Slashdot Mirror

there you go http://idisk.mac.com/r3d/Public/html5.gif

Dennis Detwiller and others are already doing this with roleplaying games - though he himself provides free downloads once the ransom is filled. After being impressed by one of his previous releases, I plunked down $10 towards a future one. It was far more satisfying than buying something the traditional way: it made me feel a kind of responsibility for the work. This model transforms consumers into participants and enablers, which IMHO is at least as valuable as its economic success.

By the way, I recommend Detwiller's Music From a Darkened Room. It's is a great read.

Your wish is the SL fashionistas command:

http://flapjack.modwest.com/businesswear

http://web.mac.com/blazecolumbia/iWeb/Blaze/PowerS uit.html

It's fanon, of course, but the topic is covered in some depth in Don Sample's altogether excellent Harry Potter and the Key of Dagon. If you don't already know what that's a crossover to, don't feel bad, I didn't either...

Weren't you paying attention when they explained that [everyone you have sex with] * [everyone they have sex with] = everyone you've had sex with?

Oh wait, this is Slashdot. Never mind, and I'll get out of your basement and leave you alone with your game. You mom says keep the shouting down.

--

One thing that is interesting: Apple has a web based newsreader up on .Mac designed for the iPhone: http://reader.mac.com/

So yes, there is more integration that you might have imagined going on.

Uh oh... we know what this means.... Oh my God, they killed Billy! You bastards!!

Someone please tell me what I'm missing here. From what *I* see, there is absolutely NO comparison as to which is more readable. Safari is more readable on MY Windows XP Pro than either IE or FF, by a mile. I have a vanilla install of XP. Haven't done a thing to it. It's about as stock as you can get. I installed FF and Safari, then went to cnn.com. I have a screen shot of all 3 browsers side by side, and at the risk of eating up all my download allotment, here is the URL: http://idisk.mac.com/Wingsy-Public/ScreenShot001.b mp Is there anyone out there who can honestly say that FF or IE is more readable? They both look like they came right out of a dot matrix printer. Can someone post a screenshot where they think Safari is the least readable (if it's different from mine)?

I've been to the Advanced Base camp on that side (Tibetan) twice. The most predictable climbing seasons are Spring and Autumn. It is possible via satellite link to get hold of some pretty accurate weather forecasts to make decisions on climbing. The main problem at that time of year is that monsoon dumps of snow make the risk of avalanche a lot higher than at other times. My self indulgent piece of tech was a CIGS portable solar panel which worked fine in freezing conditions.

Link to solar panel http://www.selectsolar.co.uk/pics/foldingpanel.php

Link to a few videos and trip2 http://web.mac.com/mattbrook/iWeb/FootstepsOfMallo ry/Frontpiece.html

Hi Brian!

I read your whole OSX article. I'm going to read your Vista review next. I do some work as an Apple System Administrator in a university setting, so I'm a bit of an OSX power user.

The two major criticisms of yours that I agree with are:
Word processor availability. If X11 is too technical for a user, there are no great Free/OpenSource alternatives to MS Word (yet?).

Bean (http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html) is gaining mindshare though, but doesn't compare to OpenOffice/MS Word in functionality.

Hardware costs.
Apple RAM costs a pretty penny.

Do people really use current operating systems with a mere 512 Megs of RAM? In my professional experience, we're now leaning to two gigs in the mini's. I think that if you buy any $600 machine with the form factor of the mini, it'll be lacking hardware somewhere. (My work desktop machine is a dual 1.8 Ghz G5 that was purchased in 2004 for about $2000. It's awsome. It'll be useable as a desktop computer for 6+ years. The design inside the case is transcendent. Especially coming from dell/hp workstation rat nests.

There were a few mistakes in your review, particularly free/opensource software availability categories.
(Check out ffmpegX: http://homepage.mac.com/major4/)
(http://www.macgimp.org/)

Although long time Apple software developers practically invented restrictively licensed share and crippleware, there is a healthy and vibrant open source development movement for OSX. I think that these two development communities are distinct.

