MS used to run lots of ads, including banner ads on slashdot, about how the london stock exchange chose windows over linux... Those ads stopped very quickly when they had the big outage a few months ago
Ah, so the MS ad servers were running Windows too?
The difference depends on the answer to the following question: If Sony wants to restrict software on PlayStation products, why doesn't it also restrict software on VAIO products?
By that logic, Apple copied off all the phones that came before them (including the ability to play games).
Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Apple is a great artist. What you're describing is merely a good artist (e.g. Sony (who were once great artists, incidentally)).
It's the same old story: Apple do something after someone else, and they're claimed to be "first" somehow; another company does something after Apple, and they've "copied".
With few exceptions, Apple is rarely cited at the "first". They are often cited as the first to get it right, however. See the iPod for example.
It's a shame that Apple didn't add the "copy" feature to the Iphone[sic], since they do it so well...
Ooh, burn!
PS, the iPhone does have copy (and cut and paste). Do try to keep up.
Unless you've been talking about some other product called an Iphone all this time. I never really considered that...
I think the app store is fine, but a bit like the blogosphere.
I mean, it's the best thing EVAR to those involved, and they get excited about it and there's a lot of activity and a lot of vibrancy and life within the scene.
To everyone else it's just kinda "meh".
Sure, but if you're planning to get into online opinion/news publishing, you're going to enter the blogosphere, and become one of "those involved".
Same thing with the App Store. It's a big deal primarily to those with iPhones, but if you're one of those outsiders without and iPhone really interested in running apps on your phone, you're most likely going to get an iPhone.
What you've said is sort of like saying "sports is the best thing EVAR only to sports fans".
Believe it or not, phones were playing games long before Apple joined the party late. I know there's a trend here on Slashdot to redefine the word "phone" with "Iphone[sic]", but let's not push it.
Apple is now the preeminent phone gaming platform. If Sony is planning to create a compelling gaming phone, a comparison to the iPhone is apt, and it's a comparison which Sony is bound fall short in.
It's also amusing that you criticize Apple for coming to the party late, while defending a PSP SonyEricsson two years after the launch of the original iPhone.
It's a business. Period. Their customers are the players. If the players want 55 free levels, faction changes, name changes, welfare epics, and on and on and on, and are willing to pay for it, either through a direct fee (name changes, faction changes) or by virtue of continuing to pay their monthly fee, they will keep getting it because at the end of the day, Blizzard, and every other major game manufacturer cares about one thing and one thing only: MONEY.
This is a fundamentally incomplete view of reality. While there are certainly people at Blizzard for whom the company is only about money, there are also people who are there because they want to make great games.
In order for a company to be truly great, it has to make a place for those types of people. I don't know first hand whether Blizzard is such a company, but looking at their products, it would appear to be the case.
On the other hand, companies that are only "about one thing and one thing only: MONEY", as you put it, are soulless places that I think should not be encouraged to exist in such a form.
That's not to say that money isn't important, but when you choose what you want to do in life, what your passion is, you don't choose to do that simply because of the money, but because it's what you love. By stating that businesses are solely about money, and nothing else, you make it just that much more difficult for the truly great companies to exist.
What if you're confined to a wheelchair or walker, and can't easily get to the beach? What if you're already estranged from your family? What if you don't have the money for European vacations?
So the way to bypass the pain of the punishment is to... become and unloved, destitute cripple? Brilliant plan!
One 'upside' to prison: Free medical care. That's right, if you have health problems, prison can be a lifesaver - they HAVE to treat you.
I don't see people going around committing crimes just to get that free health care. To be sure, I don't doubt that it's probably happened, but it can't be a significant problem, and furthermore, I highly doubt financial scammers are thinking to themselves, "sure, it's life in prison, but at least I get free healthcare!. Seriously, that's your argument?
Personally, I don't think it's worth it. But when you look at stuff like this, you have to also approach it from a statistical standpoint - SOME will think the tradeoff worth it, much like how some teenagers think it's worth it, and end up spending 60+ years behind bars for murder.
