And more importantly: Congress is still the ultimate decider on whether any treaties/agreements become the law of the land.
Treaties, yes, congressional-executive agreements, yes, sole-executive agreements, no. Sole-executive agreements with foreign powers do not have congressional oversight, and in fact may be unknown to people outside the presidential administration. Oh, and treaties are "the law of the land" (meaning at the same level of power as the constitution), but agreements are not.
That a load of rubbish, it is perfecty legal to use GCC to link a build in gcc library with a non GPL library, because the libraries in gcc are NOT GPL!, they are LPGL!
Otherwise GCC would be significantly less useful.
Actually, the libraries in gcc that are not GPL are not LGPL either. They are GPL with the runtime library exception. That runtime library exception states something to the effect of this: if this library is linked to the end compiled product, then this library may be distributed under any license whatsoever -- in particular, the source code distribution requirements of the GPL and LGPL do not apply. The new exception does not change this in the slightest. It only makes a difference if plugins exist, which they don't yet. Please reread http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html
What they are doing here is trying to be viral, plain and simple - use FUD to scare developers that unless they force GPL plugins, somehow everyone will get tained - this is exactly as true as making it illegal to link any non-GPL library using GCC.
Viral, yes, but FUD, no. They are being pretty clear as to what they intend. They want any distributed program compilable with a gcc with any plugin, proprietary or not, to be compilable to an identical binary with a gcc with only GPL-compatible plugins. If you don't distribute, they don't give a damn. If you do, the plugin had better not be required unless it is GPL-compatible.
Nice. The Linux kernel guys did this and look at the result--it is a bitch for hardware guys to write drivers for Linux
Bullshit. The result is that it's a bitch for proprietary guys to write binary only drivers for linux.
And you know - why should the GCC & Linux projects make things easy for the proprietary guys? It's not like the proprietary guys go out of their way to make life easier for OSS.
It's also a bitch if someone writes open source code, because the users of the code do not necessarily know how to modify the source if the API changes and the source is not updated. I remember on my laptop a while back I had the choice of sound or wireless, but not both, since one compiled under 2.4 and the other under 2.2. The GCC guys say the solution is to host the plugins in the GCC tree, but that is not going to happen with every plugin, just as it doesn't for every kernel driver.
Easy enough to get around that by having your "plugin" be a glue layer to a separately compiled binary with a command line interface, so your reason is useless. Besides, it has been suggested that rewriting a header file will get around copyright. See my post below for another analysis.
More precisely, the exception states that if the end compiled product is built with non-GPL compatible plugins, then the end compiled product is subject to the licenses of the linked libraries using the exception. As at least some of those linked libraries are subject to the GPL (being part of GCC) then the end product will be subject to the GPL. If you want to propagate (distribute) the end compiled product, it needs to be a GPL-compatible program, which then means that any libraries linked with it need to be GPL-compatible too, which prevents proprietary libraries linked in. If you do not propagate the end compiled product, then no problem.
So, long story short, if you have a non-GPL plugin, then either (1) the plugin must be GPL-compatible, (2) the plugin can't affect the end compiled product, or (3) the compiled program must be GPL-compatible and not be linked with anything non-GPL-compatible (say, a proprietary plugin). Basically, they want to prevent plugin writers the ability to lock down a GPL program by requiring that it be compiled with the proprietary plugin. I think there is a loophole in (3), so I hope I did not misunderstand it.
Google News (since it's the only news aggregator I use) sells no ads next to any page under the news.google.com subdomain that I've been able to find. Yes I just looked. No ads on the news search pages, no nothing, not even when I turned javascript on for google.com.
I just looked too. I counted six ads on the right side of that page listed under "Sponsored Links": "Obama Inauguration Art", "Free Obama $500 Gas Card", "Obama Inauguration Date", "Prepare to be Shocked", "Is Barack Obama Dumb?", "Was Obama A Good Choice?". The second page had two more.
A fair use right exists for copyrighted items that can not be obtained through normal means. If the item is copyrighted, and the item is not obtainable through normal channels at a reasonable price (this includes purchasing it used and contacting the publisher and asking them for the number of copies you need), then it is legal to copy the item for non-commercial use. I did this once -- a book published over thirty years ago by a USSR government agency which has not existed for at least ten years, and whose successor does not respond to inquiries.