Lastly, the buzz is that we'll see some changes to Apple's desktop lineup this weekend. I hope with you that Apple will announce a $1500 MacPro or something like it.

Isaac

Get this one instead. It's updated reasonably often, and has thus far been rock stable here. It also comes with a bunch of packages included, but isn't configured into oblivion like Aquamacs.

I use the carbon emacs builds, which are updated every 2-3 months, and have been using emacs 22 prerelease for a long time.

The Mac Plus can double as a fish tank!. The iMac could make a tank for flounder I suppose...

They'll make sure Gate's gets his due.

... beat Mac users at number of hosted spambots in 8 seconds.

No! Haven't you heard of user account control? It was even advertised in this article!

I see little evidence Apple care about consistency any more. As you say their apps seem to change from one release to the next with more and more use of the wretched chrome for no discernable reason. It's interesting to read about an eight year old article from the Interface Hall of Shame article about Quicktime 4.0 and realise nothing has really changed much. iTunes on Windows has an atrocious UI which is funny considering how Apple used to preach consistency but now see fit to ignore it when it suits them.

Who would want to put 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 into their hardware or software? :)

Well, here's a screencap of HD-DVD.org showing the key on their own web site!

I guess they're going to have to go after themselves, now. Ve haff the evidence!

Parent is correct. (GIYF)

See maps here:
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vot e2004/countymap.htm
http://homepage.mac.com/tcp/PurpleAmerica/

Now, with that said, I prefer working in /etc. It is very easy to work with and understand. But, when I try to explain to my father why he wants squid AND how to configure it, it is impossible. I simply do not put him on squid (really a shame). Now, if somebody could explain HOW to properly update windows via their KV DB ....

Webmin can administer squid.

On OSX you can use SquidMan.

WPM claims to administer Squid.

I'm currently installing a new program (March 1 '07) called Internet Cache Setup that claims to configure squid with a wizard. I guess I have to restart firefox, so I'll come back and let y'all know how it worked...

AAC aka mp4 is less 'lossy' and smaller than the mp3 format. AAC does not require the payment of any fees for usage, unlike the mp3 format a couple of discussions: http://homepage.mac.com/marc.heijligers/audio/ipod /compression/encoding/encoding.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

for things like text editors ... I can defer looking at the product

Even though I have a TextMate license (from MacHeist), it has not wooed me away from Emacs (I currently use Carbon Emacs). However, I do look at other editors from time to time to get ideas. For example, just seeing "open, edit, and save files on remote servers" in the BBEdit feature list inspired me to figure out Tramp. Code folding in Komodo and another proprietary IDE got me started with outline-minor-mode (which I actually prefer).

All that said, TextMate's rapid success is evidence of pent-up demand that Emacs, vi, BBEdit, et al. were not satisfying. Some of it may be hype and/or fad, but it looks like TextMate is here to stay.

While linux does have considerable issues with UI, after all most programs are written by individual groups with no stnadard. Visit the Interface Hall of Shame and just see who's product is list most often. Hint: they're from the same LARGE software company.

"Teachers don't freaking teach anything in class anymore." Really?

"But in the majority of classrooms, you're going to find bored students sitting quietly at little desks listening to a teacher lecture about something that the majority of the class doesn't care about and will probably not use." -- You, in October

I work in the public school system. I'm in schools every day. Are you? No? Then shut the f*ck up.

When were you last a student in the public school system, though? Don't discount what he's saying just because you haven't been on that side in a long time.

I ran the numbers recently as well, here is what I came up with. Note that I didn't do any actual measurements and relied only on what I could find in google with a few minutes searching. I've made some pretty generous (read, unrealistically optimistic) assumptions about what the human body is capable of and what people will put up with to have power.

Here is a ballpark estimation of the practicality of human power generation.

Let's assume that a person who's profession was power generation would be highly fit and well suited to long hours turning a generator at high output. If such a person could maintain an electrical output of 400W for 10 hours a day he would produce 4 kilowatt hours of electrical energy (ignoring conversion loss for the sake of simplicity). This is beyond mere 'Olympic' performance and well into the realm of the 'heroic', similar to a good bicycle sprint for 10 hours.

