There is a good reason: cross platform applications.
there are also a bajillion (jillion^2) libraries and class out there in java that can be super handy. just browse freshmeat and you may find that half yr backend is there for you already... and lgpl'd.
real basic? heck, i'd choose applescript over that! you can build a pb/ib project in applescriptvery fast... and, once again, a jillion osaxen for you to plunder.... the drawback, of course, is speed in execution but if you need a prototype right now for that clueless vencap dude...
yes, the basic *concept* of pointers is easy and the implimentation as outlined in the hello world calibre demo code that comes with most tutorials is simple... but the reality of memory management in non-trivial apps is quite different. why do you think there are so many memory profilers and leak-detectors on the market?
in obj-c memory mgmt is much better handled. when you make an object a "reserve" is put on it. when yr done with the object, you "release" it. you can add as many reserves as you want and release them when you wish. when the reserve count finally reaches zero, the object is deallocated. brilliant!
if you find you have objects deallocating prematurely and are losing track of yr reference counting, get the object meter from omni group (makers of omniweb). there's a free demo license that works quite well for the budget-challenged.
atheists... understanding of human conduct recognizes only evolutionary forces i.e. survival- and reproduction- inspired behavior.
so, any human activity other than fighting, eating or reproducing requires a belief in god?
the implications are astounding.
Because they are are judgemental dumbasses. And so are you.
where's the judgement? if one performs a deed of good or evil while under duress we do not say that individual is acting out of anything other than self-interest. a donation made to a charity at gunpoint is not a "good" act. it's a self-preserving act.
the sanctions that accompany the belief in any morality-dictating supernatural force (viz. god) is nothing more than duress or bribery motivating various activities.
i fail to see what you find judgemental about that statement.
If you want to prove a point be a better person than they can hope to deny
theists are incapable of recognizing ethical conduct and moral opinion since their "moral" code is little more than threat-avoidance/reward-driven behaviour (promises of heaven / threats of hell).
behaviour that falls outside of this paradigm is judged exclusively as "bad".
not only is cash anonymous for you the purchaser, it also puts no status restrictions on the seller.
to accept creditcards or interac (i assume you have that in the states as well) the seller must:
have legitimacy in the eyes of the state
hav sufficient money to obtain approval form banks, the state &c.
submit to scrutiny by the banks/state
meeting these requirement excludes a large portion of society (usually the poorest and wekest part) from fulfilling the "seller" role. can you accept credit cards?
while cash is good for the buyer (anonymous, fast &c.) it's impact on the seller is far more significant - not just in maintaining their anonymity but even just allowing them to fill the role of seller at all.
everybody hates job-hunting, so my advice is to make it like a role playing game. you "roll up" a resume and send it off to do battle with various hr creeps. if you "win" (get the job) you gain some experience and skills that you add to your character.
you'll note that i said that " this is how apple presented the gui to the world back in '84." i realize that the parc effort was significantly different... i also realize that it didn't make very far out of the lab.
i'm pretty sure the lisa was out and about before menu-capable x. the single-tasking argument doesn't detract from the shared menu. yes, it was the result of architectural challenges in the os itself, but the single menu is still valid. it led to a menu system that worked. no one saw the need to drastically change that at apple. a good thing!
So then you admit that you need that middle mouse button, emulated or not?
only because the author created that need by writing crappy software. in fact all the extra buttons on mice (ie more than one) are there because of crappy software. witness:
in the old (and current) mac os there is only one menu bar visible at a time. whichever app has focus, has its menu across the top of the screen. this is how apple presented the gui to the world back in '84.
later, some guys from harvard decided it would be much better to attach menus to the title bars of windows. due to this "improvement" it was possible to have dozens of menus visible on screen simultaneously. computer using moms around the world were confused - they select the text, go to get "copy" from the menu and... which menu?
the solution was the advent of the "contextual menu" (the right click menu) and the required hardware to support it. lesson from history: poor software design created hardware to compensate.
if you want 3 or 5 buttons (hell, a second keyboard on wheels) that's yr choice... but remember that those are extra buttons for added features. they should not be required for basic operation. any software that demands extra buttons suffers from feature creep.