Do note that this is rather narrow. Generally, for single-copy personal use, contacting the publisher (should the publisher exist) for them to say that they can not provide the item and searching sales for used copies is sufficient, but ideally you would get a written waiver from the publisher. It gets harder and harder to justify as you go further from single-copy personal use.
One of the horrid things about archive.org is that if there was legitimately archived data, and then a later owner/operator puts up a robots.txt, then the data is hidden, even if it is totally unrelated to the site that the robots.txt file is now protecting.
However, Alexa Internet, the company that crawls the web for the Internet Archive, does respect robots.txt instructions, and even does so retroactively. If a web site owner decides he / she prefers not to have a web crawler visiting his / her files and sets up robots.txt on the site, the Alexa crawlers will stop visiting those files and will make unavailable all files previously gathered from that site.
Expect to see a lot more ads for: "UPSKIRT SHOTS OF DEAF CHIKZ!1one."
They should really require a strobe light to go off at the same time as the shutter sound.
Interestingly enough, the warning no longer shows. It was removed in the past day since you posted. Also of note is that the warning was removed three times, but the only one that stuck was the one that gave a reason for the edit. Going further down the tangent, I point out how people complain that they make edits in good faith which are reverted as vandalism, but then do not follow the basic instructions on how to make edits ("Briefly describe the changes you have made" is on every edit page). "Good faith" includes learning a bit about the norms of the community you join, even if nothing more than reading the introductory page (three lines on the "Edit this page" page).
1: Sealing up the original Mac while Apple II and IBM PC were open architectures.
Remember who the market was intended to be. They wanted the computer to be an appliance like a toaster. Whether it was the best thing is a huge discussion involving goals, purpose, education, reliability, etc. Basically, it comes down to some good and some bad consequences for Apple and the industry at large.
2: Comparably higher prices for equivalent performance and peripherals.
You were buying more than performance and a functionality checklist. You were buying a new way of doing things, an integrated, "Just works", WYSIWYG experience. If you did not want what Apple was selling, you were free to not buy it. But, they were not selling the same thing for a higher price.
3: Absolute hostility to clone makers, which allowed Apple to pass on their inefficiency to their customers.
..., which allowed them to make a larger profit by charging more.
4: Floppy disc incompatibility with other more prevalent systems for far too long.
It was kind of cool being able to cram 10% more onto a floppy disk than a PC, though it did mean that that the drives cost more. Oh, and most OSes had incompatible formats -- FAT was simply the most prevalent one. It kind of sucks when the non-leaders are blamed for not conforming to the leaders. Linux is an example where it is blamed for not implementing every driver that is implemented for Windows. Certainly, there are good reasons for conforming, but it is not a one-sided argument.
5: Threats to discontinue warranty coverage from anybody who dared crack the sealed-box open.
This was/is the case with most devices containing a CRT.
6: Taking forever to provide an internal hard drive long after their PC competition and 3rd party suppliers (anyone remember HyperDrive) had shown them how to do it.
That was annoying.
7: Needing to dump Steve Jobs before an Open Mac arrived.
"Correlation is not causation." Jobs had actually already seen the need to head that direction, but only after the initial design was created (before then, he was dead set against it, due to the initial goals, though he saw the light later -- that was why the 512K came out so quickly, with mods to the board to make it easier to upgrade memory by soldering). There was a lot going on that delayed the Plus and subsequent models from coming out, and the power struggle was one of them, but not a resistance to the idea from Jobs (at least after the release).
8: The most expensive (by far) laser printer on the market when the excellent HP LaserJet met many user's needs with the same print engine for far less money.
So you buy an HP. What's the deal? And some people will argue, of course, that the Apple printer was better....
9: 50% profit margins and proud of it!
I would be proud of strong profits too. That's what makes a company. Though it tends to not go over well with the customers.
Yes there's more, but this was a good enough start for now.
EFI OpenBoot firmware has more code than the original Mac OS boot floppy, wich cheated by having 4 megs already in ROM.