Given a heroic muscular efficiency of 30% (beyond the human normal range of 14-27%) this 4 kilowatt hours represents about 13kWh of input power, or food. This is about 11,000 dietary calories. I'll presume that the waste heat is too low-grade for power generation, but could be used to offset living space heating requirements during cold weather.

If we feed our hero nothing but soybeans (inexpensive and fairly energy dense at 1.75cal/gram and 0.00025 cents per gram in bulk ($6.80 for 60lb) he will need about 6.25 kilos of beans a day, at a price of about $1.60.

So your human power will cost in the range of 40 cents per kilowatt hour, or about 4 times the price of grid electrical power, presuming you can find teams of heroes willing to donate their time for free.

The US consumes around 4,000,000,000,000 kilowatt hours per year. At a rate of 1460 kWh per hero per year, you will need to employ 2,700,000,000 people (almost half the world population) each year to produce the required electrical power. Feeding them will require about 6,100,000,000,000 kilos of beans a year, or about 90 times the annual US soybean crop. You may be able to reduce the number of people required slightly with a methane capture system :) You can probably increase efficiency by feeding the heros that die in the line of duty to the living heros, thereby recyling a hundred or 2 pounds of material.

A typical household in the US consumes about 30 kWh per day. Consider that this is about 8 heroes pedaling generators in your basement, consuming a 40 pound bag of soybeans each day.

Powering a typical smallish refrigerator requires about one kilowatt-hour per day, so it would only take one hero two and a half hours to keep your food cold (or, if he is charging a battery, 5 hours after losses).

A typical real person could reasonably be expected to produce 200W for an hour a day (maybe 2 for extremely dedicated individuals), certainly enough to charge small devices like laptops, but just a drop in the bucket next to the power used by a typical person.

Kinda puts the power of fossil fuels into perspective.

refs:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.ht ml
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html
http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?I ndicatorID=46&Country=US
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice &dbid=79
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/06032 2113511.htm
http://coachesinfo.com/category/rowing/77/
http://homepage.mac.com/moises.santillan/paper

i've been a fan of NightShift for downloading the latest safari/webkit nightly builds. it leaves your current install alone, while giving you the ability to test the latest webkit. unfortunately, the current build doesn't like my safari plugins, though i'm not sure which one. pith helmet, saft, or safari stand.

http://web.mac.com/jamiecox/iWeb/Florida%20Dayligh t/Welcome.html

Google only caches HTML and possibly other formats that they can index (PDF, Word DOC, Powerpoint, etc). They don't cache images.

Actually, they cache image thumbnails. Granted, that's propably not sufficient to make the key from... But at least I found this gem from this page. Should help drive the message home to the people who don't see a problem with unverifiable electronic voting... Assuming that they know who Josef Stalin was, which, since this is the American public we're speaking of, might be an unreasonable expectation.

Maybe something simpler, like: "When you're voting with Diebold machines, you're voting for communism." Good enough for the old RIAA poster, good enough for this.

Google only caches HTML and possibly other formats that they can index (PDF, Word DOC, Powerpoint, etc). They don't cache images.

Actually, they cache image thumbnails. Granted, that's propably not sufficient to make the key from... But at least I found this gem from this page. Should help drive the message home to the people who don't see a problem with unverifiable electronic voting... Assuming that they know who Josef Stalin was, which, since this is the American public we're speaking of, might be an unreasonable expectation.

Maybe something simpler, like: "When you're voting with Diebold machines, you're voting for communism." Good enough for the old RIAA poster, good enough for this.

The problems exist with both ATI and nVidia.

See http://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/invariance/H WAA.html for some example screenshots.

With this kind of brokenness in OpenGL, it's no surprise Apple decided to layer Quartz over the top.

The chief scientist for the Voyager mission told me a couple of weeks ago that he guesses Voyager 1 is more like 10 years away from the heliopause, and talked at some length about the exploration of the solar system's boundaries. You can hear the conversation in this podcast.

If when you said "Kerry was selected from the crop of democratic contenders" you meant "chosen by the few people who bothered to vote in the primaries," then yeah, that's pretty accurate.

