That's really the easier thing to do. You have choices for getting traditionally Linux/UNIX apps to run on Mac: Darwinports, Fink, binary installations, and compile from source. I work a lot with open source video programs like x264, ffmpeg, etc. I don't know if RPM or apt-get are portable to other Linux systems (not too familiar with how they work), although I do once remember an RPM package for Slackware, so maybe it's trivial. Also, you're not limited to Apple's X11 app either. Running a Mac OS X on Linux though is much harder, discounting for full virtualization/emulation software.
Hi, yes I am keeping up. I am going to look into your suggestion. Even if I am unable to run Cocoa GUI apps that way, I am sure I can take advantage of this feature. Thanks.
Yes, a number of professional tools as well as some consumer level fun tools that make you wonder how you got by without them before.
Aperture, Logic Pro, Shake, Garageband, Keynote, and iPhoto which has a print-to-photobook option that makes it unequal to Picassa. Then there's third-party apps like those made by Panic such as Unison and Coda. Granted, it's easy to find a replacement binary newsreader, a presentation application, and a programmer's text editor. But these apps are really polish and a real pleasure to work with. There are also a number of guilty little pleasures, indie games and whatnot.
At any rate, I still want someone to tell me why my concept of an electronic machine that prints a copy of your ballot, which you, after reviewing it, then put into a sealed box at the polling station, doesn't meet the criteria of a swift count with a tamper-proof backup system.
I think it does. It's just that Congress doesn't care about your idea. Capitol Hill has been deaf to public demands for tamper-proof systems of numerous types. The voting machine industry lobbies Congress just as every other industry does, and it has done a pretty successful job of convincing Congress that open systems are dangerously susceptible to tampering. Many people even suspect voting machine companies of favoring specific parties and candidates. For example, the CEO of Diebold Election Systems did fundraising on behalf of Bush and [paraphrasing] promised to deliver electoral votes for him.
Thanks for the link. A "Quit Finder" option might prove useful. As it is now, I've learned to keep a terminal open and sometimes Activity Monitor. I use Terminal.app heavily anyway, and issuing a 'kill' always works. There is a Mac-on-Linux virtualization project but it requires PowerPC. I'll just have to wait patiently to see what Leopard brings.
I exlained elsewhere in the thread, but since you asked directly: Mac OS X is fine except that on my Core 2 Duo has been very flaky. The same tasks (video and audio work) performed on my PowerPC go without a hitch. This leads me to believe it's not Mac OS X generally, but something about its implementation on x86. I know I am not the only one to notice a problem with Finder getting bogged down. Leopard will probably fix this when it comes out.
Like any Linux user my first thought was "How can I use Linux to improve my computing experience with this piece of electronics?" Specifically, "Can I run Linux so that I can run my applications and get my work done without a single errant program like Finder taking down the entire machine?" You no doubt get this, but others should understand that in this era, The Macintosh computer is no more locked to Mac OS X than a Dell/Gateway/HP with its craptacular windows-only hardware is locked to Windows.
I would have been better off asking about an alternative to Finder. That way I wouldn't have so many people challenging the sensibility of putting Linux on a Macintosh in the first place when I could do it on a $400 PC. This is not directly to you, but had I asked about running Linux on the PSP so that I could run GBA games, I would have gotten less critcism. Sheeesh.
Hehehe, yes I do have work to do. And Finder has been preventing me from getting it done by wigging out on me at random times. I'll probably just wait for Leopard and the new Finder, but I don't think getting Aperture, Shake, GarageBand, or Logic to run on Linux is stupid.
I will never understand why someone would buy a $2000 iMac and negate the entire reason for purchasing from Apple -- to run Mac OS X. You can run Linux for a lot less money, you know.
Why would you buy a $2000 PC and negate the entire reason for purchasing from [insert PC maker] -- to run Windows?
It's a matter of running the operating system I choose on the hardware I prefer. Would you ask this question of people who run Linux on iPaqs and Jornadas, or on PS3 or Xbox? The fact is, Mac OS is just one of a few operating systems in current development that runs on the Macintosh computer.
You're pretty much on point. I'm very pragmatic about operating systems because I've used so many. I do love Macs though. When people say "Why by a Mac if..." I want to retort with "Why by a Windows PC if...".
