya, Macsung or whatever, specially if the geeks manage to hack an Ion-based one) in my future. :D
What about them having to build their special Time Capsule thingy because of Time Machine's inability to do backups to plain network Volumes (as first promised) without data losses?
Just to remind people that Apple doesn't know the innards of their own products well enough to avoid having them glitch all over the place during their first year and a half of life. Every two laptop and iMac generations we have the ittle dance that usually ends with a Class Action Suit. Ever heard of the "wait for the Rev. 2" mantra among us sadomacs? Also, lately, many of the security updates and such it releases as a torrent upon us have some idiot mistake that forces them to issue a v.2 of these patchs, which is hilarious except that not it isn't.
Well, I'd add AppleCare (because Mac repair prices usually are astronomical, and while some Masc are solid as tanks, others are a tragedy), I'd configure a four-core tower with a non-Xeon part to compare with the low-range Mac Pro, I'd completely ignore Mac box aesthetics (yes, they are nice, but I'd rather have the ability to install hard disks in trays that I can extract from the front without having to open the case if I choose so, even hot-swap them if I'd like to), and I'd stop doing the stupid utilitarian vs. Rolls Royce dance, because you can be as Unibody, Titanium or whatever as you want and then give me worse WIFI reception, crappy proprietary connectors AGAIN (yes, they are sharing their miniDisplayPort tech, but nobody wanted it in the first place) and killing their own tech they convinced us to embrace.
Oh, add to that paying that yearly and a half OS X update... er... subscription?
I am a Mac user since the Classic years (and an Apple IIe user before that). Of course there has always been an Apple Premium, and of course part of it is paying for whatever they decide coolness means this or that year. Do you think the Unibody tech is about using a better part? No, it is about desperately looking for something to hook us with this time. If they were about giving us better components they wouldn't have dared to offer Combo drives for so many years, let's not talk about the supercrappy DVD writer my Mac Pro has, its noxious smells (yes, I have ono of those) or rhe lack of GPU variety.
That the OS is the best of the worst that there is out there I get: Windows can be abysmal, but that doesn't mean OS X isn't an utter mess user experience-wise and that we accept it as the Holy Blah because our expectations have become so incredibly low. That's the only reason I accept paying the premium.
(And why do you always compare things with Dell's? As much as Microsoft and others like to show their high price friends in their ads, most people can get hardware that runs circles around Apple's at Mom&Pop PCs or a big store with decent components, which is the thing to watch when one considers desktop deals)
(Horned Jobs because the RDF wore off decades ago)
Which is double plus idiotic in such a DTV production box. You can do BD-Video authoring through some apps from Adobe and Roxio, but you won't be able to test your titles on it.
(Devilish Jobs because I like being a Mac heretic, too many years of RDF exposure for it to work anymore)
Actually, you don't need 64bitness to take advantage of all these cores: Adobe After Effects, Modo, Electricimage and other 32bit apps get to use them all (by multithreading, by spawning renderer processes, by farming the output of several duplicates of the app, etc.).
Some of these are an interesting read: NeXTStep greybeards cursing all the Macintosh crap their beloved OS has adquired in its way to OS X Leotard. Their angle is not quite that well aimed, current user-base needs-wise, but there really are monsters in dark places.
They always did, since the Apple II days. Floppies, CDs, those Hotline/Carracho sites, p2p... I wonder where this idea of mac user sanctity ever came from.
Jobs, because he wants us to pirate iWork's serials so that we buy those doc sharing services they are betatesting.
UI-wise, I fervently hope that things don't go Pro Apps-like: these are rather terrible things: I work with them daily, and the last time they rethought them (Logic Pro) they seemed like a bad (really bad) imitation of Adobe After Effects' (which is reallly neat in its flexibility).
But, anyway: I liked Aqua. I liked having some sense of fun, even if it was quite disorganized. Nowadays Apple is all about sleek and sobriety and zen and... something has been lost, a certain sense of fun.
Plus, anyway, the problem is not in the widgets but the functionality, simple things like not having an unified windows and panes resizing widgets, rollover effects, grabbing area, etc.; unified keyboard shortcuts for progress palettes in apps; Spotlight field defaults; etc. It is a mess. Plus some ineffectual eyecandy that needs rethinking to live up to its potential.
That they have gotten to make it run decently on netbooks suggests that it could be a nice one, actually.
