Spend an extra $100 or so and get a Minolta 2430DL. Networkable with Bonjour/Zeroconf support, photo quality color (i.e. output like a glossy magazine), drivers for Linux, toner is affordable. I love ours.
They still don't allow you to transcode Real content into other formats. Their codecs are still proprietary one-way black holes, distributed only as binaries, with a restrictive EULA.
Apache/php/perl/etc have been ported, but seem to run most smoothly on linux.
I don't know why you'd say that, as Apache and Perl come installed by default on OS X. (I don't know about PHP, I wouldn't use that heap of crap if you paid me.) There are nice 1-click installers for Rails too.
As far as user apps, well, the Gimp still seems to be designed for linux.
Yup. That's why I paid $30 for a copy of Photoshop Elements, which blows away The GIMP for usability and has all the functionality I need. Frankly, I wish there was something to compare with Elements on Linux. I use the GIMP, but every time I do it does something weird and inexplicable.
iMovie only lets you save to Quicktime (ugh), and Windows Movie Maker to Windows Media.
False. What you apparently missed is that when you save to QuickTime from iMovie, it's not saving to QuickTime file format—it's saving to the QuickTime multimedia subsystem. From there you can set your output format to anything you like. Hence iMovie can save to MPEG-4 with H.264, DivX, 3ivX, MPEG-1, DV files, whatever the hell you like.
I don't care if iMovie can turn junk footage into pure gold - what good is it if I can only save to a proprietary format?
QuickTime file format is the basis of the MPEG-4 file format. Maybe MPEG-4 is "proprietary", but it's the closest thing to a usable open standard that exists in the world of video. The QuickTime and MPEG-4 formats are both open documented specifications.
I can't open Quicktime movies in any of my windows software for further editing, and I can't open Windows Media in any of my OSX software for further editing.
If your Windows software is so crap that it can't open QuickTime, it presumably isn't one of the well-known movie editing packages like Adobe Premier, which is built on QuickTime for Windows. In which case, export from iMovie to whatever format your software needs. To use Windows Media on OS X, you simply need to install the Flip4Mac WMV QuickTime codec plugins, which you can download from Microsoft's web site. Then you can drag-drop your WMV video straight into iMovie.
As for apps that noone on Windows/OSX seem to use, netpbm is a good example. They are command-line utilities that let you convert image formats, rescale, rotate, crop, etc.
Nobody uses them because you can do the exact same thing with Graphic Converter, PhotoShop or QuickTime, script using AppleScript, and not have to actually write the code. But netpbm and ImageMagick are available for OS X if you'd rather do batch image processing the hard way. (I speak as someone who's done batch processing with ImageMagick and with GraphicConverter.)
I'm not sure how to track down all the dependencies on OSX, or whether Apple made any modifications before compiling.
Most companies want to buy their support contracts from the software vendor, and they want to buy them from companies that smell like "real" companies to them. Someone established, who's been around a while. Red Hat passes that test. I'm not aware of any company supporting Ubuntu that does.
There's this company that sells support for DB2 on Ubuntu... some startup... what's their name again?
Having just got a DS Lite, I'm struck by how it's just perfect for LucasArts-style graphical adventures and RPGs. You've even got a second screen you can use for maps, stats, inventory, and so on.
Plus, the sound and graphics expectations aren't ridiculous, so you can develop with a reasonable budget.
In America, the Government is the People. All of us. You and me. We get to voice our opintion on things. If we do not like something, we change it by voting.
Wrong. I live here permanently, pay taxes in full, yet I am not allowed to vote. So much for government of the people by the people.
What would be a headline is if someone was passed up because of their political or religious views, despite being an extremely talened content producer.
TeX and Acrobat are not the only tools used to produce PDFs. Many, many Windows users use "print to PDF" tools created using the GPL version of Ghostscript.
Why all the vindictiveness and personal effort? Are you really that morally outraged that M$ did not get a large portion of your purchase price?
No, but I'd be outraged that the seller lied to me and sold me something other than what he claimed he was selling, i.e. defrauded me.
M$, through the BSA, puts mom and pop stores out of business all the time. Why waste your time contributing to that?
Because those mom and pop stores are the ones helping to prop up the Microsoft edifice.
I believe everyone who wants to run Windows should be required to pay full retail price for it. If that was the case, Windows market share would start to drop pretty rapidly.
I wasn't suggesting that $1000 was a viable market price; I was providing that figure as an indication of how damn much I want such a device. A laptop is not an alternative, because laptops are too big to carry everywhere.
Yes, the latter encompasses the functionality of the former, but the form factor makes it useless.
Similarly, yes, anyone who can afford a 60GB iPod could use the same money to buy a rack of superior audio gear and some shelves for their CD collection. Does that mean the iPod can't possibly sell?
