Let's say it scans all plates for drivers with a DUI history or just a penchant for speeding, and the cop uses that info to follow you waiting for that twitchy foot to push you above the magic number. This is profiling, and this is wrong.
Profiling means describing a type of person, not a specific individual. Most crime is comitted by repeat offenders. What rights are the police infringing by following a known repeat DUI offender's car for while when they spot that car at 11.30pm? What is being intruded upon? They shouldn't actually be pulled up every time, that would be harassement, though perhaps being forced to submit to random stops would be a useful sanction for a court to impose - you broke the rules, so now you must put up with random stops if you want to drive for the next five years.
I'm a Mac and Linux user (I do have an old P233 Win 2k box in the cupboard. I call it skeleton), but I can see the benefits of Windows: More software, especially games. It's pretty hard to find unsupported hardware, whereas buying hardware for Mac or Linux requires some research or a specialist dealer. You can buy local support easily (there are people with no friendly Mac/Linux user to hand you know). Familiarity, as most people who've used a computer have used Windows. The CD from your ISP works and their tech suppport will actually support you. Not an exhaustive list, but I'm sure you get the idea.
There are benefits to Mac and Linux too of course and for me and many others they outweigh the relative disadvantages, but you really are the worst kind of fanboi if you've managed to entirely blind yourself to the benefits of using Windows. I really would rather have people who can make a reasonsed arguments without distorting the facts as advocates for my platforms of choice.
Exactly. Too many are trying to blame the motivation for what they do. "The devil made me do it." Clearly the culpability lies in the decision to act regardless of the provocation. This is why the arguement for things like restriction of speech don't hold water.
This is an extremely dangerous point of view. The notion that free will can overcome all is used by the powerful to dismiss the unsavouray actions of the downtrodden as being entirely unrelated to them being fucked over. It's bullshit. If you treat people like shit they become shits. It's all too easy to say that you wouldn't steal if you were poor, that you would retain respect for others when none showed respect to you, that you would remain unviolent if you were beaten daily as a child. Those who, in the face of such continued provocation, remain good are exceptional.
We need to accept that we are all products of our society. Treating people like shit and expecting them to be good does not work. Expecting people to behave well when they are treated unfairly is a dangerous fantasy. Our will simply isn't as free as we'd like to believe, mostly do what we have been taught (intentionally or unintentionally) to do. So yes, we do need to restrict people who try to teach violence, repression and injustice. If we don't those lessons will be learnt and we will create violent, repressive unjust people.
I know it's was the 'standard' for a long time; I started using it a decade ago and stopped a few years ago when the standards-compliant methods were supported by all major browsers. This Mozilla page has details.
Ah, so it was the lack of multi-tasking, not thye desire to actually see a bit of content on the meagre 640x480 14" displays. Thanks for clearing that up. There was me thinking it was about maximising use of screen real estate for what you're actually doing now. I just don't understand why, on a small screen, you would want to waste a big chunk of it displaying a useless fraction of some application you aren't using.
My point was that contrary to what the GGP said, they do exist. As for not needing to go there, please tell me how to have my Mac automatically select my preferred wireless network (there are two here I have connected to in the past) using only the menu. Just to remind you, the problem the GGGP was having was that it was selecting the wrong network. The only workaround for that using only the menu is to manually select the network every time, assuming it's not a closed network which doesn't appear in the list in which case you'd have to enter the name manually.
Yes, because Systems Preferences was exactly where I thought to look for my IP address. And then I thought for sure to click TCP/IP - because I'm some idiot user.
Might Apple Menu > About This Mac > Network or opening/Applications/Utilities/Network Utility be more intuitive to you?
2. You're just making stuff up. There's no "configuration panel" in which to select wireless networks at all. You just click on the WiFi icon in the menu bar then select one from the list.
System Preferences > Network > AirPort > Configure, or launch Internet Connect (by clicking on 'Connect' in the Network panel, or from/Applications/Utilities).