I am specifically referring to the media elite's skewering of Howard Dean with constant replays of his 'yell'. That would be the one whose context was eliminated by a noise-canceling microphone.

Context-free Howard Dean Yell.

The video would give a different impression if it had the roaring crowd in the background. But Fox/NBC/ABC/CBS replayed the noise-canceled yell ad-infinitum (700 times?), and that was pretty much the end of Dean's candidacy.

Howard Dean and the Microphone of Doom

I'm sure there are other examples of the media being used to shape that election - this is just one that immediately comes to mind.

The problem with Real, QuickTime, Windows Media and all the other video players, is that all they are just stupid video players boxed into a rectangular prison, and not customizable or adaptable in any way. You can't add to their user interface, or fix their horrible design problems. No control over how closed captioning is presented. No transparent video overlays. No extra buttons or links to related videos. No webcam support or two-way video conferencing.

From a user interface design perspective, Flash has an enormous advantage over old-school video players, because developers are able to deeply customize and integrate the video player into their own user interfaces, like Google's and YouTube's video players, the OpenLaszlo YouTube player, or the SimFaux Network TV Fox News Simulation.

The other overwhelming advantage to Flash over all the other video players, is that it's installed on way more platforms than any other existing video player. So the fact that it has almost universal coverage, plus the fact that you can customize the user interface (like YouTube, Google Video, and everyone else does), combine to make Flash the hands-down best way to distribute video over the internet.

Here's an example of what I mean by customization: A set of reusable video playback and recording components that I've developed for OpenLaszlo, which are easy to customize and integrate into your own OpenLaszlo applications:

OpenLaszlo YouTube Player Demo and Source Code

I've been working on developing streaming video support for OpenLaszlo: LZX classes to support improved audio and video, including RTMP streaming via Flash Media Server (aka Flash Communication Server) and also the Red5 Open Source Flash Server, as well as streaming video via http. It supports playback of recorded FLVs, recording from camera and microphone, live two-way (or multi-party) audio/video conferencing, and FLV streaming over http.

It's easy to use the OpenLaszlo video components, because they're nicely integrated with the OpenLaszlo programming model. They expose logical attributes and events which make it easy to integrate video into OpenLaszlo applications.

To test it out the code and demonstrate its functionality, I've developed a simple YouTube Player in OpenLaszlo [click here to open it in a window]. It uses the YouTube ReST Web API, and some simple html screen scraping to get the URL parameters to stream the FLV file directly.

Here is the source for the test application wrapper that puts the YouTube video player in a resizable window, and the more interesting source for the youtubeplayer component, that uses the new OpenLaszlo video classes I'm developing (whose source is in this directory).

The new video classes and the YouTube player demo are now checked into the OpenLaszlo svn repository.

Yes, but once released I can get the thing up in running in a few minutes.

Never used XBMC, have you? It's about as plug-and-play as you can get. The only difficult part is modding your xbox, which can range from very easy to very difficult, depending on how much you want to spend. The really nice modchips just drop in and automagically work (like the Xenium). The XBOX Media Center's only rival in terms of user interface is the TiVo. It's really that good.

Not to mention, let me see you play media from iTunes on your crapbox.

Ah, so this answers my first question. You've never even used XBMC, and yet you somehow feel justified in criticizing it? XBMC has built-in iTunes integration. It won't play DRM'd crap you buy from the iTunes music store, however.

Now tell me, do you think the Apple iTV will have a built-in visualizations? XBMC does.
How about programatic extensions, like YouTube support or Google Video plugins? XBMC does.
Hey look, XMBC can even integrate with OS-X.

You ask some good questions, especially considering that my original post smelled of flaimbait.

I have a mind, I've heard of Ada, and I've read about it, but I've never touched an Ada compiler.

You may touch an Ada compiler for free 8^) since Ada is an official member of gcc. It is therefore available for any platform for which gcc is available. You may download from gcc.gnu.org or better (pre-compiled) from libre2.adacore. It is called GNAT and is written in Ada (at least the front end is.)

