Is anyone really going to miss the stupid sticky note or photo apps in the default install?
In fact, in the default install, there are no Microsoft libraries installed with Mono. All that is installed is ECMA C# and the various Gnome-C# bindings. Those are no more susceptible to patent threats from Microsoft or anybody else than gcc, Gnome, or KDE.
And, yes, people use f-spot and Banshee.
The inclusion of that more than anything leaves ubuntu open to patent threats
Why don't they remove C, C++, Objective-C, Firefox, Ext3, Java, Compiz, and the entire Linux kernel while they are at it? All of those are potentially threatened by patents, from Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and lots of other companies.
Have you even considered the proposals on their own merits? Keeping a clean filesystem is a noble goal, and definitely worth considering.
OS X's file system is no "cleaner" than Ubuntu's. Furthermore, OS X fails to conform to standard UNIX file system conventions.
Oh, and that attitude of yours is what I consider to be the *PRIMARY* thing that's wrong with Linux. But I guess it will be hard to fix as well...
That attitude of yours is what I consider to be the *PRIMARY* thing that's wrong with OS X.
In fact, there are many aspects of OS X that positively suck. You named some of them. Linux may need to imitate some aspects of Windows that suck simply because of the predominance of Windows in the market, but OS X's market share is so insignificant that the only features of OS X that are worth adopting in Linux are the ones that demonstrably are better than what Linux already has. File system organization, installers, and GUI designers are not among those.
Application bundles - drag and drop install, removal./Application directory
Software installation and uninstallation is a mess on OS X: some applications are drag-and-drop, others use an installer. There is no standard way of uninstalling software, no way of figuring out what modifications a piece of software made, and no way of tracking dependencies.
/Preferences - standard place for apps to store their user specific settings instead of hidden . files in the main user home directory
OS X applications don't store preferences in/Preferences, they store it in a messy hierarchy in ~/Library. Just think of.something as ~/Library/.../something.
An app interface building tool that has OS X level UI element default spacing when laying out an interface to help with the jarringly hideous problems virtually every Linux app has with visual layout
I think that's just what you're used to. Personally, I don't particularly like OS X layout, and XCode's GUI builder is a nightmare.
Ubuntu is imitating some of the good parts of OS X: simplicity, nice visual effects, etc. But Ubuntu's underlying technologies--installers, runtimes, libraries, window management, etc.--are superior to Apple's.
No. The purpose of the patent system is to reward publication and use. Generally, if you don't publish and don't patent, your ideas don't count as prior art.
No, these self-interested behemoths want the patent system changed to an even more corrupt "first to file" system, which would screw the little guy and eliminate the last defense of OSS and small-time developers known as "prior art".
First-to-invent would let big companies sit on their inventions until someone else bother to file. And companies are far better at establishing invention dates than small inventors.
eliminate the last defense of OSS and small-time developers known as "prior art".
OSS developers don't have anything to fear from first-to-file, since their work counts as published prior art.
Small-time closed source developers do have something to fear from first-to-file, but that's the intent of the patent system: either you publish, or you patent, or you don't get any protection. That's the way it is supposed to work. It is not the intent or purpose of the patent system to reward small developers for inventions that they neither publish nor patent.
If you're a small time developer, can't afford a patent, and are worried about other people patenting your idea, then you should publish your idea (or part of your source code).
Everyone knows that there will be further terrorist attacks on the U. S.
And why does that scare you? The worst terrorist attack, 9/11 killed 3000 people. That was a tragedy to be sure, but it's a small fraction of the number of easily preventable deaths each and every year in the US. If a terrorist attack like that happened every year, it still wouldn't make the list of top 10 things to worry about.
The response to 9/11 should have been to beef up airport and in-flight security somewhat, to grieve, and then to go on with our lives. There was no need for spending hundreds of billions of dollars, military action, expanded police or spy powers, secret tribunals, Guantanamo, or secret diplomatic deals.
The real post-9/11 damage wasn't done by terrorists, it was done by people who couldn't conquer their fear. The real enemies of democracy post 9/11 have been people willing to vote away everybody's rights and dismantle our democracy in exchange for a perceived but non-existent increase in safety.
A method that would allow us to choose between more than two players would, of course, be too complicated for us wielders of Ultimate Democratic Power to comprehend
What makes you think that that works any better? Germany has half a dozen parties in government, and they are passing laws that are just as restrictive as in the US. Furthermore, the Nazis came to power in Germany in part as a result of a system that encouraged many small parties.
