Your angst is incredibly misplaced. You missed the point of what I was saying. One, you should not have to buy lots of things to make your computer whole. Apple has always had this problem. You have to buy lots of little shareware programs to make the OS do things that everybody is doing for free, by default. It just was a bit disturbing that now you had to buy floppy drives, thousand dollar PCI bays, and 2 different kinds of SCSI cards just to get the thing back into a useable state.
"The option to buy more." Is a sorry state of affairs if you ask me. It would not have cost Apple any more to have created a box with the right number of PCI bays and an internal SCSI configuration to help ease the transition, and a floppy drive for goodness sakes. If they would have allocated 25% of what they spent on trying to make the thing "look cool" they would have had a decent box. As it was, it shipped incredibly buggy, half of its drivers incomplete, totally incompatible with everything Apple had ever been doing, and equiped with a dinky mouse and keyboard. Just to 'ship it on time' but 'boy it sure looks neat' Well they have fixed some of the problems, other problems they still have left hanging, such as the really really un-professional input devices.
In short, Apple does not have my loyalty because they have their priorities all over the place, not where they should be. This looks to be true of their new Aqua as well. Completely misplaced priorities. Sure making something look cool sells big. Nobody is going to debate that. I just feel sorry for all of the suckers who fell for it. (Incidentally I never would have purchased a blue/white, I kinda had one dumped in my lap at my last place of work.)
You quibble. The point he made is valid...many hardware companies still use floppies for their drivers. Many...so discarding the floppy drive is sorely premature. It does not matter what your ideals are in this matter. The companies are still using floppies, so live with that. And yes we used quark at work, and yes that was a mess. But ODBC was by far a worse mess.
His second point is incredibly valid and it is a point that lots of people on these tech boards miss. Many people still use floppies Not everybody is hooked up to 100mB ethernet in the world! Not everybody has CD-RW burners. Not everybody has JAZ or ZIP disks. Lots of people rely on the cheap, standard form of transfer, the floppy. As for losing five hours of work? Well, I have never lost information on a floppy disk myself. I suppose that is because I take care of it. But even then, I never put the only copy on the floppy. If somebody does that then they somewhat deserve it if they lose it. The individual's ignorance of common safety practices does not enter into this conversation.
One thing that you have to remember when quoting memory figures between the MacOS and Linux is that while the numbers may seem a bit larger on the Linux side at times, that is not as bad as large numbers on the Mac side. 30 megabytes of RAM for Navigator is very bad for the Mac because absolutely no other programs can access that RAM, whereas with Linux it is all swapped around to the process that need it at the time. It is more fair to take your numbers from the RSS column in top, but still, you can not just swap numbers and say one is better than the other.
Blackbox is what I like best (now that I've wrestled GNOME and KDE off my system--just needs reconfiguring); should be fine for what I usually do with it
Blockbox is very smooth, and since it uses vectors to describe window decorations, it has a very small footprint. I suggest it to anybody who has a liking for NeXtish interfaces. If you like a little more, well there are other alternatives. IceWM is also a good light WM, but with more configurability and keyboard support from what I have seen. While it uses pixmaps, it uses them very efficiently.
...by losing all the redundant or needlessly destabilizing extensions and libs it comes loaded with.
Yes, it is possible to do alot of trimming down, but in my opinion this is just as strenuous, and potentially even more dangerous for a 'typical user' as adjusting which WM is the default in Linux. That would be akin to a new user ripping kernel modules in and out. (Without the standard required MacOS reboot of course:))
Regarding E's and GNOME's functionalities, I've found them to match a lot of "hidden" functionality in MacOS that almost no one uses, because almost no one needs it, and it's not covered in the installed "Help" system. For example, MacOS already has a handy, configurable taskbar I've never seen anyone but me using.
In a sense, you are right. Yes, I have seen the MacOS taskbar. It is rather kludgy though in my opinion, and requires a ridiculous amount of keyboard mouseclick gymnastics to get it into a form that is usable for me. While alot of E+Gnome's abilities can be matched with sometimes arcane, or relatively expensive shareware addons, I can think of alot of features in E+Gnome that do not have a parallel in either the MacOS or Windows. Such as anti-aliased text, transparent operations, user extensible "themeing" (which goes way beyond simple UI adjustments) Window grouping which is extremely useful (links windows together so that any actions performed on them is mirrored on the others in the group, of course, how mirrored is configurable). View and manage multiple desktops (A standard on the X Windowing system for the most part anyway) Provide a host of snazzy special effects that leave your jaw dropped (Setting your background to a picture of the earth over water and turning on the desktop ripple effect is quite awesome). There is much more, check out both the Gnome and E sites for all the info.
And, again, with MacOS, themes are a "hidden" functionality (that shareware connivers have used to take advantage of morons by re-selling the same thing to them; the Mac world is rife with "shareware abuse," like ten-line compiled Applescripts selling for $20).
Well, manually adjusting all of the pixmaps with rezedit would be a bit of a hassle:) Just for that functionality, Kaleidascope is a good deal. Another good add-on app is ProgramSwitcher, sadly you have to pay for that one. Yet another thing that should be integrated into the core-OS, as you said. While there is a functional taskbar/switcher that comes with 8.5, it isn't very featureful, and ProgramSwitcher is excellent if you do alot of work in the MacOS.
As you said in closing, both OSes require you to do a little tweaking to get them where they are optimal. Out of the box, Redhat 6.1 provides a rich set of features and power, but on a smaller machine it is -too- much, like you said. Out of the box the MacOS is slim and not very beefy, it requires alot of knowledge about 'hidden' features to get it up to par. Both require the user to know a little extra to get more out of their system.
You are lucky. Alot of people, including me, were pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to install drivers on these things where the drivers needed a floppy disk to install. If you have a network, and you still have an older Mac hooked up to it, then you can at least write disk images and transfer the images to the blue/white. That is very clumsy and not excusable. Not only that, have you ever tried installing ODBC on a blue/white? Have fun, it requires a multiple floppy install. Unfortunatly the USB drivers don't allow for multiple disk installs, and mounted disk images do not recognize this as well. Go figure.
