Honor might be enough for you and I, but we're talking about millions of people here.
Imagine two people in similar life circumstances. One buys a house within his means; the other overextends. The one who can't pay their mortgage payments should naturally lose the house, but in this case the government steps in and picks up the difference so they both get to keep their houses. The first person retains his "honor" for living within his means, but as long as the government is getting into this sort of business, he's also stupid for not taking advantage of free government services and getting a better house.
It doesn't take a psychologist to understand the end result of rewarding bad behavior. (Hint: More bad behavior!)
Yep. The Macbook Pro is a designer notebook. It's not for everyone, and I'm sure Apple is completely aware of the type of people who fit into their target market. You and I may not be in that market, but I know many people who are. Those who mock Apple about things like this really don't understand Apple's target market; especially they don't understand that they're not in it.
That said, I personally don't care one bit about the battery. I have never even taken the battery out of my ThinkPad T42. If I had more disposable income, I might pick up a Macbook. I realize it may not be as "functional" as something else, but it has everything I might need. Fortunately, though, I'm still quite happy with my old T42.
I think that your statement can pretty much end the discussion. Summarized: Choose the license that most closely matches your values of code sharing and the needs of your project. It's not any more complicated than that,
and discussing license consolidation is next to useless since it will never happen for the obvious reason that everybody has different values and project needs.
I tend to stick with BSD/MIT-style licenses, but I have absolutely no problem at all with people who like and use GPL licenses. A license is a tool. I'm not going to get religious about what license a person chooses to use any more than I will if they choose to use a wrench versus a hammer when building furniture.
License consolidation may have some practical benefits, but mostly it reeks of religious zealotry trying to fit us all into one mold.
Worse than rebooting is maintaining two separate configurations. For example, if you use an email client, you configure it on both sides. Browser, same thing. And so on.
Agree completely. I'm sick of people here asking why we need BSD/BeOS/whatever... after all, we have Linux right? I would hope people reading this site would have more of a clue.
Who says we need it? Your questions shouldn't need to be asked in the first place.
We don't need another OS any more than we need Linux or Mac OS X. Presumably we could all get by with only one general solution (i.e. Windows). That would be a boring world, eh?
The question you should have asked is not "why?" but "why not?" You may not feel like another OS is worthwhile, but as long as there are enthusiasts willing to work on a project they like (regardless of whether it becomes "mainstream" or not, I say good for them.
Microsoft is indeed in danger of losing some marketshare to Apple in the U.S. and I would say that's mostly due to college students. Microsoft is not doing nothing to counter this like the summary suggests, it's just that they haven't been very successful yet. They realize by now that they're screwed up with Vista and even their marketing efforts haven't been great, but they should be able to get back on track if Windows 7 actually turns out to be good.
As for Linux (on the desktop), that is a serious threat to Microsoft from abroad, not so much in the U.S. Face it, most (by far) Americans are not going to fiddle with Linux, even if they're told it's free and superior, merely because they don't want to relearn anything that was hard enough to learn the first time, and they just want to use whatever is on their computer (Windows). Abroad, developing countries choosing Linux for school and government is a threat because it raises generations of non-Microsoft users who they will have less control over.
So what you want is Spotlight, beagle, or some other desktop search software. Yeah, we have that. It also works a lot better than shuffling virtual documents on a virtual desktop or inside virtual folders.
I also just generally dislike the "I'm cool, I have an Apple. I'm artsy. PC users automatically get -5 points for using a PC even if their [music, art, web design] is great." thing, but that's neither here nor there (not sure where it is, I guess):)
You can ignore that if you want. I used a Mac clear through the nineties, during the time when it was clearly unpopular to do so. Apple's rise in popularity doesn't directly effect my computing experience.
Mac Office doesn't look like a port. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't share very much (if any) code between the two products... I may be very wrong, though.
My computer is a tool. Software is my job, not my religion. If I can increase my productivity or otherwise enjoy life better by using a win32 binary in wine rather than a Free version which may or may not be available, I'll use wine without even feeling guilty. Ahh, true freedom.
I was interested, too. I googled around a bit and looked at quite a few benchmarks. I couldn't find any benchmark where NetBSD was faster than FreeBSD or Linux 2.6. From the benchmarks I saw, the performance of FreeBSD compares well with Linux 2.6 (which is really fast) in terms of scalability, while NetBSD and OpenBSD both lagged behind.
