There's a difference, though. In Windows, with the exception of spatial tasks, everything can be done with the keyboard. Every item in every menu. Every selection, drop-down and tab in every dialog box. I do a lot of Access and Excel work, and almost never touch the mouse, except for web browsing. I'm easily 3x faster at almost everything I do than mouse-users, because nearly every task I want to accomplish can be done in three or four keystrokes, all beginning with Alt.
I have 4 macs at home, own a boatload of AAPL, and truly believe that either OS9x or OSX is far superior to anything Microsoft has. But I do like the keyboarding.
A lot of the lawmakers who'll be attempting to pass legislation requiring manditory hardware/os-based DRM currently support gun rights.
What's the difference between "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." and "Hard drives don't commit piracy, people commit piracy." I'd like to think that limiting a person's ability to quickly and easily murder from a distance would be more important than limiting their ability to pirate a song. Does anyone here think we'll see laws that force gunmakers to limit what people can shoot at anytime soon?
I don't think cloning iTunes is necessary. I read somewhere that the only difference between the 'playable' directory and the 'regular disk' directory on the iPod is that the former is hidden. Yep, that's it. Hell, it's not even ROT-13.
Also, I don't think there'd be a problem with reformatting the ipod as HFS, although you'd be losing some usable disk space by doing so.
Although it's possible to invent new ways of expressing ideas stripped from the canon, there's no guarantee anyone else will understand you. The first time you use your neologism, the person won't understand until you explain it to him/her. Unless you plan on explaining it personally to each and every English speaker, there's no guarantee the word will mean what you intended when it's in general use. Without the benefit of inclusion in standardized language reference tools, means of expression become pliable, mushy, and undependable. They eventually fail to work. Dictionaries and thesauruses are important.
plutocracy (pl-tkr-s)
n. pl. plutocracies
Government by the wealthy.
A wealthy class that controls a government.
A government or state in which the wealthy rule.
Here, here. Very well argued. To add to your interesting points, LOTR is so good, I've seen people who otherwise aren't much for reading pull themselves through it, consulting a dictionary every third paragraph. There aren't a lot of books that'll do that.
The minute GWBush hit office, energy companies serving California's newly-deregulated market somehow are able to raise their rates thousands (and, in some cases, tens of thousands) of percent, despite flat demand and supply, and relatively low petroleum prices, in the winter, when power use is at its lowest. Does the Bush antitrust team so much as bat an eyelash? Clear its throat? Shift slightly in its seat? No. If blatant monopolists are treated this way, M$ can do anything it wants and get away with it.
...if you made the spring and the crank larger (say 5 feet across) you could store much more energy in it...
You could apply more torque to the system with a longer crank, but you'd have to move the crank further, in direct proportion, to do so. Each crank would require a 15 feet circuit, applying force the whole way. Having a longer lever won't enable you to push harder.
A pulley works the same way - to pick up something twice as heavy, you pull the rope twice as far.
But MacOS X isn't user friendly enough...There's no "We want to appeal to all of the hardcore techies out there" notion inherent in OS X, and there never was.
Well, make up your mind! When most people use the term, "user friendly," they're referring to users, not developers or techno-weenies. The term was itself coined as computers were becoming useful to people other than "hardcore techies." Apple and M$ don't give a rat's ass whether you buy it or not; there's, what, 100,000 of you and potentially billions of just plain old "users." Users, who, btw, are never going to use anything remotely as complex as Linux.
If you're making the point that you don't find either W2k or OSX appealing, fine. But don't accuse someone of "bigotry" simply because he notes that OSX is soon going to be the most widely-used consumer "*nix" distro and you won't be using it.
If the government funded the development, then that person DID write it themselves, and should be able to do whatever they like with it.
Not sure I follow you: if the government funds it, then it's the government that gets to decide how it's released. Just like working for a 'real' company. The coder's been paid for it already, and his/her having lost something in exchange isn't exactly unheard-of.
Someone writes a nice program, then makes it available to you, along with the source, and all people do is bitch about the restrictions of the GPL. Get over it! Don't want restrictions? Then WRITE IT YOURSELF.
Get off the box, people. That goes especially for you, Ballmer.
Another thing M$ is afraid of...
on
Shared Source?
·
· Score: 1
is that the best approach(es) to solving problems will be GPL'd before M$ can get to them itself. Even with all the money in the world and thousands of drones in Redmond, M$ is still no match for the burgeoning ranks of open-source programmers.
More than providing a framework under which an alternative to M$'s products can grow and develop, the GPL takes software out of the domain of corporate IP entirely. And M$ can't buy it, for love (ha!) or money (ha ha!). Slowly but surely, as more software is written and GPL'd, the better avenues for solving problems will be made unavailable to M$, at least theoretically. So long as one hasn't fallen for all the 'shared source' hoo-ha, an open-source programmer is free to use the right method of solving problems, even if he/she happens to stumble onto the same one used by M$.