I think people who purchase PCs in stores with the intention of running Linux are weird, but I know I look just as wierd to them.
For me, buying a Macintosh isn't about choosing Mac OS X. People who think you are locked in to Mac OS are forgetting about things like PPC Linux and BeOS - my only point being, it's been several years since the Macintosh was locked down to a single operating system. I don't go running around mocking Windows users for being forced to use MS-DOS instead of DR-DOS now do I? *wink*
I do believe in free software and I do prefer Linux over every other system, but I prefer Apple over every other hardware maker. In the end, software is portable; hardware quality is not. If I didn't have specific application needs, I would be happily running Gentoo on my iMac.
I've stated my reasons in a couple of responses. I actually was surprised that the journal entry got published when nothing else I deliberately hoped to be published EVER was. Had I thought it would have been, I would have explained my situation better. All apologies. In case you don't find my responses...
I am a Mac and Linux user. For me, it doesn't make sense to buy a Windows PC in order to run Linux. I guess you have to be a Machead in order to get that. I could build one of course, but I don't think I could do as good a job building a rig that is as silent and as integrated as my iMac. I'm not up on current PC design trends. Moreover, I already own the iMac and I use it for applications such as Aperture and Shake, neither of which has a suitable equivalent on Windows or Linux. I don't have a reason to virtualize Linux on Mac OS X. To me that doesn't really make sense unless a person needs a sandboxed Linux installation and not generally a set of Linux applications. It's just that, recently I have been dealing with flaky behavior out of my MacTel that has not existed on my PowerPC that's interrupting my work. I was hoping that were it possible to use Aperture or Shake on Linux, I would have increased stability. Maybe all I need is the new Finder that's coming.
The iMac is a consumer machine, yes. But it is a good machine. This is the 24" iMac which is better classified as a prosumer machine. It's not junk, and it won't buckle under pressure at hardware level. This whole consumer/professional thing is a bit silly irrelvant anyway don't you think? The code I'd write on my iMac is no different than the code I'd write on a Mac Pro. Aperture is incredibly fast on this machine.
I tried out iTunes for music a while back. I think it's safe to say that the technically-oriented and freedom-inclined Linux user base would also be unlikely to purchase low-bitrate DRM'ed AAC files. There is video though, some of which is free and not DRM'ed. Sadly there is even more DRM'ed video that will play nowhere else except on your iPod on iTunes supported OS. I wouldn't have even cared about the videos sold on iTunes except for the fact that there are a few videos which are not out on DVD and will likely not be for quite some time.
I hear that a lot. Fact is, Apple makes good hardware. Some peple buy Apple hardware not for the operating system but for the hardware. I don't mind paying a premium for a piece of hardware that won't die on me after 2 years like my HPs and my Compaqs have. I'd consider an IBM to be a premium purchase too by the way. The Mac look was the least of my deciding factors when I bought this MacTel. The silent operation of my Macs, x86 and PPC alike, were far more important to me. But yes, I like clean lines and a minimalist approach to design. I have an investment in Mac software already, and I rely on Mac software for work and play, so purchasing a PC makes no sense. Plus, I already own the Mac. It's cheaper to use what you already have, no? I would never have considered doing anything more than running Linux in VMWARE or Parallels on the iMac had I not run into stability problems that remain non-existant on my PowerPC.
As for replacing parts, after building and buying many traditional desktops over the years, I came to the conclusion that aside from adding memory and additional hard drives, I rarely upgrade parts without doing a total upgrade of everything in my rig. If my iMac's screen dies, I can plug it into another monitor and use that. It'll be ugly, but it will work. I've never had hardware failures with Apple computers that required replacing anything except for my MacBook's battery. The only thing I really consider myself shit outta luck on are video card upgrades.
Mac OS X is a great operating system. On My PowerPC it has never failed me. On Core 2 Duo I have been noticing behavioral problems that are interrupting my work flow. Often, and seemingly randomly, Finder will lock up. Gradually all my open windows become non-responsive until I have no choice but to hard reboot. When you do that, you risk corrupting your hard drive with invalid sibling links and invalids nodes. Some of these can be fixed using fsck; but often you must reformat the drive. A nice feature of Mac OS X is that I can boot of the installation DVD, load a terminal, and then proceed to backup all my files, but it is a pain.
