Why has corporate America avoided Macs?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: -1, Troll
I like Macs. But Macs are absurdly out of place in the office.
Why?
Because Mac isn't serious about Corporate America that's why.
Mac is, and always will be, a consumer product. This is painfully obvious from their attention to design over function, and in their pricing strategy.
For years Mac's windowing/subwindowing functions required multiple open windows on a screen to explore subdirectories. Error messaging was minimal ("sad mac"? please.) Ease of use was prioritized over rich functionality (great for home users, terrible for corporate managed workstations). Interface design was minimalist rather than functional/logical. (To eject a disk you... drag it to the trash?! And let's not even get in to the absurdity of the one-button cyclops mouse. What are mac users wearing mittens or something?). Mac designers were so proud of multitasking that windows didn't maximize automatically -- hardly making efficient use of screen real-estate. (See! There are multiple apps running behind this window!). Mac offered compatibility with windows networking very late in the game. And then there was the pricetag. Mac never attempted to price their machines competitively for corporate America. They never once offered versions with scaled down graphics or sound in an effort to replace the stripped-down pc workstation.
Mac's culture isn't the culture of corporate America and Apple has resisted corporate culture ever since its inception. IMHO Mac deserves its place lost in the margin of professional computing. Its a great home product and it always should be.
Rumour has it that Shatner is using the working title: "Starfleet Academy 90210"
This came as a last minute change to his previous title: "Starfleet High" (which network executives saw as "far too obvious a bid" to pot-smoking trek fans).
The implication is the "art" is somehow "higher" than anything else is silly.
Anyone who has studied art philosophy (I majored) can tell you that art has no standards or prerequisites. Anyone can declare anything to be art. (Duchamp anyone?)
You can literally shit on a canvas and call it art. In fact you don't even need the canvas.
Grafitti *is* art.
And for that matter so is Slashdot.
If anything, art is "low" -- most other things have defining parameters.
Before I get totally flamed, let me start by saying Google News is my homepage, and its the first thing I look at every morning. I'm a huge fan.
That having been said...
IANAL but I honestly don't understand how Google News can possibly be legal.
Forgeting for a moment whether or not ad revenue is eventually generated by all those linked-to sites: The question of whether or not legal-permission is required to link to a sub-level of another site is a legal issue from way back when.
Back in 1997 (if memory serves) I remember it was ruled that paid content sites needed to seek permission before linking to the sublevel of another paid content site. Search engines were where the law got blurry. Google News! however doesn't seem like much of a search engine -- but I suppose one could make the argument that there is indeed search technology at work behind the scenes. From a user perspective however, Google News seems more like a content aggregator.
Its not inane, its just that you didn't understand. I spell it out more clearly for you, as is apparently necessary.
Historically speaking the church is hardly a force for morality. It is and has always been a force for itself. That, and for social control.
It represents the antithesis of learning, civil rights, intellectualism and free thought.
To speak of recent freedoms, liberties and progressions within the church, social accomplishments, etc. is like a colonial power patting itself on the back for bringing light to the dark corners of the world.
You're saying Christianity is optional. Really? You mean, 'here and now' its optional. But historically that was of course, not the case. Christianity was spread by the sword. The Church sought the powers of the state, converted that power, and required mass obedience to its rule.
Christianity burned, hung, slaughtered, ostracized, slandered, tortured, imprisoned, silenced and bribed its opponents out of its path.
Like all religions it tied itself philosophically with humanist morality in order push through its less obvious (more controlling) tenets. Christianity certainly didn't come up with this morality, or even do much to promote it. The marriage of religion to morality is, and has always been, a means to push past intellectual opposition.
After submitting this very same NY Times story myself... (a good 12 hours before this story appeared on slashdot) it was rejected and the above story was posted by Timothy.
This seems to happen every time I submit !?
What gives? I give up. No more stories for you Slashdot. (Apparently Taco and Timothy would rather post themselves...)
From the article: "Everyone was supposed to be browsing the Web with their mobile phone, but the problem is that it has not happened," Berners-Lee said, adding later this was not a question of weak demand."