I buy the gaming argument, the Mac is weaker there (though you can still game - WoW, Sims 2 etc.), but for OSS it's decent enough. It's rare I have to turn to one of my Linux boxen for my fix of wholesome OSS hacking. If you're a fairly casual gamer and fairly casual OSS user the Mac is a perfect platform. Better than Linux for games, better than Windows for geekery.
You should realize that one of the top features of a Mac system is that things work well together
That was one of the top features on Microsoft Works, when I installed it thirteen years ago on a PC running MS-DOS. Nothing new there.
So Microsoft Works will configure all the nodes on my distributed wireless network, play music wirelessly through from my HiFi, put the same music through the same interface on my portable music player and let me video conference with my brother without installing a thing? Microsoft Works can do all that through a consistent interface, guarantee it'll all work together and manage any updates for all that hardware and software from one place? Wow, there was me thinking it was tired old lightweight office suite.
Macs on their own are great, but the Mac + AirPort + iPod + iSight + iChat + iLife experience is something nobody else even comes close to offering.
The excessively bold interface of windows leads users to maximise each window otherwise they can't concentrate on the task at hand.
I don't buy that. I think Windows users maximise windows partly because that's the quickest way to make them bigger and partly because it puts the scroll bar at the edge of the screen. Mac advocates love to point out that having the menu at the edge (top) of the screen makes it easier to hit, but convieniently forget that the lack of a direct equivalent to Windows 'maximise' means they can't always automatically put the scroll bar against the edge of the screen (the behaviour is application-dependant an amounts to 'as big as the developers think would be useful given the content currently displayed'). Sadly, the application developers idea of 'as big as would be useful' doesn't always match my idea - on my 12" iBook when I'm not using an external monitor I want my browser full-screen. I scroll more than I use the menus so I'd like the scroll bar at the edge of the screen. Safari won't do that for me automagically; I have to drag (which is part of the reason I don't use Safari).
In short, I think a big part of why Windows users maximise is because they can do so easily and a big part of why Mac users don't is because they can't always do so easily (not that dragging is hard, it's just many times more effort than clicking a button). I suspect use of the 'make this window bigger' button is common on both platforms and users take what that gives them. I don't buy the garish chrome argument because the content of windows and the desktop is likely to be just as distracting as some garish chrome and takes up a greater proportion of the screen. The clutter is mostly content, not chrome.
For the record, I bought my first Mac 2 years ago and killed my Windows box a year ago. I use about 90& Mac and 10% Linux these days and my computing experience has never been better. I'd go so far as to say I'm actually noticably happier computing than I used to be, there is just so little stress. I would like a maximise button though.
Drop it on the hard drive icon? That's a new one on me. If it's a.pkg you double-click, if it's a.app you drag it to wherever you like (typically/Applications or ~/Applications).
What application doesn't ask you where you want to save? Not asking is certainly not the norm for Mac applications. IIRC Camino by default doesn't ask, but that's the only one I'm aware of and Firefox on the PC did the same thing by default last time I looked. Hardly the Mac's fault.
Can you provide specific examples?
You sound like I felt about 4 hours after getting my first Mac - it's different so it's stupid. I took the time to get over the hump in the learning curve (inevitable with anything new) and after a couple of days could do everything I needed. Not knowing how to install applications suggests to me you never bothered to get over the hump before forming an opinion.
Yeah, but how many people are going to buy Vista in the shops? Anyone who bought a PC or laptop since October will find it perfectly capable of handling Aero, and all new computers with Vista pre-installed will handle it fine too.
They may be able to handle Aero, but given Vista Starter and Home Basic don't include Aero a big chunk of them won't be running it.
The suite of Windows APIs is really big, but if you're using C# odds are you're targetting.NET, which is just one API and it is, by all accounts, pretty decent and free of bloat.