What the fuck is he trying to gain?
Performance and stability. Better memory management. The lack of a Finder. Basically some of the most common things people who want to run Linux want to gain. However, I use applications like Shake, Final Cut, GarageBand, and Aperture. These don't have practical equivalents in the Windows or Linux world.
Thanks for the response. My iMac uses an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT. I need audio to work, and I need the interal iSight camera to work as well. I have seen a few HOWTOs on getting Ubuntu working on a MacBook. Sleep was brought up in a few places as being spotty. There was also some talk about Airport support and Airport Extreme support having issues as well.
My theory so far... if a MacBook can run Linux fine albiet with some hiccups, then an new gen iMac can as well. And sure enough, there are pictures here.
But yes, this is the nature of depending on proprietary software for a closed system. Honestly though, this wasn't any different from the headaches I had trying to get Linux on my old HP PC and supporting all the freaking DirectX and WDM-based video equipment I had. Can someone recommend a current generation personal computer that was *made* just for Linux, PPC preferably, and that isn't totally spartan.;-)
This is true. I've shifted as much of my video work to open-source, cross-platform apps as I can, but I still rely on Final Cut and Shake as well as Garageband. And personally, I rely on iPhoto for printing photobooks, iChat AV for video chatting, and iTunes for video podcasts only. I also have a guilty pleasure for indie Mac games of which there *are* many.
Ironically, were I decide to run Linux on my PPC, all would be fine, I can use Mac-on-Linux and a few other tools to run my apps. But PowerPC Mac has never failed me. But x86 Mac frequently pisses me off. What would Linux give me that makes me want to use it on a Mac? Stability and better memory management. I'm tired of Finder locking up as I watch window after window freeze until I have to hard reboot, risking invalid sibling links and BTree nodes that may force me to rescue the data off my drive and reformat.
Now that I think of it, the US university lobby should have been one heavily opposing the B1-B program. US kids are hardly encouraged to go into debt to get a degree knowing that they can always be easily replaced with a less-expensive offshore worker. What was their official position on the matter? Did they even have one?
My university, a major polytech, actively sought foreign students during the mid-late '90s when every other person I met on the street was either a computer science or electrical engineering major. Many of the American students and some of the faculty felt that the school had a preference for foreign students over American students. As such, my campus was predominantly foreign, though this was partly due to the fact that most American students were off-campus commuters. I and many others felt the school was being lax with school policies regarding the foreign students, particularly with the TOEFL exam requirement for the grad programs. It just always seemed that if you were an American, the school's policies would remain totally rigid; but were you a foreign student, the school was always open to negotiations. The result was foreign students receiving their Masters degrees and then going back to fulfill university requirements such as the TOEFL exam. My MBA program was big on espousing the virtues of off-shoring. I don't know if there is a "university lobby", but if there is one, my school would likely have been very supportive of the B1-B program.
In which case I believe that you are a little bit paranoid. Do you use a credit card? They can trace your movements based on your expenses. Do you own property or pay taxes? Guess how much information those two facts give to the 'system'. Do you have a passport? Gosh, they could use that to track your movements across national boundaries.
I'm sure the parent understands this who doesn't? Obviously we as citizens reasonably want to limit the government's ability to track us, and no one ought to apologize for that. And obviously we are willing to be trackable where we gain some in return, a creature comfort or government service. It's tug of war game, and every attempt by the government to increase its monitoring ought to be resisted, at least in civil protest if not through litigation. It's not a made-up problem, it's the way we preserve our rights by keeping the line in the sand from being redrawn over and over again until we've lost a right that no real patriot would argue is trivial. However...
This is a minor issue. The potential abuse is really nothing that will harm individual privacy rights anymore than having publically viewable license plates does. The scanner is merely a mechanism that adds automation to a manual process that has long been performed openly by police all across the country. Whenever a cop responds to a matter any matter, the cop will be sure to perform basic checks for such things as warrants or stolen vehicle reports. The ACLU rep thinks the scanning is a civil rights violation? But why? It wasn't a violation when a cop had to identify a plate with his eye and then manually query it. The only thing that has changed is the efficiency of the process and the effective viewing range of the cop's "eye".
