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Programming Businesses Apple IT Technology

MacHack Theme Unveiled 41

Carlos Finque writes "After much consideration, this year's theme of the annual MacHack conference was unveiled today: 'MacHack 18: Unstoppable'. Read the press statement and don't forget to register while you can. Mindful of the inevitability of their own conference and the unstoppability of it all, the committee looked for a suitable symbol for things that keep moving no matter what. It turned out that the committee needed look no further than their own Mac screen. Apple's own busy cursor -- the SPoD or 'Spinning Pizza of Death' -- is the inspiration for this year's MacHack theme element."
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MacHack Theme Unveiled

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  • Gee... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wyvern5 ( 565676 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @09:53AM (#5998540)
    I dunno, I can think of so many better things that keep on going and going and going...

    Journalists will continue to call Apple "beleagured" and proclaim that the death of Apple is assured. "Do you hear that, Mr. Jobs? That is the sound of inevitability."

    Apple will continue to make computers with ridiculously low bus and ram speeds (though we all hope the 970 will fix this :)

    Windows users will continue to blame the occasional failure of interoperability on the stupid Mac users and not the well-known flaws in their OS. Special characters in Word files, anyone?
    I wouldn't say that the SPoD sticks around very long anyway, thanks to the joys of an OS with "kill -9" :)
    • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @12:57PM (#5999833)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I've never understood the journalism world's fascination with predicting the demise of Apple. Perhaps everyone wants to be the one to say, "I predicted this back in 19XX/2XXX. See, I told you so."

        Why can't more journalists analyze Apple for what they are : an elite computer maker that caters to those with a bit different taste? No one criticizes Porsche for not lowering prices and mass producing sports cars. Sure, you can get a Trans Am or Camaro for much cheaper, but it's not a Porsche! Apple is the same
  • by nycroft ( 653728 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @09:56AM (#5998566) Homepage
    Mindful of the inevitability of their own conference and the unstoppability of it all, the committee looked for a suitable symbol for things that keep moving no matter what. It turned out that the committee needed look no further than their own Mac screen. Apple's own "busy cursor" is the inspiration for this year's MacHack theme element, the SPoD or "Spinning Pizza of Death".

    Like Steve Jobs himself...unstoppable! That kinda sounds like a movie trailer to me: "One man. One way. One...desire. In the Year of the Laptop, he runs a grossly underestimated computer company, and the competition wanted to snuff him out. But he had only one chance, and that was to fight back! Blessed with a weapon with supernatural powers: the Spinning Pizza of Death, he brings down hellfire on his enemies and throws the competition into his own house of pain. This summer, Steve Jobs is...Unstoppable."

    Help Steve fight the good fight. Help him make his computers better. Go to MacHack!
    • <emphasis voice=arnold>I just want to make tortillas.</emphasis>

      (You watch a lot of comedy central stand-up, don't you.)
      • Why yes. I ripped off Pablo Fransisco. I saw him at the Improv in Irvine, CA in December. He does the movie trailer voice really well. I was laughing so hard I had a whiskey sour shoot out my nose (yeah, it hurt a little). Sorry, I should have credited him. I highly recommend his CD "Knee to the Groin" though.

        I'm surprised you caught that. Good work. But to keep the post on topic...MacHack is the key to helping others make the most out of the best OS and hardware on the planet! Macintosh rules! There.
  • by gobbo ( 567674 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @10:07AM (#5998639) Journal
    The SPoD doesn't exist. I mean, I've seen something where the cursor pointing thingy all of a sudden tries to hypnotize me, but I've read all about that Borg Marketing Trojan Horsewear that tries to convince you that the colourful XP is stable fast and slickable, by taking over programs and turning the cursor pointing thingy to a hypnotist's wheel. So I immediately hit the Apple-Tab key combo to fight the dark side impulses, and the nausea-inducing spinning assault on my staunch macness just goes away!! After awhile I can switch back to my poor 'beleaguered' program and the Borg attack is gone.

    There is no Pizza. It is your multitasking that must bend.
  • by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @10:26AM (#5998783) Homepage Journal
    After reading the summary I still have no idea what this article is about. In fact after reading the damn article I still have no idea what this article is about.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    This term "SPoD" might be a cute inside joke or something for those who require that sort of thing to feel important. But it's clearly a play on "BSoD" for 'blue screen of death' which describes a crashed Windows system, and the MacOS X wait cursor has nothing to do with that. I therefore suggest that we nip this term in the bud before those who don't know any better get the wrong idea and start to think that OS X has serious stability problems.

    Talk about a random choice for a theme, by the way. I'll be at
    • I therefore suggest that we nip this term in the bud before those who don't know any better get the wrong idea and start to think that OS X has serious stability problems.

      Open the terminal. Type "mkfifo ~/Desktop/pipe"; that should make a named pipe, named pipe (heh), and put it on the desktop. For some reason, it will look like a server-alias icon.

      Now right (or control)-click it. Oops, scratch that. When you're done force-relauching the Finder, bring up Process Viewer and sort descending by either C
  • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @01:47PM (#6000240) Journal
    I'm not sure that the /. targetted advertising works at all. This article came with an advert for the Intel C compiler, with a tagline 'Targetting This?' and images of Intel CPU logos. Reading a Mac article. Targetting Intel CPUs. Hmm.
  • by ihatewinXP ( 638000 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @02:53PM (#6000950)
    Has to be MacJive. a small control panel for OS9 that turns all text onscreen (including the apple menu, et al) into 'jive.'

    Seeing a message pop up along the lines of:

    "Da Locashun Managa is unable to connect. Sheeit, what it is Mama?"

    it just used to make the day tolerable for me.....

    (and here is the the obligatory link, works in classic enviroment as long as the control panel is enabled).

    http://www.hax.com/MacHack/hacks99.html
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @03:16PM (#6001185)
    Which I still have to use for a variety of legacy programs. It would be so nice if one of those clever hackers figured out how to put OS 9 back into it's box...(like virtual PC does with windows) so that we could keep 9 totally separate and save OS 9 states and not have to boot every time we want to start it again.
    • I wonder if you could do this w/ the old Blue Box binaries from Rhapsody...? Did it support saved states? I know it segregated OS into its own window like VPC does.

      -Ster
    • Massive leap of faith here, presuming you want to go to a hell of a lot of trouble...

      But you can do this for real with Mac-on-Linux. If you're a masochist you can even run separate instances of MOL for OS X and OS 9 - but don't expect anything with the letters S,P,E or D.

      Yellow Dog and Mandrake can do this, I know from experience. Don't know about other Linux distros.
  • by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @04:29PM (#6001873)
    C'mon pudge...get it right, please.

    Spinning Pizza of Death should be Spinnin' Pizza O' DEATH!
  • by General Sherman ( 614373 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @07:52PM (#6003260) Journal
    I could've sworn it was the Spinning Beach Ball of Doom.

    Maybe this year they'll have a little beachball spinning on the entrance, just to make sure you know that you're waiting in line.
  • ...I've always called it "The Rainbow Stress Pizza".

    -realinvalidname
  • First of all if you want to parody an Intitialism [everything2.com] such as BSoD [everything2.com] you want to keep it the same amount of letters. Beachball is actually two words according to Dictionary.com [reference.com] beach ball is the correct spelling. So SBBoD just doesn't work, it looks and sounds stupid.

    Next up the Pizza, it in no way looks like any pizza I have seen under any state of mind. So you can just quit it with that. How many blue and purple pizza slices have you seen not counting Japanese Squid Ink Pizza [bridgewater.edu]? Even that's more black than

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