There is another side of the coin. Many of the kids who did not understand that Macs were not just those annoying slow toys that dealt with at school, administrators who knew even less about the situation and parents bitching on behalf of their kids moved schools away from Macs.
I always liked the things. The interfaces were very newbie proof and you could be further locked down if needed via software. They gave kids a wonderful easy to use way to explore computers. To this day, I love the Mac interface. It is far more intuitive than windoze or even most Linux interfaces right out of the box. Most folks using the latest *nix can toy the interface to do anything they want but Linux wants that desktop then we need to figure out how to go beyond making an interface as good as windoze or even Macs but something better.
I hope that some the Darwin movement will lead to user interface code on a large scale being released so that the free OS movement can see how to move the user's interface with their computer to the next level.
WTF? I hope you are joking man. I love computers and all but I hope my wife throws the damn box out of the windoze when I start comparing the Celsius tempature of the CPU under various Operating Systems. Are you engineer on a special project?
Otherwise, stop taking the tempature of the computer and use the thing!:->
First, the World Wide Web is part of the internet but not the whole internet mind you. Second, corporate interest in the internet as a whole has been a fairly annoying thing. Sure, people have gotten rich and such. However, spam, junk mail posting and corporate entities throwing their weight around in terms of copyright law have negated much of the benefits in my opinion of the promise of e-commerce and the money of old companies coming into the digital world.
However, like I said before, the web is not the entire internet. The backbone of the network has not been copyrighted. Once the geeks have all gone home and finally gotten tired of pop-up porno ads, junk postings in their USENET groups and spam in their dozen or so email addresses, we will create a new space just as lawless and wild as the web use to be. Maybe I am not imaginative enough but I doubt there are few of us out there that will see the nature of the next step in computing, networking and sharing information over the internet but it will come.
I remember that the mere idea of the internet seemed mind-boggling to me as a sat back dialing into my BBS at 2400 baud. Technology will move faster than the corporations and every new space will have a moment to breath before being consumed by money.
Look for the open spaces to breath. That is the only advice I can give.
Their OS with the database journaling filesystem, fast bootups and good multimedia support is a valid alternative OS especially for the desktop space that alot of Linux evangelists lust after right now.
It is not the fact that the OS is inferior. The company is finally slowly but surely waking up to the fact that making people pay for the OS is fool's way of making money.
If you had said that they did not go far enough I would sincerely agreed. However, you don't move mountains all at once. Corporations like mountains move slowly sometimes. One day soon I predict that you will see them open up the code of their product.
There have been some very good reviews of this OS in more than a few Alternative/Free OS type websites. I don't carry URLs like weapons around but do the searches. Once this thing is open sourced and the community can improve the code we will be the better for it. However, you do not insult a child for running after they made their first steps. That sort of zealotry marks our community and makes us all luck bad.
Thank you sir, for pointing out the obvious point everyone seemed to be missing.
It seems the great Netscape/AOL group in their corporate wisdom forgot all the valid reasons why they made the damn product open source and began this project in the first place. It is time for the flood of perfectly flame-free reasonable commentary to everyone in Netscape's corporate ladder. Anyone out there have an email list? They need to be reminded of the reasons why they started this to begin with.
I want to know why it is imperative that if a movie wins best picture of the year then Best Director and Actor awards are a given? The lead actor from the Best Picture and the Director from the best picture are going to win. Am I the only one who notices this nonsense?
I remember the year that Forrest Gump won everything. God, I got so tired of seeing Tom Hanks I could have puked.
The Matrix and Star Wars Episode I were good flicks and the Matrix was very entertaining. Yet, does anyone remember Blade Runner? That was an incredible deep movie that happened to be in the Sci-Fi genre. That was one that should have won a butt load of awards.
Re:(Re)Legitimizing the Mac
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
I hope not. For teachers and schools out there are still in some parts of the country very Mac dependant. The teachers know it and let us be frank it is an easy interface for the kids to get use to. Now, when you have this mac dependant environment, then having a couple of Macs acting like you file/printer servers actually make sense.