The original had 64K in ROM. The Plus (1986) had 128K in ROM. The II and SE (1987) had 256K. In 1989 it was 512K, and in 1991 it was 1M. Some time in the 90's it moved to 2M then 4M. With system 8, it was then moved to a ROM file, and there were no more ROMs manufactured as part of future Macs. The ROM was not simply dispensed with, because it was easier to make it a soft copy than rewrite a bunch of code.
People immediately realized that you wanted to have a second floppy drive, but it was not easy to get one until Apple realized how important they were. The workaround, of course, was to have a copy of the system on every floppy, which was not actually that bad, since the system was small compared to the floppy capacity. Then you use the option-double-click to switch the system to the next floppy when starting an application.
The Tab key moves text to the right. ALTernately, it moves focus to another window. Add Shift in there, it all makes sense. How does ` make sense?
It's much easier to type. Not defending the choice, but giving a reason.
In OS X, when you're going to save a text file, you can create a folder but you can't delete it or rename it. Make sense to you or no?
No, but it is hard to get it right without making it confusing to less sophisticated users.
In OS X, when a window is not minimized, there is no representation of it in the dock. How does that make sense? How is it useful?
It is the pervading paradigm of the OS. If you read the article, it explains it reasonably well. In Windows, the unit is the window. In MacOS, the unit is the application. These are due to their respective histories more than anything else. Therefore, the taskbar shows windows, and the dock shows applications.
I find the Windows/KDE/Gnome way to be simpler and more logical.
In OS X, when a window is not minimized, there is no representation of it in the dock. How does that make sense? How is it useful?
That's simply not true. Each active app appears in the doc (even if it has no windows open).
It is true. Non-minimized windows are not represented in the dock. Only applications are. However, right-clicking on the application usually (not always) brings up a menu with the windows listed.
On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
This is true on Windows as well, except for the larger number of meta-keys. The general rule is that the WinKey is the meta key for a global action (not related to the currently active app) while the Ctrl and Alt key chords generally interact with the currently active application (and are often the same app to app, though that is at the developers' discretion).
There are actually the same number of meta keys, if you don't count the right-click key (don't know the name for it). As far as global/current app distinction, it used to be that command-control was global, and command-not-control was current app.
If I want to rename a file in the Finder, I hit return/enter, rename the file, and hit return/enter again.
To the best of my knowledge, this paradigm is not used anywhere else in the known world. All the way back to the days of console-based file managers, Enter has meant "use this" not "rename this" and furthermore, Enter (with a selected item) is usually the same as double-clicking that item. Does OS X have a way to actually run a program or open a document from Finder using only one keystroke (or even a chord)?
This is a relic of the original MacOS from 1984. Back then, the Finder was nothing more than just another application, which it didn't grow out of until 1987 with Multifinder. As such, it obeyed a number of the rules back then which really don't make sense now, like all keyboard commands were command-something. So, "open" was command-O, and hitting the return key for renaming was an afterthought, which was since maintained for backwards consistancy (they really should have dropped it in OS X, they dropped so much else). Oh, and command-O still works, though command-down has worked since System 7 as well. Incidently, command-up is the same as backspace on Windows.
Additionally, it's easy to access the menu, and any option under it, from the keyboard. For example, Alt-T-O (in sequence, not chorded) will open the options display for the vast majority of Windows desktop applications. Similarly, between the Start menu (especially with Vista's search, but even without it) and WinKey-R for Run, it's easy to run any installed program from the keyboard alone. Finally, it's possible to bind any application or app shortcut to a globally-recognized key chord using the Properties page (Alt-Enter).
While some of the difference is clearly just a matter of UI paradigm, Windows is an OS where it has always been possible to do literally everything with the keyboard (admittedly not always simple - emptying the recycle bin without the mouse appears non-trivial, though still easy if you're used to keyboard navigation). If some of the specific key combos are less intuitive than they might be (Alt-F4 is a fair example) I submit that's simply because there are so very many in use.