The sad thing is that, given a choice, the average voter is mostly motivated by fear: fear of terrorism, fear of foreigners, fear of competition, fear of change. And politicians running for office know how to take advantage of that fear.
But lousy as democracy may be, it still is far superior to the alternatives. And the two party system in the US, for all its flaws and problems, has been more stable and successful than other systems elsewhere.
The only way to improve things is to educate and improve your fellow citizens; there are no shortcuts, no fancy voting systems, or any of that.
Chemistry sets have gotten "simplified" all over the world, so this isn't a uniquely American phenomenon. Likewise, gun control, pornography, drugs, violent video games, etc. have similar or even stronger restrictions in Europe than in the US.
If it can be downloaded and edited doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose?
Actually, I would guess that a Google Gears version would basically "just work" off-line, and as soon as you're on-line, it syncs and you get all the multi-user features again.
needs to compete with PPT, and any other presentation software, on a feature function level
I disagree. In fact, I think PPT has too many features. Keynote, for example, already manages to be a better presentation package by having less crap in it.
First of all, you can already download presentations so that you can show them off-line. With Google Gears, I expect you will be able to work on them off-line ("on a plane") as well in the future. And it's just the first version; give it 6-12 months, and you'll probably be able to draw and animate as well.
I'd argue that the useful advantages are not obvious until you've lived with both systems for a significant amount of time, thus making your alleged trials utterly useless.
My experience doesn't bear this out. Except for a radical and vocal minority of people like you, most people seem fairly indifferent to the Mac/Windows/Linux differences, even after months of use, in my experience. That's not surprising either: most people just seem to launch a handful of applications.
But, hey, I'm open to data: show me peer reviewed user studies, statistics, or any other actual data showing that the Macintosh platform actually has advantages in terms of usability or productivity compared to other platforms.
Unfortunately, success in the real world is far more dependent on social skills than technical skills. So, even if gaming produces the best analytical minds, it makes no difference if they can't climb up the political/military/corporate ladder.
Well, I have not met a user who switched from Windows to Mac and who actually bashed Apple in a sense that the switch was not worth it.
Right, and my explanation for that is that most people who switch are people who really hate Windows to begin with.
When I thought about it, I realized that some companies like Apple and Land Rover want to stand out from the crowd by being different and exclusive.
Yes, we agree there: Apple doesn't want 90% market share, they want a few percent market share, but they want to capture high-value loyal customers there, and they want to keep them. And to do that, they focus both their technology and their marketing on a high value segment on the market, as opposed to making the best mass market OS they could.
I think Apple's hardware restriction is governed by one thing: Money.
And I'm saying that "money" isn't just about adding to the bottom line, it's also about making their customers, once converted, more loyal and making Apple appear to be a high value brand.
I mean... according to you, every single one of us is wrong
No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that Apple's strategy selects for the customers for whom Macs are most attractive and that represent the best value to Apple. People like you.
Where you are wrong is in generalizing from your preferences and experience to others. You may be better off using a Mac, but the world probably wouldn't be better off if Apple had 90% market share.
It has users because, for many tasks, it sucks less than the other currently available options.
If you actually give random people a choice (and I have done this), most users don't see a big advantage of Macs over other systems. Only a small percentage of people who try out Macs with no strings attached and no costs seem to find them to be a lot better than other systems and turn into rabid Mac fans.
but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format)
Then Sun, OpenOffice.org, ISO, and ECMA screwed up on trademarks. "Open Office XML" and "OpenDocument Foundation" should refer to nothing other than ODF and OpenOffice.
ODF an ISO and ECMA standard, and a lot of people have fought hard for both the standard and its adoption. For anybody in the ODF camp to abandon it at this point is unacceptable; any political or technical problems with ODF should have been resolved before
People complain about "the unwillingness of its originators to release it into the Bazaar". Excuse me, it's an ISO and ECMA standard. There should be "nothing to release", this standard should be cast in stone for at least half a decade. If extensions are needed, there should be an extension mechanism (which, I believe, XML namespaces provide).
And what is supposed to replace it? A non-existent W3C standard? Heck, the W3C hasn't even been able to replace HTML with XHTML; the notion that they can replace ODF/OOXML with CDF any time soon is laughable.
Of course, something like CDF is going to happen eventually; but the proper way of introducing it would have been to emphasize ODF as the near term solution and use it as a bargaining chip to get Microsoft to settle on CDF in the long term. What is going to happen now is that Microsoft is just going to declare OOXML the winner and point at ODF/CDF as another example of how open source and open standards are unstable and can't be trusted.