Hey, I understand the floppy drive is a dying medium. For most businesses it is hardly useful, however alot of home users and software installation still require the use of floppies. It was awfully premature for Apple to just rip support for floppies, making users have to go out and purchase additional hardware just to get their Mac going. I use floppy disks all the time. They are useful and cheap for moving small things around, expecially to computers that are not networked. Contrary to popular belief the entire world is not networked yet.
A much more accurate set-up would not be the one that you described. Seeing as how the MacOS GUI allows no themeing(With the exception of 3rd party hacks that can render everything unstable) It would be a bit unfair to compare E to the MacOS. A much more fair compare would be something like Afterstep, or Blackbox. While these two do allow themeing, it is much more on the MacOS level, and are both extremely light on the memory overhead. You'll be seeing total overheard numbers much nearer to 20 megabytes.
Additionally, your 14 number is for a very stripped down default MacOS. On anything above 8.6 You'll be hard pressed to find it using less than 30 megabytes. I've seen it get bloated all the way up into the 70s, expecially with MacOS 9.
GNOME actually provides quite a bit more functionality than the stripped MacOS, a simple root menu provides about the same functionality.
Two apprentices follow their master on a journey far into unknown lands. He has spoken of a great work of art that the ancients built. When they arrived the first apprentice looked upon the site and turned to the master in disgust.
"It is old and broken down! It does not mean anything to me, today."
The second apprentice looked back at the master and said, "I see from these olden people, how we will fail in the future."
Wary of this failure the apprentice established a way to circumvent failure.
Your point is very valid. However I did not say that seamless integration necessarily == instability. I said that is one reason for Mac/Windows instability. It is not a good thing, expecially for a server product where no GUI is even necessary, much less wanted. Why waste the extra 20 odd megabytes of data for a machine that sits in a closet without a moniter.
This of course raises the issue that Corel Linux is not a server product, well his comments were directed more towards the Linux GUI in general, and GUIs in general. Yes, Corel Linux is a desktop oriented distribution, and there is contraversy over such a thing should even exist, but that is another topic for another time.
For the BeOS, that is fine that it is integrated, it is not a server. For a graphic workstation it is not as much of a problem, but there still comes a time when it is good to drop as many services as possible(telinit 1) and do maintenance. Therefore I think that BeOS could benefit from a seperated architecture, though, as you said it is not entirely necessary for all occasions.
With a graphics workstation it almost becomes just an option, but it isn't, that is my point.
I love how some people attempt one thing, or one method, and then instantly assume that an entire zone of reality is corrupted, or tainted by that one experience. Take for example, the person I am replying too:
I installed Corel Linux last weekend. Fast install. Only one reboot. The UI sucks, redraws (on a P133/64MB) take too long, severe UI inconsistancies.
So, you had a bad experience with Corel Linux, what did you do to rectify that situation? Did you attempt to tweak it at all? Maybe stop using the default KDE interface and look into some of the lighter meaner offerings in Window Managers? By the tone of your note I highly doubt it, but I had to ask.
Windows or the MacOSX are light years away from any Linux shell.
Ah, here we go. This is the blanket statement. This is roughly akin to saying, "I bought a Red Ford the other day and I had problems painting it blue.....Cars Suck!! I am going back to horses."
Sir, if you had a bad experience with Corel Linux, you need to explain what you did to try and fix it, if you did nothing, then you have no excuse to be whining and bickering about it. If you did try, and it was too hard, well then maybe Linux isn't for you.
One side note, seamless integration with a GUI is not a good thing. This is one of the reasons why both Windows and the Mac have stability problems. The GUI interface should be a seperate affair.
UI-wise, Apple has never pulled the rug under users and developers.
Well, that is of course overlooking their QuickTime 4.0 movie player! Incidentally hailed as one of the worst designs for a program by UI experts worldwide.
Their video editing studio, (the name of which escapes me at the moment.) was also extremely lacking in the common sense dept. and deviated greatly from their past pattern.
So go ahead, trust Apple. Latest trends do not serve you a good feeling on a plate though. They have consistently placed eye-candy over useability with their newest software.
This is one of the first things that I thought of when I read this article. There are alot of factors that have not been considered as far as the so-called 'metaphysical' goes. There is a rising sentiment not only in the social community, but in the scientific community, that there is more to humanity than just responsive thought. A noteable example of this is research that is being done at Princeton, with the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, or P.E.A.R.
We are getting to the point where we can almost empirically proove that the mind can alter something that otherwise should be random. That is just one area of research, there is much more. This page has many many links to similiar projects.
What are the consequences of simply replicating thought patterns in a machine? There is much to the brain that we do not understand, could it be that there is much with how it interfaces with what we have come to believe in as "reality."
What if, and this is highly speculatory, the reality as we know it, is highly controlled by our unconscious minds? What would happen to the stability of our reality if humanity were to inject itself into 'thought' machines? Can we even speculate? There could be alot of things that happen around us that we take for granted that are merely results of our unconscious will. If we injected ourselves into a machine, would that collapse?
Firstly, Tesla developed his AC generating system at the beginning of his career, BEFORE he did his work on broadcast power, so saying they picked AC over broadcast ower is simply untrue. At the time, the choice was between AC and DC.
I am aware of the fact that it was as choice between AC and DC. At the time Edison had organized at least one district to be run on DC, but it was horribly inefficient, caused fires, and had incredible maintance fees to keep it working.
At the time, Tesla's original 3-phase, 60hz AC system was exactly what was needed. Where the industry and science went wrong was stopping its research. It would not have been as difficult then to keep up with Tesla's progressing research findings as might be thought. Additionally, if power companies and corporations had seen the merit in his research, he could have been well supplied with the funds and staff necessary to go even further than he did, virtually on his own.