I didn't find a specific reference to this issue at the Ohio ACLU page referenced at the bottom of the article, so I am thinking ACLU's response was more of an informal show of concern than a formal protest that would be newsworthy. I did find this 2004 article. It seems related, and it suggests that the ACLU knew about the scanner's use back in 2004, and then only expressed concern over potential abuses. Again, not really a formal protest. Ergo, acknowledge and move on.
Good points, all of it. I still think the basic premise holds though. It's just that the school district likely made the same mistake so many people make in assuming that learning Microsoft Word means that you learned word processing. They're not idiots. Surely they would scoff at anyone claiming to know how to drive a '96 Honda civic but not know how to drive cars generally.
Off topic: It's been a while since I've been in highschool. When I was there, if you wanted to learn typesetting you burned an elective credit on a journalism class. This gave you practical experience by putting you to work at producing the school paper and the yearbook. My high school computer programming classes were all in BASIC, but I did have one teacher that was cool enough to install Turbo C and Turbo Pascal for us. I would hope that somewhere in America, there's a high school that teaches at least Python.
What else have you been working too at a PC besides Office?
A lot of software going back to DOS and Windows 3.1. I've always liked Microsoft's development tools. They really do well in that department. I remember Office XP, strange interface. It was an interim upgrade for me before I said I had enough of Windows.
Anyway, back to the topic: the school district is not in a vertical market with peculiar needs for data formats.
Yeah, you're right. It's been a while since I've looked at an organization that didn't have particular format needs.
I would have preferred that the school district chose Linux. The TCO alone should have made Linux the only real choice since few schools have the funds to do hardware upgrades. It would have even been a good idea to use BeOS. Mac OS X wouldn't have been a good choice only because the schools were predominantly x86-based. I can't fault the district for not knowing about the options available to them though. So many people buy Microsoft products just because they know Windows is a Microsoft product, and it just follows that you buy Microsoft apps to go with your Microsoft operating system. It's the kind of logic we used long ago with hi-fi stereo; you keep within the brand, otherwise you'll have a nightmare of incompatibilities.
By your logic, since MSO2007 is the new de facto standard, schools that taught any previous version would not have "give[n] children the skills they will need in order to make it."
Not my logic. I would have been against standardizing on software rather than standardizing on an output format. I was probably unclear. The precise version of the application doesn't matter. I doubt the school district thought one moment about whether students should learn using MS Office 2007 or the previous version. They defaulted to the current version. The importance as they saw it was in forcing students to develop skills in word processing as it will be a necessary skill in the future. Sadly, many people equate mastering MS Office with mastering word processing in the same way many equate mastering Windows with mastering computers.
Teach Office Suites, not MS Office.
Absolutely, and I've done my part. Did anyone do theirs and teach the guys who made the decision?
And if the feds do set such rules, do you think most state voters would accept anything less in their state elections?
Never overestimate what we Americans are willing to accept in our elections. So Canada has mandatory recounts? Our laws seems to differ from locale to locale.
Are you suggesting that the voting machine would use some form of disappearing and appearing ink to change the paper trail? If not, please outline *exactly how* a machine which registered the vote electronically, printed that vote for the voter, who reviews it personally to ensure it's correct, and then deposits said vote into a sealed ballot box, could be "fixed"? Your idea of having the voter take his receipt home with him is the most ridiculous solution I've ever heard.
I wasn't actually suggesting that voters take receipts home with them as a solution, just that were it a solution, it wouldn't be a good one. As for the voting machine forging things, it's really simple. You've assumed that the hypothetical voting machine prints a vote that the voter can verify before depositing it. That's not the reality here. You vote on screen. The machine records the vote, and that is all. The US government wants paperless voting. I think it's safe to say both major parties want it, so the future is not a voting machine that prints a vote that voters will manually drop into a sealed box. The most we'd likely see is a voting machine that prints a receipt for the voter. The voter still doesn't know absolutely that his/her vote was recorded in the machine as desired. No disappearing ink, just a very real concern if all we do is add a printer to a voting machine with shifty software on it.
This one time, I watched a Fox anchor go on an extended rant about how artificial intelligence research should be limited because it will ultimately result in robot laborers who will one day sue and riot for equal rights and labor protections such as shorter work weeks. It occured to no one on the panel that arguing against giving robots shorter work weeks requires that we first believe robots live someplace and drive to work, and then go home at the end of the day.
