Excuses excuses. They're still requiring me to get a better GPU. An operating system should not be dictating GPU needs. A users needs (i.e., if (s)he needs to do intensive 3D work) should.
And it doesn't matter how much of my GPU its using, the point is, its wasting my GPU's power when it need not be.
I have to disagree with this. People use OS X (or any Apple OS) because of the GUI. If you want a generic UNIX you can run Linux or *BSD and any of the awful WMs in X11. And you can do this on Apple hardware too. But do you notice none of the scientist quoted in the article are doing that?
The only response to this can be: IDIOT. No matter what you say, an OS is not a GUI. A GUI is the user interface to the OS. People may use MacOSX because it comes with the Aqua GUI, b ut that does not mean that Aqua is an OS: it isn't. Its a GUI.
2. MacOSX is not synonymous with Mac hardware. They are separate entities.
One again, wrong. Darwin is NOT OS X. You might as well run FreeBSD, unless you really want the Mach kernel. But I remember how much Linux users hated MkLinux because of the Mach kernel being slower.
Again, the only response to this can be: IDIOT. I said that Mac hardware is not synonymous with Mac software. In other words, software != hardware. Is that too difficult for you to grasp? Apple sells computer systems, with the Kernel and a GUI on top to make the OS, which are installed on hardware. That does not mean these components are all the same. They are separatable.
That Mac hardware is so great says nothing about its software. Try to understand that.
Your explanation doesn't even go together with your wrong refutation of my point.
True, Darwin is not OSX. OSX is the combination of Darwin (which is BSD with a Mach kernel), and the GUI (Aqua). I never said that Darwin was OSX. I said it was the core. Again, you make my point by saying that the Mach kernel is slower than the BSD kernel. So if your doing serious work, why waste time with it?
If Apple hardware is so "slow" and "overpriced" as everyone here seems to think, then why would they do that?
Apple hardware is fine. Its expensive (for personal computers), but its good hardware. Overall, its the most cost-efficient because it uses the least power and lasts the longest. But never-the-less, Mac systems (if running Mac's OS) are slow, because the software is bloated. Sit down at your local high-school's Mac, you'll see what I mean. Its not the hardware's fault, its the software's fault. In my experience, things always load slower on Mac's than on PC's. Obviously the fault of the software.
Also, I'm running OS X 10.1.5 on a 466 MHz G4 with a gig of RAM. It's not all that bloated and not slow at all. Sure, OS 9.2 runs a bit faster. But it's not the GUI. OS 9 is much older code, and has been optimized more over the years.
Wrong. OSX is based off of BSD and Mach, which are mature pieces of code: very efficient and lean. Yet, OSX runs slower than OS 9. It is the fault of the GUI, and all those extra useless features it adds like animation, transparency, icon zooming, etc.
"Bloat" does not always equal slow.
Again, another idiotic comment. Slow is relative. A GUI with extra features will run slower than if it didn't have those features, even if it runs fast.
You mention that Apple has added more features and the OS has taken up more RAM. Again, a problem. The OS should stay the fuck out of my way, not hog up all of my resources.
MacOS' are just resource hogs, be it CPU, GPU, or RAM.
Which is why if I were to buy a Mac computer, I'd buy it with nothing on it if possible and install Debian to get more performance out of it.
Control-click was introduced in OS 8; hold-clicking was introduced in OS X.
Wrong, moron. I've used both. Hold click does not work for many things in OSX, the few exceptions being folders on the dock and links in IE and Netscape. Hold click brings up property menu's in OS9.
As for the control panel, the new system to navigate through the control panel is less efficient. Its much quicker to just pull down a menu of all the control panel controls than to open up a window and click on icons.
Having used OSX alot, I also know your WRONG about APPLE-~. APPLE-~ brings up a finder window which asks you for the directory you'd like to go to; it does not switch between instances of a running applicaiton.
Next time, get your facts straight before saying something stupid. I've worked alot with both OS9 and OSX. I know about the GUI advantages and disadvantages of each.
Please. Like people can't figure that one out. Besides, that wouldn't be NECESSARY if applications minimized to their ICON on the DOCK, and then hold clicking that ICON on the DOCK would display all instances of it running, as should be the case. Also, all these animations are ANNOYING.
What about the Aqua glassy effects? Or the icon zooming?
The icon zooming makes it a lot easier to hit the right icon when you've got a LOT of things in the dock, as I do.
Firstly, that's not the way to deal with the problem. The way to deal with it is to create a scroll-up dock. Also, if they had KEPT the Apple Applications menu, it wouldn't be necessary to cram the dock full of all sorts of crap.
Transparency?
Maybe you don't ever need to see through a terminal window, but I sure do. Sometimes there's something behind there that you need to see.
Which would be nice, except for the fact that terminals (or other windows) aren't transparent. Menu's and the dock are.
If Apple's going to include all of these useless, questionable, annoying features, they should at least incldue a way to disable them and expunge them from one's hard drive.
This canard is getting a bit long in the tooth. The UI doesn't use nearly as much CPU time as people assume, and with Quartz Extreme the CPU involvement in compositing is negligible.