What is this notion of "supposed to be"? And what is he talking about when he says "this is not a question of weak demand"?
It ABSOLUTELY a question of weak demand. The number of people with PDA's and phones on which internet browsing wouldn't suck is miniscule.
Tim's agenda is to bring the Internet into every corner of our lives, and he's blaming... who? Web designers? Heh...Pshh...
Newsflash for Tim:
Mobile browsing on phones sucks.
Mobile devices in general suck.
PDA's capable of mobile browsing are too expensive too from a cost/benefit perspective.
And PDA's capable of mobile browsing hardly represent a big chunk of the market.
I love the fact that the "mobile internet" (whose usefulness, necessity and popularity should be seriously questioned) is discussed with this air of 'manifest destiny'.
How dare these silly "flashy designs" hamper the true calling of postage-stamp-sized browsing!!!
If the tables were turned, I imagine design & branding advocates would charge the "mobile internet" with hampering the true calling of world-class design, branding and online entertainment.
As a designer I agree that standards are of course important. But standards which require conformity on cellphone screens? Hah! No really, you're kidding right?
Everything happening in design right now suggests even greater convergence with video, audio, applications, etc. (You know, all the stuff Mr. Berners-Lee dismisses as "flashy")
Christianity was spread by the sword as much as anything else. Remember the strategy of the Church was to convert royalty -- and then use them to enforce belief. (Let's not forget Spain *burned* those that didn't convert.)
And Christianity caused much *more* damage than Scientology ever did. Knowlege earned over centuries of scientific progress was eradicated if it flew in the face of the church. (Galileo learned the hard way.)
Scientology is kids stuff compared to the way the Church abused power to get where it is.
Sigh... its so sad that people are allowed to say words like "I put may faith in God" on Slashdot, but if anyone promotes secular intellectualism (and points out the dangers presented by the religious right) they get modded "Troll".
You sir (whoever modded this "Troll") are a primitive.
Go and read your silly little 'good book'. I'll stick with Darwin, science and hang out with my fellow educated people.
I like to think of Slashdot as one of the great internet bastions of liberal secular thought dedicated to preserving individual, civil liberties.
There is NO FORCE ON EARTH more responsible for undermining our civil liberties and spreading FUD than *religion*
To thumb one's nose at Scientology while speaking of being a "good Christian" is ABSURD.
We live in an era where our civil liberties and freedom of speech are in danger of serious curtailment by the Christian Right. Evolution is being sidestepped for Creationism. Abortion is about to be overturned. Why? Because we allow it to happen. We nod our heads stupidly as professional athletes thank the baby Jesus for "helping the team" (hah!). Our politicians pander to ancient cults. And our universities slide back to something not seen since the dark ages.
I know it all sounds heavy handed... but wait until coat-hanger abortions are back in the headlines. Its a war and the secular intellectuals are losing it.
"Remember, its not illegal to have a monopoly, but it is illegal to abuse that position".
But there are two major problems with that statement:
1) Microsoft is not a monopoly. They are the best competitor in a multiplayer competitive business arena: And the arena is *not* the software market, it is the OS market.
The problem is that 'software' as we know it is a 'derivative product' -- It uses myriad pre-written features from OS's (like dialog boxes and visual elements, keytrapping, memory management, graphics, etc.) Software creators benefit from the rapid-development environments afforded them by the OS creators, and then turn 180 degrees and point the finger at the OS creator for having an advantage in their home field.
What does this mean? (And here comes the most unpopular thing ever uttered on Slashdot) It means that software as we know it is like making vacuum cleaner bags. Its a support field for the larger more important industry of OS development. The answer is DON'T WRITE SOFTWARE FOR WINDOWS OR OSX.
Want to free software from the shackles of the OS market? Write for a free OS. Linux is the answer. (But don't complain that free software has no marketing budget to acquire new users.)
2) The practice of revealing secret or hidden procedure calls (when done independently we call it "reverse engineering" and its illegal -- when governments do it its apparently ok) would also shatter the iPOD monopoly, the Apple monopoly, the RealNetworks monopoly, and countless other platforms which depend on secure media for their business models.