Many of Tesla's later experiments used current which was definately powerful enough to be deadly, like the lightning generator he made out in Colorado.
This is a bad example, the reason that it was dangerous is because it was wired into faulty systems, and Tesla overlooked the high-frequency feedback problems, starting fires at Colorado Power(not quite right?), because of improper grounding. Another thing to not forget is that he was basically unleashing all of that electricity in the open, it was entirely unguarded. In a controlled enviroment things would not have been so bad.
Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area.
Using a grid of 'boosters' a feild could be sustained over a large area. Theoretical models, where each home would have a booster, likewise, each block would have a bigger one, have been attempted on a small scale, and theoretically could work.
Lastly, even if the laws of physics didn't make broadcast power impossible, it would have been economically infeasible precisely because it couldn't be billed for in proportion to its use. Do you think kilowatt-hours grow on trees?
Actually alot of his later research was spent getting close to discovering how to use the earth as a power source I believe. This would make the production of electricity automatic in a sense. The "power companies" would simply be responsible for distributing something that already was freely available. ie. Keeping the feild equipment operational.
Hey, this is all theoretical stuff, and alot of his research was lost. We have reason to believe that he was alot closer to answering some of the problems you have raised. Unfortunatly they were all for the most part lost in the 'accidental' fire that destroyed his work.
Let me ask you this, since we can assume with for the most part little doubt, that the fire was intentionally set. Why did the arsonists go through all of that risk and trouble just to destroy a little science fiction, as you seem to think it to be? I think he had alot more going for him than we realize.
You have been decieved by the modern misconception engine. Adopting the current electricity grid and power system that we use today was perhaps one of the biggest -Blunders- ever made. The current system uses very low frequency power, making it extremely dangerous to living beings. It was adopted because it could be metered and distributed at a cost.
Tesla went on to research high-frequency electricity that could be distributed -without- wiring, and most importantly, without risk to living matter. Have you ever seen what fluorescent lights do in a Tesla feild? They glow nicely, now...take the light out of the socket. Wow, it still glows and it isn't even plugged in! Now get this, take an old tube that is burned out and try the same thing...it -still- glows.
Now, try to zap yourself with this electrical source. It isn't going to happen. Why? Because the frequency rate is so high that the current passes directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react.
Why wasn't this adopted? Because the corporations were afraid of something they could not charge for. They saw BIG bucks in metered power. Having feild generators and house boosters would be impossible to meter. They could only charge a flat rate for the equipment loans at best.
You are right, Edison had it all backwards with DC, but stopping with the current AC implimentation we have today was a huge mistake. All of the lives lost to electricution, all of the power lost because of line waste, all of the light bulbs you have ever bought in your life are just a few of the reasons why this was a -blunder- not a great acheivement.
...would be to store the id3 tags 'offline' so that when the client clicks on the file it could then upload the id3 tag to the server and then send it to the client. An id3 tag is not big, so that would not be too much of a problem. I don't see any reason for Napster to have all of the id3 tags online for instant demand.
From the FAQ, since it does not seem that you took the time to read the entire thing.
Q: Will I have to run Windows to run BeOS 5? A: No. Although we will offer an installation as described above that will allow you run BeOS from within Windows without repartitioning your hard drive, you will still be able to run BeOS as a stand-alone operating system.
The rest of your comment is pretty much just your opinion, I don't happen to agree with you on all points. It would be nice if they open-sourced it, that would definatly have benefits. But I think it is a good enough move on their part to just give it away for free to start out. I'm not going to fuss about that, I have been wanting to try out BeOS for quite some time, but don't really have the money to throw around on things that I wouldn't use regularly. So this is a good thing.
I am from the great lakes area. I moved here recently from the west coast. I was actually very surprised when I got here because I was plagued with a number of requests for people to help me install Linux on their computers. Word had gotten around, people had heard it was 'cool' and wanted to try it out. These are normal people I am talking about, AOL junkies who just figured out how to operate ICQ. I actually had to turn one person down because I knew that this person would not have a clue in the Linux environment.
There are alot of people here that know what it is, and when I say that I am a Linux geek they usually respond with a, 'Whoa that is cool, I have been wanting to get into that." Since I have moved here I have helped to convert 3 people.
Now, it may help that I am about 5 minutes from a University. It isn't a technical University, but sometimes that can make a whole lot of difference.
Incidentally the University just switched over all of their old Sun servers to Linux machines.:)
There is something here that bothers me. No, it is not the fact that people are doing real-time adverts, nor is it the fact that we can now do real-time manipulation[0]. The thing that is bothering me, actually, is the response to this issue.
You see, this is nothing new. Every since the first monkey[1] picked up a bone and thought to itself, "tool." We have had trickery, backstabbing, conning, and deception. Humanity suffers from an incredible amount of want, the want of more possessions. Humanity will do just about anything, including defacing his/her personal reputation and good worth, simply for a few more possessions. Not all is bad of course, ever since deception, we had the ones seeking out the deceptors and uncovering them for what they are.
It has been a game of tag since day one. What we are seeing now is the very evident cycle where the greedy have found ways to circumvent what used to be an unstoppable barrier of truth: Namely, photographs and the moving picture. For years these two technologies bared life for what it really was, and could even be used as evidence in courts of law.
What we are seeing is essentially no different than a gang of crackers circumventing new software bugs, and the developers coming up with new patches to fix the bugs, albeit at a much slower pace. We are already to the point where everybody looks twice at a picture. Simply everything is run through a computer now, and sometimes it is getting very tricky to spot the evidence of computer tampering[2]. Now we just need to readjust to the fact that video, even live video, is becomming just as vulnerable to dupery as a pre-shot film. Nobody has placed truth in pre-shot film for a very long time now[3], and soon people won't place so much validity in live film.
This isn't a bad thing, nor is it a good thing, it simply is the way things are. We had, for about 60 or 70 years, a very good medium for 'prooving' things. Before that there was just paintings, sketches, and word of mouth. We may have to go back to that, we may come up with something new and revolutionary, who knows! Times change, people just need to realize that change is not evil.