As another person noted, QuartzExtreme just pushes off the PROBLEM to the GPU. This is not a real solution. Now, its my GPU that OSX is hogging. Gee, if I wanna actually play any games or look at 3D images in Bryce, now the GUI is slowing me down. All Apple has done with Quartz Extreme is say to the user, "Get a better GPU; you'll now need at least a GeForce2 to run Aqua smoothly".
Quartz Extreme should solve most of the performance problems by making the eye candy run in the graphics card and freeing up the CPU.
Oh, great, now its eating up my GPU's resources. Well, thank god for that. You know, I spent $400 dollars on the GeForce4 just so that OSX could hog all of its power up. If the Aqua interface is hogging up the GPU's power, that means the GPU can't do its job as well -- i.e., rendering 3D objects. Btw, this isn't really a solution to a problem -- Apple is just pushing THEIR problem onto someone else. Had they actually made their code more efficient or elminated some useless features, that'd be a real solution. What they've done is say to the user, "get a better graphics card". Gee, all the programming genius that musta went into that one.
I think the impact of a beautiful computing experience is greatly underestimated. Many of us spend the bulk of our lives in front of a screen, which is normally gray and hopelessly dull visually. Making that environment beautiful - which is virtually exclusive to MacOS X - makes our lives more beautiful.
All I can say for that is HAHAHA. If your job is so boring to you that you need a fanciful GUI, then you should have a different job. If what your doing is so boring that you need tacky distractions, you should be doing something else. Btw, many people (myself included) think that OSX is not beautiful, but tacky. Like a two dollar tramp with too much makeup.
I think doing that is worth a few extra processor cycles./I.
A few? OSX hogs up tons of RAM and tons of CPU (or GPU) cycles.
Your posts suffers from several areas where you fail to distinguish between two separate things.
1. The GUI is not the OS. They are separate entities.
2. MacOSX is not synonymous with Mac hardware. They are separate entities.
I did not say that Mac hardware is terrible (though it is no match for Sun or SGI hardware). I also did not say that the operating system underneath OSX's GUI is bad/bloaty. I said the GUI is. Microsoft wants you to think that the GUI = OS = file-browser (IE). Mac apparently takes it one step further, GUI = OS = file-browser = hardware = kernel.
Regarding your criticism of Linux' GUI's, I disagree. Choice is a good thing, and different people will want different WM's and desktop environments (I prefer WindowMaker and pwm for the WM, and Xfce for the desktop). I don't know about other WM's and desktop environments, but the one's I've mentioned are very consistent in their user interface.
There may not be many features that Aqua has which are useless, but those which are there are very annoying and waste alot of your computing power. The worst one is Sherlock, which takes forever. Then there's the transparency, the Aqua effects (shiny buttons), the animation, the icon-zooming, the window zooming for maximization and minimization. Apple is using a very efficient core for its OS, so it should be running FASTER than previous versions of Mac's OS, not slower. But, the bloaty GUI obliterates any advantage that the more streamlized insides offer. Though one could say the more streamlined internal workings are what make the bloated GUI useable and somewhat responsive.
The people who like OSX don't like it because of the GUI. They like it because of the power its BSD/Mach-core provide. As for Darwin, I'm aware that you can forgo the Aqua GUI and just boot into Darwin, loading an X-windows manager. I did mention that somewhere (perhaps not in this post).
Personally, however, I'd prefer to load Debian if I had a Mac, because more *nix packages are available for it than for Darwin. Also, most benchmarks have shown that Linux performs superiorly to the BSD's (though we should not confuse performance with security and stability, both of which are categories which the BSD's have the advantage over Linux in).
I don't see why your calling OSX a "new OS". It is not a new OS. It is essentially the Aqua GUI strapped on top of a BSD/Mach core. What is NEW is the GUI, though I'd hesitate to even say that. MacOSX's GUI is a combination of the classic Mac GUI and some nice features of NeXT. What I dislike about it is that it is bloaty. There are, however, nice things about it, such as the dock. But Apple has really taken alot of steps backwards in the Aqua GUI. Firstly, there's no applications Apple menu. Secondly, they've abandoned hte hold click (corresponds to right click) in favor of control click. Thirdly, they've collapsed application switching and window switching within and application down t o just switching between all of the windows on the screen. In previous versions, APPLE-TAB switched between applications, while APPLE-~ switched between instances within an application. Now, APPLE-TAB still switches between applications, but APPLE-~ switches between all windows.
Also, they've given way to the MSesque idea that all configuration should be done through HTML-like interfaces (ok, not exactly). The control panel menu was great, why replace it with a less efficient system where you have to open up a window to access all of the different things within it?
I could go on and on with examples of how Apple has replaced efficient interface options in OS9 with inefficient bloated ones in OSX, but you get the point. Now, that said, this isn't something unique to Apple. It seems that every single application takes major steps backwards with each release, by catering to the lowest common denominator, and dumbing things down to the simplest level, at the expense of efficiency in interface. Just take a look at those stupid fucking Eminem "help characters" in the most recent versions of MS Office. Worse yet, whereas in the good old days, you could load help files instantaneously, now they're a mess of HTML which takes ages to load; the efficient "Table of Contents"/Search/Index scheme has been replaced by the "home page" scheme.
