This would be a lot cooler if *everything* about Quicktime were open (including codecs). It's pretty silly that I can run the streaming server on Linux but I have to go to Windows or Mac to view the content.
Re:Did someone hire Sculley back?
on
Apple PDA?
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· Score: 1
Maybe he meant that he (or his employer) abandoned it. Not sure why though; it works awfully well for certain types of web applications. We use it for an online app that pulls from a number of disparate databases, creates html and pdf documents, etc. It's nice. Of course, we get the academic version for $99.
Recent college graduates... proficient in VB?!? That's scary. I don't go to what would be thought of as a particularly good compsci school, but I've worked in Java, C++, Obj. CAML, and Prolog so far in required classes. What kind of school teaches CS courses in VB, for cripe's sake? And to think I was disappointed that the intro class was taught in Java...
For what it's worth (not much), the behavior of IE under Mac OS 9 (if I remember right) is to download the file, then throw an apple event to the decoder (usually Stuffit Expander). Something like "hey Stuffit, open the file HD:Desktop Folder:foo.hqx". That's as opposed to sending the Finder a command to open foo.hqx and letting file type/creator code determine which app to use. I don't know how it works under OS X.
However, I installed OS X and the 10.1 upgrade the other day, and I don't have the problem described.
Well, obviously the flip side of Christianity is Satanism! (Which obviously nobody condones).
How is that obvious? Satanists condone it. I condone it; as an atheist, I see no reason to object to Satanism any more strenuously than I object to Christianity.
Perhaps you are confusing Satanism with the popular mythology of satan worshippers. If you pick up a book on satanism or listen to a talk at your local church, chances are good that you'll be reading/hearing about the Big Bad Satan Worshippers: drinking blood, killing babies, molesting children, etc. This is a myth invented by religious folk, and is no more valid than the myth of witches in the 14th-19th centuries. ---------
The primary aim of censorship is not to prevent adults from obtaining information, but to prevent children from accessing inappropriate materials.
That's certainly the most commonly stated aim. The problem with this formulation is that if you let the censorial types get away with a little bit of their bullshit in the name of protecting children, then the definition of 'children' will eventually expand until it includes *you*.
Stated another way: Yes, J. Random Moralist wants to keep me, an adult, from accessing materials that *he* finds inappropriate. Have you ever met one of those people? They're generally convinced that (insert deity here) is on their side, and they'll use scare tactics, false statistics, and unreasonable fears about unlikely harm to children to support their position.
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Good lord. I doubt anyone other than you and I are reading this anymore, but if anyone is, I certainly hope they are intelligent enough to spot the glaring flaws in your argument. I think any more response on my part will not help matters. Good day to you. ---------
I am perfectly willing to respect the rights of LDS people to hold the term "marriage" as sacred, while also understanding that their position is deeply misguided. But I object to the fact that they insist on legislative enforcement of their current conception of marriage.
One would think that LDS people would be sensitive to legal pressure brought to bear on nontraditional family arrangements. Polygyny is still the LDS ideal, despite the fact that it is not currently practiced (it is still the preferred family model of the LDS afterlife). The religious freedom of the LDS people was legally curtailed about 100 years ago, and now they're doing the same thing to someone else.
In my (obviously biased) opinion, the Church authorities and/or the membership in general are more concerned with being accepted as a mainstream Christian church than with standing up for what's right. LDS doctrine states that one of the prime events leading to the fall of Lucifer was his insistence that living humans should be *forced* to do what is right, while Jesus argued that people should be free to make their own choices, right or wrong. How LDS people justify the discrepancy between their doctrine and their actions is beyond me. ---------
Bullshit. Of the churches who backed proposition 22 (and similar measures elsewhere), only a tiny minority don't also oppose *any* legal recognition of same-sex unions, regardless of name. That includes strong opposition to things like civil unions in Vermont.
This does not represent a trademark issue, it represents a (successful) use of church resources to codify religous tenets into law.
In any case, most of the cultures of the world are polygynous (read an anthropology book), as were the antecedents of Christian culture. LDS history is a telling point here. Defining marriage as between one man and one woman is a terribly narrow and blindered approach, both temporally and culturally. ---------
Uh-huh. Spending millions of dollars of tithe money to fund campaigns to pass state initiatives banning same-sex marriage is not my idea of staying out of the political arena. I'm not just talking about laws in Utah, either; they spent a lot of cash to pass such measures in other states. I fail to see how that protected your (or anyone's) religious freedom.