1. why would apple ever even consider os x on x86? really, you need to think about this:
remember the clones (aka macsimilies)? that nearly killed apple. hardware profits subsidize os r and d.
2. yes, it's called darwin. yes it's avail on x86. go get it. no, the windowing isn't available (it's called aqua and consists of some Very Neat Technologies).
3. i have rent to pay too. and i own a (couple of) macs.
4.
"underacheivers"? as compared to all those operating systems that were so wildly successful after porting to x86 like beos, solaris x86 and (ironically) openstep.
porting to x86 means being forced to support byzantine hardware and having to convince consumers to not only install yr os but uninstall the one that came with their computer.
if you think there is any good reason for apple to port to intel then you really aren't thinking at all.
the day before yesterday, my friends and i were waist-deep in the old vi-vs-emacs donnybrook (you know the one). reaching and impasse, we decided to seek arbitration with our local unix celebrity (who manages a fairly well-know os project).
his suggestion? mg - it's apparently "like emacs" except "without the bloat".
... of course i'm still going to keep using vim...
Re:Generation X phenomenon
on
Hacker Survey
·
· Score: 2
Oh, and I hate this whole "Generation foo" marketing thing.
when norweigan wood was first published in japan it came in two volumes: one red, the other green. legend (perhaps even fact) has the novel was so popular amongst the university crowd that fans of the book would dress entirely in the colour of the volume they most identified with. street battles are even said to have been waged between the factions.
that may sound a bit far fetched... but don't forget that mishima's literary club, the "shield society", followed him in his attempt to overthrow the government by force of arms.
don't neglect the "old school" japanese lit! murakami has produced some impressive work, but it's important to look at his precursors too. reccommended.
kobo abe - "woman in the dunes". existentialist tragedy that makes camus look like a comic book. avoid the movie (thankfully).
yukio mishima - "the sailor who fell from grace with the sea". mishima tried to overthrow the japanese government by force of arms in the 70's and committed suicide after failing. let's see thomas pynchon do that! alarming parable of post-war reconstruction of japan. depravity, vengence, ennui... it's all here. avoid the movie.
kenzeburo oe - nip the buds shoot the kids. oe won the 1994 nobel prize for literature. this first novel is his grittiest. it's often compared to the lord of the flies but this is only because the main characters are children faced with the difficult decisions of wartime that even adults often cannot deal with. no movie.
of course your mouse only has one button.... it doesn't need any more. provided yr running mac os that is.
witness: in the mac os the menu bar is alwasy located on the top of the screen. in other os's (most notably windows) each window has it's own menu bar. this results in potentially a dozen potential menus on screen at any one time.
how's a user to know which menu to use? microsofts answer was to ad yet another menu to the mix - the "contextual" menu. getting this menu requires a second mouse button. basically, ms radically changed a basic piece of hardware to compensate for crappy design and then through the power of marketing made it a standard.
if you have only one mouse button be thankful your os vendor cares enough to build a good ui.
Re:Reasons I haven't considered Apple yet
on
Apple Wants Your Input
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
1 - Confusing interface
windows puts the shutdown command under a menu called "start". unix leaves the "n" out of umount and has recursive as -r for rm but -R for cp. who's confusing here?
2 - One Button Mouse
you can buy other mice if your a button fetishist. remember tho' that the mouse's primary job is to apply focus. everything else is just feature creep
3 - Customization and configuration is hard to grasp
like what? if you can't figure out netinfo...
4 - Expensive Hardware
you pay more money for slick. it's true. if you think a $5 bottle of wine tastes as good as a $20 bottle of wine then maybe you should stick with yr win xp rig too...
5 - Apple is unpredictable
uh, we like to call that "innovation".
6 - Proprietary platform
sure is. apple makes "widgets". self-contained systems designed to work out of the box. my mom likes it.
7 - OS X is kinda slow
i assume you're still running the public beta. 10.1.2 is snappier than kde on the same machine
8 - I don't like Steve Jobs (I gotta be honest).
fair enough. i don't like bill gates and i don't like rms. lotsa people don't like theo de raat. should i switch to sparc solaris?