It may be faster than previous releases, but its still bloatware, filled with features which need to be eliminated like transparency, aqua-effects, animations, and icon-zooming.
Btw, you say "almost as fast as OS9," which means its crap compared to Linux, which runs faster than OS9 on Mac hardware. OSX is based off of BSD and Mach, which means it should be very efficient, more so than OS9. But, in fact, the opposite is true. That means that alot of extra superflous stuff is (like unnecessary eye-candy in the GUI) is slowing it down. I don't know what's up with your driver problems, because Nvidia provides Linux drivers for all its GeForce cards.
One: Mac OS X is the only UNIX that has Microsoft Office available to it, period. If you want to be a hermit and be unable to send your scientific reports to PC users since you have inappropriate software, then Linux is for you.
Firstly, your WRONG. CrossOverOffice provides MS Office for Linux users. Also, Wine allows one to run MS products on Linux. Next time, do a little bit of research before making outlandish claims. Secondly, even if you were right, who cares? OpenOffice and StarOffice can save files as MS Word documents, thus Linux users can share their files with PC users, and vica versa. Again, do your research.
Two: Mac OS X may not be the sleekest girl on the block, but her OS underpinnings have been around as long, if not longer, than Linux. Under those "glassy effects" (which are optimized for speed in the 10.2 update) is a CLI and OS kernel that soars.
Glassy effects optimized for speed? Maybe the updated version is faster than the old one, but its still a LOT of bloat, and one would be better off without it. The excellent, minimalist underpinnings of MacOSX are slowed down by its bloated filled-with-useless-features GUI.
Nothing is useless in OS X.
Yea, whatever. Exactly what purpose do the animations serve? What about the Aqua glassy effects? Or the icon zooming? Transparency? All useless, or of very minimal use. All designed for the sole purpose of having good looking screen-shots.
These scientists just believe that using your OS is more productive than having to play with the damn thing each time someone in the Linux dev group sneezes and makes Yet Another Attempt At a Stable Kernel.
When exactly has an unstable Kernel came out under the stable branch of the kernel? I don't recall it happening.
Ever heard of Debian? Makes updating to the latest stable release of packages rather easy. As for updating the kernel, that can also be done rather nicely in Debian, without even having down-time.
Your "quick answers" still do not deal with the fact that MacOSX is bloat-ware. The new finder in it is crap, for example.
One would be better off running a WM in Darwin if one uses Mac hardware, or installing Debian.
Apple doesn't even have 64-bit processors yet, so lets not jump the gun and assume they're going to overtake SGI and Sun in the scientific market.
Granted, for the type of computer Apple offers (32-bit), they're great. But, as I said before, why use the bloated OSX which'll hog alot of your RAM and CPU time, when you can install Debian, which won't?
Yes, its pretty much as stable as any other Unix. Yes, the OS never crashes.
But it still has problems.
OSX ships in a very non-secure state. Take a look at The Missing Manual: Mac OSX. You'd be surprised how poor the security is (and at how many vulnerabilities there are) on MacOSX out of the box.
That's one problem. The other problem is performance.
Just because somethings a Unix doesn't mean that it necessarily is slim and trim. OSX is not. It is enormously bloated. On the same hardware, it will run alot slower than previous Mac Operating Systems. Why? Because their GUI is unnecesarily fanciful, with useless animations and "glassy effects".
Run Debian on the same Mac you run OSX on and it will run alot faster, taking up less RAM.
Now, that said, if your willing to forgo the bloaty GUI of OSX, you can just run Darwin and install a minimal GUI like pwm; then, you won't have as much bloat.
OSX is a classic example of how companies add lots of useless features just to make a product more screen-shot worthy (i.e., animations, glassy effects, the whole Aqua appearance), despite the fact that those features don't really offer any advantages to the user.
.ORG sites should not be for corporate plundering.
Every time some corporations like the RIAA or MPAA owns a.ORG, it cheapens.ORG. Yes, the RIAA and the MPAA are BUSINESSES, not organizations. Non-profit my ass, Jack Valentini and Hillary Rosen are racking in the money.
Now, I'm not saying that any corporation that owns a.ORG should be forced to relinquish it, but in the future,.ORG's should not be given to corporations unless they're using them in a.ORG-like way. I.e., if IBM sets up a IBM.org site to be used as a forum for initiating issues movements (i.e., the freedom of a product) for IBM-related products.
I have no problem with MS owning microsoft.com, microsoft.org, and microsoft.net, so long as they use those sites in a way true to their "extention". MS.com should be MS' commercial outlet. MS.net should be their network outlet; i.e., a forum for users to discuss their issues. MS.org should be for ideological movements within MS, which (in this case) would be MS' propaganda machine.
1. ISOC has a conflict of interests. Their most influential and highest ranking members are corporations like MS, whose interests run contrary to that of the mass majority of the net-users.
2. As an ISOC insider, your statements regarding ISOC's character are to be taken with a grain of salt. Few insiders criticize their own organization.
3. ISOC does not represent the true ideals of the internet. It represents the interests of its corporate members. That MS is listed as one of the "founding members" of ISOC, speaks volumes about ISOC's allegience. An organization which represents the ideals of the internet is the EFF, and that organization would be a good choice for management of.ORG.