But this isn't usable is it. If I'm using the tab key to cycle through controls, then its obvious that I want to use the keyboard for navigation. Not being to cycle through ALL the controls then seems counterproductive. Is there a case where cycling through only the textboxes and lists makes me more productive. Seems unlikely.
I expect the default is not to allow keyboard access to dialogs to avoid accidentally dismissing them while typing. Several times using Windows I have been typing away and glanced some unexpected dialog box as it appeared and instantly disappeared because I happend to hit 'y', 'n' or one of the other shortcuts. There simply wasn't time to read what that dialog said and I had no idea what I just told the machine to do. Inadvertently issuing random commands might impact your productivity very seriously. Let's say your word processor just timed out saving to the network and in the meantime you'd switched to another document. You'd better hope you're not typing at 120wpm not looking at the screen, or you may inadvertently dismiss the dialog and not find out your save failed and you just lost a couple of hours work. Well, you'll find out when the boss comes to rip you a new asshole for not having done that report. That's fundamentally bad design. Apple's default is much safer.
Out of curiosity, why do you choose to work with reactionary morons? Perhaps if morons couldn't retain staff their software would be even worse, the morons would be sacked or their companies would fold and there would be less crappy software out there. If you consider yourself an above-average programmer (and who doesn't!) you can help make software better by choosing not to work on shit, so the morons only have sub-par programmers working for them.
The international phone system may be a compilcated network, but it's all doing one fairly simple thing - making an audio connection between two (or more) telephones. It may be doing it in a complex, efficient way, but it's still basically a one-trick pony. If all computers and the internet did was allow you to type text and have it displayed (not edit text, save text, spellcheck text, retreive remote text, play games, run databases, calculate taxes, play movies, manipulate images, reduce scientific data... just type and display text) your counter-argument might have been relevant.
Governments have already meddled and it's no longer a free market as a result. It's closer to being a patchwork of regulated monopolies and thus fair game for further regulation in the name of the common good. There is no free market for telco services if the local government restricts who can run cables down the street, for example.
I'm a little puzzled by the anti-net-neutrality stance on slashdot. So many of you are libertarian "marketplace will solve anything" types, so I'd think that you'd be philosophically against the government stepping in to prevent what companies do with their own infrastructure.
I think you've pointed out the difference between an anarchist and a libertarian. A libertarian accepts that restricting certain freedoms can actually promote freedom for the majority. To gain freedom from the fear of violence you need to restrict the freedom to violently assault people at will. To gain freedom for consumers to select between ISPs and on-line services you need to restrict the freedom of carriers to exclude or degrade competing services.
Slashdot Mirror
Profiling means describing a type of person, not a specific individual. Most crime is comitted by repeat offenders. What rights are the police infringing by following a known repeat DUI offender's car for while when they spot that car at 11.30pm? What is being intruded upon? They shouldn't actually be pulled up every time, that would be harassement, though perhaps being forced to submit to random stops would be a useful sanction for a court to impose - you broke the rules, so now you must put up with random stops if you want to drive for the next five years.
I'm a Mac and Linux user (I do have an old P233 Win 2k box in the cupboard. I call it skeleton), but I can see the benefits of Windows: More software, especially games. It's pretty hard to find unsupported hardware, whereas buying hardware for Mac or Linux requires some research or a specialist dealer. You can buy local support easily (there are people with no friendly Mac/Linux user to hand you know). Familiarity, as most people who've used a computer have used Windows. The CD from your ISP works and their tech suppport will actually support you. Not an exhaustive list, but I'm sure you get the idea.
There are benefits to Mac and Linux too of course and for me and many others they outweigh the relative disadvantages, but you really are the worst kind of fanboi if you've managed to entirely blind yourself to the benefits of using Windows. I really would rather have people who can make a reasonsed arguments without distorting the facts as advocates for my platforms of choice.