The fact is, in Utah, the LDS church doesn't really have to overtly get involved in politics. Nearly all of the politicians (and most of their constituents) are LDS, so of course an LDS perspective dominates. That is to be expected, but it is no excuse for passing laws that enforce LDS morality for everybody. ---------
I grew up in Utah, and moved away about 3 years ago. The liquor laws are only one of a number of confusing/annoying aspects of living in a state where something like 70% of the population are members of the same religion. Worse, it's a heirarchic religion, not a loose coalition of independent congregations like some other Christian churches. Basically, that means that The Church is hovering in the background of everything that goes on in the state.
Interestingly, at the time I moved away, there was a flap in the making regarding how those confusing and annoying liquor laws would affect the 2002 winter olympics. For some reason, the liquor-oriented business in Utah think that visitors from all over the world won't like the fact that there are only a few places where you can get beer, and even fewer places for a mixed drink or wine. Imagine that. ---------
Enumerate the benefits, please!
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 1
Speaking as a longtime Mac user who has almost always had to use Windows at work, I don't think this will fly at all.
There are two possibilities if Apple were to port OS X to x86: let it run anywhere (never happen!), or make their own x86 boxen proprietary enough that only they can run OS X. Even so, people would hack them to install Winders and x86 Linux, natch, so Steve would have to sit back and deal with people booting out of his brand-new OS and into other, higher-volume competitor OSes. I'm sure he'd be thrilled.
These x86 Apple boxen would, of course, be around as expensive as Macs; realistically, decent and well-built PCs with solid componentry and a good feel (comparable to a Mac) cost around as much as a Mac does. The new boxen would also have the disadvantage of being stuffed full of fans (the iMac I'm sitting in front of now has no fan at all; it doesn't need one). Apple wouldn't be able to slap a midrange-to-high-end desktop chip in a 1" thick notebook without worrying about having acreage of heat sinks and a fan or two as well (check out the new Powerbook G4).
Somebody remind me again what the benefits would be? ---------
I'm an ex-Mormon...
I wasn't aware that he used to edit Sunstone. I did think it was odd, though, when I read _Songmaster_ and found that the title character was gay, and that Card didn't particularly moralize that point. Is that one of the ones he apologized for?
In general, I think the severe cognitive dissonance experienced by "liberal" Mormons tends to cause them to either become more conservative or drop out of the church. At least, that's been my experience. So it's not surprising that Card would shrink back into the official bounds of behavior for a good LDS man. ---------
I'm not necessarily ridiculing your opinion, but I hope you understand that 'horrified' is not the only normal reaction to learning about sex. Without going into great detail, I grew up in a very conservative and religious community. A lot of my friends didn't know much of anything about sex (e.g. the actual mechanics of it) until they were nearly 18. My parents, while just as religious as their neighbors, happened to feel that sex is natural (which doesn't make it less sacred, in their view) and therefore information about it should not be withheld from children. My parents explained sex to me at age 5, and they also explained that it was something for adults to do under very specific circumstances, etc.
Long story short, I grew up to find myself one of only a few of my peers in that community to be free of sexual hangups. The concepts of sex were not mysterious to me; I had a clear understanding of how it works and what it is for. I also did not have an unstated but ingrained impression of sex as dirty and surreptious. A few of my friends, including one or two who did not learn the mechanics of sex until age 16 or 17, were not so lucky. They were, as you said, horrified.
But all this is off topic. The fact is, refraining from the use of profanity in 'mixed company' is simply politeness; a useful social skill to be sure, but not a prerequisite for the right of free speech. My wife works at the aforementioned junior high school with children who have behavioral disorders (a federally defined disability status, no laughing matter) who pathologically lack such social skills, and believe me, they use impolite words all the time. My wife endeavors to model a better example, because it's important to teach such children social skills that may help define their success later in life. But when she's at home or among friends, she has every right to swear like a sailor.
And as far as that goes, some people do swear like sailors, and it's not because they think of sex and shit all the time; the words are meaningless particles that add flavor to language, at least in some cultural groups. Not your cultural group, obviously, but that doesn't necessarily mean my (chosen) cultural group is less worthwhile than yours. ---------
I don't know of anyone who is disturbed to find out what the word 'fuck' means. Actually, I can't understand how anyone would not understand what it means from context, without explanation. And your 'most women' thing is a little ridiculous. You obviously don't know the women I know. Besides, the only person I know with a dirtier mouth than my own is my wife.
Now, obviously, I'm smart enough to change my speech patterns to suit a situation, as is my wife, who works at a junior high school. This is a matter of politeness and common sense.
I also have to disagree that the definition of 'fuck' is something only a thoughtless person or rapist would deliver to a child. I have certainly known since I was fairly small that 'fuck' means 'have sex with' or in some cases 'to act foolishly' or 'to victimize (not necessarily sexually)' with no adverse affects, and I don't see how the concept of sex is 'common, and usualy(sic) unpleasant.'