Also, I've noticed that though ISOC has links to news regarding Internet Issues, they take no stance on them. This illustrates a clear lack of any backbone. ISOC will cave in to corporate interests in managing.ORG.
Simply put,.ORG should be managed by an internet organization not affiliated with and indebted to corporations. ISOC does not qualify.
Rather than just putting up the fake files and letting their users waste their time downloading them, they should set up a service which users can connect to and it'll prevent their P2P clients from returning results for those fake files. Users would need a password for this service, which they'd have to change regularly (i.e., weekly), thus the RIAA couldn't get access to it.
Jus to ensure the RIAA can't get access to this service, they should block the RIAA and any of its member organization or member individuals from accessing the particular site needed to log into the service.
While I disagree with them blocking their users access to RIAA.org, as their users should be able to go wherever they want, its not really a big issue. Who goes to RIAA.org to look at their nazi propaganda anyways?
If customers really want to go to RIAA.org, they'll complain and the ISP will stop blocking RIAA.org.
You make a good point. In most cases, when I said "Corporate America," I should have said Microsoft, since Microsoft's reall the only one with anything to lose.
Because, you can understand something alot better by reading it than by watching it. Especially on interview shows, like the O'Reilly Factor, it helps you, because you aren't tainted as much by irrelevant outbursts of emotion by O'Reilly or his guests.
You can always take the approach that has a very strong heritage in the Linux community, and has recently been catching on in some certain colleges: RTFM! READ THE FUCKING MANUAL!
Seriously, that is what some colleges are doing. You can be expelled for helping a struggling student; it falls under the same class as cheating or plaguarism. The idea is that they want to weed out all those who can't hack it on their own, so as to save them from wasting years of work. After all, programmers need to be able to get stuff done on their own, without asking for help every 5 minutes, right?
Well, I can understand this approach: programmers need to have some degree of independence. But everyone struggles with some things, and maybe this person has really great ideas for programs/algorithms, but just has problems putting them into computer language. It'd be a shame to waste such a person because (s)he couldn't get it right by rtfm'ing.
Also, in the real programming world, though much is done independently, no programmer is an island unto himself. No one can do everything, and the wise programmer seeks the advice of specialists in particular areas.
Personally, I think that you can only help other people understand something/solve something if you know how you do. You might solve a problem lickety-split. How? If you don't know how, you can't really help anyone. But if you can analyze your thought process and come up with exactly how you solved that problem, you can help other people think in the way you do about the problems (which is obviously a good way to think, since you solved it quickly). It might be a rigorous logical thought process, or a highly innovative one. Even if you are really good, you can benefit from this type of thing by understanding the thought processes of others who are really good, thus adding to your own thought processes.
I think even if you gained majority (i.e., 50+%) control, you still have to look out for the interests of the minority share-holders. You have an obligation to the minority share-holders to do what's in their best interest. Thus, if you OpenSourced all of MS' IP after acquiring it (yeah right), you'd be in for a major lawsuite.
I agree with you 100%. Most stuff on TV is really boring. You can get news online; why watch the O'Reilly Factor when you can read it? And as for the few movies you do like, you can get them on DVD and watch them on your computer.
Well, if a quantum computer can decrypt anything encrypted by a normal computer, why can't a quantum computer encrypt something in such a way that no quantum computer could crack it in a reasonable amount of time?
I didn't suggest security through obscurity. I suggested making something so that such when the encryption on it is cracked, you get jibberish, so the cracker thinks its just crap and discards it.
Though I think that there's no basis for MS' complaints, all credability to them would be lost if MS released their additional improvements or modifications into the public domain or under the BSD license.
But the question is, can the government do that? According to the GPL, no. But, the owner of a copyright can grant exceptions to the license. Thus, Torvalds could grant an exception to the NSA regarding SE Linux, which would be as such: the original source code of the kernel/Linux upon which you based your modifications must still be released under the GPL; however, the modifications or additions you made may be released into the public domain or under the BSD license.
Furthermore, such would give the GPL license legal credability, as the government would be asking for an exception (though the NSA already gave the GPL license legal credability by releasing their modifications under the GPL).
That said, perhaps there should be some modifications of the GPL to allow people to release modifications under alternate licenses (which would include the public domain and OSI-certified or OSS licenses), if they can't possibly (due to legal restrictions) release it under the GPL. After all, its better that the modifications be released under a BSD-like license or the public domain (as opposed to the GPL), than not be released at all (which would ocur if the authors of the modifications were prevented from releasing modifications under the GPL).
SE Linux does not compete with private industry. Any corporation can take the techniques used to enhance linux (hence SE) and implement them in their own software. Any corporation can just grab the code and stick it in, provided they keep it separated from their proprietary code.
Any corporation can benefit from this by using it within their infrastructure.
MS' claims are absurd. The US government has the responsibility to do what is best for all of its citizens (while respecting the constitution and the amendments), not just what is best for corporate America. Granted, corporate America is a part of the picture, but its not all of it. SE Linux is a great benefit to the public as a whole.
The government has no obligation to subsidize obsolete products by buying them when it can make superior ones and use them; this -- subsidizing and using inferior products regarding security -- is dangerous to the security of the nation.