The difference is that the output of phpBB contains a large amount of data provided by phpBB (HTML gunk, etcetera). You can find copies of that data in the phpBB source tree. An image drawn with the GIMP, on the other hand, is only going to contain data supplied by the user (modulo file format overheads, which aren't copyrightable anyway). If I draw an image with the GIMP, you will not find any similarities between the image and the GIMP source tree.
Yeah, but graphics printed to Postscript will contain non-trivial amounts of source code provided by the Postscript driver. Should that mean any document I print on Linux ends up under the GPL?
Guess what? Load up a Windows XP or Linux box with way more active processes than it has RAM and swap, and they'll grind into non-responsiveness too. Virtual memory is not a magic cure for non-responsive systems.
There are tools for preventing runaway processes from making the machine non-responsive, you should probably learn to use them. (Look up 'ulimit'.)
3. Make it slightly smaller and lighter. May require shift to AAA instead of AA. I'd settle for any size larger than any current Palm OS PDA but smaller than the 2100.
4. Give it USB instead of serial.
5. Make it work with iSync and define an open communications protocol.
6. Maybe a higher resolution grayscale screen.
7. Faster CPU.
8. PDF support and web browser in the core OS.
I'd buy the result for pretty much any amount of money up to $1000, seriously. I don't care if people in general want it to be less than $200, I don't see anything on the market that competes so I'm prepared to pay more.
It's a damn tragedy that the Newton was killed by Jobs. It's the one thing he's done that I'm still bitter about.
More specifically, because both IBM and HP push it - the same code base - instead of both making it into incompatible proprietary products, as happened to the BSD variants.
IBM and HP made System V into incompatible proprietary variants, not BSD.
I seem to remember a site called "Whitehouse.com" (not.gov) that was a porn site whose name was designed to get hits from those who were not looking for porn, especially children.
Maybe. However, Whitehouse is the name of a bestselling porn magazine in the UK. It's named after Mary Whitehouse, and has been sold for decades. It would be perfectly legitimate for them to have their online presence at whitehouse.com, yes?
So, can you offer a single good reason why anyone would reasonably use "Barney" or "Barbie" or "Pokemon" as keywords for a site featuring a naked woman with semen all over her face?
It may be cutesy, but Animal Crossing is a lot of fun. It's what I wanted The Sims to be like. I haven't visited anyone via the net yet, that's my next task.
It's also a good game to sit and take a casual half hour break with every day or two, so it really focuses on a different part of the potential gaming audience.
I had no fundamental objection to the PSP, and there were 3 or 4 games I'd have played on it, but when I tried one the loading times were really intolerable.
Slashdot Mirror
Spend an extra $100 or so and get a Minolta 2430DL. Networkable with Bonjour/Zeroconf support, photo quality color (i.e. output like a glossy magazine), drivers for Linux, toner is affordable. I love ours.
They still don't allow you to transcode Real content into other formats. Their codecs are still proprietary one-way black holes, distributed only as binaries, with a restrictive EULA.
That's about right. People in Dallas who want culture drive to Austin. Or fly to Houston, I guess.
Nice otters in the aquarium, though.
Wrong.
I don't know why you'd say that, as Apache and Perl come installed by default on OS X. (I don't know about PHP, I wouldn't use that heap of crap if you paid me.) There are nice 1-click installers for Rails too.
Yup. That's why I paid $30 for a copy of Photoshop Elements, which blows away The GIMP for usability and has all the functionality I need. Frankly, I wish there was something to compare with Elements on Linux. I use the GIMP, but every time I do it does something weird and inexplicable.
False. What you apparently missed is that when you save to QuickTime from iMovie, it's not saving to QuickTime file format—it's saving to the QuickTime multimedia subsystem. From there you can set your output format to anything you like. Hence iMovie can save to MPEG-4 with H.264, DivX, 3ivX, MPEG-1, DV files, whatever the hell you like.
QuickTime file format is the basis of the MPEG-4 file format. Maybe MPEG-4 is "proprietary", but it's the closest thing to a usable open standard that exists in the world of video. The QuickTime and MPEG-4 formats are both open documented specifications.
If your Windows software is so crap that it can't open QuickTime, it presumably isn't one of the well-known movie editing packages like Adobe Premier, which is built on QuickTime for Windows. In which case, export from iMovie to whatever format your software needs. To use Windows Media on OS X, you simply need to install the Flip4Mac WMV QuickTime codec plugins, which you can download from Microsoft's web site. Then you can drag-drop your WMV video straight into iMovie.
Nobody uses them because you can do the exact same thing with Graphic Converter, PhotoShop or QuickTime, script using AppleScript, and not have to actually write the code. But netpbm and ImageMagick are available for OS X if you'd rather do batch image processing the hard way. (I speak as someone who's done batch processing with ImageMagick and with GraphicConverter.)
