The thing is, everybody seems to have bought into Apple Is Great, even the non-Mac guys. So they're furiously trying to copy them. But they'll never succeed. Here's why:
You know how, in high school the wannabes always tried to copy the cool kids, but failed miserably? -When the cool kids had greased back hair, the wannabes had it a year too late, and the cool kids had already moved on. -When the cool kids had acid wash jeans, wannabes copied that. By that time, cool kids had already moved on to faded jeans. Then they moved again to ripped jeans. -Cool kids had Swatches. Wannabes copied that, but too late again.
Wannabes don't get it: It's not acid wash and Swatches that made cool kids cool. It's the cool kids that made those things cool. So it doesn't matter if wannabes wear a certain type of jean.
It doesn't matter if Android gets a touch interface, rounded corners, or whatever. Android's not cool because Android's not cool. And any "new stuff" that Android comes up with (like facial recognize unlock) is stupid until Apple does it, at which time it becomes cool.
There was one big problem though: the Start menu is organized according to Software Maker, and then program. After you've installed a good number of programs, it gets hard to find your stuff.
The one big improvement by Gnome/KDE/Freedesktop was organization by category. Genius. You can give an Ubuntu 10.04 computer to a 5 year old kid, and he can easily find and try all the games without bothering you. Your father (and grandfather) can find the "office apps" because they under... Office.
I would just move right over to KDE, but there's one thing I wish the K folks would do: support the Gnome "shortcuts" (the ones that show up on the left bottom in Nautilus and the FileOpen dialog).
Doesn't FreeDesktop have a standard for that or something?
Also the Documents, Pictures, Downloads, and other "special" folders. Call em stupid if you want, but it's a good categorization of your files: Downloads is stuff you got from the Internet: software,.debs, PDFs, tgz's etc. Documents is stuff you produced. Pictures is stuff your camera produced.
So the next best thing we can hope for is that the interests of various corporations align with the general geek consensus for an open Internet and the right to develop software:
For an open Internet: Google For the right to copy (not infringing copies): the Consumer Electronics Association. Against patents: B&N, Google/Motorola, various Linux foundations.
Re: scrollbars are you talking about Mac or its poor imitation Ubuntu?
One of the funniest things about this whole situation is where Shuttleworth & Co. try to make it out as they are trying to make computer use easier for "normal people" who've never used a computer before.
To which I have to ask: how is it easier when you hide stuff which was formerly visible? How does that help discoverability? The whole point behind the scrollbar was supposed to be that you could tell your position in the document at a glance.
Now you have to constantly mouse over to be able to do that? Fail.
And, on the one hand talking about how "hard" it is to get your mouse on the menubar, Fitts law, etc., and then on the other hand playing hide and seek with the scrollbar, and making it narrower?
There's another thing too: not all apps work well maximized. In all of the worrying about "human factors" how did these devs forget something which people have known a long time: it's easier to read text which is smaller horizontally.
>Just add the Mint repos manually and you'll have it.
?
Won't that potentially make it so apt will offer to upgrade all your packages to the Mint versions, depending on the date of the Ubuntu vs. Mint packages?
You're kidding, right? I've tried that voice thing, and it's too hard on the throat. Give me a eyebrow-twitching interface any day - down eyebrow is 0, up eyebrow is 1. What could be simpler?
The kinds of guerrilla marketing you're referring to--people do that kind of stuff for free, willingly for things they believe in.
With all the "my way or the highway" changes in Ubuntu, and with total disregard of the community, and making it explicit that this is Mark Shuttleworth's distro, and not a community distro, there's no reason to think that Ubuntu users will make an effort to "spread the gospel."
The rest of your comment was fine, but just because you hold a skeptical view of hypervisors doesn't mean you need to impute I don't know how a computer works. And yes, I've paid my dues, including memorizing 8088 machine language (not assembly).
Given that some people actually think we are living in a computer simulation, I believe the universe analogy was particularly apt.
Also, someone else mentioned there's never been a Xen hack.
>Isn't that what your OS is supposed to be doing? Why do you think another layer can do something that the one you're already using is incapable of.