Futhermore, the results of government research should be available to all to use, whenver possible. In this case, the government based it off of the GPL, so it had to be GPL'ed. Never-the-less, it is available for all to use, with one restriction in that any modifications of it must also be GPL'ed. But MS whine the same complaint if the government did SE BSD: its competing with private industry. Bullshit.
If MS doesn't like the fact that this is hurting their business, they should make a more secure OS. But don't expect MY tax dollars to go towards buying an INSECURE OBSOLETE operating system, thus subsidizing a private industry (i.e., MS) which can't make it on its own.
Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business
Gee, imagine that -- the fruits of the research that the hard working taxpayers of America paid for is also provided to those very same citizens! Outrageous! It may be true that this research also benefits any other government or company in the world which may choose to use it; but more importantly, it can benefit any US citizen who chooses to implement it.
aggressive Microsoft lobbying efforts have contributed to a halt on any further work. "Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open-source software would compete with American proprietary software," said a source familiar with the complaints against the NSA who asked not to be identified.
Gee, imagine that -- the taxpayers get can get free access to the fruits of the research which their tax dollars made possible. Lets not forget, MS can also get access to this research and implement it: either the exact implementation, which would need to be separated (at a hands length) from other components of MS' OS, or the idea and make their own implementation, which they could license under any scheme they wanted.
Microsoft would not comment directly on its lobbying efforts, but did stress that it wanted to ensure the government continued to fund commercial ventures. "The federal government plays an important ro7le in funding basic software research," said a Microsoft representative. "Our interest is in helping to ensure that the government licenses its research in ways that take into account a stated goal of the U.S. government: to promote commercialization of public research."
That's interesting. According to MS, the government has an obligation to make taxpayers pay twice for the what their tax-dollars funded. Come on. Research is publicly funded because it can help all of the US, not just corporations like MS. Gee, tough concept there -- everyone pays taxes to support research, thus everyone should benefit from it, not just MS. Again, MS can make use of this research internally, thus benefit, or even put it in their OS at a hands length, or develop their own implementation of it.
In addition, the Common Criteria process, run jointly by the NSA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), is better suited to certify proprietary software coming from a single company. It's ill suited to deal with the myriad updates that the open-source community produces on a regular basis.
Then the solution is rather simple. We create a central organization of Linux volunteers to handle the mriad of updates, and they analyze and review those updates (quality-control), and submit them to the NSA and the NIAP.
Back to the government development of GPL'ed software. I think that whenever possible, the government should develop using the BSD-type license (actually, I think that the public domain should be redefined to be like the BSD-license, so that credit is always given and that the "source" of the originals are always distributed under that "license"). This is because the BSD-license allows all of the US taxpayers to implement the code in exactly the way they choose, even charge for it or make non-free modifications; but it also preserves the commons aspect of what was created by a public effort. In some cases, it may be necessary to develop under the GPL because that which your basing development off of is the GPL; such was the case in SE Linux.
Why couldn't a quantum computer create an encryption which another one couldn't break?
Just as an idea, we could use mathematical knots. There are some problems which simply cannot be solved -- period. Quantum computer or not. These are referred to as mathematical knots (though quantum computers may be able to test which ones really are mathematical knots). Why not use such a scheme to encrypt information?
Another possible idea is to encrypt something, then disperse it in a mass of static information (i.e., junk), and encrypt that. Should anything unencrypt it, it'll simply get a bunch of junk, and the person trying to spy would probably assume it was jibberish.
Also, lets not forget that quantum computers are still a ways off.
And lets remember that there are also many good things they'll be used for.
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Excuses excuses. They're still requiring me to get a better GPU. An operating system should not be dictating GPU needs. A users needs (i.e., if (s)he needs to do intensive 3D work) should.
And it doesn't matter how much of my GPU its using, the point is, its wasting my GPU's power when it need not be.
I have to disagree with this. People use OS X (or any Apple OS) because of the GUI. If you want a generic UNIX you can run Linux or *BSD and any of the awful WMs in X11. And you can do this on Apple hardware too. But do you notice none of the scientist quoted in the article are doing that?
The only response to this can be: IDIOT. No matter what you say, an OS is not a GUI. A GUI is the user interface to the OS. People may use MacOSX because it comes with the Aqua GUI, b ut that does not mean that Aqua is an OS: it isn't. Its a GUI.
2. MacOSX is not synonymous with Mac hardware. They are separate entities.
One again, wrong. Darwin is NOT OS X. You might as well run FreeBSD, unless you really want the Mach kernel. But I remember how much Linux users hated MkLinux because of the Mach kernel being slower.
Again, the only response to this can be: IDIOT. I said that Mac hardware is not synonymous with Mac software. In other words, software != hardware. Is that too difficult for you to grasp? Apple sells computer systems, with the Kernel and a GUI on top to make the OS, which are installed on hardware. That does not mean these components are all the same. They are separatable.
That Mac hardware is so great says nothing about its software. Try to understand that.
Your explanation doesn't even go together with your wrong refutation of my point.