Furthermore, Orwell's writing skills notwithstanding, if you're writing about characters who probably swear like sailors, I think it is unnecessary in today's cultural climate to pretend that they don't. ---------
I think you have that one right. I have a 450MHz 128MB New World machine, and I'm triple-booting OS9, OS X, and Yellow Dog. OS X is purty, but it's clunky. It shouldn't take 10 seconds to open a terminal window, ya know? I'm enamored of the _idea_ of OS X, but PPC/Linux is more usable for me right now. It's fast as blazes, in fact. ---------
'As my philosopher friend would accuse me... I'm "throwing away my vote" on Ralph Nader.'
People keep saying things like that to me when I tell them I'm voting for Nader. This really gets me riled up... it's a _waste_ of my vote to vote for the person I want to be president? Quite the opposite... it would be a real waste for me to vote for Gore just because I think he's somewhat less evil and scary than Bush.
For one thing, if Gore does get elected, I don't want to be personally responsible for any of the dumb crap he does while in office. Secondly, how do 3rd parties come about? They come about by losing a few times but slowly gaining support and recognition. I feel a duty to vote for Nader... maybe it'll put us back to a 2-party system; the Greens vs. the Republicrats. ---------
Ok, I am not going to defend the silly fantasy world that the author is living in, but come on! Sure, Apple did not invent the first GUI, but they took a bunch of proof-of-concept stuff, molded it together into a workable desktop paradigm, and for the love of Pete they actually implemented it. And successfully shipped it! PARC didn't do that. Furthermore, Apple did not *steal* the idea from Xerox, they *bought* the rights to use some of the concepts PARC came up with. Micros~1, on the other hand, shipped Windows with code that was directly ripped off from Apple. There's a huge difference. ---------
The people who always complain about the lawyer scum are usually the same ones who will not hesitate to sue over the slightest thing. "I'm so dumb I spilled hot coffee on my lap, I need 5 million dollars"
Unfortunately, things are never as simple as they seem. How hot would the coffee have to be before it would be OK to sue? The elderly woman in this famous case was hospitalized with serious burns over her genitals, thighs, and buttocks, and McDonald's had received numerous complaints over a long period of time informing them that the coffee was dangerously hot.
Is a consumer ever justified in suing a business over a dangerous product? An argument can be made that coffee shouldn't be served hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns.
My point? Oh, yeah, I did have one of those... Lawsuits, and the use of lawyers in general, are, like most tools, morally ambiguous. In other words, good or bad depending on the circumstances. ---------
Absolutely correct. When I have to get a user on the other end of a phone line to copy/move/rename/delete a file, I have them do it at a command line. At first I tried to get them to use Windows Explorer or the Windows shell, but it was much harder, and they kept doing things like moving important pieces of their directory structure around accidentally.
And to respond to someone else's thought on DOS: last year, my company had a lot of people crawling out of the woodwork to upgrade to the Windows version of our product, having stuck with the DOS version for years, in some cases over a decade. Let me tell you, those people did *not* know how to use DOS. Often, their systems had been configured to launch the program (an office management system for a specific type of small business) on startup, and all they knew was that they turned on the system and got the program, then told the program to quit and when the screen said C:\>, they could turn the machine off. So it's no different now than ever. ---------
Slashdot Mirror
You are right that it would be kind of silly to run the actual GUI. However, the admin interface runs on your desktop OS X machine. Take a look.
You won't be able to see the spiffy management interface without quicktime, though.
This would be the perfect solution if not for the fact that I run Linux on a Mac.
Being able to hack together limited binary compatibility is useful and a worthy effort, but it's a poor substitute for openness.
I can listen to MP3s (or, better, OGG) anywhere I like. I want my video to be as easy to use as my audio.
This would be a lot cooler if *everything* about Quicktime were open (including codecs). It's pretty silly that I can run the streaming server on Linux but I have to go to Windows or Mac to view the content.
Maybe he meant that he (or his employer) abandoned it. Not sure why though; it works awfully well for certain types of web applications. We use it for an online app that pulls from a number of disparate databases, creates html and pdf documents, etc. It's nice. Of course, we get the academic version for $99.
Recent college graduates... proficient in VB?!? That's scary. I don't go to what would be thought of as a particularly good compsci school, but I've worked in Java, C++, Obj. CAML, and Prolog so far in required classes. What kind of school teaches CS courses in VB, for cripe's sake? And to think I was disappointed that the intro class was taught in Java...
Hi. I'm Jack. Nice to meet you.