So, where is it written that all software must be written in C or C++? Its not, but TONS of software and especially existing libraries are written in C/C++.

Can Ada be used for Linux kernel modules or Windows device drivers?

Absolutely.

I know C and possibly C++ can be used. Does Ada have hooks to common libraries like SSL and zlib?

As another poster commented, it is trivial (really) to make Ada bindings to C libraries. The "connection" is an official part of the Ada language specification. I did this recently for a plotting library written in C called PLplot plplot.sourceforge.net. I was just learning Ada and knew even less C. Most of my effort was involved in learning enough C to get the job done. I have posted information about these bindings at http://homepage.mac.com/oscarruitt/plplotinada/plp lot_ada.html. Note that this software is not yet released and is still under review by the PLplot folks; the usual disclaimers about suitability and nonliabiity apply.

How proven is the Ada compiler for Solaris, Linux, Windows, and AIX?

I'm not sure what you mean by "proven," but Ada is surely as proven as C and C++ is for these platforms. Ada can do anything that C and C++ can, as far as I know. Ada compilers typically undergo a notoriously stringent testing suite. When you fly on modern commercial jet aircraft, you're flying Ada. Post your question to comp.lang.ada and you'll get answers from actual Ada experts.

I've got years of experience with C/C++, zero with Ada, if you really want that code to be written yesterday, how long will it take me to be as proficient in Ada as I am in C/C++?

Tough question. Again, others with more experience in all of these languages can answer better. I'll answer this way at the risk of sounding prejudiced: You can become proficient in the subset of Ada that "covers" C and C++ in less time than it took you to learn them. Also, once you achieve some level of proficiency in Ada, it is commonly reported that development time is less than for C/C++. And Ada is said to excel in long-term maintenance of large projects.

Personally, I (like everyone else) have looked time and time again at getting serious with C. (I first learned to program in 1973 and have used many languages.) Maybe I'm lucky, but I've always had the final choice in what languages I use. I am a big proponent of knowing several languages and choosing the best one(s) for the job. Not only has C struck me as being inappropriate for every programming task that I have had with respect to reliability, it has also struck me to be hard to learn and even harder to read. Ada, on the other hand, has a clean, consistent syntax and of course is designed from the ground up to be safe.

I ask people all the time why the still use Windows just like you are asking about why people still use C or C++. The difference in my question is that there is a clear migration from Windows via virtualization and/or using alternatives to Windows specific solutions. The fact of the matter is that change takes time and effort, and people are fundamentally lazy and comfortable with what they are already familiar with. Couple that with ignorance of there being a better way, and your stuck with the lowest common denomina

This was the year of the mainframe...

I dunno, the flying overlords seem to be pretty well documented.

Maybe I'll finally be able to get my Minority Report display (sans Aero interface, hopefully)

http://homepage.mac.com/caroledanforth/tomcruise/i mages/media.jpg

WindowDragon allows resizing windows in FVWM way - hold modifier and you can drag and resize in any direction, by any point inside window.

Absolutely right! Apple used to have some great and serious people working on HCI, and made a lot of important advances (like HyperCard), which they have totally abandoned. Today, their user interfaces look and feel like they were designed by a bunch of cocaine-addled advertising executives.

Case in point: Why didn't the QuickTime team clean up their act after being inducted into the User Interface Hall of Shame? They have had 7 years to clean up that mess, but it's just gotten worse and worse!!!

It's a great thing that the OLPC project is trying to learn from Apple's mistakes instead of blindly emulating them.

-Don

Interface Hall of Shame
- QuickTime 4.0 Player -

Amid much fanfare, Apple recently released a beta version of the QuickTime 4.0 Player. Intended to showcase the technological improvements of the QuickTime 4.0 multimedia technology, the QuickTime 4.0 Player sports a completely redesigned user interface. The new interface represents an almost violent departure from the long established standards that have been the hallmark of Apple software. Ease of Use has always been paramount to Apple, but after exploring the QuickTime 4.0 Player, the rationale behind Apple's recent "Think Different" advertising campaign is now clear.

