It's curious to me that so far as I am reading this three people have responded telling you exactly what you did that is not allowed and you haven't addressed their replies yet. Hmmm. Are they wrong?

Seems like a lame feature request to me. I can understand not wanting to implement that. VLC already has a problem with feature sprawl (or as someone else called it an identity crisis). It's already a streaming client and a video player and a transcoder/converting tool. Why does it need to be a de-archiver as well? Bloat bloat bloat. The developers should be focused at this point on increasing its performance on Win32 if anything (at least according to the general sentiment of the comments here and pretty much everywhere online).

I guess someone could always fork the project to implement archive-extraction-before-playing if they wanted it badly enough, though. So all is not lost.

If anyone understood how RAR files work they wouldn't ask for VLC to be able to play them as if they were video files.

I also only used the Apple Remote with VLC until I found this little tool: http://gravityapps.com/sofacontrol/

I am a happy registered user of Sofa Control, which allows you to program your Apple Remote to pretty much do anything. And it highly extends/replaces the Front Row functionality without borking it up if you still want to use it, while simultaneously taking over "full control" of the remote away from Front Row. You can even use it to remotely control Safari which I imagine might come in handy (presentations etc).

Yup, Sofa Control + Apple remote = useful. Sorry for the off-topic-ness.

You're hilarious.

(typo - should have wrote "it's not hypothetical" not "it's hypothetical" above.)

You are sure angry about something that I can't quite figure out. You've got some serious attitude, buster. Why are you resorting to profanity and name calling? Argument fall apart much?

This is false. Name one.

Ahhh, right, it's hypothetical. OK, so be specific. Google upgraded their existing platform and all of their applications to be compatible with IPv6. So, I have an example of a legacy system that WAS replaced without any downtime and without having to create new solutions.

Just 'cuz some dusty old server in a corner at some corporation hasn't been touched in 20 years and nobody knows what it does anymore, doesn't mean the world will implode and all will go down in flames if the server is decommissioned. Analyze, brainstorm, plan, and create a replacement that encompasses the input and output of that legacy system using existing tools ... and ta-da!

CAN NOT be done is not the same as WILL NOT BE DONE.

Replacing a legacy system is re-inventing an existing wheel, not creating a new wheel that "SIMPLY CANNOT BE IMAGINED!!! OMG!"

No, I don't "not get it", I just think you're wrong. It's not that there is NO REPLACEMENT for this completely hypothetical Fortran code. It's that there is nobody paying anyone to WRITE the replacement code. If the code is not currently available, it does not mean that the solution does not exist. Therefore, the currently available solution in your example is to WRITE THE CODE. Which is 100% possible.

Since you asked: Why would you replace a legacy system? Lots of reasons. I guess that if one is finding themselves in the situation where they are considering replacing a legacy system, that perhaps there may be a few reasons already on their mind. We are talking about replacing legacy systems with systems that are compatible with IPv6 which to me would mean that a compelling reason to convert a legacy system in this example would be 'to regain/retain future network connectivity'. For example. Is the ability for your old legacy app to remain on the network worth your company's time? At some point it is going to be UNLESS YOU REPLACE IT with something non-legacy. Either way you are addressing the same problem, it's just a matter of when.

To stick with your example further, it's not like Fortran does something that is absolutely inimitable by any other language or platform. But who cares? Fortran can exist on a non-legacy platform, and fulfill the legacy function without legacy hardware. GNU Fortran compiler, for example, doesn't even compile machine code directly, it compiles assembly language. So one could write the replacement for the legacy Fortran system in optimized assembler if one wanted to. Just because nobody is paying for that to happen does not mean that it is not possible.

Again: "TONS of legacy systems out there that can NOT be replaced with any currently available 'solutions'" is simply not true. The solutions are there (i.e. write/build/outsource a replacement), they are just not being pursued because of a lack of business incentive. This is shortsighted, and will change, when considering IPv6.

I wasn't disputing that there was or was not an incentive, I was disagreeing with your statement that it was a lot of work and/or not possible.

Specifically these statements:

Clearly, if a company has a motivation to move to IPv6 it will not take years of constant work, as Google has just demonstrated.

Conversely, there are NOT tons of legacy systems that can NOT be replaced. They are just being left alone because the owners of them have no reason to upgrade them. "can not" is not the same as "will not".

That's all.

There will be no business incentive for the average corporation until IPv4 runs out of addressing space, and those who have already switched at that point will be laughing and taking the weekend off while other businesses scramble to regain basic connectivity. For some (i.e. Google), that is enough incentive right there, as their sites need to be universally connectable for their business model to work.

That's BS. They CAN be replaced but people are simply inflexible and corporations in particular get very scared of change when it comes to IS/IT. Software in 2009 can do anything software in 1979 could do, only better. Your analog modems are legacy equipment and they are there to support the PEOPLE who insist upon them - there ARE better solutions than merely kludging legacy support into every possible corporate upgrade. Ditch the old, get better stuff!

For example, a fully functional legacy PC system with analog serial ports etc. could be implemented entirely in software including an analog modem that handles DSP via the host, and the phone line via VoIP, and then virtualized on a server somewhere, and the physical legacy analog crap could be tossed out. But humans (i.e. workers familiar with the legacy system, as well as upper management) will NOT just jump on board to ideas like this without a lot of resistance. That doesn't mean they aren't do-able. The above example is still implementing the legacy solution, but not using legacy hardware. There is probably a much more elegant (albeit completely hypothetical as per this discussion) solution that ignores the legacy equipment, and if the corporation as a whole switched over to the new solution en masse, there would be no need for the legacy system.

The block is ALWAYS people when it comes to implementing technological upgrades within corporations. It's rarely the technology. Technology is easy to replace/toss out and re-implement. People are much harder to organize and manage than technology.

Oh... and is Google not a "real corporation" now? I am surprised by that statement. They are definitely young relative to corporations from the 18th century that may still exist, but they are not new kids on the block in their field. In addition, I would suspect their network and their tech footprint greatly exceeds that of the average "real corporation", and encompasses a lot more than what a company who doesn't specialize in online information indexing / data mining would need.

I love joe and I was hoping someone would mention it. Hooray!

I can't count how many laptops I've bought from the Apple Refurb web store (either for myself or for friends). Great deals always to be had there. Came in handy recently when my friend wanted a new MacBook Pro but she also wanted to be able to replace the battery. Got a nice deal on a 2.6 (late 2008 unfortunately... but it had the matte display option when it arrived!)

Did you at least manage to recover the journal later?