When it comes to mp3 players, Apple is the industry.
How is anything an industry standard when only one company sells it? Even Motorola has dropped it from their ROKR phones. Something becomes an industry standard when an entire industry adopts it, and not just because the largest current player in that market uses it.
Rewind to 1997. What's the "industry standard" business desktop OS? Only one company made it. There were a few variations of that standard (3.1x, 95, 95se, NT 3.x, NT 4), and there were other OS's not nearly as dominant (OS/2, Solaris, Linux). But still, Windows was the "industry standard".
Once, Netscape was the industry standard browser. Now it's MSIE. Firefox is catching up, but it's only a standard, not the over-all standard. Only one company made Netscape Navigator, only one makes IE. I could sort of grant you Firefox (if it was the standard), but even Firefox has only one "official" implementation organization.
Today, iPod and iTunes are the "industry standard" digital music player, jukebox and online store, respectively.
You've got that backwards. Very few people "want" any specific phone the way they "want" an iPod.
At current, most phones are terrible mp3 players. Just like they are terrible cameras. By your logic, Nikon will need to get into the phone business or die as well.
Apple isn't afraid of Nokia, Nokia is afraid of Apple. If Apple makes an excellent iPod that is also a phone, that will be a bigger hit than any Nokia phone that's also an mp3 players.
That's not true, and it's not true for many (most?) corporations.
The bottom line is a beast they must all obey (and a beast that some serve devoutly), but they are all driven by the motives of their leaders, and the collective actions of their employees. Some (many?) corporations are lead by people whose primary motives are the bottom line. Those corporations tend to just exist. No one really cares about them, but they keep the world running. Some corporations are lead by people whose motives are more akin to avarice than merely following the bottom line, and they often have no qualms about harming people if it makes serves their greed.
Others, like Apple under Jobs (both originally, and now), and HP under the men whose initials give that corporation its name, were corporations driven by a type of excellence that truly seem to benefit the consumer, above and beyond the "bottom line".
To be sure, the bottom line is constantly there, looming, ready to devour any motive, good or bad, it deems inadequate. But CEOs, VPs, board members, managers and employees are all human. Many of them are driven by something other than the bottom line, even though they know they must acknowledge and deal with it (just as we all must deal with those things we may not prefer to deal with, but must anyway).
Right now, I wouldn't say Apple is driven solely by the bottom line. It's driven by Jobs and his ethics/ideals, as well as the team that works under him. It's not unlike those people who are able to make a living doing the things they love. The people who are able to say "NO" to something they deem unacceptable, yet maintain financial productivity. The people who believe things should be done in a moral way, and are able to see their actions through by those very morals.
In a word, it's art. The art of the engineer drove HP to it's great heights, and when that corporation lost its mastery of that art, it lost the most important piece of its soul. Disney lost its master artist, yet still has little flames that spark here and there, keeping a bit of the magic alive, even if under a mostly soulless leadership.
Apple, very much like Pixar, is firing on all fours. The have the leadership and the talent that their arts require. In contrast, look at Microsoft, which has a leadership which cares very little about (or is fairly incompetent at) its various arts, and an employee base where true artistry is snuffed out or driven off. Microsoft is very successful, but aren't loved by many at all. It's not because they are successful, it's because they lack the ethics and the art, and this lacking shows in their every product and their every action. It shows with every new worm, with every patch released a month after the flaw was made public. It shows with every upgrade that lacks innovation, that feels more like a burden on the user than a truly desirable product. No one buys Windows because they want it, they buy it because they need it.
It's possible to be true to oneself and also be financially successful. The two aren't contradictory. It's true that quite often that reality decides that one must give up their ideals or face dire hardship. It's true that being morally strong is no guarantee of success. But don't make the mistake that just because that's sometimes the case, that that's always the case.
Remove Apple and insert Google, MS, [Your favorite company here]
The problem is that, most of the time, Apple actually honestly tries to be compatible and honest with the consumer. They try to do "the right thing". Similarly, Google tries to "do no evil". MS doesn't really care about the right thing or about not being evil. They just care about market dominance. It's not bad to seek commercial success, but as a consumer, there's most definitely a difference when judging Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's actions.
Apple isn't 100% right, Google isn't 100% non-evil and MS isn't 100% dominant, so you will always be able to find a counter-example. The thing is, though, that those attributes describe those corporations fairly well.
NO, this is not something that should be fixed with the next update, if anything, it's an even greater reason to rag on Apple for releasing a broken feature.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Apple should fix it in iPhoto 6.0.1, and we should rag on Apple (although Winer isn't very good at tactful ragging--that's part of the reason we have RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and ATOM, all different, none very well designed).
In TFA, the guy says he would have been willing to sign a NDA to help Apple straighten this out before they released it.
That's weird. I'd bet that fewer than 1% of all RSS software out there sought the consultation of Dave Winer. That's not to say his advice wouldn't have likely caught these issues before iLife '06 shipped, it's just that it's a weird thing to expect to actually happen.
iPhoto 6.0.1 will probably be out shortly, and will probably fix all the actual breakage issues. So that gives us, what, perhaps a month where iPhoto photocasts don't work in some newsreaders? And some photo RSS feeds don't work in iPhoto?
That's really not that big of an issue.
Now, doing the "replace with MS" thing, MS would probably not fix it and merely expect all the RSS feeders and readers to comply with the MS standard if they want interoperability.
Of course, if Apple doesn't fix these minor errors, hand me a torch and a pitchfork and I'll join you in Cupertino. But that case would be the exception, not the rule.
It isn't something that should be fixed in the next patch, because it wasn't something that should have gotten past QA.
But since it got past QA, it should now be fixed.
All sorts of bugs get past QA. This one is pretty mild. Really.
That's a pretty harsh assesment
And pretty overblown as well.
IPhoto 6 does not understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS.
Both obviously false.
It ignores features of HTTP that Netscape 4 supported in 1996, and mis-implements features of XML that Microsoft got right in 1997.
It's not a web browser. I clearly does not need to support all features of HTTP. The "features" he's referring to are listed as optional in the standard.
It ignores 95 per cent of RSS and Atom and gets most of the remaining five per cent wrong.
Again, obviously false (if it only supported 5% of RSS and Atom, and got that 5% wrong, it wouldn't even work!). It's not a general purpose RSS/Atom feed/reader. It's a specific subset relevant to photos.
The Photocast feature, for instance, uses a new element to indicate the date on which a photo was taken, even though there are already numerous alternatives that perform the same function. IPhoto, however, will not recognise the standard date elements.
The date elements referred to are US-centric and are inferior to the standard Apple uses. There is nothing wrong with doing this at all.
What Apple has done wrong is:
- A flaw in the name space. - Lack of compatibility with all existing feeds and readers.
Essentially, it needed more testing, and a small amount of refining. I fully expect iPhoto 6.0.1 to address these issues. It's Apple's way. This is just like the iTunes 6.0.2 "spyTunes" debacle. Apple got it mostly right (it's easily turned off, they fully disclosed what the feature does, and it doesn't actually spy on you), but people wanted opt-in. So they fixed it.