For what it's worth (not much), the behavior of IE under Mac OS 9 (if I remember right) is to download the file, then throw an apple event to the decoder (usually Stuffit Expander). Something like "hey Stuffit, open the file HD:Desktop Folder:foo.hqx". That's as opposed to sending the Finder a command to open foo.hqx and letting file type/creator code determine which app to use. I don't know how it works under OS X.
However, I installed OS X and the 10.1 upgrade the other day, and I don't have the problem described.
To be honest, I had no trouble passing the class, but that doesn't mean that I can remember any of it now.
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Just in case you couldn't tell, I barely passed that class too. :)
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How is that obvious? Satanists condone it. I condone it; as an atheist, I see no reason to object to Satanism any more strenuously than I object to Christianity.
Perhaps you are confusing Satanism with the popular mythology of satan worshippers. If you pick up a book on satanism or listen to a talk at your local church, chances are good that you'll be reading/hearing about the Big Bad Satan Worshippers: drinking blood, killing babies, molesting children, etc. This is a myth invented by religious folk, and is no more valid than the myth of witches in the 14th-19th centuries.
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That's certainly the most commonly stated aim. The problem with this formulation is that if you let the censorial types get away with a little bit of their bullshit in the name of protecting children, then the definition of 'children' will eventually expand until it includes *you*.
Stated another way: Yes, J. Random Moralist wants to keep me, an adult, from accessing materials that *he* finds inappropriate. Have you ever met one of those people? They're generally convinced that (insert deity here) is on their side, and they'll use scare tactics, false statistics, and unreasonable fears about unlikely harm to children to support their position.
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Good lord. I doubt anyone other than you and I are reading this anymore, but if anyone is, I certainly hope they are intelligent enough to spot the glaring flaws in your argument. I think any more response on my part will not help matters. Good day to you.
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One would think that LDS people would be sensitive to legal pressure brought to bear on nontraditional family arrangements. Polygyny is still the LDS ideal, despite the fact that it is not currently practiced (it is still the preferred family model of the LDS afterlife). The religious freedom of the LDS people was legally curtailed about 100 years ago, and now they're doing the same thing to someone else.
In my (obviously biased) opinion, the Church authorities and/or the membership in general are more concerned with being accepted as a mainstream Christian church than with standing up for what's right. LDS doctrine states that one of the prime events leading to the fall of Lucifer was his insistence that living humans should be *forced* to do what is right, while Jesus argued that people should be free to make their own choices, right or wrong. How LDS people justify the discrepancy between their doctrine and their actions is beyond me.
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This does not represent a trademark issue, it represents a (successful) use of church resources to codify religous tenets into law.
In any case, most of the cultures of the world are polygynous (read an anthropology book), as were the antecedents of Christian culture. LDS history is a telling point here. Defining marriage as between one man and one woman is a terribly narrow and blindered approach, both temporally and culturally.
---------
The fact is, in Utah, the LDS church doesn't really have to overtly get involved in politics. Nearly all of the politicians (and most of their constituents) are LDS, so of course an LDS perspective dominates. That is to be expected, but it is no excuse for passing laws that enforce LDS morality for everybody.
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Interestingly, at the time I moved away, there was a flap in the making regarding how those confusing and annoying liquor laws would affect the 2002 winter olympics. For some reason, the liquor-oriented business in Utah think that visitors from all over the world won't like the fact that there are only a few places where you can get beer, and even fewer places for a mixed drink or wine. Imagine that.
---------
There are two possibilities if Apple were to port OS X to x86: let it run anywhere (never happen!), or make their own x86 boxen proprietary enough that only they can run OS X. Even so, people would hack them to install Winders and x86 Linux, natch, so Steve would have to sit back and deal with people booting out of his brand-new OS and into other, higher-volume competitor OSes. I'm sure he'd be thrilled.
These x86 Apple boxen would, of course, be around as expensive as Macs; realistically, decent and well-built PCs with solid componentry and a good feel (comparable to a Mac) cost around as much as a Mac does. The new boxen would also have the disadvantage of being stuffed full of fans (the iMac I'm sitting in front of now has no fan at all; it doesn't need one). Apple wouldn't be able to slap a midrange-to-high-end desktop chip in a 1" thick notebook without worrying about having acreage of heat sinks and a fan or two as well (check out the new Powerbook G4).
Somebody remind me again what the benefits would be?
---------
I'm an ex-Mormon...
I wasn't aware that he used to edit Sunstone. I did think it was odd, though, when I read _Songmaster_ and found that the title character was gay, and that Card didn't particularly moralize that point. Is that one of the ones he apologized for?