(I saw some interview to some Microsoft engineer explaining what the inner tweaks were, and I was left with the impression that this is going to be quite parallel to the initial release of OS X vs. OS X Panther, from stinkish to quite fine)
Next they'll start hunting us with their high pressure tanks with remote-controlled flying tentacles invading the coasts. Wait until they sink our nuclear subs and use the fissibles to heat the Poles and drown us all.
Microsoft only has to wait for the OpenCL gang to port it to Windows (after all, where do all these guys hope to run their mighty OpenCL thingies on? Macs and Unix/Linux only?). Meanwhile, they'll deploy their own solution as planned (I am under the impression that Ms made some GPGPU noises well before OpenCL was ever mentioned). So there, no problems no Microsoft is dying nonsense.
Samsung UN55B8000 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
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Samsung UN55B8500 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
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68 posts • joined Saturday 10th February 2007 12:52 GMT
Page:
snafu
What about Human Rights? → #
Posted Monday 8th March 2010 14:12 GMT
In Bing shies away from gay-as-day search results in Arab countries
Shouldn't they supersede any non-compliant national law?
snafu
A couple of things → #
Posted Friday 26th February 2010 11:20 GMT
In Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you
Warp drive doesn't isolate the ship from surrounding space (it isn't really an Alcubierre-type drive but a "grab a wet soap bar and press until it shoots out your grip" drive, with extra apparent mass reduction effects), so the deflector beam must be active while at warp, as the warp bubble is permeable to external matter.
Shields are gravity-based instead of magnetic.
I love nerding.
snafu
…it is proven → #
Posted Saturday 20th February 2010 20:25 GMT
In Google (finally) nabs On2 video codecs
On2 codecs are already in commercial use, some of them are comparable to h.264 and so on.
snafu
Actually... → # ↑
Posted Saturday 20th February 2010 04:43 GMT
In iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare
…CS5 moves several apps to Cocoa to get 64 bits. They would have done that sooner hadn't Apple produced and then cancelled Carbon 64.
snafu
Bussard Ramscoops but no Bussard Ramjets → #
Posted Thursday 18th February 2010 01:09 GMT
In Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you
The "Star Trek The Next Generation" guys, when doing the series' bible and the "science" behind the show, certainly did a good job at spotting the most obvious issues and formulating adequate treknobabble. That ST:TNG Technical Manual is a delight for science fiction aficionados.
One problem with any scientist or science journalist that tries to har har at the series is that the people doing it had some scientific knowledge or knew who to consult. Of course, Trek's science is pants, mostly, but they acknowledge its problems even if just by plugging the holes with some dandy buzzword.
So, anyway, there we go: the show's version of Warp Drive implies that the "subspace" bubble that propulsively distorts spacetime and also lowers the apparent mass of the ship to avoid a relativistic snafu is permeable to external particles in the way. So the navigational deflector pushes them out of the way or, if too big, the ship alters course and avoids them. That has been so since the original series.
About the Bussard Ramscoops: they are there to collect interestellar hydrogen but they are not Bussard Ramjet engines at all. The idea is to collect matter and feed part of it into a matter-to-antimatter converter. Its efficiency is terrible, but as a M/AM reaction is the only means to feed the warp engines, the ramscoops are the only way to collect fuel if you run out of antihydrogen and have not enough hidrogen left to convert (one can imagine lots of nitpicks here, but…).
I think they have never been used as intended in the show, really, but they have been featured here and there as some means to escape some tricky situations.
I love technology-fiction, and I collect spacedrives as others do coins or stamps. I also happen to not have a life, sad anorak that I am.
snafu
Adobe's own take on Apple's Aperture → #
Posted Thursday 11th February 2010 14:09 GMT
In Apple bets on Mac-only photo land grab with Aperture 3
"Instead, Apple pushed out its own take on Adobe’s Lightroom - Aperture 3"
Wouldn't that be the other way round? Aperture was first to market by a decent margin.
snafu
No Ogg → # ↑
Posted Thursday 28th January 2010 10:40 GMT
In Apple iPad spanked with Defective by Design protest
No, it won't. Neither Ogg nor FLAC, AVI, MKV, etc. Just as format-starved as the iPhone.
snafu
Kill that myth right now → # ↑
Posted Thursday 28th January 2010 10:40 GMT
In Apple iPad spanked with Defective by Design protest
Go visit any artistic forum (2D, 3D, music, etc.) and check their Mac vs. PC statistivs: you'll see people producing incredible art without a Mac and without problems.
And, anyway, the iPad isn't a Mac and lacks its flexibility.