He wasn't exactly saying your conclusion was wrong (portable G5 market was smaller than the console and desktop G5 market), just that you got your estimate of the number of notebook Macs off by an order of magnitude.
A number you still get too low:
Assume Apple shipped 50% laptops, the volume would be 2 millions a year.
Apple sells more notebooks than desktops, and last year they sold just under 5 million computers total.
You're still right in your overall conclusion, just wrong in some of your numbers and estimates.
So if your new Mac offers a 2.1Ghz CPU and a new Dell has a 3.0Ghz of the same product type - it's clear. The Dell is a lot more powerful. And the general public understands that.
Even that's not quite true. The power of a cpu is what you can do with it, not its clock-speed. A faster chip of the exact same line is not more powerful if the software is less powerful.
For example, for day-to-day tasks, a slower Mac is more powerful than a faster PC. For games, a slower PC is much more powerful than a faster Mac.
When it comes to iLife style apps, a 1.25GHz G4 Mac is far more powerful than a PC (Windows or Linux) of any speed.
Or, put another way, what's more powerful: running Windows Movie Maker on a 3 GHz cpu, or iMovie on a 2 GHz cpu?
Take for instance the "Hostile Environment" standard in sexual and racial harrassment cases. According to the law, no obscene or offensive intent is required. If the most easily offended receipient or observer in a work environment decides that something is offensive, then by law, it is.
The way the law works is you can say anything in the workplace. Once a person complains to you or management with a legitimate complaint, you have to either respect their wishes, or fire them. You can fire someone who thinks your vulgar and sexist comments are inappropriate as long as it doesn't violate their contract. You can't fire them solely because of their sex or race (I'm not sure about religion or sexual orientation).
The feminist and civil rights lobbies (who,despite their protests about being oppressed, are really increadibly powerful political lobbies)
That's a load of crap. The biggest, most powerful "lobbies" in America are the corporate lobbies, and the rich and powerful families lobbies (think 'good old boy network'). The various civil rights lobbies are more powerful than you or I (which is to be expected, as you and I aren't lobbies), but they are extremely powerless compared to the lobbies that support the "rich white guys" (ie: status quo, business as usual).
And no, you aren't a rich white guy. You're probably a white guy, and probably an asshole, but you aren't the target of the civil rights/minorities lobbies. The rich white guys, however, love to make you think you are a target, because you'll stand up for them, falsely thinking you're standing up for yourself.
Of course, any suggestion to roll back the draconian restrictions on free expression are instantly labled "racist, sexist, reactionary, etc, etc, etc."
That's because it most likely is "racist, sexist [or] reactionary".
Seems that a lot of people who have problems with the standard applied to porn have absolutely no problem applying the standard to other things.
Pornography in the home is your call. Pornography in the workplace is your employer's call (and if someone has a problem with pornography in the workplace, that person can be fired quite legally, but the employer probably would rather have that worker more than have you viewing porn). I don't see how your comparison of the two makes any sense.
Agreed, in the same vein as "all OS's suck, just that 'x' sucks less". Taken in the context of all available desktop search systems, Spotlight is pretty good.
Anything should be better.
I wouldn't bet on it. It's a really hard thing to get right. We're currently at the bear-skins and stone tools stage of full desktop search. Elegance in design takes time.
John Siracusa outlined the issues well
No he didn't. He critiqued Spotlight well. There's a huge difference. A Beagle developer cannot just use Spotlight for a while, read Apple's technical documentation, then read Siracusa's review and create a better Spotlight.
His reviews are very good. They tell you how things work, how they don't work, how they are inconsistent, and how they don't match his dogmatic ideals. What his reviews do not do is provide solutions for any of the bigger problems. They are reactive, not creative.
For example, he has this huge thing for a spatial Finder. A spatial Finder was very usable in the day of 800k floppies, and 20mb hard drives. Today, the spatial consistency of the Finder is not as important as before. He provides no solution other than to keep the Finder spatial, as before. The current NeXT-style Finder is a good stop-gap as we transition into huge hard drives with hundreds of thousands of files. The iTunes, iPhoto and Mail interfaces are very useful for their specific data types, but Spotlight is what's needed to bring the modern Finder to be as usable with today's requirements as the old Finder was back then.
So sure, compared to the "ideal", Spotlight sucks, but all desktop search systems suck. Spotlight just sucks a lot less. And Beagle (I'm glad it exists, and look forward to using it on Linux) is pretty sure to suck, probably less than Google Desktop and Windows Desktop Search suck, but will certainly suck more than Spotlight does. It's just the most rational set of expectations to hold.
Agreed, and for the discussion at hand, this also includes OS X.
I use Macs but I certainly don't count on OS X being secure enough for me to connect to the internet without using a correctly configured firewall.
While I don't mean to discourage the use of a firewall, it is wholly unnecessary, at present, with Mac OS X, and is likely to remain that way for quite some time.
Since I have a LAN, I have a hardware firewall by default (WiFi+10/100 Ethernet router), but I've run with Macs connected directly to the cable modem, and would do so again without fear. I most certainly would not do that with Windows. I would do it with Linux as well, although I'd run a portscan first and make any necessary configuration settings.
Really, Mac OS X does not need a firewall. But it's still a good habit, it makes it easier to add other computers (especially Windows machines) to your network, and "some day" may even be necessary on OS X (although that mythical "some day" is more theoretical than imminent).
Is that the "smugness" people are always talking about? It's not that I feel smug, so much as I am unconcerned (based on a rational assessment of the facts). Are Windows users "smug" because they can run the most games? Or are they just taking advantage of the fact that there are more Windows games than Mac games? Sure, one can be smug about these things, but they are true, and acting on those truths does not equate to smugness.
How about you stop buying Chinese related goods/services
Two problems:
1. Boycotts don't work very well unless a significant number of people engage in them. 2. We are now inextricably intertwined with China. A boycott against China would be very hard to maintain, while still upholding a reasonably modern lifestyle (let alone your stereotypical slashdotter lifestyle).
instead of dictating punishments to others that don't follow-in-step with your crusade?
Advocating human rights is not a "crusade". Don't try to confuse the issue with a loaded word.
As for dictating (another loaded word) punishments, what MightyMartian is advocating is completely within the realm of legitimate governance. Governments exist to essentially do the things that either aren't done naturally, and shouldn't be trusted to the individual. Some things are done better when left to the initiative of the free individual, and some things are better done collectively as a society. That's just the way things work.
Boycotting Chinese imports would send a stronger message than hurting American exports.
Again, with the loaded words. You could have just as easily written: "Hurting Chinese imports would send a stronger message than regulating American exports," and not changed the factual content of your sentence.
If corporations naturally act in ways which are considered morally wrong by the society under which they are allowed to exist, then how else to correct their behavior than to impose restrictions? That's what we do with actual people who do such things. Corporations are not people (humans), and I have no qualms about harming a corporation if it reasonably protects actual people.