The teachers can usually work the thing without mucking it up and the little buggers are damn easy to set up and maintain.
If they abandon this market, they are dropping a decent little percentage of their market share.
Everyone thinks Apple = iMac or iBook. This is not always the case.
I remember the simple skills and combat system. For a game that was hardly known, it had a beautifull huge universe with almost infinite possibilities for play.
The actual weapons were well balanced (except the Fushion gun thingee god, I would love one of those just to mess up a long boring business meeting). I will look into the GURPS thing and Marc Miller's new version of the game that is supposed to harken back to the original.
We took the Non-Weapon proficiency stuff but threw away the rest. Instead of a zillion sub-classes it allowed us to simplify and use less sub-genres of different character types. You were not a Ranger for example you were a fighter with buckloads of wilderness skills. Even Unearthed Archana in my opinion added too much complexity or overally powerful or restrictive character classes.
Keep it simple. Does anyone remember the first versions of Traveler? That was one wonderful elegant gaming system!
Katz, man, your heart is in the right place but you are missing the point.
Corporations regardless of size want to make money. They are all greedy by the very nature of what they are.
It seems to me that the real problem are the patent laws and intellectual property laws that allow the sort of abuses that you mention in your article.
After all, if corporations are greedy by nature, they will use every trick or lawsuit available to keep their advantage over the competition.
The only reasonable defense is to institute new laws that do not allow the patenting of ideas. The only way for a government to have the power to do this is to bring the population's involvement in their own government back to some sort of truly representational status. Otherwise the vested interests from the corporations will pull the string's on the new laws.
The problem is not in the corporations or the government but in the laws the companies are manipulating to squash the free exchange of ideas.
I am not suggesting a new system. What I am saying is that people want to trash the system for Anarchy. Instead I suggest we actually participate the system we have and make our representative democracy more representative of the populace at large. That would mean people actually doing something and becoming involved in politics which is beyond most folks unfortunately.
Is anyone better than the others? You say that with a mixture of the two you get screwed on both ends. However, if the people become more involved in their own government at least we will have more say on which way we get screwed.
Ok, I am going to get scored down on this off-topic rant and I don't care.
Getting rid of government is not the answer. Whether you call yourself an anarchist or a liberterian is pointless. The ideas are all the same. The world would be a better place without government they always say.
The sad part is that most conservatives really just want is a laisez-faire business policy. Some people merely take the ideas way too far. The key is not to abolish government to assert your freedom. To do this is to only drift into a mire of chaos. The real key is to take back government from the media, the corporations, the politicians, the university liberal or the aliens depending upon your personal paranoia fix. The real key is to get the power back to the people. Until we make this representative democracy more representative of the people we will always have the problem of a mistrust and even hatred of the government.
I am not going to argue the role of government because most people will simply take a stand on one extreme or the other and there will be no meeting place in between. Nobody wants government regulations on a food processing plant so severe that most small plants go under trying to get out of the red tape. However, I for one do not want to return to the days when canned meat took down military servicemen during the Spanish American war because meat processors were not regulated at all. There has to be some middle space.
Anarchy is not the answer it is merely a reaction.
I doubt you will see this since my post was so long ago. Anyway, I posed the concern as a question. That is because as you pointed out I do NOT know the participants and wondered how the fit will work. That is not spreading fear but showing that
a) I have a concern and if you are right (I have no reason on earth to think otherwise) my concerns have been put to rest.
b) I wanted just to illicit just the response I got except without the fear remark which I feel was unneeded.
It is good to know that BSDI is a good group. I feel better about the merger because of your remark even if you did think I was spreading fear and uncertainity in my wake.:->
I have mixed feelings about this whole merger. After all, it is good when a corporation can throw core developers at a free project and decrease development times. However, it is also easy to see developers being pulled.
