There's a difference between excessive meddling in a citizens life and providing for your citizens.
There may be a difference, but both of those situations suck. It's sad that people think a government ought to exist to "provide for" its citizens. This idea is so propagandized that there seem to be few people who remember what government is supposed to be. Let's go over it it again, just for fun. A group of smart men once signed a document laying out three things a good government should ensure: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interestingly, food stamps aren't included in this list. I don't see a house guaranteed either. What those three things really mean is the government will lock up those who want to kill me (life), not enact laws which encroach upon my freedom (liberty), and otherwise get the hell out of my way so I can pursue my own happiness.
I don't want the government to coddle me. I don't want them to force me to give my money to "charitable" projects where most of it will get lost in the bureaucracy. I would be more than happy to dispose of my money to the charities and causes that I choose. We don't need the government to feed people. There is already a system of non-governmental charities that do a much better job at getting people out of dependency. They would do even better if our tax dollars weren't wasted on governmental food stamps so we could put it to better use in such religious or humanitarian organizations that actually help people.
In short, government sucks. Anyone who thinks making it bigger will make things better has lost touch.
Fanboys aside, Apple certainly isn't getting a pass from users that are being affected or the general "community" at large. Lots of them are pissed. There just aren't very many of them that got affected as far as I can tell. Fanboys, on the other hand, are fanboys, and I'm not sure if you can say one group of fanboys is more annoying than another. As one using Linux predominately, Linux fanboys annoy me more than any other, but obviously it's a highly subjective matter.
... but it can replace Windows on the server as Unix and Linux are designed as server operating systems.
Unix (and by extension Linux) makes for an excellent general purpose operating system. Just because it was developed before desktops and graphical user interfaces doesn't mean that it isn't fully capable for such use any more or less than Windows (which was morphed from DOS). Mac OS X is an example of a very capable desktop operating system built on Unix. A general purpose operating system like Linux is "designed for" whatever people have built on top of it, and desktops running on top of *nix and X11 are not recent occurrences. Nowadays, X11-based desktops are extremely capable, and the development gap between Windows and such desktops has essentially been closed in the minds of many users.
So, let's drop the meme that Linux is designed for servers (thereby implying that it isn't designed for desktops or something). Instead, let's acknowledge that it is a good general purpose operating system which scales well from small devices to servers to desktops, and anything in-between. It just doesn't make sense to continue saying Linux was "designed as a server operating system" when it has really been designed for much more than that.
What makes you say MS is ignoring openoffice? I just assumed this new cheapo version of Office is in direct response to the rise again of viable alternatives such as openoffice and Google Docs.
This is all nice and stuff in theory. Every so often, people sometimes like to try to argue that code running under a VM such a java or C# with.Net are "as fast" or faster than machine-compiled code from C or C++ because of JIT and runtime optimizations and whatnot. Unfortunately, the reality just doesn't follow the theory. In real-world benchmarks, managed code is not faster than pre-compiled machine code. Period. This is just more evidence of what we already know. If the goal is sub-ten millisecond latency (and it is for stock exchange systems), LSE apparently never met that goal while other C++ solutions have for years. We can talk to death about data structure implementations and whatnot, but at the end of the day, we'll need to look around and see what the real-world results are telling us.
Which is why I sometimes get a little irritated when I'm trying to explain to people who just won't understand that CA-issued certificates are hardly more secure than self-signed certificates. In reality, CA-signed certificates are more dangerous because of the false sense of security people get when they see the friendly "lock" icon without even having to look at the certificate. Yet, some common browsers today make people jump through all sorts of hoops just to accept a self-signed certificate.
Ballmer does appear to be an idiot. Under his watch, we've seen the Xbox with its expensive warranty, the lovely Zune, Office 2007, and Vista. I consider these failures that I'm not certain would have occurred if Gates was still in charge. Okay, I'm sure at least Vista made a boat-load of money and therefore can't be classified as a failure as far as the markets are concerned, but that's only because of their market position. Ballmer won't be able to get this free ride forever as other alternatives slowly gain traction in the market.
From what I've seen, Ballmer tries really hard, but he's just not that great of a CEO. Just my opinion.
That said, I thought that OS X apps were statically linked (except with OS libs), and thus tend to be large, but reduce this issue since so much functionality is based on system libs. I could be wrong.