Yes, it will increase the cost of doing business. So what? That alone is not a valid reason. How much will it help the cause of human rights in China? How much will it hurt the US economy? And then, is the trade-off reasonable? Is it acceptable?
We made a similar choice in the US almost a century and a half ago when we decided the rights of slaves as humans outweighed the economic hardships those rights would cause the slave-holders. Well, technically half of us decided it for the other half, and had a terrible war related to that choice, but in the end, it was the right choice.
You are also truely a fool if you a salesman convinces you
Aside: I take umbrage with the fact that you'll call someone a fool who has believed a lie for which they cannot be expected to know whether it was a lie or not. In that case, everyone is, has been, or will be, "truely [sic] a fool".
that their product is 100% secure to all security issues.
No one states that Macs are magical, or that they cannot be compromised. The claim is basically that the virus/worm problem with Windows does not exist on the Mac. And they're right, IT DOESN'T.
Regardless of the reason, I know that I am safer today with a Mac than with XP.
Thought experiment: automate two machines, 1 Mac, 1 fully patched, but otherwise default, PC. Script them to browse the web, crawling through links.
Which one is guaranteed to get pwn3d? Which one is currently guaranteed not to?
Next script them to enter their email address to forms that ask for it, and have them both merely run their built-in mail programs, and ask the same question again.
It may be safe today, but we don't know what tomorrow holds.
No, but I don't know if my safe house in my safe neighborhood won't be infiltrated by two LA street gangs and an international terrorist organization tomorrow either. I can, however, look at the way things tend to be, and see that I'm as safe as I can reasonably hope to be, and aren't likely to change in the morning. If things go to hell in a hand-basket tomorrow, I'll deal with it then.
Mac OS X does not do the sorts of things that make worms, viruses, and even hard-to-battle spyware, easy to write for Windows. Windows doesn't *have* to wait for some mythical "tomorrow" for those things.
So, with my Mac, I'll not worry about worms or viruses. If they come (and they are *very* likely to come any time soon), they come. On Windows, they're already here, have been here for a while, and are a nuisance.
So yeah, the Mac is more secure. The bogeyman of "tomorrow" doesn't concern me, which is good, because it shouldn't.
Color film lasts decades. The life of a burned CD or DVD is supposedly 100 years, but since they haven't been around a hundred years, we don't know for certain. Maintaining a digital picture archive is a more user involved process, burning CDs, DVDs and what not and making sure your hard drive doesn't fail. To archive a negative, you put them in a box in low humidity and light.
Just store them online. Problem solved, and they are archived forever.
Or just backing your library up to DVD (and then BD-R/HD-R, and the whatever's next) every few years is just as good, and if you damage a disc or a drive, or whatever, you have another copy. If you damage/destroy the "archive" of a negative, it's damaged/destroyed forever.
The point is, to buy a camera to equal the quality of film you need to spend money on a sensor. A 10 dollar disposable digital is not going to have the same sensor tech comparable to film, at least not in the near term.
They don't sell you the sensor. They "rent" it to you. Even a $100 sensor only needs to be "rented" 10 times to pay for itself. I have no idea of the actual prices for sensors at bulk, but if a sub-$300 camera from Fuji can have a huge LCD, and a small, sleek case, high quality zoom optics, and a 6mp CCD, today then I don't see a 3mp CCD could be more than $100.
Yes you can argue that the disposable Kodak has a crappy lens, but I'm not arguing the merits of the optics
Yes, you are. If you want to compare a $5 disposable film camera to a digital camera, you have to include the optics. I'd put the quality of a disposable film camera at less than the quality of a 2000-era 3mp camera.
but how film is superior digital in certain occaisons, right now
As I stated already: "Seriously, even if you hold onto the notion that film is still slightly superior to digital right now, do you think in 5 years film will still have the edge over digital?"
So if you want to hold onto (or grasp at, really) a few little straws, feel free. Film's dying. Sorry you don't see that, but you know that there's nothing it really can do that digital either can't do now, or will be doing in a few years.
Seriously, 6mp disposable cameras in 2 years, $5. 10mp consumer cameras for less than $200 in 2 years. 30mp pro cameras for less than $1000 in less than 4 years.
How long until a camera phone is superior to all point-and-shoot film cameras, from disc, to 110, to 35mm? Go to any event (sporting event, wedding, anywhere) and count the ratio of digital to film. Go to your local camera store and compare floor and shelf space. What possible edge will film have that will convince people to buy film over digital, which offers so many features film can't?
That's actually significantly easier with digital.
Also film cameras are almost disposible, you can buy one for 5 bucks with film in it. There are some "disposible" digital cameras, but the costs of those are much more than a disposible film camera.
Disposable digital cameras cost $10 right now. Don't expect that price to go up.
To approach the quality of said disposible film camera, you are going to have to spend 400-500 right now.
No, there are very nice digital cameras that retail for less than $300 today. These are far superior to any disposable film camera. Not to mention the above fact that there are $10 disposable digitals now.
I can't see a time when these disposible film cameras are going away anytime soon.
If they are even remotely common in five years, I'll be very surprised.
Film won't die, like how color didn't kill black and white, photography killed painting, or painting replaced drawing, or drawing killed writing, or writing killed oral story telling, or oral story killed grunts and miming.
Perhaps you missed the part where I wrote: "There will always be those who want to work with older tech for whatever reason, be it vinyl records, hand woodworking tools, spin their own thread, whatever, but film is fast becoming a technology of the past."
There will always be film (probably), but it's really going away in any common sense. Very, very few people will be using film in the near future.
Even so, black and white film still has some significant uses over color film, painting can still do things photos don't, drawing.. etc (down the list of all of your examples). Film does nothing that digital can't do.
Really, then those new vinyl records are just my imagination
No, it's not your imagination, they exist. As used, the term "dead" is widely understood to be metaphorical, not literal. Just because a small number of people still buy them, doesn't invalidate the metaphor.
But, if you would note, I said (and you quoted), "Film is dying, and will soon be deader than vinyl records are now." In other words, however "dead" film will be soon, records are at least somewhat more alive than that.
I still expect film to be available for quite some time (I'd even say, indefinitely, perhaps), but it will ever more quickly be less and less common, until someday soon, it will be quite, metaphorically, dead. More so than records are now.
There will always be a need for film, and if need be photographers will just make there own, like when it all began.
Um, yeah, I already pointed that out when I said: "There will always be those who want to work with older tech for whatever reason, be it vinyl records, hand woodworking tools, spin their own thread, whatever, but film is fast becoming a technology of the past."
Counting WINE is moronic. You can run every single flawed Linux binary on Windows, too, if that's your metric. But in the context we're discussing, counting programs running under WINE doesn't make any sense, as neither would counting programs running under cygwin, CoLinux or VMWare, etc, against Windows make any sense.
All you're doing is resorting to nihilism, and trying only to appear right, and not actually be right. It's a cheap tactic, and tantamount to, "no, you are". Any rational response depends on the other person to be rational themselves. If you have a logical, rational, response, feel free to post it. If not, don't wait up for a reply from me as there won't be one.