True, Darwin is not OSX. OSX is the combination of Darwin (which is BSD with a Mach kernel), and the GUI (Aqua). I never said that Darwin was OSX. I said it was the core. Again, you make my point by saying that the Mach kernel is slower than the BSD kernel. So if your doing serious work, why waste time with it?
If Apple hardware is so "slow" and "overpriced" as everyone here seems to think, then why would they do that?
Apple hardware is fine. Its expensive (for personal computers), but its good hardware. Overall, its the most cost-efficient because it uses the least power and lasts the longest. But never-the-less, Mac systems (if running Mac's OS) are slow, because the software is bloated. Sit down at your local high-school's Mac, you'll see what I mean. Its not the hardware's fault, its the software's fault. In my experience, things always load slower on Mac's than on PC's. Obviously the fault of the software.
Also, I'm running OS X 10.1.5 on a 466 MHz G4 with a gig of RAM. It's not all that bloated and not slow at all. Sure, OS 9.2 runs a bit faster. But it's not the GUI. OS 9 is much older code, and has been optimized more over the years.
Wrong. OSX is based off of BSD and Mach, which are mature pieces of code: very efficient and lean. Yet, OSX runs slower than OS 9. It is the fault of the GUI, and all those extra useless features it adds like animation, transparency, icon zooming, etc.
"Bloat" does not always equal slow.
Again, another idiotic comment. Slow is relative. A GUI with extra features will run slower than if it didn't have those features, even if it runs fast.
You mention that Apple has added more features and the OS has taken up more RAM. Again, a problem. The OS should stay the fuck out of my way, not hog up all of my resources.
MacOS' are just resource hogs, be it CPU, GPU, or RAM.
Which is why if I were to buy a Mac computer, I'd buy it with nothing on it if possible and install Debian to get more performance out of it.
Control-click was introduced in OS 8; hold-clicking was introduced in OS X.
Wrong, moron. I've used both. Hold click does not work for many things in OSX, the few exceptions being folders on the dock and links in IE and Netscape. Hold click brings up property menu's in OS9.
As for the control panel, the new system to navigate through the control panel is less efficient. Its much quicker to just pull down a menu of all the control panel controls than to open up a window and click on icons.
Having used OSX alot, I also know your WRONG about APPLE-~. APPLE-~ brings up a finder window which asks you for the directory you'd like to go to; it does not switch between instances of a running applicaiton.
Next time, get your facts straight before saying something stupid. I've worked alot with both OS9 and OSX. I know about the GUI advantages and disadvantages of each.
Exactly what purpose do the animations serve?
They show the user where the window went.
Please. Like people can't figure that one out. Besides, that wouldn't be NECESSARY if applications minimized to their ICON on the DOCK, and then hold clicking that ICON on the DOCK would display all instances of it running, as should be the case. Also, all these animations are ANNOYING.
What about the Aqua glassy effects? Or the icon zooming?
The icon zooming makes it a lot easier to hit the right icon when you've got a LOT of things in the dock, as I do.
Firstly, that's not the way to deal with the problem. The way to deal with it is to create a scroll-up dock. Also, if they had KEPT the Apple Applications menu, it wouldn't be necessary to cram the dock full of all sorts of crap.
Transparency?
Maybe you don't ever need to see through a terminal window, but I sure do. Sometimes there's something behind there that you need to see.
Which would be nice, except for the fact that terminals (or other windows) aren't transparent. Menu's and the dock are.
If Apple's going to include all of these useless, questionable, annoying features, they should at least incldue a way to disable them and expunge them from one's hard drive.
This canard is getting a bit long in the tooth. The UI doesn't use nearly as much CPU time as people assume, and with Quartz Extreme the CPU involvement in compositing is negligible.
As another person noted, QuartzExtreme just pushes off the PROBLEM to the GPU. This is not a real solution. Now, its my GPU that OSX is hogging. Gee, if I wanna actually play any games or look at 3D images in Bryce, now the GUI is slowing me down. All Apple has done with Quartz Extreme is say to the user, "Get a better GPU; you'll now need at least a GeForce2 to run Aqua smoothly".
Quartz Extreme should solve most of the performance problems by making the eye candy run in the graphics card and freeing up the CPU.
Oh, great, now its eating up my GPU's resources. Well, thank god for that. You know, I spent $400 dollars on the GeForce4 just so that OSX could hog all of its power up. If the Aqua interface is hogging up the GPU's power, that means the GPU can't do its job as well -- i.e., rendering 3D objects. Btw, this isn't really a solution to a problem -- Apple is just pushing THEIR problem onto someone else. Had they actually made their code more efficient or elminated some useless features, that'd be a real solution. What they've done is say to the user, "get a better graphics card". Gee, all the programming genius that musta went into that one.
I think the impact of a beautiful computing experience is greatly underestimated. Many of us spend the bulk of our lives in front of a screen, which is normally gray and hopelessly dull visually. Making that environment beautiful - which is virtually exclusive to MacOS X - makes our lives more beautiful.
All I can say for that is HAHAHA. If your job is so boring to you that you need a fanciful GUI, then you should have a different job. If what your doing is so boring that you need tacky distractions, you should be doing something else. Btw, many people (myself included) think that OSX is not beautiful, but tacky. Like a two dollar tramp with too much makeup.