The ODF is handing Microsoft's OOXML victory on a silver platter. How much did Microsoft buy you all off for?
The problem is that people don't perceive the costs accurately in the first place. A $2400 purchase seems much bigger than 24 months of $100. That's why companies like to hide big up front costs in long term contracts.
I'm pretty sure that would be a violation of the DCMA anti-circumvention stuff, but if you find such an app, let me know.
DMCA is a law about circumventing copy protection on copyrighted content. What on earth does that have to do with measuring ISP performance and protocol compliance?
Ah, OK. I don't think that sales to PC users would hurt Mac hardware sales. Many people buy Macs for the hardware, not for the software, making things balance out.
If Apple actually shipped OS X for PCs, it would lose its aura of quality and superiority. The reason?
Think about it. Right now, to actually use OS X, you have to really hate Windows and Linux enough to pay a lot of money for a new Mac, set up the hardware, and switch. That's a big commitment, and cognitive dissonance will probably keep you from disliking it. Furthermore, you'll become a vocal advocate for OS X, both because you really hated Windows and Linux in the first place, and because you really like OS X now.
If it were easy to switch, a lot of people who are only mildly unhappy with Windows and Linux would buy OS X and stick it into their beige box. Many of them would likely conclude that the hassle of switching wasn't worth the improvement (if any) for them and just go back to what they were using before. And they'd tell others about their experience, destroying some of the aura of quality and mystery surrounding the Mac.
So, the reason you can't get OS X for your PC is likely that it is in Apple's interest to keep the cost of switching pretty high: it means they won't get a huge market share, but they skim off the best customers and the ones that are the most vocal advocates for their products.
They would probably lose money unless they charged $300 per copy of the OS.
Apple spends much less on R&D than, say, Microsoft. Furthermore, a large part of their software isn't even developed by them but taken from the open source community.
I'd guess there is probably much less actual R&D effort and much less actual development cost for each OS X release than RedHat puts into each release of RHEL.
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Is anyone really going to miss the stupid sticky note or photo apps in the default install?
In fact, in the default install, there are no Microsoft libraries installed with Mono. All that is installed is ECMA C# and the various Gnome-C# bindings. Those are no more susceptible to patent threats from Microsoft or anybody else than gcc, Gnome, or KDE.
And, yes, people use f-spot and Banshee.
The inclusion of that more than anything leaves ubuntu open to patent threats
Why don't they remove C, C++, Objective-C, Firefox, Ext3, Java, Compiz, and the entire Linux kernel while they are at it? All of those are potentially threatened by patents, from Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and lots of other companies.
Have you even considered the proposals on their own merits? Keeping a clean filesystem is a noble goal, and definitely worth considering.
OS X's file system is no "cleaner" than Ubuntu's. Furthermore, OS X fails to conform to standard UNIX file system conventions.
Oh, and that attitude of yours is what I consider to be the *PRIMARY* thing that's wrong with Linux. But I guess it will be hard to fix as well...
That attitude of yours is what I consider to be the *PRIMARY* thing that's wrong with OS X.
In fact, there are many aspects of OS X that positively suck. You named some of them. Linux may need to imitate some aspects of Windows that suck simply because of the predominance of Windows in the market, but OS X's market share is so insignificant that the only features of OS X that are worth adopting in Linux are the ones that demonstrably are better than what Linux already has. File system organization, installers, and GUI designers are not among those.
Application bundles - drag and drop install, removal. /Application directory
/Preferences - standard place for apps to store their user specific settings instead of hidden . files in the main user home directory
/Preferences, they store it in a messy hierarchy in ~/Library. Just think of .something as ~/Library/.../something.
Software installation and uninstallation is a mess on OS X: some applications are drag-and-drop, others use an installer. There is no standard way of uninstalling software, no way of figuring out what modifications a piece of software made, and no way of tracking dependencies.
OS X applications don't store preferences in
An app interface building tool that has OS X level UI element default spacing when laying out an interface to help with the jarringly hideous problems virtually every Linux app has with visual layout
I think that's just what you're used to. Personally, I don't particularly like OS X layout, and XCode's GUI builder is a nightmare.
Ubuntu is imitating some of the good parts of OS X: simplicity, nice visual effects, etc. But Ubuntu's underlying technologies--installers, runtimes, libraries, window management, etc.--are superior to Apple's.
There are many ISPs that block BitTorrent:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs
It seems odd to pick on only one of them.