The problem with nihilism is that it makes your point nonsense as well. It's a rhetorical doomsday device which destroys the wielder along with the wielder's adversary. Pretending that you've disproved me does not work if the exact same action has also disproved yourself.
Digital is faster, cheaper, better, easier to work with...
The writing is on the wall, and has been for a few years now. Film is dying, and will soon be deader than vinyl records are now.
Your two reasons are really excuses. They are contrived to defend film, not actual reasons why film is better.
I'd bet that, today, most professional photographers use digital. But even if not, the trend is clear. There will always be those who want to work with older tech for whatever reason, be it vinyl records, hand woodworking tools, spin their own thread, whatever, but film is fast becoming a technology of the past.
Seriously, even if you hold onto the notion that film is still slightly superior to digital right now, do you think in 5 years film will still have the edge over digital?
Trust me, I've mourned film's passing, but it's passed. Time to move on and embrace superior technology. That's what film would have wanted.
Again, exactly how many Linux PC's were infected simply by visiting a web page?
If you said, "zero", you would be correct.
I never said the tests were paid for by MS.
Just because vim can be tricked into running arbitrary code does not equate to any easy means of compromise. Whereas if Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows itself, can be tricked into running arbitrary code, with no interaction by the user other than receiving bad data, then you have a very easy vector by which to launch an attack.
Not to mention that if vim is compromised, you can't infect the OS.
Windows is broken. It's too easy to exploit. The list you show is data, but you are interpreting it wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it's idiotic to claim Windows is more secure than Linux. Absolutely, undeniably idiotic. All you have to do is look at the infection rate of Windows vs Linux vs Mac OS X. You have a theory about OS security, and reality shows it to be wrong.
Please, don't be an idiot. Why would you want to be to begin with? Would you rather think you're right, than to actually be right?
Now, show me a list that says Linux PC's get hacked like wildfire, that a fully patched Linux system is vulnerable to exploits that are known to be in the wild. Show me data that Open Source developers "sit on" a patch for a known and severe exploit for weeks. Show me something that actually demonstrates the conclusions of your theory accurately reflects reality, and not data that merely shows the data input to your theory matches reality.
Seriously, idiocy is nothing to flaunt. When a theory does not adequately match reality, you must abandon the theory as it currently stands, or face being an idiot.
How many Linux PC's have been pwn3d this year just visiting a web page?
No, Windows is not "less bug-prone/filled" than Linux (you got that wrong anyway, it's not "bugs", it's "vulnerabilities", that matter in terms of security).
If Macs were what windows is today, the story would be the complete opposite I assure you.
Did you put any thought into that at all? When coming up with a theory like that, one should always try to disprove it. There are plenty of things one can imagine which seem to make sense, but which fall apart under even the most basic scrutiny.
If what you just said is true, then you are stating specifically that Mac OS X and Windows are both equally insecure. And generally stating that all OS's are equally insecure. Does that appear likely to you? Outlook has had many vulnerabilities which don't even require viewing the email. Explorer has had (just last week even!) many exploits that require nothing but visiting a page, and there was nothing a user could do about it with certainty.
Windows has vectors which just don't exist on Mac OS X, and it's not because Mac OS X is less capable, it's because Windows was designed with complete disregard for all but the most superficial level of security. Mac OS X is very much influenced by UNIX, and UNIX has been hardened over the years.
No, your theory is dead wrong. Windows and Mac OS X are not equally insecure, sorry. The facts just don't bear it out.
Now, if you wanted to say, had the tables been reversed, there would be far more effort put into compromising OS X vs Windows XP, then yes, you are probably correct, but Windows would most definitely be pwn3d at a higher rate than OS X is now (which, by all accounts, is zero).
I don't think anyone's suggesting that users should be forced to, I'm simply saying that people who know what the hell they're doing aren't going to stop partitioning their linux systems.
People already don't do it now, with the exception of swap (which should go away too).
To pre-answer a question you ask further down, I already have stopped partitioning my Linux systems. I think the practice is extremely stupid in most cases. Every admin I know has stopped it as well except in cases where it's reasonable (such as setting up a file server, or a headless farm of similar machines, etc).
First, have you ever partitioned a system? It's really not hard at all. Second, if a distro chose to do this automatically, say for/home, it wouldn't be hard. I really fail to see this massive burden on the user, any linux user outside of Mandrivel and Linspire users should be able to do it in their sleep. It takes 10 minutes and you're done. Outside of this thread, I've spend exactly 0 minutes thinking about it after I set it up.
The point you're missing is not that it's hard, but why do it? You gain only small, mostly potential, benefits. These days, who's going to care about a few milliseconds here and there? Most Linux distros can upgrade in place.
Now, if you want to play with Fedora today, Ubuntu next Thursday, and FreeBSD in March, then you probably shouldn't be doing this on your primary (ie: where/home is important) PC. But if you're going to do that, then partitioning is fine, and (in fact) logical. I've already stated that there are cases where it's useful. But your average user isn't going to mess up their primary PC like that. Usually, if you want to mess around, you install a second HD, so that if you f up your system, you can still boot (perhaps, at worst, with a boot disk) back into your working setup.
The problem with it is that it's an extra step without adding significant value (in most cases). Now especially add this to your new user. They are prompted: "How do you want to partition your drive?" with options for/usr and/home and so on, and they can choose sizes for each. How are they supposed to know reasonable values? Why should they lock themselves into choices now, when the whole drive as / works just fine?
You're obviously coming at this from a hard-core Unix perspective, but I'm trying to point out to you that it's a perspective you've chosen, and that there's no reason to force that perspective on others, because Linux runs just fine on one partition, and most people really don't want to be bothered with such details. It'd be like asking someone exactly what gear ratios they want in their transmission. They don't care, they just want the car to go. Certainly, each person has a unique set of ratios that will work best for them throughout the life of their car, but aside from them not caring, they probably don't even know ahead of time what the best choices would be. At most, a little switch from "Economy" to "Sporty" by the shifter is already more than they really care about.
You also perpetuate a few myths.
You say that partitioning makes things faster. It doesn't because you are still hitting the same physical disk. The best you can hope for is putting your system at the fastest part of the disk, which isn't going to be much help.
You also state that it will make adding disks easier. How so? If you split a 100gb drive into 10 gb/, 10 gb/usr 1 gb swap and 79 gb/home, what exactly do you plan to do if you add a 300gb drive? Put/home there? You lose 79gb. Put/usr there? What a waste. You could juggle things around, but that's actually more work than if your drive was just all in one partition to begin with!
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When it comes to mp3 players, Apple is the industry.
How is anything an industry standard when only one company sells it? Even Motorola has dropped it from their ROKR phones. Something becomes an industry standard when an entire industry adopts it, and not just because the largest current player in that market uses it.