At this point, with the appropriate settings in the System Preferences, nearly everything can be done from the keyboard too, including accessing menus. The reason that the Mac does not default that way, and that it is not true that literally all things can be accessed from the keyboard, is historical. At the very beginning, Apple was pushing people to the mouse (which, I think, helped make applications conform better to the Mac Human Interface Guidelines early on). This went to the extent that there were no arrow keys on the keyboard until 1986, and the control key was even later in 1987. As a result, there was no interest in making everything accessible from the keyboard. So, the Mac has been approaching keyboard access from that direction, which means that even full dialog box access did not come until recently (though there were extensions that allowed it earlier). Further, it is off by default for consistency's sake. Microsoft, on the other hand
Um, RTMP is not a chat protocol. It is a protocol for stateful connections with multiplexed streams for downloading large amounts of media with real-time responses and quality of service requirements. It is what the Flash Player uses to download audio and video from servers. See Wikipedia. Next time, look up the topic before spouting off.
What you will find is that Adobe made it difficult to legally work on an open source viewer, and that the specs that exist are either (1) leaked, and therefore it is questionable whether you can legally use them, or (2) from a clean room reverse engineering.
Gnash development has been done using a Clean room reverse engineering technique. By agreeing to the license for the Adobe (formerly Shockwave) Flash player, a developer gives up the right to develop a competing product.
Rob: The Adobe EULA for Flash forbids anyone who has installed their Flash tools or plugin from working on Flash technologies. This has had a chilling effect on the development of free Flash players, since a developer must either choose to decide that Adobe won't sue them over this, or to do what Gnash does, which is a slow and inefficient, clean room, reverse engineering project.
Adobe has declined to comment on this issue, since the confusion benefits their lockin of the market. Although Adobe has said they support Open Source projects, and donated Tamarin to Mozilla, we'd love to see a public statement that Gnash developers won't be subject to a lawsuit. It's very difficult to find developers that have never installed the Adobe software ever, which is what we've been doing to maintain our clean room approach.
Slashdot Mirror
It would really be funny if it translated as "Dog-eating savages".
And more importantly: Congress is still the ultimate decider on whether any treaties/agreements become the law of the land.
Treaties, yes, congressional-executive agreements, yes, sole-executive agreements, no. Sole-executive agreements with foreign powers do not have congressional oversight, and in fact may be unknown to people outside the presidential administration. Oh, and treaties are "the law of the land" (meaning at the same level of power as the constitution), but agreements are not.
That a load of rubbish, it is perfecty legal to use GCC to link a build in gcc library with a non GPL library, because the libraries in gcc are NOT GPL!, they are LPGL!
Otherwise GCC would be significantly less useful.
Actually, the libraries in gcc that are not GPL are not LGPL either. They are GPL with the runtime library exception. That runtime library exception states something to the effect of this: if this library is linked to the end compiled product, then this library may be distributed under any license whatsoever -- in particular, the source code distribution requirements of the GPL and LGPL do not apply. The new exception does not change this in the slightest. It only makes a difference if plugins exist, which they don't yet. Please reread http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html
What they are doing here is trying to be viral, plain and simple - use FUD to scare developers that unless they force GPL plugins, somehow everyone will get tained - this is exactly as true as making it illegal to link any non-GPL library using GCC.
Viral, yes, but FUD, no. They are being pretty clear as to what they intend. They want any distributed program compilable with a gcc with any plugin, proprietary or not, to be compilable to an identical binary with a gcc with only GPL-compatible plugins. If you don't distribute, they don't give a damn. If you do, the plugin had better not be required unless it is GPL-compatible.
Nice. The Linux kernel guys did this and look at the result--it is a bitch for hardware guys to write drivers for Linux
Bullshit. The result is that it's a bitch for proprietary guys to write binary only drivers for linux.
And you know - why should the GCC & Linux projects make things easy for the proprietary guys? It's not like the proprietary guys go out of their way to make life easier for OSS.
It's also a bitch if someone writes open source code, because the users of the code do not necessarily know how to modify the source if the API changes and the source is not updated. I remember on my laptop a while back I had the choice of sound or wireless, but not both, since one compiled under 2.4 and the other under 2.2. The GCC guys say the solution is to host the plugins in the GCC tree, but that is not going to happen with every plugin, just as it doesn't for every kernel driver.
Easy enough to get around that by having your "plugin" be a glue layer to a separately compiled binary with a command line interface, so your reason is useless. Besides, it has been suggested that rewriting a header file will get around copyright. See my post below for another analysis.