This is an extremely dangerous point of view. The notion that free will can overcome all is used by the powerful to dismiss the unsavouray actions of the downtrodden as being entirely unrelated to them being fucked over. It's bullshit. If you treat people like shit they become shits. It's all too easy to say that you wouldn't steal if you were poor, that you would retain respect for others when none showed respect to you, that you would remain unviolent if you were beaten daily as a child. Those who, in the face of such continued provocation, remain good are exceptional.
We need to accept that we are all products of our society. Treating people like shit and expecting them to be good does not work. Expecting people to behave well when they are treated unfairly is a dangerous fantasy. Our will simply isn't as free as we'd like to believe, mostly do what we have been taught (intentionally or unintentionally) to do. So yes, we do need to restrict people who try to teach violence, repression and injustice. If we don't those lessons will be learnt and we will create violent, repressive unjust people.
So it does! I should learn to read :(
I know it's was the 'standard' for a long time; I started using it a decade ago and stopped a few years ago when the standards-compliant methods were supported by all major browsers. This Mozilla page has details.
Your reading comprehension skills are severly lacking.
The document.FormName.InputName.value form is not part of W3C standards. Try document.forms["FormName"].InputName.value and see if valid code works.
I would hope that with an up-to-date doctype declaration (strict rather than quirks mode) Firefox would barf on that invalid code too.
Ah, so it was the lack of multi-tasking, not thye desire to actually see a bit of content on the meagre 640x480 14" displays. Thanks for clearing that up. There was me thinking it was about maximising use of screen real estate for what you're actually doing now. I just don't understand why, on a small screen, you would want to waste a big chunk of it displaying a useless fraction of some application you aren't using.
My point was that contrary to what the GGP said, they do exist. As for not needing to go there, please tell me how to have my Mac automatically select my preferred wireless network (there are two here I have connected to in the past) using only the menu. Just to remind you, the problem the GGGP was having was that it was selecting the wrong network. The only workaround for that using only the menu is to manually select the network every time, assuming it's not a closed network which doesn't appear in the list in which case you'd have to enter the name manually.
Might Apple Menu > About This Mac > Network or opening /Applications/Utilities/Network Utility be more intuitive to you?
System Preferences > Network > AirPort > Configure, or launch Internet Connect (by clicking on 'Connect' in the Network panel, or from /Applications/Utilities).
I buy the gaming argument, the Mac is weaker there (though you can still game - WoW, Sims 2 etc.), but for OSS it's decent enough. It's rare I have to turn to one of my Linux boxen for my fix of wholesome OSS hacking. If you're a fairly casual gamer and fairly casual OSS user the Mac is a perfect platform. Better than Linux for games, better than Windows for geekery.
So Microsoft Works will configure all the nodes on my distributed wireless network, play music wirelessly through from my HiFi, put the same music through the same interface on my portable music player and let me video conference with my brother without installing a thing? Microsoft Works can do all that through a consistent interface, guarantee it'll all work together and manage any updates for all that hardware and software from one place? Wow, there was me thinking it was tired old lightweight office suite.
Macs on their own are great, but the Mac + AirPort + iPod + iSight + iChat + iLife experience is something nobody else even comes close to offering.
I don't buy that. I think Windows users maximise windows partly because that's the quickest way to make them bigger and partly because it puts the scroll bar at the edge of the screen. Mac advocates love to point out that having the menu at the edge (top) of the screen makes it easier to hit, but convieniently forget that the lack of a direct equivalent to Windows 'maximise' means they can't always automatically put the scroll bar against the edge of the screen (the behaviour is application-dependant an amounts to 'as big as the developers think would be useful given the content currently displayed'). Sadly, the application developers idea of 'as big as would be useful' doesn't always match my idea - on my 12" iBook when I'm not using an external monitor I want my browser full-screen. I scroll more than I use the menus so I'd like the scroll bar at the edge of the screen. Safari won't do that for me automagically; I have to drag (which is part of the reason I don't use Safari).