Rewind to 1997. What's the "industry standard" business desktop OS? Only one company made it. There were a few variations of that standard (3.1x, 95, 95se, NT 3.x, NT 4), and there were other OS's not nearly as dominant (OS/2, Solaris, Linux). But still, Windows was the "industry standard".
Once, Netscape was the industry standard browser. Now it's MSIE. Firefox is catching up, but it's only a standard, not the over-all standard. Only one company made Netscape Navigator, only one makes IE. I could sort of grant you Firefox (if it was the standard), but even Firefox has only one "official" implementation organization.
Today, iPod and iTunes are the "industry standard" digital music player, jukebox and online store, respectively.
The term for such standards is "de facto".
You've got that backwards. Very few people "want" any specific phone the way they "want" an iPod.
At current, most phones are terrible mp3 players. Just like they are terrible cameras. By your logic, Nikon will need to get into the phone business or die as well.
Apple isn't afraid of Nokia, Nokia is afraid of Apple. If Apple makes an excellent iPod that is also a phone, that will be a bigger hit than any Nokia phone that's also an mp3 players.
their [Apple's] only driver is the bottom line.
That's not true, and it's not true for many (most?) corporations.
The bottom line is a beast they must all obey (and a beast that some serve devoutly), but they are all driven by the motives of their leaders, and the collective actions of their employees. Some (many?) corporations are lead by people whose primary motives are the bottom line. Those corporations tend to just exist. No one really cares about them, but they keep the world running. Some corporations are lead by people whose motives are more akin to avarice than merely following the bottom line, and they often have no qualms about harming people if it makes serves their greed.
Others, like Apple under Jobs (both originally, and now), and HP under the men whose initials give that corporation its name, were corporations driven by a type of excellence that truly seem to benefit the consumer, above and beyond the "bottom line".
To be sure, the bottom line is constantly there, looming, ready to devour any motive, good or bad, it deems inadequate. But CEOs, VPs, board members, managers and employees are all human. Many of them are driven by something other than the bottom line, even though they know they must acknowledge and deal with it (just as we all must deal with those things we may not prefer to deal with, but must anyway).
Right now, I wouldn't say Apple is driven solely by the bottom line. It's driven by Jobs and his ethics/ideals, as well as the team that works under him. It's not unlike those people who are able to make a living doing the things they love. The people who are able to say "NO" to something they deem unacceptable, yet maintain financial productivity. The people who believe things should be done in a moral way, and are able to see their actions through by those very morals.
In a word, it's art. The art of the engineer drove HP to it's great heights, and when that corporation lost its mastery of that art, it lost the most important piece of its soul. Disney lost its master artist, yet still has little flames that spark here and there, keeping a bit of the magic alive, even if under a mostly soulless leadership.
Apple, very much like Pixar, is firing on all fours. The have the leadership and the talent that their arts require. In contrast, look at Microsoft, which has a leadership which cares very little about (or is fairly incompetent at) its various arts, and an employee base where true artistry is snuffed out or driven off. Microsoft is very successful, but aren't loved by many at all. It's not because they are successful, it's because they lack the ethics and the art, and this lacking shows in their every product and their every action. It shows with every new worm, with every patch released a month after the flaw was made public. It shows with every upgrade that lacks innovation, that feels more like a burden on the user than a truly desirable product. No one buys Windows because they want it, they buy it because they need it.
It's possible to be true to oneself and also be financially successful. The two aren't contradictory. It's true that quite often that reality decides that one must give up their ideals or face dire hardship. It's true that being morally strong is no guarantee of success. But don't make the mistake that just because that's sometimes the case, that that's always the case.
Remove Apple and insert Google, MS, [Your favorite company here]
The problem is that, most of the time, Apple actually honestly tries to be compatible and honest with the consumer. They try to do "the right thing". Similarly, Google tries to "do no evil". MS doesn't really care about the right thing or about not being evil. They just care about market dominance. It's not bad to seek commercial success, but as a consumer, there's most definitely a difference when judging Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's actions.
Apple isn't 100% right, Google isn't 100% non-evil and MS isn't 100% dominant, so you will always be able to find a counter-example. The thing is, though, that those attributes describe those corporations fairly well.
NO, this is not something that should be fixed with the next update, if anything, it's an even greater reason to rag on Apple for releasing a broken feature.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Apple should fix it in iPhoto 6.0.1, and we should rag on Apple (although Winer isn't very good at tactful ragging--that's part of the reason we have RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and ATOM, all different, none very well designed).
In TFA, the guy says he would have been willing to sign a NDA to help Apple straighten this out before they released it.
That's weird. I'd bet that fewer than 1% of all RSS software out there sought the consultation of Dave Winer. That's not to say his advice wouldn't have likely caught these issues before iLife '06 shipped, it's just that it's a weird thing to expect to actually happen.
iPhoto 6.0.1 will probably be out shortly, and will probably fix all the actual breakage issues. So that gives us, what, perhaps a month where iPhoto photocasts don't work in some newsreaders? And some photo RSS feeds don't work in iPhoto?
That's really not that big of an issue.
Now, doing the "replace with MS" thing, MS would probably not fix it and merely expect all the RSS feeders and readers to comply with the MS standard if they want interoperability.
Of course, if Apple doesn't fix these minor errors, hand me a torch and a pitchfork and I'll join you in Cupertino. But that case would be the exception, not the rule.
It isn't something that should be fixed in the next patch, because it wasn't something that should have gotten past QA.
But since it got past QA, it should now be fixed.
All sorts of bugs get past QA. This one is pretty mild. Really.
That's a pretty harsh assesment
And pretty overblown as well.
IPhoto 6 does not understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS.
Both obviously false.
It ignores features of HTTP that Netscape 4 supported in 1996, and mis-implements features of XML that Microsoft got right in 1997.
It's not a web browser. I clearly does not need to support all features of HTTP. The "features" he's referring to are listed as optional in the standard.
It ignores 95 per cent of RSS and Atom and gets most of the remaining five per cent wrong.
Again, obviously false (if it only supported 5% of RSS and Atom, and got that 5% wrong, it wouldn't even work!). It's not a general purpose RSS/Atom feed/reader. It's a specific subset relevant to photos.
The Photocast feature, for instance, uses a new element to indicate the date on which a photo was taken, even though there are already numerous alternatives that perform the same function. IPhoto, however, will not recognise the standard date elements.
The date elements referred to are US-centric and are inferior to the standard Apple uses. There is nothing wrong with doing this at all.
What Apple has done wrong is:
- A flaw in the name space.
- Lack of compatibility with all existing feeds and readers.
Essentially, it needed more testing, and a small amount of refining. I fully expect iPhoto 6.0.1 to address these issues. It's Apple's way. This is just like the iTunes 6.0.2 "spyTunes" debacle. Apple got it mostly right (it's easily turned off, they fully disclosed what the feature does, and it doesn't actually spy on you), but people wanted opt-in. So they fixed it.
Volume, thy law is cruel.
He wasn't exactly saying your conclusion was wrong (portable G5 market was smaller than the console and desktop G5 market), just that you got your estimate of the number of notebook Macs off by an order of magnitude.