I'm in favor of distributed testing, a la SETI, etc., to get rid of the whole "configuration bias" b.s. Maybe in a few years, we'll have testing suite software that completely audits the system involved (OS, RAM, HD, # of processes running, settings, etc., etc.), runs the test(s), and then exports results and audit information in xml. Then, after 30,000 ppl. have run the tests on their machines and reported back to, say, Network World, some serious crunching would get to the bottom of the whole thing.
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I have 4 macs at home, own a boatload of AAPL, and truly believe that either OS9x or OSX is far superior to anything Microsoft has. But I do like the keyboarding.
What's the difference between "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." and "Hard drives don't commit piracy, people commit piracy." I'd like to think that limiting a person's ability to quickly and easily murder from a distance would be more important than limiting their ability to pirate a song. Does anyone here think we'll see laws that force gunmakers to limit what people can shoot at anytime soon?
Also, I don't think there'd be a problem with reformatting the ipod as HFS, although you'd be losing some usable disk space by doing so.
Although it's possible to invent new ways of expressing ideas stripped from the canon, there's no guarantee anyone else will understand you. The first time you use your neologism, the person won't understand until you explain it to him/her. Unless you plan on explaining it personally to each and every English speaker, there's no guarantee the word will mean what you intended when it's in general use. Without the benefit of inclusion in standardized language reference tools, means of expression become pliable, mushy, and undependable. They eventually fail to work. Dictionaries and thesauruses are important.
Deep irony.
plutocracy (pl-tkr-s)
n. pl. plutocracies
Government by the wealthy.
A wealthy class that controls a government.
A government or state in which the wealthy rule.
Oh, never mind.
Here, here. Very well argued. To add to your interesting points, LOTR is so good, I've seen people who otherwise aren't much for reading pull themselves through it, consulting a dictionary every third paragraph. There aren't a lot of books that'll do that.
D'oh! Good one.
You could apply more torque to the system with a longer crank, but you'd have to move the crank further, in direct proportion, to do so. Each crank would require a 15 feet circuit, applying force the whole way. Having a longer lever won't enable you to push harder. A pulley works the same way - to pick up something twice as heavy, you pull the rope twice as far.
Well, make up your mind! When most people use the term, "user friendly," they're referring to users, not developers or techno-weenies. The term was itself coined as computers were becoming useful to people other than "hardcore techies." Apple and M$ don't give a rat's ass whether you buy it or not; there's, what, 100,000 of you and potentially billions of just plain old "users." Users, who, btw, are never going to use anything remotely as complex as Linux.
If you're making the point that you don't find either W2k or OSX appealing, fine. But don't accuse someone of "bigotry" simply because he notes that OSX is soon going to be the most widely-used consumer "*nix" distro and you won't be using it.
Not sure I follow you: if the government funds it, then it's the government that gets to decide how it's released. Just like working for a 'real' company. The coder's been paid for it already, and his/her having lost something in exchange isn't exactly unheard-of.
More than providing a framework under which an alternative to M$'s products can grow and develop, the GPL takes software out of the domain of corporate IP entirely. And M$ can't buy it, for love (ha!) or money (ha ha!). Slowly but surely, as more software is written and GPL'd, the better avenues for solving problems will be made unavailable to M$, at least theoretically. So long as one hasn't fallen for all the 'shared source' hoo-ha, an open-source programmer is free to use the right method of solving problems, even if he/she happens to stumble onto the same one used by M$.
The balance is tilting, even as we speak.
I don't care what they look like. All I know is that G4 towers make lousy footrests.
1. Linux users pissed they can't buy boxen without Winx on them.
2. After a lot of heavy lifting, they get their wish and can buy them with nothing preinstalled.
3. Now that a box in itself is no longer proof of having bought Winx, MS can gallop in and get companies to double-pay their licenses.
If this wasn't so sad, I'd be laughing my butt off now.
FWIW, my Turbomouse works just fine on Deus Ex.
Um...no. An $850 imac is OSX-ready. You might want to add $35 for an extra 64mb ram, but it's not required.
I'm in favor of distributed testing, a la SETI, etc., to get rid of the whole "configuration bias" b.s. Maybe in a few years, we'll have testing suite software that completely audits the system involved (OS, RAM, HD, # of processes running, settings, etc., etc.), runs the test(s), and then exports results and audit information in xml. Then, after 30,000 ppl. have run the tests on their machines and reported back to, say, Network World, some serious crunching would get to the bottom of the whole thing.