Yeah, you are wrong. Mac OS X apps are definitely dynamically linked (the equivalent of so on Mac OS X is dylib). The reason Mac OS X apps can be larger than executables on other platforms is because they often contain machine code for multiple platforms (ppc, x86, x86_64). That only translates to a large footprint in storage.
After all Apple is just about inviting this type of solution.
How exactly is Apple inviting USB spoofing when they already have a fully functional, documented API and plug-in framework to be used for the purpose of syncing 3rd-party devices?
Rabid Apple haters are just as ridiculous and illogical as extreme Apple fanbois; they've just chosen the opposite extreme. Either way, you're throwing good sense out the door in order to pretend the world really is how your suppose it is (either Apple is always evil or Apple can do no wrong).
This forum sure contains a lot of ridiculous and close-minded people for a group that fancies itself to have above-average intellect.
I can't believe I have to explain this to somebody reading Slashdot, but interface is built with html and css, not perl (or any other server language).
Not wanting to troll but, you know, if openssh was GPL licensed said commercial vendors would have to release the source for openssh with their products, including any modifications they made. The project could also offer LGPL or BSD licensed versions in exchange for cold, hard, cash.
Instead they do the noble thing and release their hard work without strings attached. They understand the alternatives but actively choose to stick with a license that doesn't childishly punish those who cannot or won't return the favor. They do what they do not to "stick it" to corporations but rather because they love to code and love when their code is used to improve peoples' lives. They even love it when somebody is able to take what they've done and build off of it or incorporate it into a product. It's a matter of love, and love must be given without strings and viral conditions. It's true charity, and charity is for the giver as much as the receiver. It's the BSD philosophy, and it's not often understand by the GNU herd. But that's okay, because the software we write is for them, too. And we love it even if they don't understand why.
Thanks OpenBSD. You're awesome. I hope a lot of people today make good use of this link.
It's just disturbing to me to think that there is apparently a large percentage of Slashdot regulars who still think they AV software. I tend to assume Slashdot readers are generally not the 90% of uninformed computer users. I've maintained a Windows (Vista) partition for over a year without AV software behind a modest router firewall, no problem. It's not hard, and not losing resources to an AV daemon has been well worth it. I'm not sure why more experienced computer users don't do this.
The "Uninstall Windows"-posts aren't trolls, there attempts at being funny.
They may very well be grasping at humor, but that also doesn't mean they're not trolls. I'm not a Windows user, but that sounds like a trollish comment to me.
Actually, you're both wrong. There should be an apostrophe because not only is it the plural of kid, but it is also possessive--somebody's got take take ownership of those heads. However, the correct placement of the apostrophe is after the s.
Yeah, that's pretty bad. I'm willing to give Apple a pass on that since that was then. There's no excuse for cheese like that in marketing nowadays, at least from a huge megacorp like Microsoft that can afford to hire any ad agency they want.
I think Firewire served Apple's purpose well. During the time that USB was still catching up (for several years), Apple computers had a freaking fast peripheral bus which made them very desirable for video and photo people. That gave them the edge they needed to stay relevant and perhaps dominate in that area, to a limited extent.
It looks like you entirely missed the point. Whether or not you believe the games on the iPhone terrible, it's a sizable market, and it's not even a gaming device.
It's really like saying "Oh, hey, MS Exchange in X college got hacked, MS's security sucks!"
Err... what's wrong with saying that? If MS Exchange is hacked because of a vulnerability in Exchange, then there's nothing wrong with saying that MS's security sucks. Likewise, if Google's service shares your emails with more people than you had in mind (whether or not it's a vulnerability with the public gmail or their private email service--and there have been problems with both), then what's wrong with saying Google's security sucks? Nothing, unless there's some sort of double-standard your are trying to promote.
The only discussion down this avenue that is worth discussing is concerning the overall security provided by both MS and Google, relative to each other. Personally, I would wager that Google probably trumps MS in several security categories, but I haven't looked at any research, therefore this assertion is based mostly on my own observations and biases.
I experienced this the other day. I had occasion to put several dozen arrows in a document, connecting various ideas. Each time after placing an arrow, the ribbon would go to the first tab, forcing me to search for the arrow tool again. I had never used that tool previously although I knew Word had the capability, but it still took me several minutes searching the ribbon to find it the first time. I don't do documents very often, so I'm willing to fully accept that somebody with a little more training could do what I did a lot faster, but so much for intuitiveness.