A number you still get too low:
Assume Apple shipped 50% laptops, the volume would be 2 millions a year.
Apple sells more notebooks than desktops, and last year they sold just under 5 million computers total.
You're still right in your overall conclusion, just wrong in some of your numbers and estimates.
So if your new Mac offers a 2.1Ghz CPU and a new Dell has a 3.0Ghz of the same product type - it's clear. The Dell is a lot more powerful. And the general public understands that.
Even that's not quite true. The power of a cpu is what you can do with it, not its clock-speed. A faster chip of the exact same line is not more powerful if the software is less powerful.
For example, for day-to-day tasks, a slower Mac is more powerful than a faster PC. For games, a slower PC is much more powerful than a faster Mac.
When it comes to iLife style apps, a 1.25GHz G4 Mac is far more powerful than a PC (Windows or Linux) of any speed.
Or, put another way, what's more powerful: running Windows Movie Maker on a 3 GHz cpu, or iMovie on a 2 GHz cpu?
Take for instance the "Hostile Environment" standard in sexual and racial harrassment cases. According to the law, no obscene or offensive intent is required. If the most easily offended receipient or observer in a work environment decides that something is offensive, then by law, it is.
,despite their protests about being oppressed, are really increadibly powerful political lobbies)
The way the law works is you can say anything in the workplace. Once a person complains to you or management with a legitimate complaint, you have to either respect their wishes, or fire them. You can fire someone who thinks your vulgar and sexist comments are inappropriate as long as it doesn't violate their contract. You can't fire them solely because of their sex or race (I'm not sure about religion or sexual orientation).
The feminist and civil rights lobbies (who
That's a load of crap. The biggest, most powerful "lobbies" in America are the corporate lobbies, and the rich and powerful families lobbies (think 'good old boy network'). The various civil rights lobbies are more powerful than you or I (which is to be expected, as you and I aren't lobbies), but they are extremely powerless compared to the lobbies that support the "rich white guys" (ie: status quo, business as usual).
And no, you aren't a rich white guy. You're probably a white guy, and probably an asshole, but you aren't the target of the civil rights/minorities lobbies. The rich white guys, however, love to make you think you are a target, because you'll stand up for them, falsely thinking you're standing up for yourself.
Of course, any suggestion to roll back the draconian restrictions on free expression are instantly labled "racist, sexist, reactionary, etc, etc, etc."
That's because it most likely is "racist, sexist [or] reactionary".
Seems that a lot of people who have problems with the standard applied to porn have absolutely no problem applying the standard to other things.
Pornography in the home is your call. Pornography in the workplace is your employer's call (and if someone has a problem with pornography in the workplace, that person can be fired quite legally, but the employer probably would rather have that worker more than have you viewing porn). I don't see how your comparison of the two makes any sense.
the spotlight interface is horrible
Agreed, in the same vein as "all OS's suck, just that 'x' sucks less". Taken in the context of all available desktop search systems, Spotlight is pretty good.
Anything should be better.
I wouldn't bet on it. It's a really hard thing to get right. We're currently at the bear-skins and stone tools stage of full desktop search. Elegance in design takes time.
John Siracusa outlined the issues well
No he didn't. He critiqued Spotlight well. There's a huge difference. A Beagle developer cannot just use Spotlight for a while, read Apple's technical documentation, then read Siracusa's review and create a better Spotlight.
His reviews are very good. They tell you how things work, how they don't work, how they are inconsistent, and how they don't match his dogmatic ideals. What his reviews do not do is provide solutions for any of the bigger problems. They are reactive, not creative.
For example, he has this huge thing for a spatial Finder. A spatial Finder was very usable in the day of 800k floppies, and 20mb hard drives. Today, the spatial consistency of the Finder is not as important as before. He provides no solution other than to keep the Finder spatial, as before. The current NeXT-style Finder is a good stop-gap as we transition into huge hard drives with hundreds of thousands of files. The iTunes, iPhoto and Mail interfaces are very useful for their specific data types, but Spotlight is what's needed to bring the modern Finder to be as usable with today's requirements as the old Finder was back then.
So sure, compared to the "ideal", Spotlight sucks, but all desktop search systems suck. Spotlight just sucks a lot less. And Beagle (I'm glad it exists, and look forward to using it on Linux) is pretty sure to suck, probably less than Google Desktop and Windows Desktop Search suck, but will certainly suck more than Spotlight does. It's just the most rational set of expectations to hold.
nothing is perfect
Agreed, and for the discussion at hand, this also includes OS X.
I use Macs but I certainly don't count on OS X being secure enough for me to connect to the internet without using a correctly configured firewall.
While I don't mean to discourage the use of a firewall, it is wholly unnecessary, at present, with Mac OS X, and is likely to remain that way for quite some time.
Since I have a LAN, I have a hardware firewall by default (WiFi+10/100 Ethernet router), but I've run with Macs connected directly to the cable modem, and would do so again without fear. I most certainly would not do that with Windows. I would do it with Linux as well, although I'd run a portscan first and make any necessary configuration settings.
Really, Mac OS X does not need a firewall. But it's still a good habit, it makes it easier to add other computers (especially Windows machines) to your network, and "some day" may even be necessary on OS X (although that mythical "some day" is more theoretical than imminent).
Is that the "smugness" people are always talking about? It's not that I feel smug, so much as I am unconcerned (based on a rational assessment of the facts). Are Windows users "smug" because they can run the most games? Or are they just taking advantage of the fact that there are more Windows games than Mac games? Sure, one can be smug about these things, but they are true, and acting on those truths does not equate to smugness.
How about you stop buying Chinese related goods/services
Two problems:
1. Boycotts don't work very well unless a significant number of people engage in them.
2. We are now inextricably intertwined with China. A boycott against China would be very hard to maintain, while still upholding a reasonably modern lifestyle (let alone your stereotypical slashdotter lifestyle).
instead of dictating punishments to others that don't follow-in-step with your crusade?
Advocating human rights is not a "crusade". Don't try to confuse the issue with a loaded word.
As for dictating (another loaded word) punishments, what MightyMartian is advocating is completely within the realm of legitimate governance. Governments exist to essentially do the things that either aren't done naturally, and shouldn't be trusted to the individual. Some things are done better when left to the initiative of the free individual, and some things are better done collectively as a society. That's just the way things work.
Boycotting Chinese imports would send a stronger message than hurting American exports.
Again, with the loaded words. You could have just as easily written: "Hurting Chinese imports would send a stronger message than regulating American exports," and not changed the factual content of your sentence.
If corporations naturally act in ways which are considered morally wrong by the society under which they are allowed to exist, then how else to correct their behavior than to impose restrictions? That's what we do with actual people who do such things. Corporations are not people (humans), and I have no qualms about harming a corporation if it reasonably protects actual people.
Yes, it will increase the cost of doing business. So what? That alone is not a valid reason. How much will it help the cause of human rights in China? How much will it hurt the US economy? And then, is the trade-off reasonable? Is it acceptable?