With all of that being said, I'm going to go back a tad and state my opinion. I think this is excellent news. The ability to manipulate moving pictures in real time brings us one step closer to an entirely new, and interactive form of entertainment. Sure, it will bring along with it the sleazy car salesmen and whatnot...as do all new technologies. I prefer to look at how such developments will aid humanity instead of dwelling on the abuse, the abuse can be ignored. Turn off your television and do something constructive for a change[4]. It isn't that difficult.
.:. Starface ------------------
[0] There seems to be two arguments going on. One against advertising in general which is a tad bizarre if you ask me, the other is pro/con real-time manipulation. [1] Or, perfect, wonderfully created being. Whatever your cup of tea is. [2] I worked at a job where it was my description to 'fix' photographs. I know the tricks of the trade, there are alot of adverts and photos out there that are tampered. [3] See here, for an excellent demonstration of that. [4] Try literature and a cup of Earl Grey.
I could be incorrect about this, but I believe that stations have a certain block of advertising time set aside for 'Local' adverts. The local businesses still want to get their word out, and with so many people subscribing to cable instead of just using the free television waves, they were losing airtime. So I think it is a planned thing, not just a local cable company oversplicing their own ads in.
Another excellent book that covers the topic of nanotechnologies impact on society is Diamond Age, by Neil Stephensen. The point of the book is covering another topic, but he also goes in depth on the issue of nanotechnology, and how the system could be easily abused.
Plus, as with any Stephensen book, reading it is a great ride.
Actually it takes a full one second for the three blink.
Okay, let's say you access menu functions about 100 times a day. This depends greatly on the software you use. If you use adobe software that is realistic because they don't believe in the powers of user customization. Alot of menu commands have no keyboard equal.
That is one minute and forty seconds of wasted time a day. Working 5 days a week (don't you wish!) for one month, that adds up to thirty-three minutes and twenty seconds! If you are a graphics professional that means, in one year, you will have spent almost SEVEN hours waiting for some little stupid menu animation.
Now, I realize that this menu "feature" can be turned off, but you would be surprised how many professionals arn't aware of that setting.
I guess I just have a problem with using 10% of a 256 megabyte machine simply to have nicer looking icons.
An icon need only protray what the icon will do when clicked upon. We don't need full color representations of the Mona Lisa sitting in our RAM, bloating the OS into the 40+ megabyte arena.
Furthermore, not many people are actually going to be using the full 128x128 size. That is extremely huge. So for the most part this investment is a complete waste.
Do you know how quickly that 'liquid funneling warping cool thing' will get extremely annoying and obnoxious to a user trying to get some real work done? You are talking to a person that hates that 3-blink menu option because you have to waste time waiting for the menu to blink-blink-blink before it does the operation.
I don't want to have to sit there and wait while my windows do HollyWood tricks when I iconize them.
Just a couple of notes that I can see as problems from looking at this screenshot:
1. Window buttons are specified merely by location and color. This is completely unintuitive. What does a green button do?
2. There seems to be a complete lack of window framing. This is not a good thing. This is the biggest issue that I have with NeXt and the MacOS. They insist on placing controllers at corners of the window, leaving the rest of the window frame non-functional at best.
You should be able to raise, lower, iconify, move, resize, and access a window-operation menu from all sides of the window. There is no need to make the user travel 500+ pixels just to seek a too-small button for window ops.
3. Transparency is nice...but what is it doing? In other words, what functionality is it adding? To me the slight view of what is under the menu is a bit distracting, and keep in mind this is a controlled screenshot setup. You get a computer with normal usage and you have windows and text all over the place, such a transparent menu would get additionally garbled. I am not a big fan of adding lots of glitz to distract from a lack of functionality. MetaCreations' interfaces are a good example of this. They have some of the worst interfaces, but very glitzy.
4. I can't quite tell what is at the bottom of the screen, but it looks somewhat like a NeXtish wharf? If this is the case, what is the point of multiple sized icons? Why are they so big? This is wasting an awefull lot of screen space, and I have a feeling, underneath, alot of RAM to handle those huge 24bpp icons.
5. Look closely at the scrollbar. Bad tiling effect, wouldn't a simple pixel stretch be a much better solution than a graphic block that tiles? It would be much more memory efficient and accurate.
6. As long as you can make that toolbar on the finder text only, or small buttons that is fine. Huge buttons are a mistake otherwise.
7. It is too bad that it doesn't look like they are going to be using the root-menu concept. This is much more efficient than having to travel all the way to the corner of your screen to access launcher menus. Also I am a bit dissapointed to see that they are sticking with the 'seperated-menu' idea that has been apart of the MacOS for so long. It is completely innefficient to have a menu bar way up in the corner, expecially if it is for a small little app in the lower right of your screen. The argument for this is screen space? Well if that is such an issue incorporate multiple desktops. There is no reason to travel thousands of pixels to access a un-hotkeyed menu function (bad concept in itself).
All in all, it looks snazzy, that doesn't make it good, just snazzy. I'd like to see how it performs on anything less than a blue/white. If it can't even work decently, well, then...that -is- why people are switching to Linux. Modern misconception "Create fancy looking real world metaphore interfaces to make a good UI" Bad mistake, a computer is a computer, not a hand held walkman or DVD viewer. The volume control does not need to be a little spinny thing that is impossible to determine what the current volume setting is at. It looks like they fixed that with this newer version at least. But the concept remains true, you cannot replace efficiency and functionality with jazzy graphics. Of course I can't really say much until I've actually used it. Maybe it is efficient to use, but from what I see: I see the same old mistakes, and some new ones, being done.
Click here for a good page on the Dos and Don'ts of user interfaces.