In general, I think the severe cognitive dissonance experienced by "liberal" Mormons tends to cause them to either become more conservative or drop out of the church. At least, that's been my experience. So it's not surprising that Card would shrink back into the official bounds of behavior for a good LDS man.
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Long story short, I grew up to find myself one of only a few of my peers in that community to be free of sexual hangups. The concepts of sex were not mysterious to me; I had a clear understanding of how it works and what it is for. I also did not have an unstated but ingrained impression of sex as dirty and surreptious. A few of my friends, including one or two who did not learn the mechanics of sex until age 16 or 17, were not so lucky. They were, as you said, horrified.
But all this is off topic. The fact is, refraining from the use of profanity in 'mixed company' is simply politeness; a useful social skill to be sure, but not a prerequisite for the right of free speech. My wife works at the aforementioned junior high school with children who have behavioral disorders (a federally defined disability status, no laughing matter) who pathologically lack such social skills, and believe me, they use impolite words all the time. My wife endeavors to model a better example, because it's important to teach such children social skills that may help define their success later in life. But when she's at home or among friends, she has every right to swear like a sailor.
And as far as that goes, some people do swear like sailors, and it's not because they think of sex and shit all the time; the words are meaningless particles that add flavor to language, at least in some cultural groups. Not your cultural group, obviously, but that doesn't necessarily mean my (chosen) cultural group is less worthwhile than yours.
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Now, obviously, I'm smart enough to change my speech patterns to suit a situation, as is my wife, who works at a junior high school. This is a matter of politeness and common sense.
I also have to disagree that the definition of 'fuck' is something only a thoughtless person or rapist would deliver to a child. I have certainly known since I was fairly small that 'fuck' means 'have sex with' or in some cases 'to act foolishly' or 'to victimize (not necessarily sexually)' with no adverse affects, and I don't see how the concept of sex is 'common, and usualy(sic) unpleasant.'
Furthermore, Orwell's writing skills notwithstanding, if you're writing about characters who probably swear like sailors, I think it is unnecessary in today's cultural climate to pretend that they don't.
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I think you have that one right. I have a 450MHz 128MB New World machine, and I'm triple-booting OS9, OS X, and Yellow Dog. OS X is purty, but it's clunky. It shouldn't take 10 seconds to open a terminal window, ya know? I'm enamored of the _idea_ of OS X, but PPC/Linux is more usable for me right now. It's fast as blazes, in fact.
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'As my philosopher friend would accuse me... I'm "throwing away my vote" on Ralph Nader.'
People keep saying things like that to me when I tell them I'm voting for Nader. This really gets me riled up... it's a _waste_ of my vote to vote for the person I want to be president? Quite the opposite... it would be a real waste for me to vote for Gore just because I think he's somewhat less evil and scary than Bush.
For one thing, if Gore does get elected, I don't want to be personally responsible for any of the dumb crap he does while in office. Secondly, how do 3rd parties come about? They come about by losing a few times but slowly gaining support and recognition. I feel a duty to vote for Nader... maybe it'll put us back to a 2-party system; the Greens vs. the Republicrats.
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Ok, I am not going to defend the silly fantasy world that the author is living in, but come on!
Sure, Apple did not invent the first GUI, but they took a bunch of proof-of-concept stuff, molded it together into a workable desktop paradigm, and for the love of Pete they actually implemented it. And successfully shipped it! PARC didn't do that. Furthermore, Apple did not *steal* the idea from Xerox, they *bought* the rights to use some of the concepts PARC came up with. Micros~1, on the other hand, shipped Windows with code that was directly ripped off from Apple. There's a huge difference.
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Unfortunately, things are never as simple as they seem. How hot would the coffee have to be before it would be OK to sue? The elderly woman in this famous case was hospitalized with serious burns over her genitals, thighs, and buttocks, and McDonald's had received numerous complaints over a long period of time informing them that the coffee was dangerously hot.
Is a consumer ever justified in suing a business over a dangerous product? An argument can be made that coffee shouldn't be served hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns.
My point? Oh, yeah, I did have one of those...
Lawsuits, and the use of lawyers in general, are, like most tools, morally ambiguous. In other words, good or bad depending on the circumstances.
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And to respond to someone else's thought on DOS: last year, my company had a lot of people crawling out of the woodwork to upgrade to the Windows version of our product, having stuck with the DOS version for years, in some cases over a decade. Let me tell you, those people did *not* know how to use DOS. Often, their systems had been configured to launch the program (an office management system for a specific type of small business) on startup, and all they knew was that they turned on the system and got the program, then told the program to quit and when the screen said C:\>, they could turn the machine off. So it's no different now than ever.
---------