It's not just Fox News though. They're all idiots for sure. But I would say the same about CNN and to a lesser degree MSNBC. This is what happens when news becomes 24-hours but isn't really 24-hours and you start hiring lawyers, attorneys, and disc-jokeys to be journalists instead of *cough* journalists.
Slashdot Mirror
That's really the easier thing to do. You have choices for getting traditionally Linux/UNIX apps to run on Mac: Darwinports, Fink, binary installations, and compile from source. I work a lot with open source video programs like x264, ffmpeg, etc. I don't know if RPM or apt-get are portable to other Linux systems (not too familiar with how they work), although I do once remember an RPM package for Slackware, so maybe it's trivial. Also, you're not limited to Apple's X11 app either. Running a Mac OS X on Linux though is much harder, discounting for full virtualization/emulation software.
You're not far off. FUD techniques often rely on Fucked Up Data.
Hi, yes I am keeping up. I am going to look into your suggestion. Even if I am unable to run Cocoa GUI apps that way, I am sure I can take advantage of this feature. Thanks.
I would be surprised if Ray Kurzweil didn't already do this many years ago. In any case, I too remember this being done already.
Damn it, I just know my DNA sequence is going to sound like ABBA's "Waterloo".
Yes, a number of professional tools as well as some consumer level fun tools that make you wonder how you got by without them before.
Aperture, Logic Pro, Shake, Garageband, Keynote, and iPhoto which has a print-to-photobook option that makes it unequal to Picassa. Then there's third-party apps like those made by Panic such as Unison and Coda. Granted, it's easy to find a replacement binary newsreader, a presentation application, and a programmer's text editor. But these apps are really polish and a real pleasure to work with. There are also a number of guilty little pleasures, indie games and whatnot.
I think it does. It's just that Congress doesn't care about your idea. Capitol Hill has been deaf to public demands for tamper-proof systems of numerous types. The voting machine industry lobbies Congress just as every other industry does, and it has done a pretty successful job of convincing Congress that open systems are dangerously susceptible to tampering. Many people even suspect voting machine companies of favoring specific parties and candidates. For example, the CEO of Diebold Election Systems did fundraising on behalf of Bush and [paraphrasing] promised to deliver electoral votes for him.
Thanks for the link. A "Quit Finder" option might prove useful. As it is now, I've learned to keep a terminal open and sometimes Activity Monitor. I use Terminal.app heavily anyway, and issuing a 'kill' always works. There is a Mac-on-Linux virtualization project but it requires PowerPC. I'll just have to wait patiently to see what Leopard brings.
I exlained elsewhere in the thread, but since you asked directly: Mac OS X is fine except that on my Core 2 Duo has been very flaky. The same tasks (video and audio work) performed on my PowerPC go without a hitch. This leads me to believe it's not Mac OS X generally, but something about its implementation on x86. I know I am not the only one to notice a problem with Finder getting bogged down. Leopard will probably fix this when it comes out.
Like any Linux user my first thought was "How can I use Linux to improve my computing experience with this piece of electronics?" Specifically, "Can I run Linux so that I can run my applications and get my work done without a single errant program like Finder taking down the entire machine?" You no doubt get this, but others should understand that in this era, The Macintosh computer is no more locked to Mac OS X than a Dell/Gateway/HP with its craptacular windows-only hardware is locked to Windows.
I would have been better off asking about an alternative to Finder. That way I wouldn't have so many people challenging the sensibility of putting Linux on a Macintosh in the first place when I could do it on a $400 PC. This is not directly to you, but had I asked about running Linux on the PSP so that I could run GBA games, I would have gotten less critcism. Sheeesh.
Hehehe, yes I do have work to do. And Finder has been preventing me from getting it done by wigging out on me at random times. I'll probably just wait for Leopard and the new Finder, but I don't think getting Aperture, Shake, GarageBand, or Logic to run on Linux is stupid.
Why would you buy a $2000 PC and negate the entire reason for purchasing from [insert PC maker] -- to run Windows?
It's a matter of running the operating system I choose on the hardware I prefer. Would you ask this question of people who run Linux on iPaqs and Jornadas, or on PS3 or Xbox? The fact is, Mac OS is just one of a few operating systems in current development that runs on the Macintosh computer.