Some great-grandmother blew away the rapist of her great granddaughter. In court. Before the judge, bailiff, jury, etc...
There's no doubt that some people will not be deterred, but that's true no matter what the punishment. Regardless of the lunatic fringe for whom no level of deterrent is enough, the number of would-be scammers would be put off by a potential life (or 150 year) prison sentence than would be put off by a 3-10 year sentence.
It destroys one of the fundamental aspects of the calculation, which has generally been, "even if I get caught (and I don't think I will, but just in case), I'll do a few years, and once I'm out I'll dig up my hidden stash."
Now the message is, "if you get caught, your life is ruined."
But if you're old, and you've lived a full life, you can rest assured that your kids and your wife will still get to live a life of luxury, while you live a life of leisure in a state-run old age home. And you'll have plenty of influence to ensure you get a comfy life inside prison, since you can pay off anyone you need.
But that's true of any crime, isn't it? If you're a serial killer, and get the death penalty, if you do it once you're old, not so big a loss, right?
By your own standards, "you've lived a full life" means you had to commit the fraud while you were still young enough for it to contribute to that "full life". In so doing, you risk getting caught when a life sentence still holds significant consequences.
And I fail to see how people think that living your last years of life in prison is somehow not so bad. Would you be happy being confined such that you can't leave a campus-sized compound ever? No trips to the beach, no family reunions, no camping, no European vacations, etc? Ever again.
So in order to avoid panic we reward felons with bailouts instead of indictments? How is that more sane than bankrupting the bad actors and selling their assets to the banks that didn't get involved with mortgage fraud?
By Ayn Rand's standards, it wasn't a fraud. The banks chose, willfully, to over leverage their assets.
That's what FDIC insurance is for. It would have cost less than $750 billion to pay FDIC on all those accounts, and that money would have gone to people who would be more likely to spend it and "kick-start the economy" from the ground up instead of hoarding it like the bankers.
Giving more money to bankers is throwing people to the wolves.
What you state makes no sense. The people the FDIC would have paid would have lost money over certain amounts, had the banks been allowed to fail completely. By keeping the banks alive, those people instead get to keep all of their money.
How is your scenario, where people lose some of their money supposed to be better than the the present case where they get to keep 100% of their money?
Greenspan, for all the harm he did, actually believed that Ayn Rand crap would work.
It would have worked if he and Congress would have allowed the large banks to actually go bankrupt when they deserved it. Failure is the ultimate regulator, unfortunately the people who fund all the reelection campaigns in this country mysteriously became "too big to fail".
Uh, no. The fact that the banks were failing was the failure of the Ayn Rand bullshit.
The fact that your only defense is, "they should have been allowed to fail" demonstrates how bankrupt your philosophy is. Glass-Steagall told the banks that they could take risks, but only up to a point. This, combined with FDIC allowed people a certain level of confidence in their banks. By repealing Glass-Steagall, the banks were now free to take excessive risks. Greenspan thought, as Ayn Rand had taught him, that the self-interest of the bankers would keep them in check, but it didn't. Once one bank took the risks, and saw the immediate profits, the others had to follow suit, or see their value plummet.
So they all took on the risks. And when the house of cards fell (as they tend to do), the banks were set to fail, leaving the taxpayers on the hook from the FDIC, and leaving Washington with a choice. Let them fail entirely, and rebuild anew, or keep them afloat as needed until they can recover.
Were we to follow the insane Ayn Rand choice of "let them fail", we'd be throwing away vast amounts of banking infrastructure which would just have to be rebuilt. It's like throwing out your car because the engine failed instead of just putting in a new engine. Wasteful and unnecessary. In the meantime, that would have caused inordinate hardship on Americans who would have to scramble to find a new bank, but finding a shortage of banks. That shortage would lead to fly-by-night banks of questionable character, and leading most people to go without any bank whatsoever. This might sound well and good from the individualistic idealism of Ayn Rand, but would lead to all sorts of mayhem with regards to things like credit cards, payroll deposits, and automated bill payments. It's just not feasible for our economy to run on people keeping piles of cash under their mattresses, or carrying around bags of gold on their belts.