I know that the core FreeBSD team will survive on but I am also wondering if the Free version of BSD will continue to show up shelves with the same sort of exposure.
How will the FreeBSD core REALLY interact with the BSDI folks? The whole thing makes me nervous.
I completely agree! The Linux community is NOT ready for the Linux OS to be accepted by the masses.
Everytime I get on IRC I watch the poor little newbies beg for help as the older linux folks give them information in tiny bits or hit them with a barrage of links to huge overly technical documentation that they will never understand.
The worst part is to someone make a mistake. If someone gets a technical fact or does not about that one file the older user is referring them to then the newbie gets roasted.
Most linux users look at the end luser as a blithering idiot. If you had to answer technical questions about Linux coming from your mom the same way you do when asked by strangers, then your own mothers would probably disown you.
You can get great tech support if you already know enough about Unix to grok the command line, otherwise stay away or you'll get roasted.
Sure, I fear that the OS will end up being watered down to meet the end of getting as many users as possible to the OS. However, my bigger fear is that people will realize what a**holes most technical people are when they Anonymously online.
Of course.. the world is packaged in neat little containers for the consumption of mothers and grumpy dads with not enough time on their hands to make real choices...
People have such a limited view of existence though. Listen, when the web is a mess of corporate goo, the hardcore geeks among us will retreat back to our FTP sites and IRC and find another way to communicate that allows us to be just as free. That is the great thing about computers. We fashion our own reality. I remember BBSes all gone and forgotten. One day the World Wide Web will be yesterday's news as well. Another way will come and we will get the play free pass until the government and the corporations figure out how they can make a buck off of it. I can't complain too much because out here in the digital world is where I make my money as well. Remember the internet is not the Web and the Web is just one big ass corner of something far bigger.
Don't despair there will always be a place for freedom, you just have to look for the next frontier before the big boys do.
The advice against MYSQL will be arguing point for some here but I use Oracle every day. It can be a pain in the ass at times but there is no substitute for the reliability. Just spend the time to set up right the first time and you have it made.
Spending wisely is another bit of good advice but one big server backed by redundant smaller servers can be a very good option. It has worked for me in the past. The fellow I am replying to is saying don't blow the whole wad on a couple of huge servers. This can be misunderstood. A big server can give a lot of stability if configured correctly.
I know the one question I would love to ask this fellow.
I have wondered this since the first day I heard about CIV:CTP port. Considering the limited nature of the Linux market at this moment how well is Loki doing as a company in terms of sales and profits?
Yes, I remember how the guy sitting in front of the TSR-80 was branded the kid most likely to never get laid.
Hell, as a reaction, I turn my back on geekdom for a few years joined the football team (permanent benchwarmer) and got my letterman jacket. With a beat up car and that jacket, I got a girlfriend and, well, I did not live up to the prediction above.
It did not take me long to turn back to the one true way, but the poster is correct. Things have come a long way.
The man makes a good point. FreeBSD and OpenBSD and all the other variants would be left out in the cold with this plan. We have to remember that Linux does not live alone in the world as free OSes go.
Also, it begs another question. How much of the core development of the Linux operating system does the community want to have taken over by the Linux corporations? One bad corporate citizen could play heck with the order of things.
Keeping it open in the hands of the hobbyists and the coders on a crusade is the only way to keep the core of the OS out of reach of exploitation.
Thank you!! Everyone is so focused on making Linuix as pretty as this, that or the other OS that it is like we have forgotten about making the interface better. The very next new post down talks about using the interface to take advantage of new technologies, 3d technologies, voice recognition and all that.
The one thing we might be quick to forget is the idea of automation through the OS. At one time, the buzz was all about agents that would perform daily computing tasks like getting the email downloading your favorite sites and all that. Yes, I know that through crontab, scripts and individual programs all of the above can be automated TODAY. However, a friendly user interface to bind automation of daily tasks together would be a huge step.