Well, it's like this: OS-level partitioning is when you've got your stuff locked in your car, and another guy's stuff is in another car. Sure, they're "locked", but someone can always find his way in.
VM-level partitioning is like your car is in a totally different universe. Eerily familiar, yet different in subtle ways. Such as which car is parked in a given parking spot. (Xen is the multiverse in this car analogy.)
Yeah, it's where the Ultimate Entity watches over all entities in the known universe, and recycles them when they die. And the other is a virtualization program.
Well, here's an argument (the traditional one):/bin is supposed to contain the minimal stuff you need to boot the system./sbin is programs you don't necessarily want to give normal users access to. Basically, you can just prevent access to the directory itself./usr/bin is everything else.
Assuming you've got an SSD, you might want to put/bin on the SSD, but not everything else. If you want to have everything in one place, why not just symlink/bin to/usr/bin instead of dropping the directory structure?
Of course they can get it to work. Getting it to work is nothing more than putting the POP/IMAP server on the Internet.
The question is information security for the hidden stakeholders (customers whose data it is, and who pay for people's salaries). Caring about the stakeholder who isn't present is not being lazy.
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The thing is, everybody seems to have bought into Apple Is Great, even the non-Mac guys. So they're furiously trying to copy them. But they'll never succeed. Here's why:
You know how, in high school the wannabes always tried to copy the cool kids, but failed miserably?
-When the cool kids had greased back hair, the wannabes had it a year too late, and the cool kids had already moved on.
-When the cool kids had acid wash jeans, wannabes copied that. By that time, cool kids had already moved on to faded jeans. Then they moved again to ripped jeans.
-Cool kids had Swatches. Wannabes copied that, but too late again.
Wannabes don't get it: It's not acid wash and Swatches that made cool kids cool. It's the cool kids that made those things cool. So it doesn't matter if wannabes wear a certain type of jean.
It doesn't matter if Android gets a touch interface, rounded corners, or whatever. Android's not cool because Android's not cool. And any "new stuff" that Android comes up with (like facial recognize unlock) is stupid until Apple does it, at which time it becomes cool.
>GUI design has mostly been downhill since then.
Mostly agree about Win95 being pretty good.
There was one big problem though: the Start menu is organized according to Software Maker, and then program. After you've installed a good number of programs, it gets hard to find your stuff.
The one big improvement by Gnome/KDE/Freedesktop was organization by category. Genius. You can give an Ubuntu 10.04 computer to a 5 year old kid, and he can easily find and try all the games without bothering you. Your father (and grandfather) can find the "office apps" because they under ... Office.
Now they want to throw all that away.
I would just move right over to KDE, but there's one thing I wish the K folks would do: support the Gnome "shortcuts" (the ones that show up on the left bottom in Nautilus and the FileOpen dialog).
Doesn't FreeDesktop have a standard for that or something?
Also the Documents, Pictures, Downloads, and other "special" folders. Call em stupid if you want, but it's a good categorization of your files: Downloads is stuff you got from the Internet: software, .debs, PDFs, tgz's etc. Documents is stuff you produced. Pictures is stuff your camera produced.
So the next best thing we can hope for is that the interests of various corporations align with the general geek consensus for an open Internet and the right to develop software:
For an open Internet: Google
For the right to copy (not infringing copies): the Consumer Electronics Association.
Against patents: B&N, Google/Motorola, various Linux foundations.
>They are moving from "insanely great" to "subtle elegance".
The thing is, there's enough critical mass with Apple now that whatever they do is acclaimed.
Bright primary colors for the close, minimize, and optimize buttons? Apple is Great
Go to a grey colorscheme? Apple is Great.
Not have copy/paste? Apple is Great. Have it? Apple is Great.
Re: scrollbars are you talking about Mac or its poor imitation Ubuntu?
One of the funniest things about this whole situation is where Shuttleworth & Co. try to make it out as they are trying to make computer use easier for "normal people" who've never used a computer before.
To which I have to ask: how is it easier when you hide stuff which was formerly visible? How does that help discoverability? The whole point behind the scrollbar was supposed to be that you could tell your position in the document at a glance.
Now you have to constantly mouse over to be able to do that? Fail.
