toxicsoftware.com - Latest Comments in Second Hand Smoke

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Ankur — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 21:52:15 -0000

Thanks for making this known. I've had a lot of fun with the smoke.

However, it doesn't work when using the framework from Disco 1.0. I've taken another class-dump, but I can't beat the errors. Maybe I should've kept a copy of the beta version... Anyone got any ideas?

Re: Second Hand Smoke

David Mantripp — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:23:10 -0000

Never mind "novice users". Real world users, ie people who use computers to do useful things, rather than people who use computers to use computers, I think would find this pretty good. Maybe it would be fairer - and considerably less disingenuous - to compare with Toast. I don't Toast has got anything like "Discography".

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Kelvin — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:58:24 -0000

"Spandex is nothing special, it actually doesnt seperate large files, it just splits up the directories amoungst multiple discsâ€¦ wupdidoo..."

That's quite true but there's a certain derision in the post about how Disco is charging for features that are available free in Disk Utility. I think there's some value in the streamlined interface that does automatic spanning and indexing and automatically chooses the type of disc to be burned based on the context of the files being thrown at it.

While most expert users would have no use for this I could see a lot of novice users finding a use for a utility like that (I don't know how many times I've had to explain that you can't just burn MP3s or VIDEO_TS folders as normal data CDs and expect them to work in the normal media players...)

I think the main problem though is that demographic is one of the least likely type of users to look on the internet for a third-party shareware solution.

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Brad Choate — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 03:50:57 -0000

So can the amount and density of the plume be derived on a combination of memory and CPU usage? So once you have a couple of dozen tabs open in Safari, it should look like Rome burning?

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Matt — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:33:15 -0000

"Thereâ€™s really only one feature of Disco that interests me, and thatâ€™s â€œSpandexâ€"

Spandex is nothing special, it actually doesnt seperate large files, it just splits up the directories amoungst multiple discs... wupdidoo. So if you have one huge video file, it won't even be able to span.

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Peter — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:29:16 -0000

"...that Disc burning program that does a fraction of what Disk Utility does"

There's really only one feature of Disco that interests me, and that's "Spandex". Given the above statement, can Disk Utility do what Spandex does, and if so how? It's something I've been trying to figure out for some time.

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Libb — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 12:32:28 -0000

Forget NNW, I want NewsFire to burn baby burn :)

Awesome hack, wish I knew Objective-C so I could actually make use of it, but still cool.

Re: Second Hand Smoke

schwa — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:00:54 -0000

David Young: Yes ripping it off and redistributing it, especially if I had tried to pass it off as my own work would have been uncool. But I didn't do that.

The DiscoApp developer I smoke (Austin) even mentioned sponsoring a contest for the best smoke related hacks with free copies of Disco to the winners. Basically I think that they look at this as extra free publicity.

Re: Second Hand Smoke

David Young — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:46:38 -0000

I dunno man, while it's true that anyone with class-dump could've reverse-engineered Smoke.framework on their own, it certainly looks like a lot of effort went into engineering it. Ripping it off (especially if one were to link to the framework and redistribute it) seems pretty uncool. If I were the developer, and the smoke effect turned up in a bunch of applications, I probably wouln't waste money on a lawyer, but I wouldn't be happy either.

But, if you've chatted with one of the developers and he/she says it's okay, no harm done. Have the developers really confirmed that they meant for other developers to use Smoke.framework? (Having removed the headers from the shipping product indicates to me that the answer is probably no...)

Re: Second Hand Smoke

iacas — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:12:32 -0000

Brian Ball strikes me as an odd duck. First he grabs people's names and email addresses from the macsb mailing list (and then spams them) to promote MacZot. Then he comments here about lawyers.

That's just silly.

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Brian — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:09:27 -0000

Edit: Oh, you already pointed that out, sorry :-)

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Brian — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:07:06 -0000

You can reconstruct the missing headers using:

class-dump Disco.app/Contents/Framewor...

I don't know why they bothered to take them out.

(class-dump is available from http://www.codethecode.com/... )

Re: Second Hand Smoke

schwa — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:46:55 -0000

Brian: I've chatted with one of the developers of Disco, and the developer of the smoke effect actually commented on this post earlier. I'm not really worried about being contacted by anyone's laywers.

Dave: glad you enjoyed it.

Indigo: You're on your own :-)

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Indigo — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:02:18 -0000

hay, i am on an intel mac and i can't get it to work. it just won't start. as soon as it starts to start, i quits. any help?

Re: Second Hand Smoke

dave — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:13:10 -0000

wow, this is cool. I was too late to get Disco with the intact headers, but yours worked just fine, as did changing the settings in disco. Smart thinking, thanks for sharing this!

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Brian Ball — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:56:51 -0000

Wow! Whoever coded that smoking framework must be a genius.

Also, it's great that you made this post public so their lawyers can contact you easily.

Keep up the good work!

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Kevin Hoctor — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:10:44 -0000

"Bad developer. No cookie."

Wow, that just hit me as so funny. Thanks for the laugh!

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Justin Williams — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 12:03:54 -0000

For some reason I sense hostility towards smoking windows in this post. :-P

Re: Second Hand Smoke

schwa — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:38:32 -0000

Thanks Jason,

Very slick code by the way. I don't like how the code is being used within Disco (as you might have been able to tell from the tone of my post ;-) But I love the effect itself. Very cool. Very interesting looking at the cikernel code too. Very slick indeed.

Re: Second Hand Smoke

Jason Harris — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:31:00 -0000

This is just freaking awesome!