I think doing that is worth a few extra processor cycles./I.
A few? OSX hogs up tons of RAM and tons of CPU (or GPU) cycles.
Your posts suffers from several areas where you fail to distinguish between two separate things.
1. The GUI is not the OS. They are separate entities.
2. MacOSX is not synonymous with Mac hardware. They are separate entities.
I did not say that Mac hardware is terrible (though it is no match for Sun or SGI hardware). I also did not say that the operating system underneath OSX's GUI is bad/bloaty. I said the GUI is. Microsoft wants you to think that the GUI = OS = file-browser (IE). Mac apparently takes it one step further, GUI = OS = file-browser = hardware = kernel.
Regarding your criticism of Linux' GUI's, I disagree. Choice is a good thing, and different people will want different WM's and desktop environments (I prefer WindowMaker and pwm for the WM, and Xfce for the desktop). I don't know about other WM's and desktop environments, but the one's I've mentioned are very consistent in their user interface.
There may not be many features that Aqua has which are useless, but those which are there are very annoying and waste alot of your computing power. The worst one is Sherlock, which takes forever. Then there's the transparency, the Aqua effects (shiny buttons), the animation, the icon-zooming, the window zooming for maximization and minimization. Apple is using a very efficient core for its OS, so it should be running FASTER than previous versions of Mac's OS, not slower. But, the bloaty GUI obliterates any advantage that the more streamlized insides offer. Though one could say the more streamlined internal workings are what make the bloated GUI useable and somewhat responsive.
The people who like OSX don't like it because of the GUI. They like it because of the power its BSD/Mach-core provide. As for Darwin, I'm aware that you can forgo the Aqua GUI and just boot into Darwin, loading an X-windows manager. I did mention that somewhere (perhaps not in this post).
Personally, however, I'd prefer to load Debian if I had a Mac, because more *nix packages are available for it than for Darwin. Also, most benchmarks have shown that Linux performs superiorly to the BSD's (though we should not confuse performance with security and stability, both of which are categories which the BSD's have the advantage over Linux in).
I don't see why your calling OSX a "new OS". It is not a new OS. It is essentially the Aqua GUI strapped on top of a BSD/Mach core. What is NEW is the GUI, though I'd hesitate to even say that. MacOSX's GUI is a combination of the classic Mac GUI and some nice features of NeXT. What I dislike about it is that it is bloaty. There are, however, nice things about it, such as the dock. But Apple has really taken alot of steps backwards in the Aqua GUI. Firstly, there's no applications Apple menu. Secondly, they've abandoned hte hold click (corresponds to right click) in favor of control click. Thirdly, they've collapsed application switching and window switching within and application down t o just switching between all of the windows on the screen. In previous versions, APPLE-TAB switched between applications, while APPLE-~ switched between instances within an application. Now, APPLE-TAB still switches between applications, but APPLE-~ switches between all windows.
Also, they've given way to the MSesque idea that all configuration should be done through HTML-like interfaces (ok, not exactly). The control panel menu was great, why replace it with a less efficient system where you have to open up a window to access all of the different things within it?
I could go on and on with examples of how Apple has replaced efficient interface options in OS9 with inefficient bloated ones in OSX, but you get the point. Now, that said, this isn't something unique to Apple. It seems that every single application takes major steps backwards with each release, by catering to the lowest common denominator, and dumbing things down to the simplest level, at the expense of efficiency in interface. Just take a look at those stupid fucking Eminem "help characters" in the most recent versions of MS Office. Worse yet, whereas in the good old days, you could load help files instantaneously, now they're a mess of HTML which takes ages to load; the efficient "Table of Contents"/Search/Index scheme has been replaced by the "home page" scheme.
We are using 10.2.
It may be faster than previous releases, but its still bloatware, filled with features which need to be eliminated like transparency, aqua-effects, animations, and icon-zooming.
Btw, you say "almost as fast as OS9," which means its crap compared to Linux, which runs faster than OS9 on Mac hardware. OSX is based off of BSD and Mach, which means it should be very efficient, more so than OS9. But, in fact, the opposite is true. That means that alot of extra superflous stuff is (like unnecessary eye-candy in the GUI) is slowing it down. I don't know what's up with your driver problems, because Nvidia provides Linux drivers for all its GeForce cards.
One: Mac OS X is the only UNIX that has Microsoft Office available to it, period. If you want to be a hermit and be unable to send your scientific reports to PC users since you have inappropriate software, then Linux is for you.
Firstly, your WRONG. CrossOverOffice provides MS Office for Linux users. Also, Wine allows one to run MS products on Linux. Next time, do a little bit of research before making outlandish claims. Secondly, even if you were right, who cares? OpenOffice and StarOffice can save files as MS Word documents, thus Linux users can share their files with PC users, and vica versa. Again, do your research.
Two: Mac OS X may not be the sleekest girl on the block, but her OS underpinnings have been around as long, if not longer, than Linux. Under those "glassy effects" (which are optimized for speed in the 10.2 update) is a CLI and OS kernel that soars.