(after a couple of decades being a Mac user and owner, one develops RDF inmunity. Frustrations are a great vaccine)
snafu
iSoma → #
Posted Friday 1st January 2010 20:19 GMT
In Welcome to the out-of-control decade
Apple's model isn't Orwellian but Huxleyan, actually.
snafu
"64bit operation is the default modus operandi" → #
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 20:44 GMT
In A New Year's call to Apple: publish and be damned
"…because 64-bit operation is the default modus operandi under Snow Leopard…"
What do you mean by that, exactly? As far as I know, Snow Leopard behaves just like Leopard, supporting 32bit and 64bit apps. Also, for now it defaults to booting in 32bit kernel mode.
snafu
actually... → # ↑
Posted Friday 4th December 2009 23:10 GMT
In Attack exploits just-patched Mac security bug
Not quite: historically, Apple has lagged behind everybody else Java updates-wise.
snafu
Sounds like FUN → #
Posted Wednesday 18th November 2009 14:11 GMT
In US Navy electromagnetic mass-driver commences tests
Is that picture available in HiRes somewhere? All those guys and gal look like having great fun.
snafu
Yes, but… → #
Posted Monday 16th November 2009 14:18 GMT
In Apple wins attack of the clones
If it is a true update disc, that's what will happen. But most retail editions of OS X are full installers that don't demand any previous OS install to exist, and the last known "update disc" (Snow Leopard) happened to be a full installer too.
snafu
Ant they fall for it… again → #
Posted Saturday 14th November 2009 14:51 GMT
In Spanish region teaches kids how to crack one off
Our current Leftoid government is a master at throwing this kind of moral outrage silliness targets to its Rightish opposition, so that it does its usual foaming mouth act and gets both distracted and painted as retrograde. Abortion law reform, euthanasia, etc., now this. Please don't see it as another idiotic act from government: the dosage is too precisely measured. You could argue good reasons behind every initiative of those, but they usually are all too well designed to push the Right's right buttons. It doesn't help that the Right has too many of those, plus its eagerness to froth at the mouth whatever the real level of offense.
Yes, being a Spaniard IS fun these days.
The manual, by the way, is a simple sexuality Q&A guide covering everything from masturbation to peer pressure, A bit disorganized and faux-hip, but nothing to worry about.
snafu
Mushroom mushroom → #
Posted Thursday 5th November 2009 14:09 GMT
In Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber
You KNOW what happens if badgers take up residence.
snafu
Call Emmerich! → #
Posted Tuesday 3rd November 2009 20:46 GMT
In Volcanic African 'unzipping' could see continent divided
He knows how to sex this up. "Crack in the World" remake, anyone?
snafu
Shuttle → #
Posted Monday 26th October 2009 10:37 GMT
In Ares I: What's the point?
Because the shuttle was and is a bad idea: its cargo capability is not that great,its dead weight wings don't contribute lift during ascent, its placement in the stack produces off-axis loads, subjects it to fuel tank pieces impacts and makes emergency separations problematic, uses uncontrollable solid fuel rockets, and above all, has a deadly track record.
Getting a heavy loads launcher is more interesting and flexible, I think.
snafu
Women are from Mars → #
Posted Tuesday 20th October 2009 00:21 GMT
In Neanderthal woman could whup Schwarzenegger
Klingon women… mmmm…
snafu
flash-fried food for thought → #
Posted Friday 2nd October 2009 23:21 GMT
In US spontaneous human combustion raygun video released
This is mostly spacebattles-related, though it covers the physics of laser weapons quite well, including all the little things that make them so complicated, expensive and rather inefficient. Some USAF laser-turret Jumbo data there, too.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#laser
(an excellent site, really)
snafu
Apple's → #
Posted Friday 28th August 2009 14:48 GMT
In Linux guru: interface innovation is the challenge
"...Linux would do well to copy where Apple have gone, as a massive amount of research and development has gone into, what many consider to be, the best Desktop experience bar none..."
That could be said of Apple during the classic Mac OS era: they had an Humane Interface Group doung actual UI development and testing back then. Nowadays, OS X' desktop is a mess, with lots of glitzy things band-aiding the user experience.
snafu
Bull → #
Posted Friday 21st August 2009 14:52 GMT
In Beer drinking model to get caned in Malaysia
'...Spain - They kill bulls for "sport..."'
Well, no: we kill them for "art" and manliness' sake.