We can't have an interface that is merely as good as Windoze or even Mac. We have to be better if we want to increase the number of users to the Linux OS. Think about it folks. Has anyone ever switched to a new OS because the new one was as good as their old one. No, it had to be better.
The people who use Linux on a consistent basis are still dominated by sys admins, programmers and students looking for the cheap powerful way to use their computers, oh yes, there are also the typical Anti-Microsoft lot as well. If we want to gain the desktop users and home users then we have to build them the better interface.
Ok, call me old school if you want. Still, when I am sitting back on a Sunday morning with a pot of coffee and my toddler rampaging all over the house, there is something nice about chilling with the Sunday paper.
The laptop is cumbersome and the kid tends to rip through the cords with wild eyed abandon. He loves watching the laptop tumble off the kitchen table while I am getting another cup of java.
Besides, there is something nice and tactile about holding that paper in your hand and planting myself on the sofa to sit back and take in the world as presented to me by the Atlanta Journal Constipation.
You make a good point. However, as long as they change the apples in the themes to oranges to be more than a little overt, I think Apple should stand aside.
Still, I do not want to downplay the fact your point is very valid and I actually thought VALINUX just hosted but did not own themes.org. My ignorance getting in the way again. You have pointed out one of the best arguements in the world for community sites to refuse to be bought out by OS and HW companies associated with the product the sites are trying to cover. This sort of thing in another form WILL come up again. This time it is only over themes, next time it could be something much more important.
Listen if they are going to play at being more open to open source and all that, then they should have taken the brave step and given short written permission to anyone willing to submit their themes on themes.org, only.
This approval would amount to consent so the company would not lose its claim over the copyrighted material. However, at the same time, it would have given the big Apple brand another claim of being friendly to the Open Source community. Just a thought and maybe it would not have worked. I like to hear replies on this one.
Slashdot Mirror
There is another side of the coin. Many of the kids who did not understand that Macs were not just those annoying slow toys that dealt with at school, administrators who knew even less about the situation and parents bitching on behalf of their kids moved schools away from Macs.
I always liked the things. The interfaces were very newbie proof and you could be further locked down if needed via software. They gave kids a wonderful easy to use way to explore computers. To this day, I love the Mac interface. It is far more intuitive than windoze or even most Linux interfaces right out of the box. Most folks using the latest *nix can toy the interface to do anything they want but Linux wants that desktop then we need to figure out how to go beyond making an interface as good as windoze or even Macs but something better.
I hope that some the Darwin movement will lead to user interface code on a large scale being released so that the free OS movement can see how to move the user's interface with their computer to the next level.
WTF? I hope you are joking man. I love computers and all but I hope my wife throws the damn box out of the windoze when I start comparing the Celsius tempature of the CPU under various Operating Systems. Are you engineer on a special project?
:->
Otherwise, stop taking the tempature of the computer and use the thing!
First, the World Wide Web is part of the internet but not the whole internet mind you. Second, corporate interest in the internet as a whole has been a fairly annoying thing. Sure, people have gotten rich and such. However, spam, junk mail posting and corporate entities throwing their weight around in terms of copyright law have negated much of the benefits in my opinion of the promise of e-commerce and the money of old companies coming into the digital world.
However, like I said before, the web is not the entire internet. The backbone of the network has not been copyrighted. Once the geeks have all gone home and finally gotten tired of pop-up porno ads, junk postings in their USENET groups and spam in their dozen or so email addresses, we will create a new space just as lawless and wild as the web use to be. Maybe I am not imaginative enough but I doubt there are few of us out there that will see the nature of the next step in computing, networking and sharing information over the internet but it will come.
I remember that the mere idea of the internet seemed mind-boggling to me as a sat back dialing into my BBS at 2400 baud. Technology will move faster than the corporations and every new space will have a moment to breath before being consumed by money.
Look for the open spaces to breath. That is the only advice I can give.