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Your angst is incredibly misplaced. You missed the point of what I was saying. One, you should not have to buy lots of things to make your computer whole. Apple has always had this problem. You have to buy lots of little shareware programs to make the OS do things that everybody is doing for free, by default. It just was a bit disturbing that now you had to buy floppy drives, thousand dollar PCI bays, and 2 different kinds of SCSI cards just to get the thing back into a useable state.
"The option to buy more." Is a sorry state of affairs if you ask me. It would not have cost Apple any more to have created a box with the right number of PCI bays and an internal SCSI configuration to help ease the transition, and a floppy drive for goodness sakes. If they would have allocated 25% of what they spent on trying to make the thing "look cool" they would have had a decent box. As it was, it shipped incredibly buggy, half of its drivers incomplete, totally incompatible with everything Apple had ever been doing, and equiped with a dinky mouse and keyboard. Just to 'ship it on time' but 'boy it sure looks neat' Well they have fixed some of the problems, other problems they still have left hanging, such as the really really un-professional input devices.
In short, Apple does not have my loyalty because they have their priorities all over the place, not where they should be. This looks to be true of their new Aqua as well. Completely misplaced priorities. Sure making something look cool sells big. Nobody is going to debate that. I just feel sorry for all of the suckers who fell for it. (Incidentally I never would have purchased a blue/white, I kinda had one dumped in my lap at my last place of work.)
You quibble. The point he made is valid...many hardware companies still use floppies for their drivers. Many...so discarding the floppy drive is sorely premature. It does not matter what your ideals are in this matter. The companies are still using floppies, so live with that. And yes we used quark at work, and yes that was a mess. But ODBC was by far a worse mess.
His second point is incredibly valid and it is a point that lots of people on these tech boards miss. Many people still use floppies Not everybody is hooked up to 100mB ethernet in the world! Not everybody has CD-RW burners. Not everybody has JAZ or ZIP disks. Lots of people rely on the cheap, standard form of transfer, the floppy. As for losing five hours of work? Well, I have never lost information on a floppy disk myself. I suppose that is because I take care of it. But even then, I never put the only copy on the floppy. If somebody does that then they somewhat deserve it if they lose it. The individual's ignorance of common safety practices does not enter into this conversation.
One thing that you have to remember when quoting memory figures between the MacOS and Linux is that while the numbers may seem a bit larger on the Linux side at times, that is not as bad as large numbers on the Mac side. 30 megabytes of RAM for Navigator is very bad for the Mac because absolutely no other programs can access that RAM, whereas with Linux it is all swapped around to the process that need it at the time. It is more fair to take your numbers from the RSS column in top, but still, you can not just swap numbers and say one is better than the other.
Blackbox is what I like best (now that I've wrestled GNOME and KDE off my system--just needs reconfiguring); should be fine for what I usually do with it
...by losing all the redundant or needlessly destabilizing extensions and libs it comes loaded with.
:))
:) Just for that functionality, Kaleidascope is a good deal. Another good add-on app is ProgramSwitcher, sadly you have to pay for that one. Yet another thing that should be integrated into the core-OS, as you said. While there is a functional taskbar/switcher that comes with 8.5, it isn't very featureful, and ProgramSwitcher is excellent if you do alot of work in the MacOS.
Blockbox is very smooth, and since it uses vectors to describe window decorations, it has a very small footprint. I suggest it to anybody who has a liking for NeXtish interfaces. If you like a little more, well there are other alternatives. IceWM is also a good light WM, but with more configurability and keyboard support from what I have seen. While it uses pixmaps, it uses them very efficiently.
Yes, it is possible to do alot of trimming down, but in my opinion this is just as strenuous, and potentially even more dangerous for a 'typical user' as adjusting which WM is the default in Linux. That would be akin to a new user ripping kernel modules in and out. (Without the standard required MacOS reboot of course
Regarding E's and GNOME's functionalities, I've found them to match a lot of "hidden" functionality in MacOS that almost no one uses, because almost no one needs it, and it's not covered in the installed "Help" system. For example, MacOS already has a handy, configurable taskbar I've never seen anyone but me using.
In a sense, you are right. Yes, I have seen the MacOS taskbar. It is rather kludgy though in my opinion, and requires a ridiculous amount of keyboard mouseclick gymnastics to get it into a form that is usable for me. While alot of E+Gnome's abilities can be matched with sometimes arcane, or relatively expensive shareware addons, I can think of alot of features in E+Gnome that do not have a parallel in either the MacOS or Windows. Such as anti-aliased text, transparent operations, user extensible "themeing" (which goes way beyond simple UI adjustments) Window grouping which is extremely useful (links windows together so that any actions performed on them is mirrored on the others in the group, of course, how mirrored is configurable). View and manage multiple desktops (A standard on the X Windowing system for the most part anyway) Provide a host of snazzy special effects that leave your jaw dropped (Setting your background to a picture of the earth over water and turning on the desktop ripple effect is quite awesome). There is much more, check out both the Gnome and E sites for all the info.
And, again, with MacOS, themes are a "hidden" functionality (that shareware connivers have used to take advantage of morons by re-selling the same thing to them; the Mac world is rife with "shareware abuse," like ten-line compiled Applescripts selling for $20).
Well, manually adjusting all of the pixmaps with rezedit would be a bit of a hassle
As you said in closing, both OSes require you to do a little tweaking to get them where they are optimal. Out of the box, Redhat 6.1 provides a rich set of features and power, but on a smaller machine it is -too- much, like you said. Out of the box the MacOS is slim and not very beefy, it requires alot of knowledge about 'hidden' features to get it up to par. Both require the user to know a little extra to get more out of their system.
You are lucky. Alot of people, including me, were pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to install drivers on these things where the drivers needed a floppy disk to install. If you have a network, and you still have an older Mac hooked up to it, then you can at least write disk images and transfer the images to the blue/white. That is very clumsy and not excusable. Not only that, have you ever tried installing ODBC on a blue/white? Have fun, it requires a multiple floppy install. Unfortunatly the USB drivers don't allow for multiple disk installs, and mounted disk images do not recognize this as well. Go figure.