You're pretty much on point. I'm very pragmatic about operating systems because I've used so many. I do love Macs though. When people say "Why by a Mac if..." I want to retort with "Why by a Windows PC if...".
I think people who purchase PCs in stores with the intention of running Linux are weird, but I know I look just as wierd to them.
For me, buying a Macintosh isn't about choosing Mac OS X. People who think you are locked in to Mac OS are forgetting about things like PPC Linux and BeOS - my only point being, it's been several years since the Macintosh was locked down to a single operating system. I don't go running around mocking Windows users for being forced to use MS-DOS instead of DR-DOS now do I? *wink*
I do believe in free software and I do prefer Linux over every other system, but I prefer Apple over every other hardware maker. In the end, software is portable; hardware quality is not. If I didn't have specific application needs, I would be happily running Gentoo on my iMac.
I've stated my reasons in a couple of responses. I actually was surprised that the journal entry got published when nothing else I deliberately hoped to be published EVER was. Had I thought it would have been, I would have explained my situation better. All apologies. In case you don't find my responses...
I am a Mac and Linux user. For me, it doesn't make sense to buy a Windows PC in order to run Linux. I guess you have to be a Machead in order to get that. I could build one of course, but I don't think I could do as good a job building a rig that is as silent and as integrated as my iMac. I'm not up on current PC design trends. Moreover, I already own the iMac and I use it for applications such as Aperture and Shake, neither of which has a suitable equivalent on Windows or Linux. I don't have a reason to virtualize Linux on Mac OS X. To me that doesn't really make sense unless a person needs a sandboxed Linux installation and not generally a set of Linux applications. It's just that, recently I have been dealing with flaky behavior out of my MacTel that has not existed on my PowerPC that's interrupting my work. I was hoping that were it possible to use Aperture or Shake on Linux, I would have increased stability. Maybe all I need is the new Finder that's coming.
The iMac is a consumer machine, yes. But it is a good machine. This is the 24" iMac which is better classified as a prosumer machine. It's not junk, and it won't buckle under pressure at hardware level. This whole consumer/professional thing is a bit silly irrelvant anyway don't you think? The code I'd write on my iMac is no different than the code I'd write on a Mac Pro. Aperture is incredibly fast on this machine.
I tried out iTunes for music a while back. I think it's safe to say that the technically-oriented and freedom-inclined Linux user base would also be unlikely to purchase low-bitrate DRM'ed AAC files. There is video though, some of which is free and not DRM'ed. Sadly there is even more DRM'ed video that will play nowhere else except on your iPod on iTunes supported OS. I wouldn't have even cared about the videos sold on iTunes except for the fact that there are a few videos which are not out on DVD and will likely not be for quite some time.
I hear that a lot. Fact is, Apple makes good hardware. Some peple buy Apple hardware not for the operating system but for the hardware. I don't mind paying a premium for a piece of hardware that won't die on me after 2 years like my HPs and my Compaqs have. I'd consider an IBM to be a premium purchase too by the way. The Mac look was the least of my deciding factors when I bought this MacTel. The silent operation of my Macs, x86 and PPC alike, were far more important to me. But yes, I like clean lines and a minimalist approach to design. I have an investment in Mac software already, and I rely on Mac software for work and play, so purchasing a PC makes no sense. Plus, I already own the Mac. It's cheaper to use what you already have, no? I would never have considered doing anything more than running Linux in VMWARE or Parallels on the iMac had I not run into stability problems that remain non-existant on my PowerPC.
As for replacing parts, after building and buying many traditional desktops over the years, I came to the conclusion that aside from adding memory and additional hard drives, I rarely upgrade parts without doing a total upgrade of everything in my rig. If my iMac's screen dies, I can plug it into another monitor and use that. It'll be ugly, but it will work. I've never had hardware failures with Apple computers that required replacing anything except for my MacBook's battery. The only thing I really consider myself shit outta luck on are video card upgrades.
Mac OS X is a great operating system. On My PowerPC it has never failed me. On Core 2 Duo I have been noticing behavioral problems that are interrupting my work flow. Often, and seemingly randomly, Finder will lock up. Gradually all my open windows become non-responsive until I have no choice but to hard reboot. When you do that, you risk corrupting your hard drive with invalid sibling links and invalids nodes. Some of these can be fixed using fsck; but often you must reformat the drive. A nice feature of Mac OS X is that I can boot of the installation DVD, load a terminal, and then proceed to backup all my files, but it is a pain.