9 - We've heard about Apple treatening many Open Source projects (ie. Themes.org OSX theme)
and yet they opened up the entire core of their os. gosh they're so anti-open source.
i don't think this is a list of reasons why you shouldn't buy an "apple" (there actually hasn't been a computer by that name since 1983) but the reasons why you shouldn't by a computer.
you raise very valid points. the reason why i chose vietnam as my initial example were for these reasons exactly: the enemy was diffuse and invisible and for the most part non-positional... however after the rant response about the effectiveness of arial bombing in vietnam and arial bombing in general i felt compelled to point out that bombing more often stiffens the resolve of the bombed than not. london during the blitz, america this week, vietnam during the entire episode there... ever since franco/hitler started the whole concept of anti-civilian arial warfare at geurnica in 1937 that's pretty much been the reaction. it should be noted that the us dropped more pounds of explosives on cambodia alone from 1970-73 than were dropped on all sides during the entirety of world war two. that includes the a-bombs and dresden.
if bush doesn't realize that afgahnistan is a meat grinder for the youth of america he is not paying attention to anything that vaguely resembles reality. even the remote risk of a pro-taliban insurgance in pakistan getting ahold of nuclear weapons should be enough to cause second thought. the worst case scenario of all this is a suitcase nuke attack. not so far fetched really. there are 6000 dead americans now and there is the very real possibility that gwb will spend another 6000 lives a month in retribution, risk the potential demolishment of one or several of his cities and trample the rights and freedoms that are supposed to be the very things he is protecting in the process.
from a pure systems analysis perspective this is perhaps the worst course of action possible.
those who's leaders forget history are condemned to repeat it:
"we must be willing to continue our bombing until we have destoryed every work of man in North Vietnam if this is what it takes to win the war"
-Curtis LeMay
General US Air Force
Long Beach CA,
April 1, 1967
"We have dropped twelve tonnes of bombs for every square mile of North and South Vietnam. Whole provinces have been substantially destroyed."
-Robert Kennedy
Senator from New York
Washington DC,
Feb 8, 1968
"You've got to forget about this civilian stuff. Whenever you drop bombs you're going to hit civilians. It's foolish to pretend you're not."
-Barry Goldwater
Senator from Arizona
New York City
January 23, 1967
"It has become increasingly apparent that the US bombing of North and South Vietnam has been one of the most wasteful and expensive hoaxes ever to be put over on the American people."
David M. Shoup
Commadant US Marines Corps
in Atlantic magazine
April 1969
Please enter your social security number, date of birth, tax identification number, and driver's license
number. Please scan your finger print and prick your finger on the way out.
and this is different from passport how? if an os vendor is going to get all that info on me, i at least want it to be an os vendor i can vote for.
now, NaderOS might be something i would pay an extra $2 a year in tax for... (RobinsonOS as translated for canadians)
Slashdot Mirror
gtk+ apps do not run in the gimp. apply analogy where necessary.
there are also a bajillion (jillion^2) libraries and class out there in java that can be super handy. just browse freshmeat and you may find that half yr backend is there for you already... and lgpl'd.
real basic? heck, i'd choose applescript over that! you can build a pb/ib project in applescript very fast... and, once again, a jillion osaxen for you to plunder.... the drawback, of course, is speed in execution but if you need a prototype right now for that clueless vencap dude...
in obj-c memory mgmt is much better handled. when you make an object a "reserve" is put on it. when yr done with the object, you "release" it. you can add as many reserves as you want and release them when you wish. when the reserve count finally reaches zero, the object is deallocated. brilliant!
the skinny on obj-c and memory is here
if you find you have objects deallocating prematurely and are losing track of yr reference counting, get the object meter from omni group (makers of omniweb). there's a free demo license that works quite well for the budget-challenged.
so, any human activity other than fighting, eating or reproducing requires a belief in god? the implications are astounding.
Because they are are judgemental dumbasses. And so are you.
where's the judgement? if one performs a deed of good or evil while under duress we do not say that individual is acting out of anything other than self-interest. a donation made to a charity at gunpoint is not a "good" act. it's a self-preserving act.
the sanctions that accompany the belief in any morality-dictating supernatural force (viz. god) is nothing more than duress or bribery motivating various activities.
i fail to see what you find judgemental about that statement.
read your bank statement! mine (cibc) says great things like this:
mac's milk address-of-store time $39.81
so... they have a lot. micro purchases on interac can retrace yr location over the course of a day, month, year whatever.
theists are incapable of recognizing ethical conduct and moral opinion since their "moral" code is little more than threat-avoidance/reward-driven behaviour (promises of heaven / threats of hell).
behaviour that falls outside of this paradigm is judged exclusively as "bad".
to accept creditcards or interac (i assume you have that in the states as well) the seller must:
- have legitimacy in the eyes of the state
- hav sufficient money to obtain approval form banks, the state &c.