Hey, I understand the floppy drive is a dying medium. For most businesses it is hardly useful, however alot of home users and software installation still require the use of floppies. It was awfully premature for Apple to just rip support for floppies, making users have to go out and purchase additional hardware just to get their Mac going. I use floppy disks all the time. They are useful and cheap for moving small things around, expecially to computers that are not networked. Contrary to popular belief the entire world is not networked yet.
A much more accurate set-up would not be the one that you described. Seeing as how the MacOS GUI allows no themeing(With the exception of 3rd party hacks that can render everything unstable) It would be a bit unfair to compare E to the MacOS. A much more fair compare would be something like Afterstep, or Blackbox. While these two do allow themeing, it is much more on the MacOS level, and are both extremely light on the memory overhead. You'll be seeing total overheard numbers much nearer to 20 megabytes.
Additionally, your 14 number is for a very stripped down default MacOS. On anything above 8.6 You'll be hard pressed to find it using less than 30 megabytes. I've seen it get bloated all the way up into the 70s, expecially with MacOS 9.
GNOME actually provides quite a bit more functionality than the stripped MacOS, a simple root menu provides about the same functionality.
Two apprentices follow their master on a journey far into unknown lands. He has spoken of a great work of art that the ancients built. When they arrived the first apprentice looked upon the site and turned to the master in disgust.
"It is old and broken down! It does not mean anything to me, today."
The second apprentice looked back at the master and said, "I see from these olden people, how we will fail in the future."
Wary of this failure the apprentice established a way to circumvent failure.
The master smiled, for it was his creation.
Your point is very valid. However I did not say that seamless integration necessarily == instability. I said that is one reason for Mac/Windows instability. It is not a good thing, expecially for a server product where no GUI is even necessary, much less wanted. Why waste the extra 20 odd megabytes of data for a machine that sits in a closet without a moniter.
This of course raises the issue that Corel Linux is not a server product, well his comments were directed more towards the Linux GUI in general, and GUIs in general. Yes, Corel Linux is a desktop oriented distribution, and there is contraversy over such a thing should even exist, but that is another topic for another time.
For the BeOS, that is fine that it is integrated, it is not a server. For a graphic workstation it is not as much of a problem, but there still comes a time when it is good to drop as many services as possible(telinit 1) and do maintenance. Therefore I think that BeOS could benefit from a seperated architecture, though, as you said it is not entirely necessary for all occasions.
With a graphics workstation it almost becomes just an option, but it isn't, that is my point.
I love how some people attempt one thing, or one method, and then instantly assume that an entire zone of reality is corrupted, or tainted by that one experience. Take for example, the person I am replying too:
I installed Corel Linux last weekend. Fast install. Only one reboot. The UI sucks, redraws (on a P133/64MB) take too long, severe UI inconsistancies.
So, you had a bad experience with Corel Linux, what did you do to rectify that situation? Did you attempt to tweak it at all? Maybe stop using the default KDE interface and look into some of the lighter meaner offerings in Window Managers? By the tone of your note I highly doubt it, but I had to ask.
Windows or the MacOSX are light years away from any Linux shell.
Ah, here we go. This is the blanket statement. This is roughly akin to saying, "I bought a Red Ford the other day and I had problems painting it blue.....Cars Suck!! I am going back to horses."
Sir, if you had a bad experience with Corel Linux, you need to explain what you did to try and fix it, if you did nothing, then you have no excuse to be whining and bickering about it. If you did try, and it was too hard, well then maybe Linux isn't for you.
One side note, seamless integration with a GUI is not a good thing. This is one of the reasons why both Windows and the Mac have stability problems. The GUI interface should be a seperate affair.
UI-wise, Apple has never pulled the rug under users and developers.
Well, that is of course overlooking their QuickTime 4.0 movie player! Incidentally hailed as one of the worst designs for a program by UI experts worldwide.
Their video editing studio, (the name of which escapes me at the moment.) was also extremely lacking in the common sense dept. and deviated greatly from their past pattern.
So go ahead, trust Apple. Latest trends do not serve you a good feeling on a plate though. They have consistently placed eye-candy over useability with their newest software.
Not a Good Thing
This is one of the first things that I thought of when I read this article. There are alot of factors that have not been considered as far as the so-called 'metaphysical' goes. There is a rising sentiment not only in the social community, but in the scientific community, that there is more to humanity than just responsive thought. A noteable example of this is research that is being done at Princeton, with the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, or P.E.A.R.
We are getting to the point where we can almost empirically proove that the mind can alter something that otherwise should be random. That is just one area of research, there is much more. This page has many many links to similiar projects.
What are the consequences of simply replicating thought patterns in a machine? There is much to the brain that we do not understand, could it be that there is much with how it interfaces with what we have come to believe in as "reality."
What if, and this is highly speculatory, the reality as we know it, is highly controlled by our unconscious minds? What would happen to the stability of our reality if humanity were to inject itself into 'thought' machines? Can we even speculate? There could be alot of things that happen around us that we take for granted that are merely results of our unconscious will. If we injected ourselves into a machine, would that collapse?
Firstly, Tesla developed his AC generating system at the beginning of his career, BEFORE he did his work on broadcast power, so saying they picked AC over broadcast ower is simply untrue. At the time, the choice was between AC and DC.
I am aware of the fact that it was as choice between AC and DC. At the time Edison had organized at least one district to be run on DC, but it was horribly inefficient, caused fires, and had incredible maintance fees to keep it working.
At the time, Tesla's original 3-phase, 60hz AC system was exactly what was needed. Where the industry and science went wrong was stopping its research. It would not have been as difficult then to keep up with Tesla's progressing research findings as might be thought. Additionally, if power companies and corporations had seen the merit in his research, he could have been well supplied with the funds and staff necessary to go even further than he did, virtually on his own.