Performance and stability. Better memory management. The lack of a Finder. Basically some of the most common things people who want to run Linux want to gain. However, I use applications like Shake, Final Cut, GarageBand, and Aperture. These don't have practical equivalents in the Windows or Linux world.
Thanks for the response. My iMac uses an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT. I need audio to work, and I need the interal iSight camera to work as well. I have seen a few HOWTOs on getting Ubuntu working on a MacBook. Sleep was brought up in a few places as being spotty. There was also some talk about Airport support and Airport Extreme support having issues as well.
My theory so far... if a MacBook can run Linux fine albiet with some hiccups, then an new gen iMac can as well. And sure enough, there are pictures here.
But yes, this is the nature of depending on proprietary software for a closed system. Honestly though, this wasn't any different from the headaches I had trying to get Linux on my old HP PC and supporting all the freaking DirectX and WDM-based video equipment I had. Can someone recommend a current generation personal computer that was *made* just for Linux, PPC preferably, and that isn't totally spartan. ;-)
This is true. I've shifted as much of my video work to open-source, cross-platform apps as I can, but I still rely on Final Cut and Shake as well as Garageband. And personally, I rely on iPhoto for printing photobooks, iChat AV for video chatting, and iTunes for video podcasts only. I also have a guilty pleasure for indie Mac games of which there *are* many.
Ironically, were I decide to run Linux on my PPC, all would be fine, I can use Mac-on-Linux and a few other tools to run my apps. But PowerPC Mac has never failed me. But x86 Mac frequently pisses me off. What would Linux give me that makes me want to use it on a Mac? Stability and better memory management. I'm tired of Finder locking up as I watch window after window freeze until I have to hard reboot, risking invalid sibling links and BTree nodes that may force me to rescue the data off my drive and reformat.
My university, a major polytech, actively sought foreign students during the mid-late '90s when every other person I met on the street was either a computer science or electrical engineering major. Many of the American students and some of the faculty felt that the school had a preference for foreign students over American students. As such, my campus was predominantly foreign, though this was partly due to the fact that most American students were off-campus commuters. I and many others felt the school was being lax with school policies regarding the foreign students, particularly with the TOEFL exam requirement for the grad programs. It just always seemed that if you were an American, the school's policies would remain totally rigid; but were you a foreign student, the school was always open to negotiations. The result was foreign students receiving their Masters degrees and then going back to fulfill university requirements such as the TOEFL exam. My MBA program was big on espousing the virtues of off-shoring. I don't know if there is a "university lobby", but if there is one, my school would likely have been very supportive of the B1-B program.
I'm sure the parent understands this who doesn't? Obviously we as citizens reasonably want to limit the government's ability to track us, and no one ought to apologize for that. And obviously we are willing to be trackable where we gain some in return, a creature comfort or government service. It's tug of war game, and every attempt by the government to increase its monitoring ought to be resisted, at least in civil protest if not through litigation. It's not a made-up problem, it's the way we preserve our rights by keeping the line in the sand from being redrawn over and over again until we've lost a right that no real patriot would argue is trivial. However...
This is a minor issue. The potential abuse is really nothing that will harm individual privacy rights anymore than having publically viewable license plates does. The scanner is merely a mechanism that adds automation to a manual process that has long been performed openly by police all across the country. Whenever a cop responds to a matter any matter, the cop will be sure to perform basic checks for such things as warrants or stolen vehicle reports. The ACLU rep thinks the scanning is a civil rights violation? But why? It wasn't a violation when a cop had to identify a plate with his eye and then manually query it. The only thing that has changed is the efficiency of the process and the effective viewing range of the cop's "eye".
I didn't find a specific reference to this issue at the Ohio ACLU page referenced at the bottom of the article, so I am thinking ACLU's response was more of an informal show of concern than a formal protest that would be newsworthy. I did find this 2004 article. It seems related, and it suggests that the ACLU knew about the scanner's use back in 2004, and then only expressed concern over potential abuses. Again, not really a formal protest. Ergo, acknowledge and move on.