It's like the railroads in Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand thinks that as long as the railroads are free to do as they wish, then naturally the Dagney Taggarts will rise to the top, pushing out the James Taggarts. It's a nice fantasy, but reality shows otherwise. The banking failure wasn't because the Dagney's weren't allowed the freedom to do what they wanted, it failed because they were allowed the freedom to take undue risks that had far reaching consequences. James might have fucked things up quicker, but even Dagney would have made a mistake, bringing the whole thing down on top of the American people.
Or because you can't punish the people in power for making bad choices because no one would be willing to risk it.
Greenspan, for all the harm he did, actually believed that Ayn Rand crap would work. It only took the decimation of the world economy to convince him otherwise.
The problem isn't the leaders, it's those that keep the leaders in power, year after year, making the same mistakes, and to a large extent, the media which dupes so many people into voting against their own self interests.
I'm sure Madoff operated with that understanding (hey, he can't be stupid), yet still got caught in spite of that. I don't really think this sends any message anyone wasn't already aware of.
The message before today was, "and if you get caught, you get 3-10 years, then you're back out and you'll be rich."
A lot of people take these sorts of risks under the impression that, worst case, they spend a few years in jail, and they're fine with the prospect of trading a few years of their life in exchange for wealth far beyond their natural means.
Now the message is, "if you get caught, your life is ruined."
I would be rich by now if every Windows and Linux user that could not find his way around an Apple machine would have given me a penny.
That's not usability. Usability doesn't mean you're going to instantly know how to use something.
The usability of computer you're coming from doesn't make it easier or harder to user the computer you're going to. The only thing that makes a difference is the similarity. Two equally usable computers can be quite dissimilar, and two very unequally usable computers can be quite similar (think of the Mac skins for X11).
watching people trying to adjust to an unfamiliar environment should dispel the myth that a given environment is better than others.
The topic is "more usable," not "is better". Better can mean anything to anyone. Usability is much more universal. You seem to be saying that Linux (or maybe Windows) is better for you. Great! Use it. Usability is just one aspect of a system, and needn't be the most important. It's like how much space a system takes up. It's important, sure, but other factors come into play, such as already held knowledge, like the "lost Windows and Linux" users you mention above. Mac OS X may be more usable, but Windows is usable enough, and they already know it. Good for them!
Linux and Unix users are notorious for feeling comfortable using the command line for many tasks, other people roll their eyes thinking that user friendliness requires a mouse and shiny icons, in reality the command line can be very user friendly, specially if you have spent a lifetime building habits around it.
Saying, "a CLI can be user friendly" is true, but it's rare for the CLI to be more usable than even a mediocre GUI. You even have to bolster your point by adding, "specially if you have spent a lifetime building habits around it." No such caveat is needed to consider a GUI user friendly.
I mean, hell, even the bagpipes can be easy to play, if you've spent your life mastering them!
That he died of a heart attack is just so... mundane
Cardiac arrest is not the same as a heart attack. Cardiac arrest is when the heart just stops, a heart attack is when the heart stops receiving blood/oxygen (as ironic as that sounds).
All you're saying is that since you already know Ubuntu, it's the easiest for you to use. That's fine. Usability needn't be the most important criteria for choosing an OS.
You extrapolate this to state that Ubuntu is the easiest OS of all to use, which is fundamentally absurd. You even admit this inadvertently when you state that instead of "dumbing down" the OS, we should "smarten up" the users. In doing so, you've made two drastic errors. The first is that you equate usability with "dumbing down". The second is that you want people to learn things that they neither need to nor want to.
And lastly, you've made the mistake that usability and easy are interchangeable. They are related, but at some point, as you make an interface easier and easier, it will likely go from being ever more usable to drastically less usable.