We've now seen Charlie's Angels, Battlestar Galactica, Starsky & Hutch, and a long list of other 70's and 80's shows rehashed into modern TV content -- (most of them badly, but that's besides the point). The point is that most of these shows *can* be re-hashed because there's something about these shows that has some relevance today.
Wonder Woman is not one of those shows.
Wonder Woman is embarrasingly dated, and unless this is going to be a comedy (its not) I'm going to bet on it being god awful.
Not only does its very title suggest an era when women weren't thought to be capable of much, but its about a woman who comes from an "island of powerful Amazonian women" for crying out loud. Does anyone *not* find this backstory to be a little stupid?
Now on to Joss Whedon: I know this is heresy on/. but I'm going to come out and say it: Firefly sucked. It got pulled off TV because it sucked. Its ratings were god awful, the acting was awful, the scenario's were the worst of B-movie drivel and its special effects were few and far between. The only reason we all desperately wanted it to be good was that we had an already long in the tooth Star Trek as our only option.
So what's behind the concept of a rehashed Wonder Woman? Simple: We have Joss Whedon trying to get back on his feet after the bad stumble that Firefly was, returning to the old familiar theme of his one big success: "A chick who kicks ass".
Except the problem is that Wonder Woman doesn't really kick ass. She's got a hilariously dated costume (which she dons by spinning around!) some shiny gold wristlets, and a backstory that can only call into question her obvious European features.
Slashdot Mirror
I like Macs. But Macs are absurdly out of place in the office.
Why?
Because Mac isn't serious about Corporate America that's why.
Mac is, and always will be, a consumer product. This is painfully obvious from their attention to design over function, and in their pricing strategy.
For years Mac's windowing/subwindowing functions required multiple open windows on a screen to explore subdirectories. Error messaging was minimal ("sad mac"? please.) Ease of use was prioritized over rich functionality (great for home users, terrible for corporate managed workstations). Interface design was minimalist rather than functional/logical. (To eject a disk you
Mac's culture isn't the culture of corporate America and Apple has resisted corporate culture ever since its inception. IMHO Mac deserves its place lost in the margin of professional computing. Its a great home product and it always should be.
Rumour has it that Shatner is using the working title: "Starfleet Academy 90210"
This came as a last minute change to his previous title: "Starfleet High" (which network executives saw as "far too obvious a bid" to pot-smoking trek fans).
"Elevates grafitti to art" ???
The implication is the "art" is somehow "higher" than anything else is silly.
Anyone who has studied art philosophy (I majored) can tell you that art has no standards or prerequisites. Anyone can declare anything to be art. (Duchamp anyone?)
You can literally shit on a canvas and call it art. In fact you don't even need the canvas.
Grafitti *is* art.
And for that matter so is Slashdot.
If anything, art is "low" -- most other things have defining parameters.
In the name of all that's holy... what mad science is THIS?!
He's actually HAND WRITING urls onto (sit down) PHYSICAL
URLS...
PHYSICAL SURFACES...
Its MAD! No... its more than mad.
ITS I N S A N E !!!!
Before I get totally flamed, let me start by saying Google News is my homepage, and its the first thing I look at every morning. I'm a huge fan.
That having been said...
IANAL but I honestly don't understand how Google News can possibly be legal.
Forgeting for a moment whether or not ad revenue is eventually generated by all those linked-to sites: The question of whether or not legal-permission is required to link to a sub-level of another site is a legal issue from way back when.
Back in 1997 (if memory serves) I remember it was ruled that paid content sites needed to seek permission before linking to the sublevel of another paid content site. Search engines were where the law got blurry. Google News! however doesn't seem like much of a search engine -- but I suppose one could make the argument that there is indeed search technology at work behind the scenes. From a user perspective however, Google News seems more like a content aggregator.
Its not inane, its just that you didn't understand. I spell it out more clearly for you, as is apparently necessary.
Historically speaking the church is hardly a force for morality. It is and has always been a force for itself. That, and for social control.