While there are some who would conclude that the revised interface represents innovative thinking at Apple, we would have to conclude otherwise. There is nothing innovative about the user interface of the QuickTime 4.0 Player; the developers adopted the same misguided principles employed in IBM's RealThings, copied some of the same features we critiqued in our reviews of IBM's RealPhone and RealCD, and added a few new follies of their own.

We recognize that some visitors may disagree with our assessment of particular features of the application and we invite your feedback. Comments can be sent to quicktime@iarchitect.com.

For the sake of accuracy, it should be noted that the following is a review of the user interface of the QuickTime 4.0 Player, not the QuickTime technology itself.

Inducted 25-May-1999

QuickTime 4.0 Player One look at QuickTime 4.0 Player and one must wonder whether Apple, arguably the most zealous defender of consistency in user interface design, has abandoned its twenty-year effort to champion interface standards. As with IBM's RealThings, it would seem that appearance has taken precedence to the basic principles of graphical interface design. In an effort to achieve what some consider to be a more modern appearance, Apple has removed the very interface clues and subtleties that allowed us to learn how to use GUI in the first place. Window borders, title bars, window management controls, meaningful control labels, state indicators, focus indicators, default control indicators, and discernible keyboard access mechanisms are all gone. According to IBM's RealThings, and apparently to Apple, such items and the meaningful information they provide are merely "visual noise and clutter". While the graphical designer may be pleased with the result, the user is left in a state of confusion: unable to determine which objects are controls, which are available at any point in the interaction, how they are activated, where they may be located, and how basic functions can be performed.

The QuickTime 4.0 Player sports a consumer interface, designed so that it "looks like" a physical consumer product. Apologists for this design philosophy maintain that users will more readily be able to transfer their knowledge of real-world objects to the software. Unfortunately, the apologists fail to recognize that there are two likely consequences of this approach: (1) the user is unable to transfer his or her existing knowledge of computer interaction, and (2) the software becomes needlessly subject to the limitations of the physical device.

Absolutely right! Apple used to have some great and serious people working on HCI, and made a lot of important advances (like HyperCard), which they have totally abandoned. Today, their user interfaces look and feel like they were designed by a bunch of cocaine-addled advertising executives.

Case in point: Why didn't the QuickTime team clean up their act after being inducted into the User Interface Hall of Shame? They have had 7 years to clean up that mess, but it's just gotten worse and worse!!!

It's a great thing that the OLPC project is trying to learn from Apple's mistakes instead of blindly emulating them.

-Don

Interface Hall of Shame
- QuickTime 4.0 Player -

Amid much fanfare, Apple recently released a beta version of the QuickTime 4.0 Player. Intended to showcase the technological improvements of the QuickTime 4.0 multimedia technology, the QuickTime 4.0 Player sports a completely redesigned user interface. The new interface represents an almost violent departure from the long established standards that have been the hallmark of Apple software. Ease of Use has always been paramount to Apple, but after exploring the QuickTime 4.0 Player, the rationale behind Apple's recent "Think Different" advertising campaign is now clear.

While there are some who would conclude that the revised interface represents innovative thinking at Apple, we would have to conclude otherwise. There is nothing innovative about the user interface of the QuickTime 4.0 Player; the developers adopted the same misguided principles employed in IBM's RealThings, copied some of the same features we critiqued in our reviews of IBM's RealPhone and RealCD, and added a few new follies of their own.

We recognize that some visitors may disagree with our assessment of particular features of the application and we invite your feedback. Comments can be sent to quicktime@iarchitect.com.

For the sake of accuracy, it should be noted that the following is a review of the user interface of the QuickTime 4.0 Player, not the QuickTime technology itself.