A mistake a lot of Linux users make when assessing Mac OS X is to think that it's a simplified, underpowered system, mistaking the usability for simplicity. I can assure you, being intimately familiar with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, that Mac OS X is extremely powerful and complex. So much so that in some ways, it make Linux looks simple and dumbed down. LaunchDaemons, AppleScript, and application bundles come to mind. I'm not saying this to put down Linux, but to point out that Mac OS X is by no means a simplistic OS. It's just so well engineered from a usability standpoint that most users will never even know any of that stuff exists behind the well-polished GUI.
That's one of the most meaningless statements ever and pretty much validates what I said. People throw the term 'usability' around with respect to Macs as some ideal without really any clue what they're talking about.
Just because you don't understand it, don't think that the people who are talking about it don't either. You're basically saying, "I don't understand this topic, therefore it doesn't exist".
Windows still has more applications available than Macs and for most it is still more usable as a result because.......you can use it to perform a wider variety of tasks.
Usability != functionality. Usability is an aspect of functionality. Each function your computer can perform has some measure of usability associated with it.
Usability isn't what you can do with your computer, it's how you do those things which you can do with your computer.
For an analogy, consider the information contained in a road sign and the readability of a road sign. What you're stating is that all that matters is the content of the sign, and whether or not one can easily read it is a meaningless "cherry on the top". The only reason you can state that is that most signs will, just in the natural course of being created, have some sufficient level of readability.
The same is true for functionality in software. All software has some natural amount of usability stemming from the simple fact that the programmer is going to have to imbue it with such in order to use it himself. But if you stop there, you're going to make software that is more difficult to use than it could be with just a little bit of attention to usability.
Usability with respect to human computer interaction, meaning the interface for most people, is a cherry on top of a very large cake. That's not desktop Linux's problem right now.
The Mac is a system where a lot of effort has been put into improving usability. To a lesser extent, Windows also has had effort put into usability--consider the changes to the task bar in Windows 7. On Linux, usability is generally an afterthought, like you stated, "a cherry on top". But you got the following sentence dead wrong. That mentality is overwhelmingly the single-most thing keeping Linux off the desktop. Most people just can't use the damned thing. The Internet is littered with tales of people trying and failing miserably.
Usability is about far more than making some sad Mac clone. It's about developers, developers, developers, developers - creating the useful applications and functionality that people want
No, usability is not about functionality, it's about how that functionality works. Specifically, it's when the functions are designed to work in a way that better matches the way humans function. Open Source tends to focus more on how the computer functions as a computer and not enough on how it functions as something for people to use.
This focus on human-computer interaction is something the Mac excels at. People don't point to it as inspiration because it's pretty. They point to it because it's more usable. Its prettiness is just one aspect of its usability.
To be clear, functionality is important, but it's not the same as usability. To be usable, a system needs functions, but merely having the functions doesn't make a system terribly usable.
Wrong. It's was childish of him to undermine his own point with that "M$" bullshit. You lose.
Too bad I stated that using 'M$' is childish.
Just as it was childish of me to mod your post down and bookmark your user page for the next batch of mod points.
Knock yourself out. You aren't the first, and you won't be the last. Just remember, each time you do it, that it demonstrates your insecurity and is a reminder of the impotence of your passive aggresive existence.
As for myself, it won't bother me in the slightest. Unlike a lot of folks here (judging from the 'don't mod me down just because you disagree' sigs), I'm perfectly fine with the fact that idiots are granted mod points. It's kind of sad that you'd rather waste them than use them to make things better for the rest of us, but whatever, they're your points.
No need to reply, as I have no interest, nor feel any compulsion, to carry on a tiresome argument with you.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.
I can't accept the implication that every boss[1] in the world is that incompetent.
MS used to run lots of ads, including banner ads on slashdot, about how the london stock exchange chose windows over linux... Those ads stopped very quickly when they had the big outage a few months ago
Ah, so the MS ad servers were running Windows too?
The difference depends on the answer to the following question: If Sony wants to restrict software on PlayStation products, why doesn't it also restrict software on VAIO products?