More precisely, the exception states that if the end compiled product is built with non-GPL compatible plugins, then the end compiled product is subject to the licenses of the linked libraries using the exception. As at least some of those linked libraries are subject to the GPL (being part of GCC) then the end product will be subject to the GPL. If you want to propagate (distribute) the end compiled product, it needs to be a GPL-compatible program, which then means that any libraries linked with it need to be GPL-compatible too, which prevents proprietary libraries linked in. If you do not propagate the end compiled product, then no problem.
So, long story short, if you have a non-GPL plugin, then either (1) the plugin must be GPL-compatible, (2) the plugin can't affect the end compiled product, or (3) the compiled program must be GPL-compatible and not be linked with anything non-GPL-compatible (say, a proprietary plugin). Basically, they want to prevent plugin writers the ability to lock down a GPL program by requiring that it be compiled with the proprietary plugin. I think there is a loophole in (3), so I hope I did not misunderstand it.
Google News (since it's the only news aggregator I use) sells no ads next to any page under the news.google.com subdomain that I've been able to find. Yes I just looked. No ads on the news search pages, no nothing, not even when I turned javascript on for google.com.
I just looked too. I counted six ads on the right side of that page listed under "Sponsored Links": "Obama Inauguration Art", "Free Obama $500 Gas Card", "Obama Inauguration Date", "Prepare to be Shocked", "Is Barack Obama Dumb?", "Was Obama A Good Choice?". The second page had two more.
A fair use right exists for copyrighted items that can not be obtained through normal means. If the item is copyrighted, and the item is not obtainable through normal channels at a reasonable price (this includes purchasing it used and contacting the publisher and asking them for the number of copies you need), then it is legal to copy the item for non-commercial use. I did this once -- a book published over thirty years ago by a USSR government agency which has not existed for at least ten years, and whose successor does not respond to inquiries.
Do note that this is rather narrow. Generally, for single-copy personal use, contacting the publisher (should the publisher exist) for them to say that they can not provide the item and searching sales for used copies is sufficient, but ideally you would get a written waiver from the publisher. It gets harder and harder to justify as you go further from single-copy personal use.
However, Alexa Internet, the company that crawls the web for the Internet Archive, does respect robots.txt instructions, and even does so retroactively. If a web site owner decides he / she prefers not to have a web crawler visiting his / her files and sets up robots.txt on the site, the Alexa crawlers will stop visiting those files and will make unavailable all files previously gathered from that site.
See: http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php
Expect to see a lot more ads for: "UPSKIRT SHOTS OF DEAF CHIKZ!1one." They should really require a strobe light to go off at the same time as the shutter sound.
Oh! Like a flash, you mean?
Interestingly enough, the warning no longer shows. It was removed in the past day since you posted. Also of note is that the warning was removed three times, but the only one that stuck was the one that gave a reason for the edit. Going further down the tangent, I point out how people complain that they make edits in good faith which are reverted as vandalism, but then do not follow the basic instructions on how to make edits ("Briefly describe the changes you have made" is on every edit page). "Good faith" includes learning a bit about the norms of the community you join, even if nothing more than reading the introductory page (three lines on the "Edit this page" page).
Ultimately it led to a teacher being transfered to another school.
So, something happened, and the problem simply got moved somewhere where no one would stop it?
Those that appreciate them can buy them cheaply. And making a Mac fishbowl is a good way to appreciate it -- it is a classic mod.
What I remember Macintosh for:
1: Sealing up the original Mac while Apple II and IBM PC were open architectures.
Remember who the market was intended to be. They wanted the computer to be an appliance like a toaster. Whether it was the best thing is a huge discussion involving goals, purpose, education, reliability, etc. Basically, it comes down to some good and some bad consequences for Apple and the industry at large.
2: Comparably higher prices for equivalent performance and peripherals.
You were buying more than performance and a functionality checklist. You were buying a new way of doing things, an integrated, "Just works", WYSIWYG experience. If you did not want what Apple was selling, you were free to not buy it. But, they were not selling the same thing for a higher price.
3: Absolute hostility to clone makers, which allowed Apple to pass on their inefficiency to their customers.