So download the latest netpbm from DarwinPorts.
It's not just adura, it's Extremadura! And it doesn't get much more extreme than running Linux.
There's this company that sells support for DB2 on Ubuntu... some startup... what's their name again?
Having just got a DS Lite, I'm struck by how it's just perfect for LucasArts-style graphical adventures and RPGs. You've even got a second screen you can use for maps, stats, inventory, and so on.
Plus, the sound and graphics expectations aren't ridiculous, so you can develop with a reasonable budget.
Wrong. I live here permanently, pay taxes in full, yet I am not allowed to vote. So much for government of the people by the people.
No, that wouldn't be a headline, because it happens every day. Even big budget TV shows get cancelled because they're not politically correct.
TeX and Acrobat are not the only tools used to produce PDFs. Many, many Windows users use "print to PDF" tools created using the GPL version of Ghostscript.
No, but I'd be outraged that the seller lied to me and sold me something other than what he claimed he was selling, i.e. defrauded me.
Because those mom and pop stores are the ones helping to prop up the Microsoft edifice.
I believe everyone who wants to run Windows should be required to pay full retail price for it. If that was the case, Windows market share would start to drop pretty rapidly.
Well, if you're right, that's a massive problem for people who create and distribute PDF documents.
The biggest problem would be getting the money together to start production. Custom rubberized plastic casings and so on aren't cheap to produce.
Does it finally include vCard/iCard support for the address book?
GPLv3 doesn't forbid vendors from locking you into a hardware platform.
It simply ensures vendors can't stop you from changing GPLv3 software and using the changed code on your hardware.
If they want to lock you into a hardware platform, they can use non-GPLv3 software.
I wasn't suggesting that $1000 was a viable market price; I was providing that figure as an indication of how damn much I want such a device. A laptop is not an alternative, because laptops are too big to carry everywhere.
Really, it's like I'm saying I want a copy of The Elements of Java Style, and you're saying "Well, anyone who can afford Java books will just get a copy of the hardback Java Professional Library".
Yes, the latter encompasses the functionality of the former, but the form factor makes it useless.
Similarly, yes, anyone who can afford a 60GB iPod could use the same money to buy a rack of superior audio gear and some shelves for their CD collection. Does that mean the iPod can't possibly sell?
Yeah, but graphics printed to Postscript will contain non-trivial amounts of source code provided by the Postscript driver. Should that mean any document I print on Linux ends up under the GPL?
Guess what? Load up a Windows XP or Linux box with way more active processes than it has RAM and swap, and they'll grind into non-responsiveness too. Virtual memory is not a magic cure for non-responsive systems.
There are tools for preventing runaway processes from making the machine non-responsive, you should probably learn to use them. (Look up 'ulimit'.)
1. Lose the PCMCIA, replace with SD.
2. Built in WiFi and Bluetooth.
3. Make it slightly smaller and lighter. May require shift to AAA instead of AA. I'd settle for any size larger than any current Palm OS PDA but smaller than the 2100.
4. Give it USB instead of serial.
5. Make it work with iSync and define an open communications protocol.
6. Maybe a higher resolution grayscale screen.
7. Faster CPU.
8. PDF support and web browser in the core OS.
I'd buy the result for pretty much any amount of money up to $1000, seriously. I don't care if people in general want it to be less than $200, I don't see anything on the market that competes so I'm prepared to pay more.
It's a damn tragedy that the Newton was killed by Jobs. It's the one thing he's done that I'm still bitter about.
IBM and HP made System V into incompatible proprietary variants, not BSD.
Maybe. However, Whitehouse is the name of a bestselling porn magazine in the UK. It's named after Mary Whitehouse, and has been sold for decades. It would be perfectly legitimate for them to have their online presence at whitehouse.com, yes?
Umm, the fact that there are dozens of porn stars called Barbie, a couple of porn stars named Barney and a couple of directors named Barney?
There's probably Pokemon Hentai too, even if the owners of the trademark don't want it used to describe same.
Should it be a felony for Lanny Barbie's official fan site to use her name in their meta tags?
This points to the whole reason why the law is pointless: it's clearly going to fail a basic First Amendment test.
You misspelled "total bastards".
http://www.pacifict.com/Products.html
It may be cutesy, but Animal Crossing is a lot of fun. It's what I wanted The Sims to be like. I haven't visited anyone via the net yet, that's my next task.
It's also a good game to sit and take a casual half hour break with every day or two, so it really focuses on a different part of the potential gaming audience.
I had no fundamental objection to the PSP, and there were 3 or 4 games I'd have played on it, but when I tried one the loading times were really intolerable.