Because they can't.
Are you referring to "piracy" (unlawful copying of major-label games) or to "homebrew" (original apps and games developed by people in home offices)?
Yes.
By that logic, Apple copied off all the phones that came before them (including the ability to play games).
Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Apple is a great artist. What you're describing is merely a good artist (e.g. Sony (who were once great artists, incidentally)).
It's the same old story: Apple do something after someone else, and they're claimed to be "first" somehow; another company does something after Apple, and they've "copied".
With few exceptions, Apple is rarely cited at the "first". They are often cited as the first to get it right, however. See the iPod for example.
It's a shame that Apple didn't add the "copy" feature to the Iphone[sic], since they do it so well...
Ooh, burn!
PS, the iPhone does have copy (and cut and paste). Do try to keep up.
Unless you've been talking about some other product called an Iphone all this time. I never really considered that...
I think the app store is fine, but a bit like the blogosphere.
I mean, it's the best thing EVAR to those involved, and they get excited about it and there's a lot of activity and a lot of vibrancy and life within the scene.
To everyone else it's just kinda "meh".
Sure, but if you're planning to get into online opinion/news publishing, you're going to enter the blogosphere, and become one of "those involved".
Same thing with the App Store. It's a big deal primarily to those with iPhones, but if you're one of those outsiders without and iPhone really interested in running apps on your phone, you're most likely going to get an iPhone.
What you've said is sort of like saying "sports is the best thing EVAR only to sports fans".
Lets build a Phone!
Fixed that for you.
Believe it or not, phones were playing games long before Apple joined the party late. I know there's a trend here on Slashdot to redefine the word "phone" with "Iphone[sic]", but let's not push it.
Apple is now the preeminent phone gaming platform. If Sony is planning to create a compelling gaming phone, a comparison to the iPhone is apt, and it's a comparison which Sony is bound fall short in.
It's also amusing that you criticize Apple for coming to the party late, while defending a PSP SonyEricsson two years after the launch of the original iPhone.
Huh? Is there somebody out there yelling, "No! We need one browser! Competition is evil"?
I think his name is Ballmer.
If so, I haven't run across them.
That's good... he throws chairs. :)
It was much easier to deal with him back when he used to just roll barrels at you...
a few people who paid way too much for their computers would be running Safari
I see what you did there..
Yeah, someone should tell him that Safari runs on Macs, too... :D
It's a business. Period. Their customers are the players. If the players want 55 free levels, faction changes, name changes, welfare epics, and on and on and on, and are willing to pay for it, either through a direct fee (name changes, faction changes) or by virtue of continuing to pay their monthly fee, they will keep getting it because at the end of the day, Blizzard, and every other major game manufacturer cares about one thing and one thing only: MONEY.
This is a fundamentally incomplete view of reality. While there are certainly people at Blizzard for whom the company is only about money, there are also people who are there because they want to make great games.
In order for a company to be truly great, it has to make a place for those types of people. I don't know first hand whether Blizzard is such a company, but looking at their products, it would appear to be the case.
On the other hand, companies that are only "about one thing and one thing only: MONEY", as you put it, are soulless places that I think should not be encouraged to exist in such a form.
That's not to say that money isn't important, but when you choose what you want to do in life, what your passion is, you don't choose to do that simply because of the money, but because it's what you love. By stating that businesses are solely about money, and nothing else, you make it just that much more difficult for the truly great companies to exist.
What if you're confined to a wheelchair or walker, and can't easily get to the beach? What if you're already estranged from your family? What if you don't have the money for European vacations?
So the way to bypass the pain of the punishment is to... become and unloved, destitute cripple? Brilliant plan!
One 'upside' to prison: Free medical care. That's right, if you have health problems, prison can be a lifesaver - they HAVE to treat you.
I don't see people going around committing crimes just to get that free health care. To be sure, I don't doubt that it's probably happened, but it can't be a significant problem, and furthermore, I highly doubt financial scammers are thinking to themselves, "sure, it's life in prison, but at least I get free healthcare!. Seriously, that's your argument?