Their OS with the database journaling filesystem, fast bootups and good multimedia support is a valid alternative OS especially for the desktop space that alot of Linux evangelists lust after right now.
It is not the fact that the OS is inferior. The company is finally slowly but surely waking up to the fact that making people pay for the OS is fool's way of making money.
If you had said that they did not go far enough I would sincerely agreed. However, you don't move mountains all at once. Corporations like mountains move slowly sometimes. One day soon I predict that you will see them open up the code of their product.
There have been some very good reviews of this OS in more than a few Alternative/Free OS type websites. I don't carry URLs like weapons around but do the searches. Once this thing is open sourced and the community can improve the code we will be the better for it. However, you do not insult a child for running after they made their first steps. That sort of zealotry marks our community and makes us all luck bad.
Thank you sir, for pointing out the obvious point everyone seemed to be missing.
It seems the great Netscape/AOL group in their corporate wisdom forgot all the valid reasons why they made the damn product open source and began this project in the first place. It is time for the flood of perfectly flame-free reasonable commentary to everyone in Netscape's corporate ladder. Anyone out there have an email list? They need to be reminded of the reasons why they started this to begin with.
I want to know why it is imperative that if a movie wins best picture of the year then Best Director and Actor awards are a given? The lead actor from the Best Picture and the Director from the best picture are going to win. Am I the only one who notices this nonsense?
I remember the year that Forrest Gump won everything. God, I got so tired of seeing Tom Hanks I could have puked.
The Matrix and Star Wars Episode I were good flicks and the Matrix was very entertaining. Yet, does anyone remember Blade Runner? That was an incredible deep movie that happened to be in the Sci-Fi genre. That was one that should have won a butt load of awards.
I hope not. For teachers and schools out there are still in some parts of the country very Mac dependant. The teachers know it and let us be frank it is an easy interface for the kids to get use to. Now, when you have this mac dependant environment, then having a couple of Macs acting like you file/printer servers actually make sense.
The teachers can usually work the thing without mucking it up and the little buggers are damn easy to set up and maintain.
If they abandon this market, they are dropping a decent little percentage of their market share.
Everyone thinks Apple = iMac or iBook. This is not always the case.
I remember the simple skills and combat system. For a game that was hardly known, it had a beautifull huge universe with almost infinite possibilities for play.
The actual weapons were well balanced (except the Fushion gun thingee god, I would love one of those just to mess up a long boring business meeting). I will look into the GURPS thing and Marc Miller's new version of the game that is supposed to harken back to the original.
"This is Scout Vessel Godspeed signing off..."
amen, brother.
We took the Non-Weapon proficiency stuff but threw away the rest. Instead of a zillion sub-classes it allowed us to simplify and use less sub-genres of different character types. You were not a Ranger for example you were a fighter with buckloads of wilderness skills. Even Unearthed Archana in my opinion added too much complexity or overally powerful or restrictive character classes.
Keep it simple. Does anyone remember the first versions of Traveler? That was one wonderful elegant gaming system!
Katz, man, your heart is in the right place but you are missing the point.
Corporations regardless of size want to make money. They are all greedy by the very nature of what they are.
It seems to me that the real problem are the patent laws and intellectual property laws that allow the sort of abuses that you mention in your article.
After all, if corporations are greedy by nature, they will use every trick or lawsuit available to keep their advantage over the competition.
The only reasonable defense is to institute new laws that do not allow the patenting of ideas. The only way for a government to have the power to do this is to bring the population's involvement in their own government back to some sort of truly representational status. Otherwise the vested interests from the corporations will pull the string's on the new laws.
The problem is not in the corporations or the government but in the laws the companies are manipulating to squash the free exchange of ideas.
Let's take the points in turn:
I am not suggesting a new system. What I am saying is that people want to trash the system for Anarchy. Instead I suggest we actually participate the system we have and make our representative democracy more representative of the populace at large. That would mean people actually doing something and becoming involved in politics which is beyond most folks unfortunately.
