Yeah, and another thing, how can you people remember Ctrl-C/V/X??
Z, X, C and V for the main Edit menu commands were chosen by Apple with accessability (on merkin QWERTY keyboards) in mind. Most people use them sufficiently often that they're easily remembered.
I can't understant how anyone can get by without right-click, especially in Windows. I right click everything. Copying/moving/deleting files, viewing properties of just about everything... and for Quake of course, you need at least 3 buttons plus a scroll wheel.
95% of users couldn't give a coprolith about the input requirements of Quake, and it's hardly a good basis for what is required in a productivity-oriented interface.
And the Mac has always been able to speak (even out of the box, at least on the original and eveything since about 1992)
It's a little more complicated than that. When the Mac was first released, Apple demoed it with speech synthesis... but for that to actually run, it had to be beefed up to four times the normal RAM allocation... yes, a huge half-meg of RAM!
The speech synthesis software was outsourced, for demos only, but when the 512k "Fat" Mac became available, punters wanted it. Apple eventually released it (as Macintalk) but never obtained the source code. Eventually it stopped working, and Apple re-implemented it from scratch as Macintalk 2. The current Speech Manager encompasses Macintalk 3, Macintalk Pro and Plaintalk, the speech input software.
BTW, the claim upthread that Plaintalk is keyed to a single speaker is bogus; it's completely non-adaptive, keyed to "average" North American males.
Hundreds of millions on dollars spent on GUI redesign and they came up with the command line.
No; hundreds of millions of dollars and they came up with web-based applications. (You know, those messy form-based things that amply demonstrate that a format suited to hypertext is not necessarily suited to arbitrary interactivity.)
Re:I have a question...
on
New Crypto-OS
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· Score: 1
Tell them that a wise man once said that a man who sacrifices his liberty for security deserves to have neither.
And when they ask you what makes him wise, and why this implies he is necessarily correct, what do you answer? Attributing your opinions to an anonymous wise man is just a tad pat.
ADB rocks. BUT, in the effort to make the lives of HW developers easier, and promote firms to make Mac compatible equipment, Apple had to move to industry standard ports (usb, fw).
ADB is an Apple tech licensed to other corps[1].
FireWire is an Apple tech licensed to other corps.
USB is basicaly a greatly improved version of ADB, which it replaces.
FireWire replaces SCSI, which was at least as broadly-used as FireWire is today.
The lines aren't quite as clear as you draw them.
[1] I'm under the impression that it is/was used in Sun and SGI workstations. I'm not sure whether they are/were charged for it.
I for one think that the media should make a greater effort in properly utilizing the word 'hacking'. Since when does installing some software or checking a box to enable a feature constitute 'hacking'?
Most of the media think that using Netbus or Back Orifice <=> hacking. Surely that's worse?
Which isn't to say apple doesn't secretly want that. Apple has a pretty firm history of denouncing such activity, then turning the blind eye of "unsupported" to a hell of a lot of things you'd think they'd be reacting against. Or writing in things to make such activity easier and then refusing to document them.
Apple isn't denouncing anything. They simply will have nothing to do with making OS X run on unsupported hardware, because if they did support such efforts they'd have to qualify them, which is expensive.
There has to be a study out there showing that people who stick to the keyboard as much as possible get stuff done more quickly than those who keep having to switch back and forth between keyboard and mouse.
Possibly. I've only ever seen studies with the opposite conclusion. Although it feels faster to use the keyboard, actual timings show the opposite. People using the keyboard often blank out for several seconds at a time trying to recall the right key, without noticing it.
Keyboard shortcuts are your friend...they're even faster to get at than having to grab the mouse and point it at some part of the screen (even if that part of the screen is along the top).
Only for a minority of users in a minority of situations. Of course, experienced time is not the same as actual time taken.
but to do something as basic as shut the machine down, you need to hit the mouse (or the power switch, but that's a Bad Idea).
Be reasonable. Shutting down is a pretty rare occurence, thus having a dedicated key combo is silly... despite this, there is one on the Mac OS: power key (brings up a "cancel/sleep/restart/shut down" alert) followed by return or enter (default is shut down).
The funny thing is, I think Apple just stumbled into [using a single global menu bar]
Nope. They used this amazing, appearntly rare technique called "usability testing" and tried having the menu bar on the top or bottom of the screen vs. the top or bottom of every window. Having it attached to the edge of the screen was an order of magnitude faster and less confusing. Putting it at the top was judged more intuitive.
Of course, only the genius of Microsoft would think of putting menubars at the top of each window plus an additional menu bar 1 pixel from the bottom of the screen.
Taxes on wealth are stupid. If you want to try to tax that, sales taxes are the way to go. What's the point in having wealth if you don't spend it? Sooner or later the government will get a chance to collect, and you'll do wonders for encouraging investment (which, as any econ student knows, is one of the most important factors in determining a country's rate of economic growth).
Surely taxing wealth encourages circulation, either through spending or investment, thus being a Good Thing?
don't speed. A law is a law is a law, if you're gunna speed you might as well kill someone. If you think you should be able to speed then you should gather together all your like minded fellow citizens and get the law changed.
YM changing the speed limit will eliminate the risk of accidents at high speeds? Hmm...
The current OS X Server has been discontinued and will be replaced by one based on the current OS X, which is very different. OS X Server 1.2 and earlier can't really be extrapolated upon.
A lot depends on the Apple API and whether or not a desktop application written for MacOSX can be easily supported under the various BSDs.
Easily? No. The Mac OS X UI is completely unrelated to X, and it's the bit Apple is charging money for.
Unfortunately, I don't think Apple is far-sighted enough to allow this. They'll keep their API's private and try to grow their little piece of the market without giving up control. By the time they realize how foolish this is it'll be too late.
There is a significant difference in meaning, and I am quite sure that the Turing Machine implemented in Life is not perverted, unless you construe every vertical line to be a phallic symbol.
A fig's a phallic symbol if it's taller than it's wide...
I wonder how much longer before someone tries to engineer extra infra-red cones.
ISTR reading that IR eyes based on the same general technology as human eyes, with the same "refresh rate" and "resoulution" even as our night vision, would require eyes about the size of our heads.
Slashdot Mirror
The speech synthesis software was outsourced, for demos only, but when the 512k "Fat" Mac became available, punters wanted it. Apple eventually released it (as Macintalk) but never obtained the source code. Eventually it stopped working, and Apple re-implemented it from scratch as Macintalk 2. The current Speech Manager encompasses Macintalk 3, Macintalk Pro and Plaintalk, the speech input software.
BTW, the claim upthread that Plaintalk is keyed to a single speaker is bogus; it's completely non-adaptive, keyed to "average" North American males.
Details or references would be nice.
USB is basicaly a greatly improved version of ADB, which it replaces. FireWire replaces SCSI, which was at least as broadly-used as FireWire is today.
The lines aren't quite as clear as you draw them.
[1] I'm under the impression that it is/was used in Sun and SGI workstations. I'm not sure whether they are/were charged for it.
Of course, only the genius of Microsoft would think of putting menubars at the top of each window plus an additional menu bar 1 pixel from the bottom of the screen.
tell application "Appearance" to set scroll bar arrow style to "dubl"
and run.
The current OS X Server has been discontinued and will be replaced by one based on the current OS X, which is very different. OS X Server 1.2 and earlier can't really be extrapolated upon.
Now, implement Life in BrainFuck and run it on your Life BrainFuck engine...
- A cluster of turing machines can inherently emulate a turing machine.
- A turing machine can emulate any other finite state system.
Thus they are interchangeable.