Personally, I don't think it's worth it. But when you look at stuff like this, you have to also approach it from a statistical standpoint - SOME will think the tradeoff worth it, much like how some teenagers think it's worth it, and end up spending 60+ years behind bars for murder.
Some great-grandmother blew away the rapist of her great granddaughter. In court. Before the judge, bailiff, jury, etc...
There's no doubt that some people will not be deterred, but that's true no matter what the punishment. Regardless of the lunatic fringe for whom no level of deterrent is enough, the number of would-be scammers would be put off by a potential life (or 150 year) prison sentence than would be put off by a 3-10 year sentence.
It destroys one of the fundamental aspects of the calculation, which has generally been, "even if I get caught (and I don't think I will, but just in case), I'll do a few years, and once I'm out I'll dig up my hidden stash."
But if you're old, and you've lived a full life, you can rest assured that your kids and your wife will still get to live a life of luxury, while you live a life of leisure in a state-run old age home. And you'll have plenty of influence to ensure you get a comfy life inside prison, since you can pay off anyone you need.
But that's true of any crime, isn't it? If you're a serial killer, and get the death penalty, if you do it once you're old, not so big a loss, right?
By your own standards, "you've lived a full life" means you had to commit the fraud while you were still young enough for it to contribute to that "full life". In so doing, you risk getting caught when a life sentence still holds significant consequences.
And I fail to see how people think that living your last years of life in prison is somehow not so bad. Would you be happy being confined such that you can't leave a campus-sized compound ever? No trips to the beach, no family reunions, no camping, no European vacations, etc? Ever again.
So in order to avoid panic we reward felons with bailouts instead of indictments? How is that more sane than bankrupting the bad actors and selling their assets to the banks that didn't get involved with mortgage fraud?
By Ayn Rand's standards, it wasn't a fraud. The banks chose, willfully, to over leverage their assets.
That's what FDIC insurance is for. It would have cost less than $750 billion to pay FDIC on all those accounts, and that money would have gone to people who would be more likely to spend it and "kick-start the economy" from the ground up instead of hoarding it like the bankers.
Giving more money to bankers is throwing people to the wolves.
What you state makes no sense. The people the FDIC would have paid would have lost money over certain amounts, had the banks been allowed to fail completely. By keeping the banks alive, those people instead get to keep all of their money.
How is your scenario, where people lose some of their money supposed to be better than the the present case where they get to keep 100% of their money?
It would have worked if he and Congress would have allowed the large banks to actually go bankrupt when they deserved it. Failure is the ultimate regulator, unfortunately the people who fund all the reelection campaigns in this country mysteriously became "too big to fail".
Uh, no. The fact that the banks were failing was the failure of the Ayn Rand bullshit.
The fact that your only defense is, "they should have been allowed to fail" demonstrates how bankrupt your philosophy is. Glass-Steagall told the banks that they could take risks, but only up to a point. This, combined with FDIC allowed people a certain level of confidence in their banks. By repealing Glass-Steagall, the banks were now free to take excessive risks. Greenspan thought, as Ayn Rand had taught him, that the self-interest of the bankers would keep them in check, but it didn't. Once one bank took the risks, and saw the immediate profits, the others had to follow suit, or see their value plummet.
So they all took on the risks. And when the house of cards fell (as they tend to do), the banks were set to fail, leaving the taxpayers on the hook from the FDIC, and leaving Washington with a choice. Let them fail entirely, and rebuild anew, or keep them afloat as needed until they can recover.
Were we to follow the insane Ayn Rand choice of "let them fail", we'd be throwing away vast amounts of banking infrastructure which would just have to be rebuilt. It's like throwing out your car because the engine failed instead of just putting in a new engine. Wasteful and unnecessary. In the meantime, that would have caused inordinate hardship on Americans who would have to scramble to find a new bank, but finding a shortage of banks. That shortage would lead to fly-by-night banks of questionable character, and leading most people to go without any bank whatsoever. This might sound well and good from the individualistic idealism of Ayn Rand, but would lead to all sorts of mayhem with regards to things like credit cards, payroll deposits, and automated bill payments. It's just not feasible for our economy to run on people keeping piles of cash under their mattresses, or carrying around bags of gold on their belts.