Good points, all of it. I still think the basic premise holds though. It's just that the school district likely made the same mistake so many people make in assuming that learning Microsoft Word means that you learned word processing. They're not idiots. Surely they would scoff at anyone claiming to know how to drive a '96 Honda civic but not know how to drive cars generally.
Off topic: It's been a while since I've been in highschool. When I was there, if you wanted to learn typesetting you burned an elective credit on a journalism class. This gave you practical experience by putting you to work at producing the school paper and the yearbook. My high school computer programming classes were all in BASIC, but I did have one teacher that was cool enough to install Turbo C and Turbo Pascal for us. I would hope that somewhere in America, there's a high school that teaches at least Python.
What else have you been working too at a PC besides Office?
A lot of software going back to DOS and Windows 3.1. I've always liked Microsoft's development tools. They really do well in that department. I remember Office XP, strange interface. It was an interim upgrade for me before I said I had enough of Windows.
Anyway, back to the topic: the school district is not in a vertical market with peculiar needs for data formats.
Yeah, you're right. It's been a while since I've looked at an organization that didn't have particular format needs.
I would have preferred that the school district chose Linux. The TCO alone should have made Linux the only real choice since few schools have the funds to do hardware upgrades. It would have even been a good idea to use BeOS. Mac OS X wouldn't have been a good choice only because the schools were predominantly x86-based. I can't fault the district for not knowing about the options available to them though. So many people buy Microsoft products just because they know Windows is a Microsoft product, and it just follows that you buy Microsoft apps to go with your Microsoft operating system. It's the kind of logic we used long ago with hi-fi stereo; you keep within the brand, otherwise you'll have a nightmare of incompatibilities.
By your logic, since MSO2007 is the new de facto standard, schools that taught any previous version would not have "give[n] children the skills they will need in order to make it."
Not my logic. I would have been against standardizing on software rather than standardizing on an output format. I was probably unclear. The precise version of the application doesn't matter. I doubt the school district thought one moment about whether students should learn using MS Office 2007 or the previous version. They defaulted to the current version. The importance as they saw it was in forcing students to develop skills in word processing as it will be a necessary skill in the future. Sadly, many people equate mastering MS Office with mastering word processing in the same way many equate mastering Windows with mastering computers.
Teach Office Suites, not MS Office.
Absolutely, and I've done my part. Did anyone do theirs and teach the guys who made the decision?
And if the feds do set such rules, do you think most state voters would accept anything less in their state elections?
Never overestimate what we Americans are willing to accept in our elections. So Canada has mandatory recounts? Our laws seems to differ from locale to locale.
Are you suggesting that the voting machine would use some form of disappearing and appearing ink to change the paper trail? If not, please outline *exactly how* a machine which registered the vote electronically, printed that vote for the voter, who reviews it personally to ensure it's correct, and then deposits said vote into a sealed ballot box, could be "fixed"? Your idea of having the voter take his receipt home with him is the most ridiculous solution I've ever heard.
I wasn't actually suggesting that voters take receipts home with them as a solution, just that were it a solution, it wouldn't be a good one. As for the voting machine forging things, it's really simple. You've assumed that the hypothetical voting machine prints a vote that the voter can verify before depositing it. That's not the reality here. You vote on screen. The machine records the vote, and that is all. The US government wants paperless voting. I think it's safe to say both major parties want it, so the future is not a voting machine that prints a vote that voters will manually drop into a sealed box. The most we'd likely see is a voting machine that prints a receipt for the voter. The voter still doesn't know absolutely that his/her vote was recorded in the machine as desired. No disappearing ink, just a very real concern if all we do is add a printer to a voting machine with shifty software on it.
This one time, I watched a Fox anchor go on an extended rant about how artificial intelligence research should be limited because it will ultimately result in robot laborers who will one day sue and riot for equal rights and labor protections such as shorter work weeks. It occured to no one on the panel that arguing against giving robots shorter work weeks requires that we first believe robots live someplace and drive to work, and then go home at the end of the day.
It's not just Fox News though. They're all idiots for sure. But I would say the same about CNN and to a lesser degree MSNBC. This is what happens when news becomes 24-hours but isn't really 24-hours and you start hiring lawyers, attorneys, and disc-jokeys to be journalists instead of *cough* journalists.