My five minutes of googling may not be able to conclude much, but what they say about the various BSDs seems to be true: NetBSD for portability, OpenBSD for security, FreeBSD for performance. Broad categorizations, but it seems accurate from what I've seen.
On an unrelated note, I have run NetBSD before on an "Old World" Mac and was impressed with it. Not only could it make my old computer useful again, but it really felt like a solid OS. It's been so long that I don't remember specific experiences, just my overall impression with it. If I ever became dissatisfied with gentoo, I think I'd feel just fine switching to one of the BSDs rather than a different linux distro.
Force MS to use an actual app instead of the activex in IE for windows update. Why anyone thought it was a good idea to use a web browser to do a system update is beyond me.
Allow users to completly remove IE (save for the rendering engine - which good programming practice dictates should already be separate from the browser).
Umm, I don't think either of those points even apply even more. Vista doesn't use I.E. for upgrading, and I'm pretty sure you can uninstall/disable Internet Explorer using some feature of the add/remove programs control panel. I'm not at work right now so I can't check the only Windows computer I use, but I think that's right...
The only real solution is to let the VAR (ie. dell, hp, compaq, gateway, etc. etc.) bundle whatever they want. (which is what they've wanted to do for a while, but couldn't, else they'd get hit for higher prices for their OEM deals on the 'doze licenses)
Yep. You're right. Windows should have a package manager, but that's a solution to a different problem.
By "minor cosmetic adjustments," I think you probably also mean not making it brown. Even for those of us not overly concerned with style, brown was just a terrible idea. It's just not an appealing color... at all.
My favorite, of course, is how they made it so that cursor blinking is a global setting. It doesn't matter if you use gconf or not, either your cursor blinks everywhere, including the terminal, or it blinks nowhere. That is, neither setting is acceptable.
Wow. If that is your favorite thing to complain about, I guess Gnome must be pretty good...
Very sadly, Firefox itself leaks more than I've seen the Flash plug-in leak... even FF3. Right now my FF3 process is using 20.38% of my 2Gig. One tab open, Flash isn't installed.
I'd rather that the operating system be leaner, so I can run my heavy duty stuff on top of it. A game can't use the resources that the OS has allowed itself to expand into.
Nor will the OS keep holding onto it if it is requested by the game... so what's the problem again?
Slashdot Mirror
Honor might be enough for you and I, but we're talking about millions of people here.
Imagine two people in similar life circumstances. One buys a house within his means; the other overextends. The one who can't pay their mortgage payments should naturally lose the house, but in this case the government steps in and picks up the difference so they both get to keep their houses. The first person retains his "honor" for living within his means, but as long as the government is getting into this sort of business, he's also stupid for not taking advantage of free government services and getting a better house.
It doesn't take a psychologist to understand the end result of rewarding bad behavior. (Hint: More bad behavior!)
Yep. The Macbook Pro is a designer notebook. It's not for everyone, and I'm sure Apple is completely aware of the type of people who fit into their target market. You and I may not be in that market, but I know many people who are. Those who mock Apple about things like this really don't understand Apple's target market; especially they don't understand that they're not in it.
That said, I personally don't care one bit about the battery. I have never even taken the battery out of my ThinkPad T42. If I had more disposable income, I might pick up a Macbook. I realize it may not be as "functional" as something else, but it has everything I might need. Fortunately, though, I'm still quite happy with my old T42.
Modded Interesting... I'm pretty sure he's going for Funny.
I think that your statement can pretty much end the discussion. Summarized: Choose the license that most closely matches your values of code sharing and the needs of your project. It's not any more complicated than that, and discussing license consolidation is next to useless since it will never happen for the obvious reason that everybody has different values and project needs.
I tend to stick with BSD/MIT-style licenses, but I have absolutely no problem at all with people who like and use GPL licenses. A license is a tool. I'm not going to get religious about what license a person chooses to use any more than I will if they choose to use a wrench versus a hammer when building furniture.
License consolidation may have some practical benefits, but mostly it reeks of religious zealotry trying to fit us all into one mold.
Palm failed because they performed poorly as a company, not because there is some weak market force that works to break up monopolies...
Worse than rebooting is maintaining two separate configurations. For example, if you use an email client, you configure it on both sides. Browser, same thing. And so on.
Not sure what you're getting at...
Agree completely. I'm sick of people here asking why we need BSD/BeOS/whatever... after all, we have Linux right? I would hope people reading this site would have more of a clue.
... or that glut is an OpenGL emulator.