Ah, that brings back memories of 4.2BSD, the first BSD with real Internet support.
(OpenBSD 4.2 seems somewhat less exciting to me.)
No. The purpose of the patent system is to reward publication and use. Generally, if you don't publish and don't patent, your ideas don't count as prior art.
No, these self-interested behemoths want the patent system changed to an even more corrupt "first to file" system, which would screw the little guy and eliminate the last defense of OSS and small-time developers known as "prior art".
First-to-invent would let big companies sit on their inventions until someone else bother to file. And companies are far better at establishing invention dates than small inventors.
eliminate the last defense of OSS and small-time developers known as "prior art".
OSS developers don't have anything to fear from first-to-file, since their work counts as published prior art.
Small-time closed source developers do have something to fear from first-to-file, but that's the intent of the patent system: either you publish, or you patent, or you don't get any protection. That's the way it is supposed to work. It is not the intent or purpose of the patent system to reward small developers for inventions that they neither publish nor patent.
If you're a small time developer, can't afford a patent, and are worried about other people patenting your idea, then you should publish your idea (or part of your source code).
Everyone knows that there will be further terrorist attacks on the U. S.
And why does that scare you? The worst terrorist attack, 9/11 killed 3000 people. That was a tragedy to be sure, but it's a small fraction of the number of easily preventable deaths each and every year in the US. If a terrorist attack like that happened every year, it still wouldn't make the list of top 10 things to worry about.
The response to 9/11 should have been to beef up airport and in-flight security somewhat, to grieve, and then to go on with our lives. There was no need for spending hundreds of billions of dollars, military action, expanded police or spy powers, secret tribunals, Guantanamo, or secret diplomatic deals.
The real post-9/11 damage wasn't done by terrorists, it was done by people who couldn't conquer their fear. The real enemies of democracy post 9/11 have been people willing to vote away everybody's rights and dismantle our democracy in exchange for a perceived but non-existent increase in safety.
A method that would allow us to choose between more than two players would, of course, be too complicated for us wielders of Ultimate Democratic Power to comprehend
What makes you think that that works any better? Germany has half a dozen parties in government, and they are passing laws that are just as restrictive as in the US. Furthermore, the Nazis came to power in Germany in part as a result of a system that encouraged many small parties.
The sad thing is that, given a choice, the average voter is mostly motivated by fear: fear of terrorism, fear of foreigners, fear of competition, fear of change. And politicians running for office know how to take advantage of that fear.
But lousy as democracy may be, it still is far superior to the alternatives. And the two party system in the US, for all its flaws and problems, has been more stable and successful than other systems elsewhere.
The only way to improve things is to educate and improve your fellow citizens; there are no shortcuts, no fancy voting systems, or any of that.
Correction: that's "Office Open XML", so named by it's owner, Microsoft, for the sole purpose of confusing people.
That is my point: that is exactly why "OOXML" should be a trademark violation.
Chemistry sets have gotten "simplified" all over the world, so this isn't a uniquely American phenomenon. Likewise, gun control, pornography, drugs, violent video games, etc. have similar or even stronger restrictions in Europe than in the US.
If it can be downloaded and edited doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose?
Actually, I would guess that a Google Gears version would basically "just work" off-line, and as soon as you're on-line, it syncs and you get all the multi-user features again.
needs to compete with PPT, and any other presentation software, on a feature function level
I disagree. In fact, I think PPT has too many features. Keynote, for example, already manages to be a better presentation package by having less crap in it.
If you're concerned about security, just boot one of the Linux live CD distributions instead of booting from hard disk.
First of all, you can already download presentations so that you can show them off-line. With Google Gears, I expect you will be able to work on them off-line ("on a plane") as well in the future. And it's just the first version; give it 6-12 months, and you'll probably be able to draw and animate as well.
I'd argue that the useful advantages are not obvious until you've lived with both systems for a significant amount of time, thus making your alleged trials utterly useless.
My experience doesn't bear this out. Except for a radical and vocal minority of people like you, most people seem fairly indifferent to the Mac/Windows/Linux differences, even after months of use, in my experience. That's not surprising either: most people just seem to launch a handful of applications.
But, hey, I'm open to data: show me peer reviewed user studies, statistics, or any other actual data showing that the Macintosh platform actually has advantages in terms of usability or productivity compared to other platforms.
Unfortunately, success in the real world is far more dependent on social skills than technical skills. So, even if gaming produces the best analytical minds, it makes no difference if they can't climb up the political/military/corporate ladder.