It represents the antithesis of learning, civil rights, intellectualism and free thought.
To speak of recent freedoms, liberties and progressions within the church, social accomplishments, etc. is like a colonial power patting itself on the back for bringing light to the dark corners of the world.
You're saying Christianity is optional. Really? You mean, 'here and now' its optional. But historically that was of course, not the case. Christianity was spread by the sword. The Church sought the powers of the state, converted that power, and required mass obedience to its rule.
Christianity burned, hung, slaughtered, ostracized, slandered, tortured, imprisoned, silenced and bribed its opponents out of its path.
Like all religions it tied itself philosophically with humanist morality in order push through its less obvious (more controlling) tenets. Christianity certainly didn't come up with this morality, or even do much to promote it. The marriage of religion to morality is, and has always been, a means to push past intellectual opposition.
As it has apparently done to you.
And you're also a dick.
After submitting this very same NY Times story myself
This seems to happen every time I submit !?
What gives? I give up. No more stories for you Slashdot. (Apparently Taco and Timothy would rather post themselves...)
Pthpth & kiss my ass.
What is this notion of "supposed to be"?
And what is he talking about when he says "this is not a question of weak demand"?
It ABSOLUTELY a question of weak demand. The number of people with PDA's and phones on which internet browsing wouldn't suck is miniscule.
Tim's agenda is to bring the Internet into every corner of our lives, and he's blaming... who? Web designers? Heh...Pshh...
Newsflash for Tim:
I love the fact that the "mobile internet" (whose usefulness, necessity and popularity should be seriously questioned) is discussed with this air of 'manifest destiny'.
How dare these silly "flashy designs" hamper the true calling of postage-stamp-sized browsing!!!
If the tables were turned, I imagine design & branding advocates would charge the "mobile internet" with hampering the true calling of world-class design, branding and online entertainment.
As a designer I agree that standards are of course important. But standards which require conformity on cellphone screens? Hah! No really, you're kidding right?
Everything happening in design right now suggests even greater convergence with video, audio, applications, etc. (You know, all the stuff Mr. Berners-Lee dismisses as "flashy")
I've come up with the ultimate 'Impossible to Forge' signature:
I DO IT DIFFERENTLY EVERY TIME!
you're starting history at a very convenient point. nice try.
huh????
Christianity *was* a cult.
Christianity was spread by the sword as much as anything else. Remember the strategy of the Church was to convert royalty -- and then use them to enforce belief. (Let's not forget Spain *burned* those that didn't convert.)
And Christianity caused much *more* damage than Scientology ever did. Knowlege earned over centuries of scientific progress was eradicated if it flew in the face of the church. (Galileo learned the hard way.)
Scientology is kids stuff compared to the way the Church abused power to get where it is.
By "pathetic volunteer project" are you referring to the multi-billion dollar Linux industry?
That's a good one...
Troll?
Sigh... its so sad that people are allowed to say words like "I put may faith in God" on Slashdot, but if anyone promotes secular intellectualism (and points out the dangers presented by the religious right) they get modded "Troll".
You sir (whoever modded this "Troll") are a primitive.
Go and read your silly little 'good book'. I'll stick with Darwin, science and hang out with my fellow educated people.
Any rumours on the grapevine for what the buyout price was? And what the terms of the deal were?
I find it even sadder that we live in a society that is afraid to call religion silly.
Religion is incredibly primitive, backwards and it represents the opposite of intellectualism.
Uh... yah scientology and christianity aren't compatible cuz... they're pretty much the same thing dumbass.
MOD PARENT DOWN!
I like to think of Slashdot as one of the great internet bastions of liberal secular thought dedicated to preserving individual, civil liberties.
There is NO FORCE ON EARTH more responsible for undermining our civil liberties and spreading FUD than *religion*
To thumb one's nose at Scientology while speaking of being a "good Christian" is ABSURD.
We live in an era where our civil liberties and freedom of speech are in danger of serious curtailment by the Christian Right. Evolution is being sidestepped for Creationism. Abortion is about to be overturned. Why? Because we allow it to happen. We nod our heads stupidly as professional athletes thank the baby Jesus for "helping the team" (hah!). Our politicians pander to ancient cults. And our universities slide back to something not seen since the dark ages.