Given your other examples, you probably meant mesa in place of glut.
Microsoft is indeed in danger of losing some marketshare to Apple in the U.S. and I would say that's mostly due to college students. Microsoft is not doing nothing to counter this like the summary suggests, it's just that they haven't been very successful yet. They realize by now that they're screwed up with Vista and even their marketing efforts haven't been great, but they should be able to get back on track if Windows 7 actually turns out to be good.
As for Linux (on the desktop), that is a serious threat to Microsoft from abroad, not so much in the U.S. Face it, most (by far) Americans are not going to fiddle with Linux, even if they're told it's free and superior, merely because they don't want to relearn anything that was hard enough to learn the first time, and they just want to use whatever is on their computer (Windows). Abroad, developing countries choosing Linux for school and government is a threat because it raises generations of non-Microsoft users who they will have less control over.
So what you want is Spotlight, beagle, or some other desktop search software. Yeah, we have that. It also works a lot better than shuffling virtual documents on a virtual desktop or inside virtual folders.
I also just generally dislike the "I'm cool, I have an Apple. I'm artsy. PC users automatically get -5 points for using a PC even if their [music, art, web design] is great." thing, but that's neither here nor there (not sure where it is, I guess) :)
You can ignore that if you want. I used a Mac clear through the nineties, during the time when it was clearly unpopular to do so. Apple's rise in popularity doesn't directly effect my computing experience.
Mac Office doesn't look like a port. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't share very much (if any) code between the two products... I may be very wrong, though.
My computer is a tool. Software is my job, not my religion. If I can increase my productivity or otherwise enjoy life better by using a win32 binary in wine rather than a Free version which may or may not be available, I'll use wine without even feeling guilty. Ahh, true freedom.
In the world of computers, anything that isn't a work in progress is already obsolete.
I was interested, too. I googled around a bit and looked at quite a few benchmarks. I couldn't find any benchmark where NetBSD was faster than FreeBSD or Linux 2.6. From the benchmarks I saw, the performance of FreeBSD compares well with Linux 2.6 (which is really fast) in terms of scalability, while NetBSD and OpenBSD both lagged behind.
My five minutes of googling may not be able to conclude much, but what they say about the various BSDs seems to be true: NetBSD for portability, OpenBSD for security, FreeBSD for performance. Broad categorizations, but it seems accurate from what I've seen.
On an unrelated note, I have run NetBSD before on an "Old World" Mac and was impressed with it. Not only could it make my old computer useful again, but it really felt like a solid OS. It's been so long that I don't remember specific experiences, just my overall impression with it. If I ever became dissatisfied with gentoo, I think I'd feel just fine switching to one of the BSDs rather than a different linux distro.
Umm, I don't think either of those points even apply even more. Vista doesn't use I.E. for upgrading, and I'm pretty sure you can uninstall/disable Internet Explorer using some feature of the add/remove programs control panel. I'm not at work right now so I can't check the only Windows computer I use, but I think that's right...
The only real solution is to let the VAR (ie. dell, hp, compaq, gateway, etc. etc.) bundle whatever they want. (which is what they've wanted to do for a while, but couldn't, else they'd get hit for higher prices for their OEM deals on the 'doze licenses)
Yep. You're right. Windows should have a package manager, but that's a solution to a different problem.
By "minor cosmetic adjustments," I think you probably also mean not making it brown. Even for those of us not overly concerned with style, brown was just a terrible idea. It's just not an appealing color... at all.
My favorite, of course, is how they made it so that cursor blinking is a global setting. It doesn't matter if you use gconf or not, either your cursor blinks everywhere, including the terminal, or it blinks nowhere. That is, neither setting is acceptable.
Wow. If that is your favorite thing to complain about, I guess Gnome must be pretty good...
Except that this is about new open source projects. I doubt there are so many open source iPhone projects to tip the scales that much.
Very sadly, Firefox itself leaks more than I've seen the Flash plug-in leak... even FF3. Right now my FF3 process is using 20.38% of my 2Gig. One tab open, Flash isn't installed.
I'd rather that the operating system be leaner, so I can run my heavy duty stuff on top of it. A game can't use the resources that the OS has allowed itself to expand into.
Nor will the OS keep holding onto it if it is requested by the game... so what's the problem again?
If you want to see real intrusive DRM, get a Macbook with just a vga port and try to play protected iTunes videos...
Okay...
Wait a second, I see a movie playing. I thought I was supposed to be seeing intrusive DRM!