Is anyone better than the others? You say that with a mixture of the two you get screwed on both ends. However, if the people become more involved in their own government at least we will have more say on which way we get screwed.
Ok, I am going to get scored down on this off-topic rant and I don't care.
Getting rid of government is not the answer. Whether you call yourself an anarchist or a liberterian is pointless. The ideas are all the same. The world would be a better place without government they always say.
The sad part is that most conservatives really just want is a laisez-faire business policy. Some people merely take the ideas way too far. The key is not to abolish government to assert your freedom. To do this is to only drift into a mire of chaos. The real key is to take back government from the media, the corporations, the politicians, the university liberal or the aliens depending upon your personal paranoia fix. The real key is to get the power back to the people. Until we make this representative democracy more representative of the people we will always have the problem of a mistrust and even hatred of the government.
I am not going to argue the role of government because most people will simply take a stand on one extreme or the other and there will be no meeting place in between. Nobody wants government regulations on a food processing plant so severe that most small plants go under trying to get out of the red tape. However, I for one do not want to return to the days when canned meat took down military servicemen during the Spanish American war because meat processors were not regulated at all. There has to be some middle space.
Anarchy is not the answer it is merely a reaction.
I doubt you will see this since my post was so long ago. Anyway, I posed the concern as a question. That is because as you pointed out I do NOT know the participants and wondered how the fit will work. That is not spreading fear but showing that
:->
a) I have a concern and if you are right (I have no reason on earth to think otherwise) my concerns have been put to rest.
b) I wanted just to illicit just the response I got except without the fear remark which I feel was unneeded.
It is good to know that BSDI is a good group. I feel better about the merger because of your remark even if you did think I was spreading fear and uncertainity in my wake.
I have mixed feelings about this whole merger. After all, it is good when a corporation can throw core developers at a free project and decrease development times. However, it is also easy to see developers being pulled.
I know that the core FreeBSD team will survive on but I am also wondering if the Free version of BSD will continue to show up shelves with the same sort of exposure.
How will the FreeBSD core REALLY interact with the BSDI folks? The whole thing makes me nervous.
I completely agree! The Linux community is NOT ready for the Linux OS to be accepted by the masses.
Everytime I get on IRC I watch the poor little newbies beg for help as the older linux folks give them information in tiny bits or hit them with a barrage of links to huge overly technical documentation that they will never understand.
The worst part is to someone make a mistake. If someone gets a technical fact or does not about that one file the older user is referring them to then the newbie gets roasted.
Most linux users look at the end luser as a blithering idiot. If you had to answer technical questions about Linux coming from your mom the same way you do when asked by strangers, then your own mothers would probably disown you.
You can get great tech support if you already know enough about Unix to grok the command line, otherwise stay away or you'll get roasted.
Sure, I fear that the OS will end up being watered down to meet the end of getting as many users as possible to the OS. However, my bigger fear is that people will realize what a**holes most technical people are when they Anonymously online.
Of course..
the world is packaged in neat little
containers for the consumption of
mothers and grumpy dads with not
enough time on their hands to
make real choices...
People have such a limited view of existence though. Listen, when the web is a mess of corporate goo, the hardcore geeks among us will retreat back to our FTP sites and IRC and find another way to communicate that allows us to be just as free. That is the great thing about computers. We fashion our own reality. I remember BBSes all gone and forgotten. One day the World Wide Web will be yesterday's news as well. Another way will come and we will get the play free pass until the government and the corporations figure out how they can make a buck off of it. I can't complain too much because out here in the digital world is where I make my money as well. Remember the internet is not the Web and the Web is just one big ass corner of something far bigger.
Don't despair there will always be a place for freedom, you just have to look for the next frontier before the big boys do.
The advice against MYSQL will be arguing point for some here but I use Oracle every day. It can be a pain in the ass at times but there is no substitute for the reliability. Just spend the time to set up right the first time and you have it made.