Well, I have not met a user who switched from Windows to Mac and who actually bashed Apple in a sense that the switch was not worth it.
Right, and my explanation for that is that most people who switch are people who really hate Windows to begin with.
When I thought about it, I realized that some companies like Apple and Land Rover want to stand out from the crowd by being different and exclusive.
Yes, we agree there: Apple doesn't want 90% market share, they want a few percent market share, but they want to capture high-value loyal customers there, and they want to keep them. And to do that, they focus both their technology and their marketing on a high value segment on the market, as opposed to making the best mass market OS they could.
I think Apple's hardware restriction is governed by one thing: Money.
And I'm saying that "money" isn't just about adding to the bottom line, it's also about making their customers, once converted, more loyal and making Apple appear to be a high value brand.
I mean... according to you, every single one of us is wrong
No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that Apple's strategy selects for the customers for whom Macs are most attractive and that represent the best value to Apple. People like you.
Where you are wrong is in generalizing from your preferences and experience to others. You may be better off using a Mac, but the world probably wouldn't be better off if Apple had 90% market share.
It has users because, for many tasks, it sucks less than the other currently available options.
If you actually give random people a choice (and I have done this), most users don't see a big advantage of Macs over other systems. Only a small percentage of people who try out Macs with no strings attached and no costs seem to find them to be a lot better than other systems and turn into rabid Mac fans.
but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format)
Then Sun, OpenOffice.org, ISO, and ECMA screwed up on trademarks. "Open Office XML" and "OpenDocument Foundation" should refer to nothing other than ODF and OpenOffice.
ODF an ISO and ECMA standard, and a lot of people have fought hard for both the standard and its adoption. For anybody in the ODF camp to abandon it at this point is unacceptable; any political or technical problems with ODF should have been resolved before
People complain about "the unwillingness of its originators to release it into the Bazaar". Excuse me, it's an ISO and ECMA standard. There should be "nothing to release", this standard should be cast in stone for at least half a decade. If extensions are needed, there should be an extension mechanism (which, I believe, XML namespaces provide).
And what is supposed to replace it? A non-existent W3C standard? Heck, the W3C hasn't even been able to replace HTML with XHTML; the notion that they can replace ODF/OOXML with CDF any time soon is laughable.
Of course, something like CDF is going to happen eventually; but the proper way of introducing it would have been to emphasize ODF as the near term solution and use it as a bargaining chip to get Microsoft to settle on CDF in the long term. What is going to happen now is that Microsoft is just going to declare OOXML the winner and point at ODF/CDF as another example of how open source and open standards are unstable and can't be trusted.
The ODF is handing Microsoft's OOXML victory on a silver platter. How much did Microsoft buy you all off for?
The problem is that people don't perceive the costs accurately in the first place. A $2400 purchase seems much bigger than 24 months of $100. That's why companies like to hide big up front costs in long term contracts.
I'm pretty sure that would be a violation of the DCMA anti-circumvention stuff, but if you find such an app, let me know.
DMCA is a law about circumventing copy protection on copyrighted content. What on earth does that have to do with measuring ISP performance and protocol compliance?
Ah, OK. I don't think that sales to PC users would hurt Mac hardware sales. Many people buy Macs for the hardware, not for the software, making things balance out.
If Apple actually shipped OS X for PCs, it would lose its aura of quality and superiority. The reason?
Think about it. Right now, to actually use OS X, you have to really hate Windows and Linux enough to pay a lot of money for a new Mac, set up the hardware, and switch. That's a big commitment, and cognitive dissonance will probably keep you from disliking it. Furthermore, you'll become a vocal advocate for OS X, both because you really hated Windows and Linux in the first place, and because you really like OS X now.
If it were easy to switch, a lot of people who are only mildly unhappy with Windows and Linux would buy OS X and stick it into their beige box. Many of them would likely conclude that the hassle of switching wasn't worth the improvement (if any) for them and just go back to what they were using before. And they'd tell others about their experience, destroying some of the aura of quality and mystery surrounding the Mac.
So, the reason you can't get OS X for your PC is likely that it is in Apple's interest to keep the cost of switching pretty high: it means they won't get a huge market share, but they skim off the best customers and the ones that are the most vocal advocates for their products.
They would probably lose money unless they charged $300 per copy of the OS.
Apple spends much less on R&D than, say, Microsoft. Furthermore, a large part of their software isn't even developed by them but taken from the open source community.
I'd guess there is probably much less actual R&D effort and much less actual development cost for each OS X release than RedHat puts into each release of RHEL.