- submit to scrutiny by the banks/state
meeting these requirement excludes a large portion of society (usually the poorest and wekest part) from fulfilling the "seller" role. can you accept credit cards?while cash is good for the buyer (anonymous, fast &c.) it's impact on the seller is far more significant - not just in maintaining their anonymity but even just allowing them to fill the role of seller at all.
everybody hates job-hunting, so my advice is to make it like a role playing game. you "roll up" a resume and send it off to do battle with various hr creeps. if you "win" (get the job) you gain some experience and skills that you add to your character.
/dev/urandom
right now my resume looks like this:
name: frymaster
class: paladin (web)
level: 6
alignment:
str: 12
int: 16
wis: 15
dex: 17
char: 9
hp: 45
bonuses:
+9 vs. enterprise applications
+4 vs. venture capitalists
spells:
exercise stock options
exorcise stock options
dispell windows
summon libraries
banish end user
read documentation
evangelize
skills:
hide in office (+20)
comment code (+10 elvish)
languages:
java, php, elvish
you'll note that i said that " this is how apple presented the gui to the world back in '84." i realize that the parc effort was significantly different... i also realize that it didn't make very far out of the lab.
i'm pretty sure the lisa was out and about before menu-capable x. the single-tasking argument doesn't detract from the shared menu. yes, it was the result of architectural challenges in the os itself, but the single menu is still valid. it led to a menu system that worked. no one saw the need to drastically change that at apple. a good thing!
only because the author created that need by writing crappy software. in fact all the extra buttons on mice (ie more than one) are there because of crappy software. witness:
in the old (and current) mac os there is only one menu bar visible at a time. whichever app has focus, has its menu across the top of the screen. this is how apple presented the gui to the world back in '84.
later, some guys from harvard decided it would be much better to attach menus to the title bars of windows. due to this "improvement" it was possible to have dozens of menus visible on screen simultaneously. computer using moms around the world were confused - they select the text, go to get "copy" from the menu and... which menu?
the solution was the advent of the "contextual menu" (the right click menu) and the required hardware to support it. lesson from history: poor software design created hardware to compensate.
if you want 3 or 5 buttons (hell, a second keyboard on wheels) that's yr choice... but remember that those are extra buttons for added features. they should not be required for basic operation. any software that demands extra buttons suffers from feature creep.
finally, word is catching up to emacs 1988!
2. yes, it's called darwin. yes it's avail on x86. go get it. no, the windowing isn't available (it's called aqua and consists of some Very Neat Technologies).
3. i have rent to pay too. and i own a (couple of) macs.
4. "underacheivers"? as compared to all those operating systems that were so wildly successful after porting to x86 like beos, solaris x86 and (ironically) openstep.
porting to x86 means being forced to support byzantine hardware and having to convince consumers to not only install yr os but uninstall the one that came with their computer.
if you think there is any good reason for apple to port to intel then you really aren't thinking at all.
his suggestion? mg - it's apparently "like emacs" except "without the bloat".
very gen x of you.
damn typos.
mind you, a year earlier they left the "f" out of "shift work required".
when norweigan wood was first published in japan it came in two volumes: one red, the other green. legend (perhaps even fact) has the novel was so popular amongst the university crowd that fans of the book would dress entirely in the colour of the volume they most identified with. street battles are even said to have been waged between the factions.
that may sound a bit far fetched... but don't forget that mishima's literary club, the "shield society", followed him in his attempt to overthrow the government by force of arms.
kobo abe - "woman in the dunes". existentialist tragedy that makes camus look like a comic book. avoid the movie (thankfully).
yukio mishima - "the sailor who fell from grace with the sea". mishima tried to overthrow the japanese government by force of arms in the 70's and committed suicide after failing. let's see thomas pynchon do that! alarming parable of post-war reconstruction of japan. depravity, vengence, ennui... it's all here. avoid the movie.