Spending wisely is another bit of good advice but one big server backed by redundant smaller servers can be a very good option. It has worked for me in the past. The fellow I am replying to is saying don't blow the whole wad on a couple of huge servers. This can be misunderstood. A big server can give a lot of stability if configured correctly.
I know the one question I would love to ask this fellow.
I have wondered this since the first day I heard about CIV:CTP port. Considering the limited nature of the Linux market at this moment how well is Loki doing as a company in terms of sales and profits?
Yes, I remember how the guy sitting in front of the TSR-80 was branded the kid most likely to never get laid.
Hell, as a reaction, I turn my back on geekdom for a few years joined the football team (permanent benchwarmer) and got my letterman jacket. With a beat up car and that jacket, I got a girlfriend and, well, I did not live up to the prediction above.
It did not take me long to turn back to the one true way, but the poster is correct. Things have come a long way.
Hey now, watch what you say about Scooby Doo! ;-> Hell, I would be a rich man if it wasn't for those meddling kids.
The man makes a good point. FreeBSD and OpenBSD and all the other variants would be left out in the cold with this plan. We have to remember that Linux does not live alone in the world as free OSes go.
Also, it begs another question. How much of the core development of the Linux operating system does the community want to have taken over by the Linux corporations? One bad corporate citizen could play heck with the order of things.
Keeping it open in the hands of the hobbyists and the coders on a crusade is the only way to keep the core of the OS out of reach of exploitation.
Thank you!! Everyone is so focused on making Linuix as pretty as this, that or the other OS that it is like we have forgotten about making the interface better. The very next new post down talks about using the interface to take advantage of new technologies, 3d technologies, voice recognition and all that.
The one thing we might be quick to forget is the idea of automation through the OS. At one time, the buzz was all about agents that would perform daily computing tasks like getting the email downloading your favorite sites and all that. Yes, I know that through crontab, scripts and individual programs all of the above can be automated TODAY. However, a friendly user interface to bind automation of daily tasks together would be a huge step.
We can't have an interface that is merely as good as Windoze or even Mac. We have to be better if we want to increase the number of users to the Linux OS. Think about it folks. Has anyone ever switched to a new OS because the new one was as good as their old one. No, it had to be better.
The people who use Linux on a consistent basis are still dominated by sys admins, programmers and students looking for the cheap powerful way to use their computers, oh yes, there are also the typical Anti-Microsoft lot as well. If we want to gain the desktop users and home users then we have to build them the better interface.
Ok, call me old school if you want. Still, when I am sitting back on a Sunday morning with a pot of coffee and my toddler rampaging all over the house, there is something nice about chilling with the Sunday paper.
The laptop is cumbersome and the kid tends to rip through the cords with wild eyed abandon. He loves watching the laptop tumble off the kitchen table while I am getting another cup of java.
Besides, there is something nice and tactile about holding that paper in your hand and planting myself on the sofa to sit back and take in the world as presented to me by the Atlanta Journal Constipation.
You make a good point. However, as long as they change the apples in the themes to oranges to be more than a little overt, I think Apple should stand aside.
Still, I do not want to downplay the fact your point is very valid and I actually thought VALINUX just hosted but did not own themes.org. My ignorance getting in the way again. You have pointed out one of the best arguements in the world for community sites to refuse to be bought out by OS and HW companies associated with the product the sites are trying to cover. This sort of thing in another form WILL come up again. This time it is only over themes, next time it could be something much more important.
Listen if they are going to play at being more open to open source and all that, then they should have taken the brave step and given short written permission to anyone willing to submit their themes on themes.org, only.
This approval would amount to consent so the company would not lose its claim over the copyrighted material. However, at the same time, it would have given the big Apple brand another claim of being friendly to the Open Source community. Just a thought and maybe it would not have worked. I like to hear replies on this one.