And half of us would like this idiocy prohibited, because of what it says about us. Also, we've had seven deaths, including a minor's, quite recently. We crucify driving under the influence but then when an idiot gets trampled by a bull we homage him and declare a birthplace-wide mourning day. Pure Darwin Awards material.
snafu
Being Muslim → #
Posted Friday 21st August 2009 00:03 GMT
In Beer drinking model to get caned in Malaysia
"...On one hand, she was a practicing Muslim following Muslim law, and knew that drinking alcohol was illegal. She knew full well that she would be tried as a Muslim if caught..."
One could argue that she has no choice but be a practicing Muslim, or else.
And, law-wise, how do international laws work in a case such as this?
snafu
Noooo!!! → #
Posted Tuesday 4th August 2009 22:27 GMT
In Is Apple plotting a search of its own?
Spotlight, as a Search anything, is horrible enough on the desktop (try doing a semicomplex query, have fun). As an Internet Search Engine it surely would run afoul of the Geneva Convention (and the Helvetica Treaty, and the Frutiger Accord, the Dingbats Flashmob and...)
snafu
Actually... → #
Posted Saturday 20th June 2009 15:03 GMT
In Spanish bar invites customer abuse
Weeeellll... First of all, no, we don't go abuse-happy at nobody unless, one, we know each other enough to understand we are being a bit playful or brash and all is in good humor, or two, we are reeeeally furious.
Also, in context, many brutal pejoratives express admiration, actually: "de puta madre", "el puto amo", "de cojones", etc ("puto" this and "puta" that, although the term is the short and brutal for "prostitute", would translate better as "fucking" this or that).
It is not that different to swearing in English, really, and the same rules apply: you don't even try unless the context allows it or you are about to bust a blood vessel in ire.
snafu
Was that a BuzzwordsBot? → #
Posted Tuesday 16th June 2009 21:55 GMT
In Apple releases Java patches (finally)
Can we vivisect it? Can we?
snafu
No OpenCL for most ATI-based Macs → #
Posted Saturday 13th June 2009 16:21 GMT
In Apple's big week: the good, the bad, the ugly
Add to the ugly the fact that Apple's OpenCL implementation supports lots of nVidia GPUs but just two recent ATI models, so most "best" Mac configurations are unsupported, including many of the towers. First gen Mac Pros have no officially supported upgrade paths (there is some ATI card which has 32/64bit EFI support and has been tested to run well on these). Several one year or less Mac models are out of the equation, too. There's been no clarification about the possibility of more drivers becoming available later or this being it.
The same goes for hardware-accelerated h.264 decoding: nVidia-only.
snafu
The weight of the world → #
Posted Friday 29th May 2009 23:14 GMT
In Fans decry tennis gal's breast-slash plan
After seeing that documentary in which a well-endowed girl told her all too laughing girlfriends "ok, now just put this couple of weighted sacks over yours all day and we'll see how you enjoy your lower back pain", I get her point.
Even so...
snafu
nobody stone anybody until I blow this whistle → #
Posted Sunday 24th May 2009 13:00 GMT
In iTunes store Kama Sutra gives Apple warm cheeks
What bad press? The "it has a web browser so your child inevitably can surf extreme porn sites" or the "it has access to Project Gutemberg so your boy could, you know, read a book now and then, if he or you pay for the relevant iPhone application"?
snafu
Java is part of OS X → #
Posted Wednesday 20th May 2009 09:51 GMT
In Six months on, Macs still plagued by critical Java vuln
"...This article is confused. JAVA is not part of the OS..."
It is, being Apple the one who maintains and distributes OS X' custom version.
snafu
Of course they would. They are Apple → #
Posted Tuesday 19th May 2009 09:00 GMT
In Apple to look to software to differentiate multiple iPhone models
For a long while Apple iBooks had hardware able to do extended desktops over two monitors but no firmware to allow it: desktop mirroring only... until some guy distributed the required enabler hack.
snafu
Big Bro Jobs → #
Posted Wednesday 6th May 2009 09:17 GMT
In Apple brands UK tabloid 'obscene'
"By Michael Hawkes Posted Tuesday 5th May 2009 15:25 GMT
Reading the article, it reminded me of Orwell, Big Brother, and 1984, then I remembered the commercial Apple used to launch the Macintosh. Have they become what they once mocked?"
That TV spot was just a fine product of their Ministry of Truth, actually, announcing openness by selling a completely closed product (at the time), the antithesis of the Apple II.