Many of Tesla's later experiments used current which was definately powerful enough to be deadly, like the lightning generator he made out in Colorado.
This is a bad example, the reason that it was dangerous is because it was wired into faulty systems, and Tesla overlooked the high-frequency feedback problems, starting fires at Colorado Power(not quite right?), because of improper grounding. Another thing to not forget is that he was basically unleashing all of that electricity in the open, it was entirely unguarded. In a controlled enviroment things would not have been so bad.
Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area.
Using a grid of 'boosters' a feild could be sustained over a large area. Theoretical models, where each home would have a booster, likewise, each block would have a bigger one, have been attempted on a small scale, and theoretically could work.
Lastly, even if the laws of physics didn't make broadcast power impossible, it would have been economically infeasible precisely because it couldn't be billed for in proportion to its use. Do you think kilowatt-hours grow on trees?
Actually alot of his later research was spent getting close to discovering how to use the earth as a power source I believe. This would make the production of electricity automatic in a sense. The "power companies" would simply be responsible for distributing something that already was freely available. ie. Keeping the feild equipment operational.
Hey, this is all theoretical stuff, and alot of his research was lost. We have reason to believe that he was alot closer to answering some of the problems you have raised. Unfortunatly they were all for the most part lost in the 'accidental' fire that destroyed his work.
Let me ask you this, since we can assume with for the most part little doubt, that the fire was intentionally set. Why did the arsonists go through all of that risk and trouble just to destroy a little science fiction, as you seem to think it to be? I think he had alot more going for him than we realize.
You have been decieved by the modern misconception engine. Adopting the current electricity grid and power system that we use today was perhaps one of the biggest -Blunders- ever made. The current system uses very low frequency power, making it extremely dangerous to living beings. It was adopted because it could be metered and distributed at a cost.
Tesla went on to research high-frequency electricity that could be distributed -without- wiring, and most importantly, without risk to living matter. Have you ever seen what fluorescent lights do in a Tesla feild? They glow nicely, now...take the light out of the socket. Wow, it still glows and it isn't even plugged in! Now get this, take an old tube that is burned out and try the same thing...it -still- glows.
Now, try to zap yourself with this electrical source. It isn't going to happen. Why? Because the frequency rate is so high that the current passes directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react.
Why wasn't this adopted? Because the corporations were afraid of something they could not charge for. They saw BIG bucks in metered power. Having feild generators and house boosters would be impossible to meter. They could only charge a flat rate for the equipment loans at best.
You are right, Edison had it all backwards with DC, but stopping with the current AC implimentation we have today was a huge mistake. All of the lives lost to electricution, all of the power lost because of line waste, all of the light bulbs you have ever bought in your life are just a few of the reasons why this was a -blunder- not a great acheivement.
...would be to store the id3 tags 'offline' so that when the client clicks on the file it could then upload the id3 tag to the server and then send it to the client. An id3 tag is not big, so that would not be too much of a problem. I don't see any reason for Napster to have all of the id3 tags online for instant demand.
Hey if you are looking for a good junkbuster script there is a pretty effective one posted in the Tuning section at linux.com.
From the FAQ, since it does not seem that you took the time to read the entire thing.
Q: Will I have to run Windows to run BeOS 5?
A: No. Although we will offer an installation as described above that will allow you run BeOS from within Windows without repartitioning your hard drive, you will still be able to run BeOS as a stand-alone operating system.
The rest of your comment is pretty much just your opinion, I don't happen to agree with you on all points. It would be nice if they open-sourced it, that would definatly have benefits. But I think it is a good enough move on their part to just give it away for free to start out. I'm not going to fuss about that, I have been wanting to try out BeOS for quite some time, but don't really have the money to throw around on things that I wouldn't use regularly. So this is a good thing.
I am from the great lakes area. I moved here recently from the west coast. I was actually very surprised when I got here because I was plagued with a number of requests for people to help me install Linux on their computers. Word had gotten around, people had heard it was 'cool' and wanted to try it out. These are normal people I am talking about, AOL junkies who just figured out how to operate ICQ. I actually had to turn one person down because I knew that this person would not have a clue in the Linux environment.
:)
There are alot of people here that know what it is, and when I say that I am a Linux geek they usually respond with a, 'Whoa that is cool, I have been wanting to get into that." Since I have moved here I have helped to convert 3 people.
Now, it may help that I am about 5 minutes from a University. It isn't a technical University, but sometimes that can make a whole lot of difference.
Incidentally the University just switched over all of their old Sun servers to Linux machines.
There is something here that bothers me. No, it is not the fact that people are doing real-time adverts, nor is it the fact that we can now do real-time manipulation[0]. The thing that is bothering me, actually, is the response to this issue.
You see, this is nothing new. Every since the first monkey[1] picked up a bone and thought to itself, "tool." We have had trickery, backstabbing, conning, and deception. Humanity suffers from an incredible amount of want, the want of more possessions. Humanity will do just about anything, including defacing his/her personal reputation and good worth, simply for a few more possessions. Not all is bad of course, ever since deception, we had the ones seeking out the deceptors and uncovering them for what they are.
It has been a game of tag since day one. What we are seeing now is the very evident cycle where the greedy have found ways to circumvent what used to be an unstoppable barrier of truth: Namely, photographs and the moving picture. For years these two technologies bared life for what it really was, and could even be used as evidence in courts of law.
What we are seeing is essentially no different than a gang of crackers circumventing new software bugs, and the developers coming up with new patches to fix the bugs, albeit at a much slower pace. We are already to the point where everybody looks twice at a picture. Simply everything is run through a computer now, and sometimes it is getting very tricky to spot the evidence of computer tampering[2]. Now we just need to readjust to the fact that video, even live video, is becomming just as vulnerable to dupery as a pre-shot film. Nobody has placed truth in pre-shot film for a very long time now[3], and soon people won't place so much validity in live film.