There is nothing intuitive about using a computer except those things with which we have already been trained. Computers aren't natural, and we aren't born with an understanding of computer interfaces. Therefore, it makes not sense to say that the ribbon is intuitive, when in reality, it's not intuitive by the simple fact that it's different. It may be something that we can all be trained to use with time, but it's not intuitive like menus and toolbars which have become intuitive by our exposure to them.
The BSD License allows proprietary use, and for the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary products. Works based on the material may be released under a proprietary license or as closed source software. This is the reason for widespread use of the BSD code in proprietary products, ranging from Juniper Networks routers to Mac OS X
Except that's misleading. That statement makes it sound like companies actively use BSD code so that they can close it or release it under a proprietary license. In reality, any code Apple (and many other companies that don't suck) has taken or used from the community has been returned improved and remains open, even if they are under no obligation to do so.
The real reason some companies prefer BSD code to GPL competitors is that pesky viral condition of the GPL which they may not be able to legally adhere to since they themselves may be licensing code of which they are not the copyright owners and therefore cannot release any changes they make plus anything built in conjunction with said GPL software. In short, using GPL software is legally more scary to proprietary software houses, which was the intention of the FSF. The philosophical discussion and semantics debate surrounding both licenses has been thoroughly covered elsewhere and probably need not be repeated here.
Except this whole discussion is pointless because there is a legit way to use iTunes to sync to your device; by writing a plugin with the API that Apple published years ago. What Palm did was despicable, not because they're "un-cripplingling technology" (they're not), but because they, for whatever reason, implemented this half-assed faked-ID method to sync rather than do what everybody else does and write an iTunes plugin, all the while lying to customers about the Pre's amazing ability to sync with iTunes. But there are those who will go to any length to reaffirm that Apple is the "bad guy" in their own minds.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a difference between excessive meddling in a citizens life and providing for your citizens.
There may be a difference, but both of those situations suck. It's sad that people think a government ought to exist to "provide for" its citizens. This idea is so propagandized that there seem to be few people who remember what government is supposed to be. Let's go over it it again, just for fun. A group of smart men once signed a document laying out three things a good government should ensure: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interestingly, food stamps aren't included in this list. I don't see a house guaranteed either. What those three things really mean is the government will lock up those who want to kill me (life), not enact laws which encroach upon my freedom (liberty), and otherwise get the hell out of my way so I can pursue my own happiness.
I don't want the government to coddle me. I don't want them to force me to give my money to "charitable" projects where most of it will get lost in the bureaucracy. I would be more than happy to dispose of my money to the charities and causes that I choose. We don't need the government to feed people. There is already a system of non-governmental charities that do a much better job at getting people out of dependency. They would do even better if our tax dollars weren't wasted on governmental food stamps so we could put it to better use in such religious or humanitarian organizations that actually help people.
In short, government sucks. Anyone who thinks making it bigger will make things better has lost touch.
Fanboys aside, Apple certainly isn't getting a pass from users that are being affected or the general "community" at large. Lots of them are pissed. There just aren't very many of them that got affected as far as I can tell. Fanboys, on the other hand, are fanboys, and I'm not sure if you can say one group of fanboys is more annoying than another. As one using Linux predominately, Linux fanboys annoy me more than any other, but obviously it's a highly subjective matter.
... but it can replace Windows on the server as Unix and Linux are designed as server operating systems.
Unix (and by extension Linux) makes for an excellent general purpose operating system. Just because it was developed before desktops and graphical user interfaces doesn't mean that it isn't fully capable for such use any more or less than Windows (which was morphed from DOS). Mac OS X is an example of a very capable desktop operating system built on Unix. A general purpose operating system like Linux is "designed for" whatever people have built on top of it, and desktops running on top of *nix and X11 are not recent occurrences. Nowadays, X11-based desktops are extremely capable, and the development gap between Windows and such desktops has essentially been closed in the minds of many users.
So, let's drop the meme that Linux is designed for servers (thereby implying that it isn't designed for desktops or something). Instead, let's acknowledge that it is a good general purpose operating system which scales well from small devices to servers to desktops, and anything in-between. It just doesn't make sense to continue saying Linux was "designed as a server operating system" when it has really been designed for much more than that.
Aww, so this is why he's sitting on the decision to increase troops in Afghanistan or not.