Remember that incoherence in a commie dictatorship is not a byproduct: it is a requirement and a tool. Hence Apple's policies :D
snafu
All Tomorrow's Parties → #
Posted Friday 24th April 2009 20:48 GMT
In Self-replicating machine replicates
Echoes of William Gibson's novel there.
snafu
Mac Book Mini → #
Posted Monday 13th April 2009 09:07 GMT
In Microsoft conjures imaginary 'Apple Tax'
Should we factor hackintoshing into the equation? I would make things far funnier. For all my MacMartyrdom (to avoid WinMartyrdom: to each one their own) rants, I know there is a MacBook Mini (EeeMac, Macspire, Makoya, Macsung or whatever, specially if the geeks manage to hack an Ion-based one) in my future. :D
snafu
Time Capsule was a solution to an OS problem → #
Posted Sunday 12th April 2009 12:04 GMT
In Microsoft conjures imaginary 'Apple Tax'
What about them having to build their special Time Capsule thingy because of Time Machine's inability to do backups to plain network Volumes (as first promised) without data losses?
snafu
Tight control yeah right → #
Posted Saturday 11th April 2009 23:25 GMT
In Microsoft conjures imaginary 'Apple Tax'
Just to remind people that Apple doesn't know the innards of their own products well enough to avoid having them glitch all over the place during their first year and a half of life. Every two laptop and iMac generations we have the ittle dance that usually ends with a Class Action Suit. Ever heard of the "wait for the Rev. 2" mantra among us sadomacs? Also, lately, many of the security updates and such it releases as a torrent upon us have some idiot mistake that forces them to issue a v.2 of these patchs, which is hilarious except that not it isn't.
snafu
Apple tax → #
Posted Saturday 11th April 2009 15:27 GMT
In Microsoft conjures imaginary 'Apple Tax'
Well, I'd add AppleCare (because Mac repair prices usually are astronomical, and while some Masc are solid as tanks, others are a tragedy), I'd configure a four-core tower with a non-Xeon part to compare with the low-range Mac Pro, I'd completely ignore Mac box aesthetics (yes, they are nice, but I'd rather have the ability to install hard disks in trays that I can extract from the front without having to open the case if I choose so, even hot-swap them if I'd like to), and I'd stop doing the stupid utilitarian vs. Rolls Royce dance, because you can be as Unibody, Titanium or whatever as you want and then give me worse WIFI reception, crappy proprietary connectors AGAIN (yes, they are sharing their miniDisplayPort tech, but nobody wanted it in the first place) and killing their own tech they convinced us to embrace.
Oh, add to that paying that yearly and a half OS X update... er... subscription?
I am a Mac user since the Classic years (and an Apple IIe user before that). Of course there has always been an Apple Premium, and of course part of it is paying for whatever they decide coolness means this or that year. Do you think the Unibody tech is about using a better part? No, it is about desperately looking for something to hook us with this time. If they were about giving us better components they wouldn't have dared to offer Combo drives for so many years, let's not talk about the supercrappy DVD writer my Mac Pro has, its noxious smells (yes, I have ono of those) or rhe lack of GPU variety.
That the OS is the best of the worst that there is out there I get: Windows can be abysmal, but that doesn't mean OS X isn't an utter mess user experience-wise and that we accept it as the Holy Blah because our expectations have become so incredibly low. That's the only reason I accept paying the premium.
(And why do you always compare things with Dell's? As much as Microsoft and others like to show their high price friends in their ads, most people can get hardware that runs circles around Apple's at Mom&Pop PCs or a big store with decent components, which is the thing to watch when one considers desktop deals)
(Horned Jobs because the RDF wore off decades ago)
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BD → #
Posted Saturday 11th April 2009 15:27 GMT
In Microsoft conjures imaginary 'Apple Tax'
And yes, I want to be able to play Blu-Ray titles.
By the way: Apple's miniDisplayPort setup won't do audio through DisplayPort, so forget it about full DP-to-HDMI converters.
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Blu-Ray yes, Blu-Ray Video, sadly, no → #
Posted Monday 6th April 2009 13:58 GMT
In Apple Mac Pro
Which is double plus idiotic in such a DTV production box. You can do BD-Video authoring through some apps from Adobe and Roxio, but you won't be able to test your titles on it.
(Devilish Jobs because I like being a Mac heretic, too many years of RDF exposure for it to work anymore)
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No 64bit needed to use all cores → #
Posted Thursday 2nd April 2009 15:05 GMT
In Apple Mac Pro
Actually, you don't need 64bitness to take advantage of all these cores: Adobe After Effects, Modo, Electricimage and other 32bit apps get to use them all (by multithreading, by spawning renderer processes, by farming the output of several duplicates of the app, etc.).