We made a similar choice in the US almost a century and a half ago when we decided the rights of slaves as humans outweighed the economic hardships those rights would cause the slave-holders. Well, technically half of us decided it for the other half, and had a terrible war related to that choice, but in the end, it was the right choice.
You are also truely a fool if you a salesman convinces you
Aside: I take umbrage with the fact that you'll call someone a fool who has believed a lie for which they cannot be expected to know whether it was a lie or not. In that case, everyone is, has been, or will be, "truely [sic] a fool".
that their product is 100% secure to all security issues.
No one states that Macs are magical, or that they cannot be compromised. The claim is basically that the virus/worm problem with Windows does not exist on the Mac. And they're right, IT DOESN'T.
Regardless of the reason, I know that I am safer today with a Mac than with XP.
Thought experiment: automate two machines, 1 Mac, 1 fully patched, but otherwise default, PC. Script them to browse the web, crawling through links.
Which one is guaranteed to get pwn3d? Which one is currently guaranteed not to?
Next script them to enter their email address to forms that ask for it, and have them both merely run their built-in mail programs, and ask the same question again.
It may be safe today, but we don't know what tomorrow holds.
No, but I don't know if my safe house in my safe neighborhood won't be infiltrated by two LA street gangs and an international terrorist organization tomorrow either. I can, however, look at the way things tend to be, and see that I'm as safe as I can reasonably hope to be, and aren't likely to change in the morning. If things go to hell in a hand-basket tomorrow, I'll deal with it then.
Mac OS X does not do the sorts of things that make worms, viruses, and even hard-to-battle spyware, easy to write for Windows. Windows doesn't *have* to wait for some mythical "tomorrow" for those things.
So, with my Mac, I'll not worry about worms or viruses. If they come (and they are *very* likely to come any time soon), they come. On Windows, they're already here, have been here for a while, and are a nuisance.
So yeah, the Mac is more secure. The bogeyman of "tomorrow" doesn't concern me, which is good, because it shouldn't.
Color film lasts decades. The life of a burned CD or DVD is supposedly 100 years, but since they haven't been around a hundred years, we don't know for certain. Maintaining a digital picture archive is a more user involved process, burning CDs, DVDs and what not and making sure your hard drive doesn't fail. To archive a negative, you put them in a box in low humidity and light.
Just store them online. Problem solved, and they are archived forever.
Or just backing your library up to DVD (and then BD-R/HD-R, and the whatever's next) every few years is just as good, and if you damage a disc or a drive, or whatever, you have another copy. If you damage/destroy the "archive" of a negative, it's damaged/destroyed forever.
The point is, to buy a camera to equal the quality of film you need to spend money on a sensor. A 10 dollar disposable digital is not going to have the same sensor tech comparable to film, at least not in the near term.
They don't sell you the sensor. They "rent" it to you. Even a $100 sensor only needs to be "rented" 10 times to pay for itself. I have no idea of the actual prices for sensors at bulk, but if a sub-$300 camera from Fuji can have a huge LCD, and a small, sleek case, high quality zoom optics, and a 6mp CCD, today then I don't see a 3mp CCD could be more than $100.
Yes you can argue that the disposable Kodak has a crappy lens, but I'm not arguing the merits of the optics
Yes, you are. If you want to compare a $5 disposable film camera to a digital camera, you have to include the optics. I'd put the quality of a disposable film camera at less than the quality of a 2000-era 3mp camera.
but how film is superior digital in certain occaisons, right now
As I stated already: "Seriously, even if you hold onto the notion that film is still slightly superior to digital right now, do you think in 5 years film will still have the edge over digital?"
So if you want to hold onto (or grasp at, really) a few little straws, feel free. Film's dying. Sorry you don't see that, but you know that there's nothing it really can do that digital either can't do now, or will be doing in a few years.
Seriously, 6mp disposable cameras in 2 years, $5. 10mp consumer cameras for less than $200 in 2 years. 30mp pro cameras for less than $1000 in less than 4 years.
How long until a camera phone is superior to all point-and-shoot film cameras, from disc, to 110, to 35mm? Go to any event (sporting event, wedding, anywhere) and count the ratio of digital to film. Go to your local camera store and compare floor and shelf space. What possible edge will film have that will convince people to buy film over digital, which offers so many features film can't?
"reliable word has it that it was Steve Jobs himself" then why not cite the source?
Because the Macworld reporter did not store the information, only used it to make recommendations about the MiniStore.
You're grasping.
With film you have a built in ability to archive.
That's actually significantly easier with digital.
Also film cameras are almost disposible, you can buy one for 5 bucks with film in it. There are some "disposible" digital cameras, but the costs of those are much more than a disposible film camera.
Disposable digital cameras cost $10 right now. Don't expect that price to go up.
To approach the quality of said disposible film camera, you are going to have to spend 400-500 right now.
No, there are very nice digital cameras that retail for less than $300 today. These are far superior to any disposable film camera. Not to mention the above fact that there are $10 disposable digitals now.
I can't see a time when these disposible film cameras are going away anytime soon.
If they are even remotely common in five years, I'll be very surprised.
Film won't die, like how color didn't kill black and white, photography killed painting, or painting replaced drawing, or drawing killed writing, or writing killed oral story telling, or oral story killed grunts and miming.
Perhaps you missed the part where I wrote: "There will always be those who want to work with older tech for whatever reason, be it vinyl records, hand woodworking tools, spin their own thread, whatever, but film is fast becoming a technology of the past."
There will always be film (probably), but it's really going away in any common sense. Very, very few people will be using film in the near future.
Even so, black and white film still has some significant uses over color film, painting can still do things photos don't, drawing.. etc (down the list of all of your examples). Film does nothing that digital can't do.
Really, then those new vinyl records are just my imagination
No, it's not your imagination, they exist. As used, the term "dead" is widely understood to be metaphorical, not literal. Just because a small number of people still buy them, doesn't invalidate the metaphor.
But, if you would note, I said (and you quoted), "Film is dying, and will soon be deader than vinyl records are now." In other words, however "dead" film will be soon, records are at least somewhat more alive than that.
I still expect film to be available for quite some time (I'd even say, indefinitely, perhaps), but it will ever more quickly be less and less common, until someday soon, it will be quite, metaphorically, dead. More so than records are now.
There will always be a need for film, and if need be photographers will just make there own, like when it all began.
Um, yeah, I already pointed that out when I said:
"There will always be those who want to work with older tech for whatever reason, be it vinyl records, hand woodworking tools, spin their own thread, whatever, but film is fast becoming a technology of the past."
Counting WINE is moronic. You can run every single flawed Linux binary on Windows, too, if that's your metric. But in the context we're discussing, counting programs running under WINE doesn't make any sense, as neither would counting programs running under cygwin, CoLinux or VMWare, etc, against Windows make any sense.