kenzeburo oe - nip the buds shoot the kids. oe won the 1994 nobel prize for literature. this first novel is his grittiest. it's often compared to the lord of the flies but this is only because the main characters are children faced with the difficult decisions of wartime that even adults often cannot deal with. no movie.
of course your mouse only has one button.... it doesn't need any more. provided yr running mac os that is.
witness: in the mac os the menu bar is alwasy located on the top of the screen. in other os's (most notably windows) each window has it's own menu bar. this results in potentially a dozen potential menus on screen at any one time.
how's a user to know which menu to use? microsofts answer was to ad yet another menu to the mix - the "contextual" menu. getting this menu requires a second mouse button. basically, ms radically changed a basic piece of hardware to compensate for crappy design and then through the power of marketing made it a standard.
if you have only one mouse button be thankful your os vendor cares enough to build a good ui.
windows puts the shutdown command under a menu called "start". unix leaves the "n" out of umount and has recursive as -r for rm but -R for cp. who's confusing here?
2 - One Button Mouse
you can buy other mice if your a button fetishist. remember tho' that the mouse's primary job is to apply focus. everything else is just feature creep
3 - Customization and configuration is hard to grasp
like what? if you can't figure out netinfo...
4 - Expensive Hardware
you pay more money for slick. it's true. if you think a $5 bottle of wine tastes as good as a $20 bottle of wine then maybe you should stick with yr win xp rig too...
5 - Apple is unpredictable
uh, we like to call that "innovation".
6 - Proprietary platform
sure is. apple makes "widgets". self-contained systems designed to work out of the box. my mom likes it.
7 - OS X is kinda slow
i assume you're still running the public beta. 10.1.2 is snappier than kde on the same machine
8 - I don't like Steve Jobs (I gotta be honest).
fair enough. i don't like bill gates and i don't like rms. lotsa people don't like theo de raat. should i switch to sparc solaris?
9 - We've heard about Apple treatening many Open Source projects (ie. Themes.org OSX theme)
and yet they opened up the entire core of their os. gosh they're so anti-open source.
i don't think this is a list of reasons why you shouldn't buy an "apple" (there actually hasn't been a computer by that name since 1983) but the reasons why you shouldn't by a computer.
and how would that work with the right to refuse self incriminiation?
a. it's somewhat customized (the dock on the left)
b. it's messy
os x is "unix the musical". all singing, all dancing, all unix.
if bush doesn't realize that afgahnistan is a meat grinder for the youth of america he is not paying attention to anything that vaguely resembles reality. even the remote risk of a pro-taliban insurgance in pakistan getting ahold of nuclear weapons should be enough to cause second thought. the worst case scenario of all this is a suitcase nuke attack. not so far fetched really. there are 6000 dead americans now and there is the very real possibility that gwb will spend another 6000 lives a month in retribution, risk the potential demolishment of one or several of his cities and trample the rights and freedoms that are supposed to be the very things he is protecting in the process.
from a pure systems analysis perspective this is perhaps the worst course of action possible.
just two notes:
"we must be willing to continue our bombing until we have destoryed every work of man in North Vietnam if this is what it takes to win the war"
-Curtis LeMay
General US Air Force
Long Beach CA,
April 1, 1967
"We have dropped twelve tonnes of bombs for every square mile of North and South Vietnam. Whole provinces have been substantially destroyed."
-Robert Kennedy
Senator from New York
Washington DC,
Feb 8, 1968
"You've got to forget about this civilian stuff. Whenever you drop bombs you're going to hit civilians. It's foolish to pretend you're not."
-Barry Goldwater
Senator from Arizona
New York City
January 23, 1967
"It has become increasingly apparent that the US bombing of North and South Vietnam has been one of the most wasteful and expensive hoaxes ever to be put over on the American people."
David M. Shoup
Commadant US Marines Corps
in Atlantic magazine
April 1969
number. Please scan your finger print and prick your finger on the way out.
and this is different from passport how? if an os vendor is going to get all that info on me, i at least want it to be an os vendor i can vote for.
now, NaderOS might be something i would pay an extra $2 a year in tax for... (RobinsonOS as translated for canadians)