4: Floppy disc incompatibility with other more prevalent systems for far too long.
It was kind of cool being able to cram 10% more onto a floppy disk than a PC, though it did mean that that the drives cost more. Oh, and most OSes had incompatible formats -- FAT was simply the most prevalent one. It kind of sucks when the non-leaders are blamed for not conforming to the leaders. Linux is an example where it is blamed for not implementing every driver that is implemented for Windows. Certainly, there are good reasons for conforming, but it is not a one-sided argument.
5: Threats to discontinue warranty coverage from anybody who dared crack the sealed-box open.
This was/is the case with most devices containing a CRT.
6: Taking forever to provide an internal hard drive long after their PC competition and 3rd party suppliers (anyone remember HyperDrive) had shown them how to do it.
That was annoying.
7: Needing to dump Steve Jobs before an Open Mac arrived.
"Correlation is not causation." Jobs had actually already seen the need to head that direction, but only after the initial design was created (before then, he was dead set against it, due to the initial goals, though he saw the light later -- that was why the 512K came out so quickly, with mods to the board to make it easier to upgrade memory by soldering). There was a lot going on that delayed the Plus and subsequent models from coming out, and the power struggle was one of them, but not a resistance to the idea from Jobs (at least after the release).
8: The most expensive (by far) laser printer on the market when the excellent HP LaserJet met many user's needs with the same print engine for far less money.
So you buy an HP. What's the deal? And some people will argue, of course, that the Apple printer was better....
9: 50% profit margins and proud of it!
I would be proud of strong profits too. That's what makes a company. Though it tends to not go over well with the customers.
Yes there's more, but this was a good enough start for now.
EFI OpenBoot firmware has more code than the original Mac OS boot floppy, wich cheated by having 4 megs already in ROM.
The original had 64K in ROM. The Plus (1986) had 128K in ROM. The II and SE (1987) had 256K. In 1989 it was 512K, and in 1991 it was 1M. Some time in the 90's it moved to 2M then 4M. With system 8, it was then moved to a ROM file, and there were no more ROMs manufactured as part of future Macs. The ROM was not simply dispensed with, because it was easier to make it a soft copy than rewrite a bunch of code.
People immediately realized that you wanted to have a second floppy drive, but it was not easy to get one until Apple realized how important they were. The workaround, of course, was to have a copy of the system on every floppy, which was not actually that bad, since the system was small compared to the floppy capacity. Then you use the option-double-click to switch the system to the next floppy when starting an application.
So many you *require* a dedicated third party app
What? Let me fix that for you.
So many you *require* a dedicated third party apps
That's more like it.
Let me fix that for you.
So many you *require* dedicated third party apps
It's a trojan, not a virus. Everyone knows that Macs don't get viruses.
The Tab key moves text to the right. ALTernately, it moves focus to another window. Add Shift in there, it all makes sense. How does ` make sense?
It's much easier to type. Not defending the choice, but giving a reason.
In OS X, when you're going to save a text file, you can create a folder but you can't delete it or rename it. Make sense to you or no?
No, but it is hard to get it right without making it confusing to less sophisticated users.
In OS X, when a window is not minimized, there is no representation of it in the dock. How does that make sense? How is it useful?
It is the pervading paradigm of the OS. If you read the article, it explains it reasonably well. In Windows, the unit is the window. In MacOS, the unit is the application. These are due to their respective histories more than anything else. Therefore, the taskbar shows windows, and the dock shows applications.
I find the Windows/KDE/Gnome way to be simpler and more logical.
Okay.
In OS X, when a window is not minimized, there is no representation of it in the dock. How does that make sense? How is it useful?
That's simply not true. Each active app appears in the doc (even if it has no windows open).
It is true. Non-minimized windows are not represented in the dock. Only applications are. However, right-clicking on the application usually (not always) brings up a menu with the windows listed.
On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
This is true on Windows as well, except for the larger number of meta-keys. The general rule is that the WinKey is the meta key for a global action (not related to the currently active app) while the Ctrl and Alt key chords generally interact with the currently active application (and are often the same app to app, though that is at the developers' discretion).
There are actually the same number of meta keys, if you don't count the right-click key (don't know the name for it). As far as global/current app distinction, it used to be that command-control was global, and command-not-control was current app.