It's like the railroads in Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand thinks that as long as the railroads are free to do as they wish, then naturally the Dagney Taggarts will rise to the top, pushing out the James Taggarts. It's a nice fantasy, but reality shows otherwise. The banking failure wasn't because the Dagney's weren't allowed the freedom to do what they wanted, it failed because they were allowed the freedom to take undue risks that had far reaching consequences. James might have fucked things up quicker, but even Dagney would have made a mistake, bringing the whole thing down on top of the American people.
Or because you can't punish the people in power for making bad choices because no one would be willing to risk it.
Greenspan, for all the harm he did, actually believed that Ayn Rand crap would work. It only took the decimation of the world economy to convince him otherwise.
The problem isn't the leaders, it's those that keep the leaders in power, year after year, making the same mistakes, and to a large extent, the media which dupes so many people into voting against their own self interests.
I'm sure Madoff operated with that understanding (hey, he can't be stupid), yet still got caught in spite of that. I don't really think this sends any message anyone wasn't already aware of.
The message before today was, "and if you get caught, you get 3-10 years, then you're back out and you'll be rich."
A lot of people take these sorts of risks under the impression that, worst case, they spend a few years in jail, and they're fine with the prospect of trading a few years of their life in exchange for wealth far beyond their natural means.
Now the message is, "if you get caught, your life is ruined."
If MS did this we'd all be crying about how this isn't sanctioned by W3C, and it's "embraceandextend" (tag?).
Extinguish.
It's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. That last E makes all the difference in the world.
I would be rich by now if every Windows and Linux user that could not find his way around an Apple machine would have given me a penny.
That's not usability. Usability doesn't mean you're going to instantly know how to use something.
The usability of computer you're coming from doesn't make it easier or harder to user the computer you're going to. The only thing that makes a difference is the similarity. Two equally usable computers can be quite dissimilar, and two very unequally usable computers can be quite similar (think of the Mac skins for X11).
watching people trying to adjust to an unfamiliar environment should dispel the myth that a given environment is better than others.
The topic is "more usable," not "is better". Better can mean anything to anyone. Usability is much more universal. You seem to be saying that Linux (or maybe Windows) is better for you. Great! Use it. Usability is just one aspect of a system, and needn't be the most important. It's like how much space a system takes up. It's important, sure, but other factors come into play, such as already held knowledge, like the "lost Windows and Linux" users you mention above. Mac OS X may be more usable, but Windows is usable enough, and they already know it. Good for them!
Linux and Unix users are notorious for feeling comfortable using the command line for many tasks, other people roll their eyes thinking that user friendliness requires a mouse and shiny icons, in reality the command line can be very user friendly, specially if you have spent a lifetime building habits around it.
Saying, "a CLI can be user friendly" is true, but it's rare for the CLI to be more usable than even a mediocre GUI. You even have to bolster your point by adding, "specially if you have spent a lifetime building habits around it." No such caveat is needed to consider a GUI user friendly.
I mean, hell, even the bagpipes can be easy to play, if you've spent your life mastering them!
That he died of a heart attack is just so ... mundane
Cardiac arrest is not the same as a heart attack. Cardiac arrest is when the heart just stops, a heart attack is when the heart stops receiving blood/oxygen (as ironic as that sounds).
All you're saying is that since you already know Ubuntu, it's the easiest for you to use. That's fine. Usability needn't be the most important criteria for choosing an OS.
You extrapolate this to state that Ubuntu is the easiest OS of all to use, which is fundamentally absurd. You even admit this inadvertently when you state that instead of "dumbing down" the OS, we should "smarten up" the users. In doing so, you've made two drastic errors. The first is that you equate usability with "dumbing down". The second is that you want people to learn things that they neither need to nor want to.