And, on the one hand talking about how "hard" it is to get your mouse on the menubar, Fitts law, etc., and then on the other hand playing hide and seek with the scrollbar, and making it narrower?
Same here. I usually have a few shortcuts to some screenshot apps because I need to make a lot of screenshots:
One for active window screenshot. One for select region screenshot. And one for a different Perl-based screenshot program.
There's another thing too: not all apps work well maximized. In all of the worrying about "human factors" how did these devs forget something which people have known a long time: it's easier to read text which is smaller horizontally.
That's why newspapers are printed in columns.
Question about that: does that mean if you launch one program, it gets the entire screen?
And if you launch another one, the first one becomes half the size, and they all take up 1/2 each?
3 programs: 1/3 space each? 4 -> 1/4 each, etc?
So what happens when you have 8 programs running? Or a browser with a lot of windows open?
OK, thanks, I thought that they had their own (like Ubuntu has their own instead of being Debian + extras).
The bashing is highly warranted.
Ubuntu only relented because it was bashed.
Have you switched to a Dvorak keyboard? Or Kinesis?
If not, why not?
>Just add the Mint repos manually and you'll have it.
?
Won't that potentially make it so apt will offer to upgrade all your packages to the Mint versions, depending on the date of the Ubuntu vs. Mint packages?
Kudos to him for taking responsibility, but:
The one iPhone was lost at a bar.
Is he saying that he should have had 2 security men following each Apple employee around during work and outside of work?
I'm sure there was more than one person working on the next version of the iPhone at that point.
And security can promulgate all the edicts they want, but people who "have work to do" either have them overturned or find a way a around them.
Seriously, what more could he have done short of implementing a police state?
You're kidding, right? I've tried that voice thing, and it's too hard on the throat. Give me a eyebrow-twitching interface any day - down eyebrow is 0, up eyebrow is 1. What could be simpler?
The kinds of guerrilla marketing you're referring to--people do that kind of stuff for free, willingly for things they believe in.
With all the "my way or the highway" changes in Ubuntu, and with total disregard of the community, and making it explicit that this is Mark Shuttleworth's distro, and not a community distro, there's no reason to think that Ubuntu users will make an effort to "spread the gospel."
The rest of your comment was fine, but just because you hold a skeptical view of hypervisors doesn't mean you need to impute I don't know how a computer works. And yes, I've paid my dues, including memorizing 8088 machine language (not assembly).
Given that some people actually think we are living in a computer simulation, I believe the universe analogy was particularly apt.
Also, someone else mentioned there's never been a Xen hack.
No problem, I just saw an in to make a joke.
>Isn't that what your OS is supposed to be doing? Why do you think another layer can do something that the one you're already using is incapable of.
Well, it's like this: OS-level partitioning is when you've got your stuff locked in your car, and another guy's stuff is in another car. Sure, they're "locked", but someone can always find his way in.
VM-level partitioning is like your car is in a totally different universe. Eerily familiar, yet different in subtle ways. Such as which car is parked in a given parking spot. (Xen is the multiverse in this car analogy.)
Yeah, it's where the Ultimate Entity watches over all entities in the known universe, and recycles them when they die. And the other is a virtualization program.
I thought it had relocated to the Internet Archive, along with MySpace, Friendster, and GeoCities.
Or is it waiting for Yahoo, and they'll go together?
Yankees tellin me to stop sellin Apples? No siri bob, not gonna happen.
Well, here's an argument (the traditional one): /bin is supposed to contain the minimal stuff you need to boot the system. /sbin is programs you don't necessarily want to give normal users access to. Basically, you can just prevent access to the directory itself. /usr/bin is everything else.
Assuming you've got an SSD, you might want to put /bin on the SSD, but not everything else. If you want to have everything in one place, why not just symlink /bin to /usr/bin instead of dropping the directory structure?
Of course they can get it to work. Getting it to work is nothing more than putting the POP/IMAP server on the Internet.
The question is information security for the hidden stakeholders (customers whose data it is, and who pay for people's salaries). Caring about the stakeholder who isn't present is not being lazy.
Oops, I was thinking of Solaris et al. vs. Linux, and hadn't considered OSX.