Inducted 25-May-1999

QuickTime 4.0 Player One look at QuickTime 4.0 Player and one must wonder whether Apple, arguably the most zealous defender of consistency in user interface design, has abandoned its twenty-year effort to champion interface standards. As with IBM's RealThings, it would seem that appearance has taken precedence to the basic principles of graphical interface design. In an effort to achieve what some consider to be a more modern appearance, Apple has removed the very interface clues and subtleties that allowed us to learn how to use GUI in the first place. Window borders, title bars, window management controls, meaningful control labels, state indicators, focus indicators, default control indicators, and discernible keyboard access mechanisms are all gone. According to IBM's RealThings, and apparently to Apple, such items and the meaningful information they provide are merely "visual noise and clutter". While the graphical designer may be pleased with the result, the user is left in a state of confusion: unable to determine which objects are controls, which are available at any point in the interaction, how they are activated, where they may be located, and how basic functions can be performed.

The QuickTime 4.0 Player sports a consumer interface, designed so that it "looks like" a physical consumer product. Apologists for this design philosophy maintain that users will more readily be able to transfer their knowledge of real-world objects to the software. Unfortunately, the apologists fail to recognize that there are two likely consequences of this approach: (1) the user is unable to transfer his or her existing knowledge of computer interaction, and (2) the software becomes needlessly subject to the limitations of the physical device.

MacOS (and OS/X) most certainly IS boring and unoriginal. Mac OS/X is based on the ancient NeXT Step window system, which was design a long long time ago. Apple has totally stagnated, and has been resting on their laurels for many years now. All their focus is on meaningless fluff and window dressing, instead of usability and empowering users.

For example, take the QuickTime player, which has only gotten worse and more obnoxious in the service of marketing iTunes and upgrades and advertisements, since it was rightfully inducted into the User Interface Hall of Shame.

Why hasn't Apple finally admitted that it's a reasonable idea to let users resize windows with the other three corners? They were wrong in 1984 to have only one resize corner, they were still wrong in 1994, still wrong in 2004, and they are still wrong in 2006. Like George W Bush, they're too vain to admit they made a mistake and correct it. Can ANYONE here give me one good argument why Mac windows can only be resized from the lower right corner?

Bill Buxton put it well: it is an unworthy design objective to aim for anything less than trying to do to the Macintosh what the Macintosh did to the previous state of the art.

-Don

TRINITY: What happened? What did you see?
NEO: An article was posted to Slashdot and then I saw another that looked just like it.
TRINITY: How much like it? Was it the same article?
NEO: It might have been. I'm not sure.
NEO: What is it?
TRINITY: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.

If it's a manpower issue, they could always hire this guy who looks like he is well qualified for that, skill wise.

On a tangent: I'm noticing a lot of speculation that the reason for the younger demographic going with PCs is price. Although that age group is certainly (by necessity) more price-conscious, the Mac mini is cheap enough that they could go get a Mac if they actually wanted one. The fact that they're not suggests to me that they don't want a Mac, not that they can't afford one.

How many Windows iPods were sold a few weeks after they hit the market?

I had every intention of flaming you, but you are right. These sales figures show that it took over a year for iPod to really take off.

I moved to Linux in 1994 as my primary desktop and server OS. About three years ago I decided that I wanted to produce some video content. Video editing was theoretically possible in Linux - I hooked up my camcorder to my Linux box and did some editing, but the tools were primitive and cofiguration was unusually difficult.

Eventually I looked at OS X and iLife. I decided to jump to a Mac. What a great move!

I found that Linux made it possible to do some things, but OS X made it simple to do them.

Fast forward a few years. I now have a few macs at home - their licensing policy makes it affordable to have several machines and a five user license for the OS and tools. My family loves the power and usability of the Mac.

Recently my linux server at home began acting a bit flaky. I did some analysis and determined that hardware replacement was needed. After checking prices for CPU/motherboard/RAM (and potentially hard disk) I figured out that I'd need a few hundred bucks to replace the CentOS box with a new one. After thinking about whether to drop a few hundred bucks or not on this server, it occurred to me that I might be able to move all of the services hosted on linux to OS X.

I found that samba,
  hotwayd,
  dansguardian,
  uw-imapd,
  fetchmail,
  procmail,
  spamassassin,
    rsync,
  rsnapshot,
  apache2,
  MySQL4,
  PHP,
  perl,
  java, and
  squid were all available for OS X.