All you're doing is resorting to nihilism, and trying only to appear right, and not actually be right. It's a cheap tactic, and tantamount to, "no, you are". Any rational response depends on the other person to be rational themselves. If you have a logical, rational, response, feel free to post it. If not, don't wait up for a reply from me as there won't be one.
The problem with nihilism is that it makes your point nonsense as well. It's a rhetorical doomsday device which destroys the wielder along with the wielder's adversary. Pretending that you've disproved me does not work if the exact same action has also disproved yourself.
Digital is faster, cheaper, better, easier to work with...
The writing is on the wall, and has been for a few years now. Film is dying, and will soon be deader than vinyl records are now.
Your two reasons are really excuses. They are contrived to defend film, not actual reasons why film is better.
I'd bet that, today, most professional photographers use digital. But even if not, the trend is clear. There will always be those who want to work with older tech for whatever reason, be it vinyl records, hand woodworking tools, spin their own thread, whatever, but film is fast becoming a technology of the past.
Seriously, even if you hold onto the notion that film is still slightly superior to digital right now, do you think in 5 years film will still have the edge over digital?
Trust me, I've mourned film's passing, but it's passed. Time to move on and embrace superior technology. That's what film would have wanted.
Again, exactly how many Linux PC's were infected simply by visiting a web page?
If you said, "zero", you would be correct.
I never said the tests were paid for by MS.
Just because vim can be tricked into running arbitrary code does not equate to any easy means of compromise. Whereas if Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows itself, can be tricked into running arbitrary code, with no interaction by the user other than receiving bad data, then you have a very easy vector by which to launch an attack.
Not to mention that if vim is compromised, you can't infect the OS.
Windows is broken. It's too easy to exploit. The list you show is data, but you are interpreting it wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it's idiotic to claim Windows is more secure than Linux. Absolutely, undeniably idiotic. All you have to do is look at the infection rate of Windows vs Linux vs Mac OS X. You have a theory about OS security, and reality shows it to be wrong.
Please, don't be an idiot. Why would you want to be to begin with? Would you rather think you're right, than to actually be right?
Now, show me a list that says Linux PC's get hacked like wildfire, that a fully patched Linux system is vulnerable to exploits that are known to be in the wild. Show me data that Open Source developers "sit on" a patch for a known and severe exploit for weeks. Show me something that actually demonstrates the conclusions of your theory accurately reflects reality, and not data that merely shows the data input to your theory matches reality.
Seriously, idiocy is nothing to flaunt. When a theory does not adequately match reality, you must abandon the theory as it currently stands, or face being an idiot.
How many Linux PC's have been pwn3d this year just visiting a web page?
No, Windows is not "less bug-prone/filled" than Linux (you got that wrong anyway, it's not "bugs", it's "vulnerabilities", that matter in terms of security).
If Macs were what windows is today, the story would be the complete opposite I assure you.
Did you put any thought into that at all? When coming up with a theory like that, one should always try to disprove it. There are plenty of things one can imagine which seem to make sense, but which fall apart under even the most basic scrutiny.
If what you just said is true, then you are stating specifically that Mac OS X and Windows are both equally insecure. And generally stating that all OS's are equally insecure. Does that appear likely to you? Outlook has had many vulnerabilities which don't even require viewing the email. Explorer has had (just last week even!) many exploits that require nothing but visiting a page, and there was nothing a user could do about it with certainty.
Windows has vectors which just don't exist on Mac OS X, and it's not because Mac OS X is less capable, it's because Windows was designed with complete disregard for all but the most superficial level of security. Mac OS X is very much influenced by UNIX, and UNIX has been hardened over the years.
No, your theory is dead wrong. Windows and Mac OS X are not equally insecure, sorry. The facts just don't bear it out.
Now, if you wanted to say, had the tables been reversed, there would be far more effort put into compromising OS X vs Windows XP, then yes, you are probably correct, but Windows would most definitely be pwn3d at a higher rate than OS X is now (which, by all accounts, is zero).
Props for the anagram, but with a little re-arranging you get:
MacBook Pro (or kaboom!, PC)
I don't think anyone's suggesting that users should be forced to, I'm simply saying that people who know what the hell they're doing aren't going to stop partitioning their linux systems.
/home, it wouldn't be hard. I really fail to see this massive burden on the user, any linux user outside of Mandrivel and Linspire users should be able to do it in their sleep. It takes 10 minutes and you're done. Outside of this thread, I've spend exactly 0 minutes thinking about it after I set it up.
/home is important) PC. But if you're going to do that, then partitioning is fine, and (in fact) logical. I've already stated that there are cases where it's useful. But your average user isn't going to mess up their primary PC like that. Usually, if you want to mess around, you install a second HD, so that if you f up your system, you can still boot (perhaps, at worst, with a boot disk) back into your working setup.
/usr and /home and so on, and they can choose sizes for each. How are they supposed to know reasonable values? Why should they lock themselves into choices now, when the whole drive as / works just fine?
/, 10 gb /usr 1 gb swap and 79 gb /home, what exactly do you plan to do if you add a 300gb drive? Put /home there? You lose 79gb. Put /usr there? What a waste. You could juggle things around, but that's actually more work than if your drive was just all in one partition to begin with!
People already don't do it now, with the exception of swap (which should go away too).
To pre-answer a question you ask further down, I already have stopped partitioning my Linux systems. I think the practice is extremely stupid in most cases. Every admin I know has stopped it as well except in cases where it's reasonable (such as setting up a file server, or a headless farm of similar machines, etc).
First, have you ever partitioned a system? It's really not hard at all. Second, if a distro chose to do this automatically, say for
The point you're missing is not that it's hard, but why do it? You gain only small, mostly potential, benefits. These days, who's going to care about a few milliseconds here and there? Most Linux distros can upgrade in place.
Now, if you want to play with Fedora today, Ubuntu next Thursday, and FreeBSD in March, then you probably shouldn't be doing this on your primary (ie: where
The problem with it is that it's an extra step without adding significant value (in most cases). Now especially add this to your new user. They are prompted: "How do you want to partition your drive?" with options for
You're obviously coming at this from a hard-core Unix perspective, but I'm trying to point out to you that it's a perspective you've chosen, and that there's no reason to force that perspective on others, because Linux runs just fine on one partition, and most people really don't want to be bothered with such details. It'd be like asking someone exactly what gear ratios they want in their transmission. They don't care, they just want the car to go. Certainly, each person has a unique set of ratios that will work best for them throughout the life of their car, but aside from them not caring, they probably don't even know ahead of time what the best choices would be. At most, a little switch from "Economy" to "Sporty" by the shifter is already more than they really care about.
You also perpetuate a few myths.
You say that partitioning makes things faster. It doesn't because you are still hitting the same physical disk. The best you can hope for is putting your system at the fastest part of the disk, which isn't going to be much help.
You also state that it will make adding disks easier. How so? If you split a 100gb drive into 10 gb
Wow, how about that... **Beatles-Beatles and ScuttleMonkey at it again. What a team! Coincidence? I don't think so...
No, I'm pretty sure he and his monkey got nothing to hide.