This isn't a bad thing, nor is it a good thing, it simply is the way things are. We had, for about 60 or 70 years, a very good medium for 'prooving' things. Before that there was just paintings, sketches, and word of mouth. We may have to go back to that, we may come up with something new and revolutionary, who knows! Times change, people just need to realize that change is not evil.
With all of that being said, I'm going to go back a tad and state my opinion. I think this is excellent news. The ability to manipulate moving pictures in real time brings us one step closer to an entirely new, and interactive form of entertainment. Sure, it will bring along with it the sleazy car salesmen and whatnot...as do all new technologies. I prefer to look at how such developments will aid humanity instead of dwelling on the abuse, the abuse can be ignored. Turn off your television and do something constructive for a change[4]. It isn't that difficult.
.:. Starface
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[0] There seems to be two arguments going on. One against advertising in general which is a tad bizarre if you ask me, the other is pro/con real-time manipulation.
[1] Or, perfect, wonderfully created being. Whatever your cup of tea is.
[2] I worked at a job where it was my description to 'fix' photographs. I know the tricks of the trade, there are alot of adverts and photos out there that are tampered.
[3] See here, for an excellent demonstration of that.
[4] Try literature and a cup of Earl Grey.
I could be incorrect about this, but I believe that stations have a certain block of advertising time set aside for 'Local' adverts. The local businesses still want to get their word out, and with so many people subscribing to cable instead of just using the free television waves, they were losing airtime. So I think it is a planned thing, not just a local cable company oversplicing their own ads in.
Again, could be wrong about this.
Did you use Megahal to generate this or something?
Another excellent book that covers the topic of nanotechnologies impact on society is Diamond Age, by Neil Stephensen. The point of the book is covering another topic, but he also goes in depth on the issue of nanotechnology, and how the system could be easily abused.
Plus, as with any Stephensen book, reading it is a great ride.
Actually it takes a full one second for the three blink.
Okay, let's say you access menu functions about 100 times a day. This depends greatly on the software you use. If you use adobe software that is realistic because they don't believe in the powers of user customization. Alot of menu commands have no keyboard equal.
That is one minute and forty seconds of wasted time a day. Working 5 days a week (don't you wish!) for one month, that adds up to thirty-three minutes and twenty seconds! If you are a graphics professional that means, in one year, you will have spent almost SEVEN hours waiting for some little stupid menu animation.
Now, I realize that this menu "feature" can be turned off, but you would be surprised how many professionals arn't aware of that setting.
I guess I just have a problem with using 10% of a 256 megabyte machine simply to have nicer looking icons.
An icon need only protray what the icon will do when clicked upon. We don't need full color representations of the Mona Lisa sitting in our RAM, bloating the OS into the 40+ megabyte arena.
Furthermore, not many people are actually going to be using the full 128x128 size. That is extremely huge. So for the most part this investment is a complete waste.
Do you know how quickly that 'liquid funneling warping cool thing' will get extremely annoying and obnoxious to a user trying to get some real work done? You are talking to a person that hates that 3-blink menu option because you have to waste time waiting for the menu to blink-blink-blink before it does the operation.
I don't want to have to sit there and wait while my windows do HollyWood tricks when I iconize them.
Just a couple of notes that I can see as problems from looking at this screenshot:
1. Window buttons are specified merely by location and color. This is completely unintuitive. What does a green button do?
2. There seems to be a complete lack of window framing. This is not a good thing. This is the biggest issue that I have with NeXt and the MacOS. They insist on placing controllers at corners of the window, leaving the rest of the window frame non-functional at best.
You should be able to raise, lower, iconify, move, resize, and access a window-operation menu from all sides of the window. There is no need to make the user travel 500+ pixels just to seek a too-small button for window ops.
3. Transparency is nice...but what is it doing? In other words, what functionality is it adding? To me the slight view of what is under the menu is a bit distracting, and keep in mind this is a controlled screenshot setup. You get a computer with normal usage and you have windows and text all over the place, such a transparent menu would get additionally garbled. I am not a big fan of adding lots of glitz to distract from a lack of functionality. MetaCreations' interfaces are a good example of this. They have some of the worst interfaces, but very glitzy.
4. I can't quite tell what is at the bottom of the screen, but it looks somewhat like a NeXtish wharf? If this is the case, what is the point of multiple sized icons? Why are they so big? This is wasting an awefull lot of screen space, and I have a feeling, underneath, alot of RAM to handle those huge 24bpp icons.
5. Look closely at the scrollbar. Bad tiling effect, wouldn't a simple pixel stretch be a much better solution than a graphic block that tiles? It would be much more memory efficient and accurate.
6. As long as you can make that toolbar on the finder text only, or small buttons that is fine. Huge buttons are a mistake otherwise.
7. It is too bad that it doesn't look like they are going to be using the root-menu concept. This is much more efficient than having to travel all the way to the corner of your screen to access launcher menus. Also I am a bit dissapointed to see that they are sticking with the 'seperated-menu' idea that has been apart of the MacOS for so long. It is completely innefficient to have a menu bar way up in the corner, expecially if it is for a small little app in the lower right of your screen. The argument for this is screen space? Well if that is such an issue incorporate multiple desktops. There is no reason to travel thousands of pixels to access a un-hotkeyed menu function (bad concept in itself).
All in all, it looks snazzy, that doesn't make it good, just snazzy. I'd like to see how it performs on anything less than a blue/white. If it can't even work decently, well, then...that -is- why people are switching to Linux. Modern misconception "Create fancy looking real world metaphore interfaces to make a good UI" Bad mistake, a computer is a computer, not a hand held walkman or DVD viewer. The volume control does not need to be a little spinny thing that is impossible to determine what the current volume setting is at. It looks like they fixed that with this newer version at least. But the concept remains true, you cannot replace efficiency and functionality with jazzy graphics. Of course I can't really say much until I've actually used it. Maybe it is efficient to use, but from what I see: I see the same old mistakes, and some new ones, being done.
Click here for a good page on the Dos and Don'ts of user interfaces.