Most of these are "in the box" with OS X. The only ones that I need to compile from source are uw-imapd and squid! Of course I need the bundled developer tools to get a compiler, and the Apple/BSD startup mechanism and the netinfo wierdness require some tweaks - but since when did Linux *not* require any tweaking?

What this means to me is that after more than a decade of running Linux at home (and work) I am *this* close to shutting down Linux for good at home.

Hope your experience is similar.

Regards,
Anomaly

PS - I share your recent comments about the loss of a pet. :(

I moved to Linux in 1994 as my primary desktop and server OS. About three years ago I decided that I wanted to produce some video content. Video editing was theoretically possible in Linux - I hooked up my camcorder to my Linux box and did some editing, but the tools were primitive and cofiguration was unusually difficult.

Eventually I looked at OS X and iLife. I decided to jump to a Mac. What a great move!

I found that Linux made it possible to do some things, but OS X made it simple to do them.

Fast forward a few years. I now have a few macs at home - their licensing policy makes it affordable to have several machines and a five user license for the OS and tools. My family loves the power and usability of the Mac.

Recently my linux server at home began acting a bit flaky. I did some analysis and determined that hardware replacement was needed. After checking prices for CPU/motherboard/RAM (and potentially hard disk) I figured out that I'd need a few hundred bucks to replace the CentOS box with a new one. After thinking about whether to drop a few hundred bucks or not on this server, it occurred to me that I might be able to move all of the services hosted on linux to OS X.

I found that samba,
  hotwayd,
  dansguardian,
  uw-imapd,
  fetchmail,
  procmail,
  spamassassin,
    rsync,
  rsnapshot,
  apache2,
  MySQL4,
  PHP,
  perl,
  java, and
  squid were all available for OS X.

Most of these are "in the box" with OS X. The only ones that I need to compile from source are uw-imapd and squid! Of course I need the bundled developer tools to get a compiler, and the Apple/BSD startup mechanism and the netinfo wierdness require some tweaks - but since when did Linux *not* require any tweaking?

What this means to me is that after more than a decade of running Linux at home (and work) I am *this* close to shutting down Linux for good at home.

Hope your experience is similar.

Regards,
Anomaly

PS - I share your recent comments about the loss of a pet. :(

I moved to Linux in 1994 as my primary desktop and server OS. About three years ago I decided that I wanted to produce some video content. Video editing was theoretically possible in Linux - I hooked up my camcorder to my Linux box and did some editing, but the tools were primitive and cofiguration was unusually difficult.

Eventually I looked at OS X and iLife. I decided to jump to a Mac. What a great move!

I found that Linux made it possible to do some things, but OS X made it simple to do them.

Fast forward a few years. I now have a few macs at home - their licensing policy makes it affordable to have several machines and a five user license for the OS and tools. My family loves the power and usability of the Mac.

Recently my linux server at home began acting a bit flaky. I did some analysis and determined that hardware replacement was needed. After checking prices for CPU/motherboard/RAM (and potentially hard disk) I figured out that I'd need a few hundred bucks to replace the CentOS box with a new one. After thinking about whether to drop a few hundred bucks or not on this server, it occurred to me that I might be able to move all of the services hosted on linux to OS X.

I found that samba,
  hotwayd,
  dansguardian,
  uw-imapd,
  fetchmail,
  procmail,
  spamassassin,
    rsync,
  rsnapshot,
  apache2,
  MySQL4,
  PHP,
  perl,
  java, and
  squid were all available for OS X.

Most of these are "in the box" with OS X. The only ones that I need to compile from source are uw-imapd and squid! Of course I need the bundled developer tools to get a compiler, and the Apple/BSD startup mechanism and the netinfo wierdness require some tweaks - but since when did Linux *not* require any tweaking?

What this means to me is that after more than a decade of running Linux at home (and work) I am *this* close to shutting down Linux for good at home.

Hope your experience is similar.

Regards,
Anomaly

PS - I share your recent comments about the loss of a pet. :(

Why would anyone steal the elections by miscalibrating the touchscreen? It shows, it produces news reports, it's messy. The elections can be stolen, it's been demonstrated pretty convincingly, without anyone registering anything. Oh, and this.