And lastly, you've made the mistake that usability and easy are interchangeable. They are related, but at some point, as you make an interface easier and easier, it will likely go from being ever more usable to drastically less usable.
A mistake a lot of Linux users make when assessing Mac OS X is to think that it's a simplified, underpowered system, mistaking the usability for simplicity. I can assure you, being intimately familiar with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, that Mac OS X is extremely powerful and complex. So much so that in some ways, it make Linux looks simple and dumbed down. LaunchDaemons, AppleScript, and application bundles come to mind. I'm not saying this to put down Linux, but to point out that Mac OS X is by no means a simplistic OS. It's just so well engineered from a usability standpoint that most users will never even know any of that stuff exists behind the well-polished GUI.
That's one of the most meaningless statements ever and pretty much validates what I said. People throw the term 'usability' around with respect to Macs as some ideal without really any clue what they're talking about.
Just because you don't understand it, don't think that the people who are talking about it don't either. You're basically saying, "I don't understand this topic, therefore it doesn't exist".
Windows still has more applications available than Macs and for most it is still more usable as a result because.......you can use it to perform a wider variety of tasks.
Usability != functionality. Usability is an aspect of functionality. Each function your computer can perform has some measure of usability associated with it.
Usability isn't what you can do with your computer, it's how you do those things which you can do with your computer.
For an analogy, consider the information contained in a road sign and the readability of a road sign. What you're stating is that all that matters is the content of the sign, and whether or not one can easily read it is a meaningless "cherry on the top". The only reason you can state that is that most signs will, just in the natural course of being created, have some sufficient level of readability.
The same is true for functionality in software. All software has some natural amount of usability stemming from the simple fact that the programmer is going to have to imbue it with such in order to use it himself. But if you stop there, you're going to make software that is more difficult to use than it could be with just a little bit of attention to usability.
Usability with respect to human computer interaction, meaning the interface for most people, is a cherry on top of a very large cake. That's not desktop Linux's problem right now.
The Mac is a system where a lot of effort has been put into improving usability. To a lesser extent, Windows also has had effort put into usability--consider the changes to the task bar in Windows 7. On Linux, usability is generally an afterthought, like you stated, "a cherry on top". But you got the following sentence dead wrong. That mentality is overwhelmingly the single-most thing keeping Linux off the desktop. Most people just can't use the damned thing. The Internet is littered with tales of people trying and failing miserably.
Usability is about far more than making some sad Mac clone. It's about developers, developers, developers, developers - creating the useful applications and functionality that people want
No, usability is not about functionality, it's about how that functionality works. Specifically, it's when the functions are designed to work in a way that better matches the way humans function. Open Source tends to focus more on how the computer functions as a computer and not enough on how it functions as something for people to use.
This focus on human-computer interaction is something the Mac excels at. People don't point to it as inspiration because it's pretty. They point to it because it's more usable. Its prettiness is just one aspect of its usability.
To be clear, functionality is important, but it's not the same as usability. To be usable, a system needs functions, but merely having the functions doesn't make a system terribly usable.
Why? YouTube already works on the iPhone.
Wrong. It's was childish of him to undermine his own point with that "M$" bullshit. You lose.
Too bad I stated that using 'M$' is childish.
Just as it was childish of me to mod your post down and bookmark your user page for the next batch of mod points.
Knock yourself out. You aren't the first, and you won't be the last. Just remember, each time you do it, that it demonstrates your insecurity and is a reminder of the impotence of your passive aggresive existence.
As for myself, it won't bother me in the slightest. Unlike a lot of folks here (judging from the 'don't mod me down just because you disagree' sigs), I'm perfectly fine with the fact that idiots are granted mod points. It's kind of sad that you'd rather waste them than use them to make things better for the rest of us, but whatever, they're your points.
No need to reply, as I have no interest, nor feel any compulsion, to carry on a tiresome argument with you.