What makes you say MS is ignoring openoffice? I just assumed this new cheapo version of Office is in direct response to the rise again of viable alternatives such as openoffice and Google Docs.
This is all nice and stuff in theory. Every so often, people sometimes like to try to argue that code running under a VM such a java or C# with .Net are "as fast" or faster than machine-compiled code from C or C++ because of JIT and runtime optimizations and whatnot. Unfortunately, the reality just doesn't follow the theory. In real-world benchmarks, managed code is not faster than pre-compiled machine code. Period. This is just more evidence of what we already know. If the goal is sub-ten millisecond latency (and it is for stock exchange systems), LSE apparently never met that goal while other C++ solutions have for years. We can talk to death about data structure implementations and whatnot, but at the end of the day, we'll need to look around and see what the real-world results are telling us.
Which is why I sometimes get a little irritated when I'm trying to explain to people who just won't understand that CA-issued certificates are hardly more secure than self-signed certificates. In reality, CA-signed certificates are more dangerous because of the false sense of security people get when they see the friendly "lock" icon without even having to look at the certificate. Yet, some common browsers today make people jump through all sorts of hoops just to accept a self-signed certificate.
Ballmer does appear to be an idiot. Under his watch, we've seen the Xbox with its expensive warranty, the lovely Zune, Office 2007, and Vista. I consider these failures that I'm not certain would have occurred if Gates was still in charge. Okay, I'm sure at least Vista made a boat-load of money and therefore can't be classified as a failure as far as the markets are concerned, but that's only because of their market position. Ballmer won't be able to get this free ride forever as other alternatives slowly gain traction in the market.
From what I've seen, Ballmer tries really hard, but he's just not that great of a CEO. Just my opinion.
This is why I just don't use Windows. That's easier than using an esoteric language.
That said, I thought that OS X apps were statically linked (except with OS libs), and thus tend to be large, but reduce this issue since so much functionality is based on system libs. I could be wrong.
Yeah, you are wrong. Mac OS X apps are definitely dynamically linked (the equivalent of so on Mac OS X is dylib). The reason Mac OS X apps can be larger than executables on other platforms is because they often contain machine code for multiple platforms (ppc, x86, x86_64). That only translates to a large footprint in storage.
Now you know.
After all Apple is just about inviting this type of solution.
How exactly is Apple inviting USB spoofing when they already have a fully functional, documented API and plug-in framework to be used for the purpose of syncing 3rd-party devices?
Rabid Apple haters are just as ridiculous and illogical as extreme Apple fanbois; they've just chosen the opposite extreme. Either way, you're throwing good sense out the door in order to pretend the world really is how your suppose it is (either Apple is always evil or Apple can do no wrong).
This forum sure contains a lot of ridiculous and close-minded people for a group that fancies itself to have above-average intellect.
Is that why the interface is such fucking shit?
include: Slashdot
I can't believe I have to explain this to somebody reading Slashdot, but interface is built with html and css, not perl (or any other server language).
Not wanting to troll but, you know, if openssh was GPL licensed said commercial vendors would have to release the source for openssh with their products, including any modifications they made. The project could also offer LGPL or BSD licensed versions in exchange for cold, hard, cash.
Instead they do the noble thing and release their hard work without strings attached. They understand the alternatives but actively choose to stick with a license that doesn't childishly punish those who cannot or won't return the favor. They do what they do not to "stick it" to corporations but rather because they love to code and love when their code is used to improve peoples' lives. They even love it when somebody is able to take what they've done and build off of it or incorporate it into a product. It's a matter of love, and love must be given without strings and viral conditions. It's true charity, and charity is for the giver as much as the receiver. It's the BSD philosophy, and it's not often understand by the GNU herd. But that's okay, because the software we write is for them, too. And we love it even if they don't understand why.
Thanks OpenBSD. You're awesome. I hope a lot of people today make good use of this link.
It's just disturbing to me to think that there is apparently a large percentage of Slashdot regulars who still think they AV software. I tend to assume Slashdot readers are generally not the 90% of uninformed computer users. I've maintained a Windows (Vista) partition for over a year without AV software behind a modest router firewall, no problem. It's not hard, and not losing resources to an AV daemon has been well worth it. I'm not sure why more experienced computer users don't do this.
The "Uninstall Windows"-posts aren't trolls, there attempts at being funny.