In short, I think a big part of why Windows users maximise is because they can do so easily and a big part of why Mac users don't is because they can't always do so easily (not that dragging is hard, it's just many times more effort than clicking a button). I suspect use of the 'make this window bigger' button is common on both platforms and users take what that gives them. I don't buy the garish chrome argument because the content of windows and the desktop is likely to be just as distracting as some garish chrome and takes up a greater proportion of the screen. The clutter is mostly content, not chrome.
For the record, I bought my first Mac 2 years ago and killed my Windows box a year ago. I use about 90& Mac and 10% Linux these days and my computing experience has never been better. I'd go so far as to say I'm actually noticably happier computing than I used to be, there is just so little stress. I would like a maximise button though.
Drop it on the hard drive icon? That's a new one on me. If it's a .pkg you double-click, if it's a .app you drag it to wherever you like (typically /Applications or ~/Applications).
What application doesn't ask you where you want to save? Not asking is certainly not the norm for Mac applications. IIRC Camino by default doesn't ask, but that's the only one I'm aware of and Firefox on the PC did the same thing by default last time I looked. Hardly the Mac's fault.
Can you provide specific examples?
You sound like I felt about 4 hours after getting my first Mac - it's different so it's stupid. I took the time to get over the hump in the learning curve (inevitable with anything new) and after a couple of days could do everything I needed. Not knowing how to install applications suggests to me you never bothered to get over the hump before forming an opinion.
They may be able to handle Aero, but given Vista Starter and Home Basic don't include Aero a big chunk of them won't be running it.
The suite of Windows APIs is really big, but if you're using C# odds are you're targetting .NET, which is just one API and it is, by all accounts, pretty decent and free of bloat.
Agreed! Car/computer analogies are the Trabants of /. English usage.
I expect the default is not to allow keyboard access to dialogs to avoid accidentally dismissing them while typing. Several times using Windows I have been typing away and glanced some unexpected dialog box as it appeared and instantly disappeared because I happend to hit 'y', 'n' or one of the other shortcuts. There simply wasn't time to read what that dialog said and I had no idea what I just told the machine to do. Inadvertently issuing random commands might impact your productivity very seriously. Let's say your word processor just timed out saving to the network and in the meantime you'd switched to another document. You'd better hope you're not typing at 120wpm not looking at the screen, or you may inadvertently dismiss the dialog and not find out your save failed and you just lost a couple of hours work. Well, you'll find out when the boss comes to rip you a new asshole for not having done that report. That's fundamentally bad design. Apple's default is much safer.
Out of curiosity, why do you choose to work with reactionary morons? Perhaps if morons couldn't retain staff their software would be even worse, the morons would be sacked or their companies would fold and there would be less crappy software out there. If you consider yourself an above-average programmer (and who doesn't!) you can help make software better by choosing not to work on shit, so the morons only have sub-par programmers working for them.
The international phone system may be a compilcated network, but it's all doing one fairly simple thing - making an audio connection between two (or more) telephones. It may be doing it in a complex, efficient way, but it's still basically a one-trick pony. If all computers and the internet did was allow you to type text and have it displayed (not edit text, save text, spellcheck text, retreive remote text, play games, run databases, calculate taxes, play movies, manipulate images, reduce scientific data... just type and display text) your counter-argument might have been relevant.
Governments have already meddled and it's no longer a free market as a result. It's closer to being a patchwork of regulated monopolies and thus fair game for further regulation in the name of the common good. There is no free market for telco services if the local government restricts who can run cables down the street, for example.
WTFDQFTSF?
I think you've pointed out the difference between an anarchist and a libertarian. A libertarian accepts that restricting certain freedoms can actually promote freedom for the majority. To gain freedom from the fear of violence you need to restrict the freedom to violently assault people at will. To gain freedom for consumers to select between ISPs and on-line services you need to restrict the freedom of carriers to exclude or degrade competing services.