I know it all sounds heavy handed... but wait until coat-hanger abortions are back in the headlines. Its a war and the secular intellectuals are losing it.
MOD PARENT DOWN PLEASE.
You said:
"Remember, its not illegal to have a monopoly, but it is illegal to abuse that position".
But there are two major problems with that statement:
1) Microsoft is not a monopoly. They are the best competitor in a multiplayer competitive business arena: And the arena is *not* the software market, it is the OS market.
The problem is that 'software' as we know it is a 'derivative product' -- It uses myriad pre-written features from OS's (like dialog boxes and visual elements, keytrapping, memory management, graphics, etc.) Software creators benefit from the rapid-development environments afforded them by the OS creators, and then turn 180 degrees and point the finger at the OS creator for having an advantage in their home field.
What does this mean? (And here comes the most unpopular thing ever uttered on Slashdot) It means that software as we know it is like making vacuum cleaner bags. Its a support field for the larger more important industry of OS development. The answer is DON'T WRITE SOFTWARE FOR WINDOWS OR OSX.
Want to free software from the shackles of the OS market? Write for a free OS. Linux is the answer. (But don't complain that free software has no marketing budget to acquire new users.)
2) The practice of revealing secret or hidden procedure calls (when done independently we call it "reverse engineering" and its illegal -- when governments do it its apparently ok) would also shatter the iPOD monopoly, the Apple monopoly, the RealNetworks monopoly, and countless other platforms which depend on secure media for their business models.
Negative. Stargate sucks twice as hard as Firefly ever did.
But Stargate *has* managed to stay alive, generate ratings and even has a spinoff.
The word "failure" isn't subjective. Firefly was a "failure".
(IMHO: Galactica *is* "scifi done right")
hmm...
We've now seen Charlie's Angels, Battlestar Galactica, Starsky & Hutch, and a long list of other 70's and 80's shows rehashed into modern TV content -- (most of them badly, but that's besides the point). The point is that most of these shows *can* be re-hashed because there's something about these shows that has some relevance today.
/. but I'm going to come out and say it: Firefly sucked. It got pulled off TV because it sucked. Its ratings were god awful, the acting was awful, the scenario's were the worst of B-movie drivel and its special effects were few and far between. The only reason we all desperately wanted it to be good was that we had an already long in the tooth Star Trek as our only option.
Wonder Woman is not one of those shows.
Wonder Woman is embarrasingly dated, and unless this is going to be a comedy (its not) I'm going to bet on it being god awful.
Not only does its very title suggest an era when women weren't thought to be capable of much, but its about a woman who comes from an "island of powerful Amazonian women" for crying out loud. Does anyone *not* find this backstory to be a little stupid?
Now on to Joss Whedon: I know this is heresy on
So what's behind the concept of a rehashed Wonder Woman? Simple: We have Joss Whedon trying to get back on his feet after the bad stumble that Firefly was, returning to the old familiar theme of his one big success: "A chick who kicks ass".
Except the problem is that Wonder Woman doesn't really kick ass. She's got a hilariously dated costume (which she dons by spinning around!) some shiny gold wristlets, and a backstory that can only call into question her obvious European features.
This is going to crash and burn.
Enough with the rehashed 70's crap...
And in other Headlines:
Kwon Suk electronics throws down the Blu Ray interoperability gauntlet to Sony...
OpenOffice.org throws down the multiple file-format compatibility gauntlet to Microsoft...
The SVG Coalition throws down the open source scalable vector graphics gauntlet down to Macromedia...
And..
Belgium throws down the human-rights gauntlet to China...
Now that we're done listening to the pitiful whines of the little guy can we get back to accepting that most things aren't fair?
Its a non-topic. A non-technology. Its not even widely utilised -- whatever it is.
IMHO -- P2P streaming is important. Its the next logical step up from conventional streaming technologies.
Why it gets no attention I have no idea.