If I want to rename a file in the Finder, I hit return/enter, rename the file, and hit return/enter again.
To the best of my knowledge, this paradigm is not used anywhere else in the known world. All the way back to the days of console-based file managers, Enter has meant "use this" not "rename this" and furthermore, Enter (with a selected item) is usually the same as double-clicking that item. Does OS X have a way to actually run a program or open a document from Finder using only one keystroke (or even a chord)?
This is a relic of the original MacOS from 1984. Back then, the Finder was nothing more than just another application, which it didn't grow out of until 1987 with Multifinder. As such, it obeyed a number of the rules back then which really don't make sense now, like all keyboard commands were command-something. So, "open" was command-O, and hitting the return key for renaming was an afterthought, which was since maintained for backwards consistancy (they really should have dropped it in OS X, they dropped so much else). Oh, and command-O still works, though command-down has worked since System 7 as well. Incidently, command-up is the same as backspace on Windows.
Additionally, it's easy to access the menu, and any option under it, from the keyboard. For example, Alt-T-O (in sequence, not chorded) will open the options display for the vast majority of Windows desktop applications. Similarly, between the Start menu (especially with Vista's search, but even without it) and WinKey-R for Run, it's easy to run any installed program from the keyboard alone. Finally, it's possible to bind any application or app shortcut to a globally-recognized key chord using the Properties page (Alt-Enter).
While some of the difference is clearly just a matter of UI paradigm, Windows is an OS where it has always been possible to do literally everything with the keyboard (admittedly not always simple - emptying the recycle bin without the mouse appears non-trivial, though still easy if you're used to keyboard navigation). If some of the specific key combos are less intuitive than they might be (Alt-F4 is a fair example) I submit that's simply because there are so very many in use.
At this point, with the appropriate settings in the System Preferences, nearly everything can be done from the keyboard too, including accessing menus. The reason that the Mac does not default that way, and that it is not true that literally all things can be accessed from the keyboard, is historical. At the very beginning, Apple was pushing people to the mouse (which, I think, helped make applications conform better to the Mac Human Interface Guidelines early on). This went to the extent that there were no arrow keys on the keyboard until 1986, and the control key was even later in 1987. As a result, there was no interest in making everything accessible from the keyboard. So, the Mac has been approaching keyboard access from that direction, which means that even full dialog box access did not come until recently (though there were extensions that allowed it earlier). Further, it is off by default for consistency's sake. Microsoft, on the other hand
God wrote in Lisp
Ostensibly, yes. But God hacked most of the Universe together with Perl.
Um, RTMP is not a chat protocol. It is a protocol for stateful connections with multiplexed streams for downloading large amounts of media with real-time responses and quality of service requirements. It is what the Flash Player uses to download audio and video from servers. See Wikipedia. Next time, look up the topic before spouting off.
Search on google for: gnash clean room
What you will find is that Adobe made it difficult to legally work on an open source viewer, and that the specs that exist are either (1) leaked, and therefore it is questionable whether you can legally use them, or (2) from a clean room reverse engineering.
From: http://lwn.net/Articles/270056/
Gnash development has been done using a Clean room reverse engineering technique. By agreeing to the license for the Adobe (formerly Shockwave) Flash player, a developer gives up the right to develop a competing product.
From: http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/30
Rob: The Adobe EULA for Flash forbids anyone who has installed their Flash tools or plugin from working on Flash technologies. This has had a chilling effect on the development of free Flash players, since a developer must either choose to decide that Adobe won't sue them over this, or to do what Gnash does, which is a slow and inefficient, clean room, reverse engineering project.
Adobe has declined to comment on this issue, since the confusion benefits their lockin of the market. Although Adobe has said they support Open Source projects, and donated Tamarin to Mozilla, we'd love to see a public statement that Gnash developers won't be subject to a lawsuit. It's very difficult to find developers that have never installed the Adobe software ever, which is what we've been doing to maintain our clean room approach.
From: http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/21
Savoye suggests that, "Most of this documentation, if we really wanted it, has already leaked out on the Internet years ago."
Huh? Do you live in some state that has legislated the value of pi?
Probably Indiana.