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There can be only one → #
Posted Friday 30th January 2009 10:53 GMT
In Universal thaws out The Thing
Get Bruce Campbell!
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The NeXTStep greybeards' opinion on OS X → #
Posted Friday 23rd January 2009 10:43 GMT
In Mac malware piggybacks on pirated iWork
Some of these are an interesting read: NeXTStep greybeards cursing all the Macintosh crap their beloved OS has adquired in its way to OS X Leotard. Their angle is not quite that well aimed, current user-base needs-wise, but there really are monsters in dark places.
http://rixstep.com/2/
See:
http://rixstep.com/2/2/20081231,00.shtml
http://rixstep.com/2/4/20090118,00.shtml
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"When mac users start to pirate"? → #
Posted Friday 23rd January 2009 02:11 GMT
In Mac malware piggybacks on pirated iWork
They always did, since the Apple II days. Floppies, CDs, those Hotline/Carracho sites, p2p... I wonder where this idea of mac user sanctity ever came from.
Jobs, because he wants us to pirate iWork's serials so that we buy those doc sharing services they are betatesting.
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I liked Aqua, it was so lickable → #
Posted Friday 16th January 2009 10:25 GMT
In Apple moves to unify its OS and interface
UI-wise, I fervently hope that things don't go Pro Apps-like: these are rather terrible things: I work with them daily, and the last time they rethought them (Logic Pro) they seemed like a bad (really bad) imitation of Adobe After Effects' (which is reallly neat in its flexibility).
But, anyway: I liked Aqua. I liked having some sense of fun, even if it was quite disorganized. Nowadays Apple is all about sleek and sobriety and zen and... something has been lost, a certain sense of fun.
Plus, anyway, the problem is not in the widgets but the functionality, simple things like not having an unified windows and panes resizing widgets, rollover effects, grabbing area, etc.; unified keyboard shortcuts for progress palettes in apps; Spotlight field defaults; etc. It is a mess. Plus some ineffectual eyecandy that needs rethinking to live up to its potential.
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Elephant → #
Posted Monday 12th January 2009 09:10 GMT
In Could the Airbus A380 be the new Air Force One?
Why don't they use the Airbus Beluga. Yes, it would like a bit silly, but they could have a Presidential swimming pool :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A300-600ST_1_New_Colour.JPG
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Netbooks → #
Posted Thursday 8th January 2009 14:23 GMT
In First Windows 7 beta puts fresh face on Vista
That they have gotten to make it run decently on netbooks suggests that it could be a nice one, actually.
(I saw some interview to some Microsoft engineer explaining what the inner tweaks were, and I was left with the impression that this is going to be quite parallel to the initial release of OS X vs. OS X Panther, from stinkish to quite fine)
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The Blonde Ambition → #
Posted Wednesday 17th December 2008 12:11 GMT
In Jobs, Apple out of Macworld Expo
Actually, Schiller did keynote a MacWorld Expo on his own, and it wasn't bad at all: it resulted in a gentler nicer one.
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Brave New World → #
Posted Tuesday 16th December 2008 10:23 GMT
In Orwellian Apple ad celebrates 25th birthday
It became more of a Huxley thing tan an Orwell one. Pass the iSoma.
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The Kraken Wakes → #
Posted Monday 15th December 2008 15:06 GMT
In Attack of the quarter-ton, 'fridge-sized' killer jellyfish
Next they'll start hunting us with their high pressure tanks with remote-controlled flying tentacles invading the coasts. Wait until they sink our nuclear subs and use the fissibles to heat the Poles and drown us all.
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Microsoft → #
Posted Wednesday 10th December 2008 10:20 GMT
In Apple's Snow Leopard set to exploit GPU power
Microsoft only has to wait for the OpenCL gang to port it to Windows (after all, where do all these guys hope to run their mighty OpenCL thingies on? Macs and Unix/Linux only?). Meanwhile, they'll deploy their own solution as planned (I am under the impression that Ms made some GPGPU noises well before OpenCL was ever mentioned). So there, no problems no Microsoft is dying nonsense.
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Nitpick → #
Posted Monday 8th December 2008 12:34 GMT
In Samsung SyncMaster 2263DX 22in monitor
"Being based on DisplayPort technology, as you would expect the secondary screen is not designed for performance but for functionality"
Shouldn't that be rephrased as "being based on USB technology"? Conventional DisplayPort signaling is as capable as DVI or HDMI.
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