They may very well be grasping at humor, but that also doesn't mean they're not trolls. I'm not a Windows user, but that sounds like a trollish comment to me.
Actually, you're both wrong. There should be an apostrophe because not only is it the plural of kid, but it is also possessive--somebody's got take take ownership of those heads. However, the correct placement of the apostrophe is after the s.
Why would they put it out and then withdraw it a few hours later?
Oh I dunno. Maybe because they never intended for it to happen?
Yeah, that's pretty bad. I'm willing to give Apple a pass on that since that was then. There's no excuse for cheese like that in marketing nowadays, at least from a huge megacorp like Microsoft that can afford to hire any ad agency they want.
Why does Microsoft have to push for Windows launch parties? If it was something people were that excited about, wouldn't parties spontaneously happen?
I think Firewire served Apple's purpose well. During the time that USB was still catching up (for several years), Apple computers had a freaking fast peripheral bus which made them very desirable for video and photo people. That gave them the edge they needed to stay relevant and perhaps dominate in that area, to a limited extent.
It looks like you entirely missed the point. Whether or not you believe the games on the iPhone terrible, it's a sizable market, and it's not even a gaming device.
It's really like saying "Oh, hey, MS Exchange in X college got hacked, MS's security sucks!"
Err... what's wrong with saying that? If MS Exchange is hacked because of a vulnerability in Exchange, then there's nothing wrong with saying that MS's security sucks. Likewise, if Google's service shares your emails with more people than you had in mind (whether or not it's a vulnerability with the public gmail or their private email service--and there have been problems with both), then what's wrong with saying Google's security sucks? Nothing, unless there's some sort of double-standard your are trying to promote.
The only discussion down this avenue that is worth discussing is concerning the overall security provided by both MS and Google, relative to each other. Personally, I would wager that Google probably trumps MS in several security categories, but I haven't looked at any research, therefore this assertion is based mostly on my own observations and biases.
I experienced this the other day. I had occasion to put several dozen arrows in a document, connecting various ideas. Each time after placing an arrow, the ribbon would go to the first tab, forcing me to search for the arrow tool again. I had never used that tool previously although I knew Word had the capability, but it still took me several minutes searching the ribbon to find it the first time. I don't do documents very often, so I'm willing to fully accept that somebody with a little more training could do what I did a lot faster, but so much for intuitiveness.
There is nothing intuitive about using a computer except those things with which we have already been trained. Computers aren't natural, and we aren't born with an understanding of computer interfaces. Therefore, it makes not sense to say that the ribbon is intuitive, when in reality, it's not intuitive by the simple fact that it's different. It may be something that we can all be trained to use with time, but it's not intuitive like menus and toolbars which have become intuitive by our exposure to them.
BSD!=GPL. Learn the minor differences, all OSS is not the 'same'.
With the BSD license you can do what ever the hell you want with the code. Including closing it and charging for it.
BSD License
The BSD License allows proprietary use, and for the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary products. Works based on the material may be released under a proprietary license or as closed source software. This is the reason for widespread use of the BSD code in proprietary products, ranging from Juniper Networks routers to Mac OS X
Except that's misleading. That statement makes it sound like companies actively use BSD code so that they can close it or release it under a proprietary license. In reality, any code Apple (and many other companies that don't suck) has taken or used from the community has been returned improved and remains open, even if they are under no obligation to do so.
The real reason some companies prefer BSD code to GPL competitors is that pesky viral condition of the GPL which they may not be able to legally adhere to since they themselves may be licensing code of which they are not the copyright owners and therefore cannot release any changes they make plus anything built in conjunction with said GPL software. In short, using GPL software is legally more scary to proprietary software houses, which was the intention of the FSF. The philosophical discussion and semantics debate surrounding both licenses has been thoroughly covered elsewhere and probably need not be repeated here.
Except this whole discussion is pointless because there is a legit way to use iTunes to sync to your device; by writing a plugin with the API that Apple published years ago. What Palm did was despicable, not because they're "un-cripplingling technology" (they're not), but because they, for whatever reason, implemented this half-assed faked-ID method to sync rather than do what everybody else does and write an iTunes plugin, all the while lying to customers about the Pre's amazing ability to sync with iTunes. But there are those who will go to any length to reaffirm that Apple is the "bad guy" in their own minds.