Glassy effects optimized for speed? Maybe the updated version is faster than the old one, but its still a LOT of bloat, and one would be better off without it. The excellent, minimalist underpinnings of MacOSX are slowed down by its bloated filled-with-useless-features GUI.
Nothing is useless in OS X.
Yea, whatever. Exactly what purpose do the animations serve? What about the Aqua glassy effects? Or the icon zooming? Transparency? All useless, or of very minimal use. All designed for the sole purpose of having good looking screen-shots.
These scientists just believe that using your OS is more productive than having to play with the damn thing each time someone in the Linux dev group sneezes and makes Yet Another Attempt At a Stable Kernel.
When exactly has an unstable Kernel came out under the stable branch of the kernel? I don't recall it happening.
Ever heard of Debian? Makes updating to the latest stable release of packages rather easy. As for updating the kernel, that can also be done rather nicely in Debian, without even having down-time.
Your "quick answers" still do not deal with the fact that MacOSX is bloat-ware. The new finder in it is crap, for example.
One would be better off running a WM in Darwin if one uses Mac hardware, or installing Debian.
http://www.sgi.com/workstations/fuel/
Nothing Apple has compares to that.
Apple doesn't even have 64-bit processors yet, so lets not jump the gun and assume they're going to overtake SGI and Sun in the scientific market.
Granted, for the type of computer Apple offers (32-bit), they're great. But, as I said before, why use the bloated OSX which'll hog alot of your RAM and CPU time, when you can install Debian, which won't?
How many of you here have actually used MacOSX?
Yes, its pretty much as stable as any other Unix. Yes, the OS never crashes.
But it still has problems.
OSX ships in a very non-secure state. Take a look at The Missing Manual: Mac OSX. You'd be surprised how poor the security is (and at how many vulnerabilities there are) on MacOSX out of the box.
That's one problem. The other problem is performance.
Just because somethings a Unix doesn't mean that it necessarily is slim and trim. OSX is not. It is enormously bloated. On the same hardware, it will run alot slower than previous Mac Operating Systems. Why? Because their GUI is unnecesarily fanciful, with useless animations and "glassy effects".
Run Debian on the same Mac you run OSX on and it will run alot faster, taking up less RAM.
Now, that said, if your willing to forgo the bloaty GUI of OSX, you can just run Darwin and install a minimal GUI like pwm; then, you won't have as much bloat.
OSX is a classic example of how companies add lots of useless features just to make a product more screen-shot worthy (i.e., animations, glassy effects, the whole Aqua appearance), despite the fact that those features don't really offer any advantages to the user.
.ORG sites should not be for corporate plundering.
.ORG, it cheapens .ORG. Yes, the RIAA and the MPAA are BUSINESSES, not organizations. Non-profit my ass, Jack Valentini and Hillary Rosen are racking in the money.
.ORG should be forced to relinquish it, but in the future, .ORG's should not be given to corporations unless they're using them in a .ORG-like way. I.e., if IBM sets up a IBM.org site to be used as a forum for initiating issues movements (i.e., the freedom of a product) for IBM-related products.
Every time some corporations like the RIAA or MPAA owns a
Now, I'm not saying that any corporation that owns a
I have no problem with MS owning microsoft.com, microsoft.org, and microsoft.net, so long as they use those sites in a way true to their "extention". MS.com should be MS' commercial outlet. MS.net should be their network outlet; i.e., a forum for users to discuss their issues. MS.org should be for ideological movements within MS, which (in this case) would be MS' propaganda machine.
1. ISOC has a conflict of interests. Their most influential and highest ranking members are corporations like MS, whose interests run contrary to that of the mass majority of the net-users.
.ORG.
.ORG.
.ORG should be managed by an internet organization not affiliated with and indebted to corporations. ISOC does not qualify.
2. As an ISOC insider, your statements regarding ISOC's character are to be taken with a grain of salt. Few insiders criticize their own organization.
3. ISOC does not represent the true ideals of the internet. It represents the interests of its corporate members. That MS is listed as one of the "founding members" of ISOC, speaks volumes about ISOC's allegience. An organization which represents the ideals of the internet is the EFF, and that organization would be a good choice for management of
Also, I've noticed that though ISOC has links to news regarding Internet Issues, they take no stance on them. This illustrates a clear lack of any backbone. ISOC will cave in to corporate interests in managing
Simply put,
Rather than just putting up the fake files and letting their users waste their time downloading them, they should set up a service which users can connect to and it'll prevent their P2P clients from returning results for those fake files. Users would need a password for this service, which they'd have to change regularly (i.e., weekly), thus the RIAA couldn't get access to it.
Jus to ensure the RIAA can't get access to this service, they should block the RIAA and any of its member organization or member individuals from accessing the particular site needed to log into the service.
While I disagree with them blocking their users access to RIAA.org, as their users should be able to go wherever they want, its not really a big issue. Who goes to RIAA.org to look at their nazi propaganda anyways?
If customers really want to go to RIAA.org, they'll complain and the ISP will stop blocking RIAA.org.
You make a good point. In most cases, when I said "Corporate America," I should have said Microsoft, since Microsoft's reall the only one with anything to lose.
Because, you can understand something alot better by reading it than by watching it. Especially on interview shows, like the O'Reilly Factor, it helps you, because you aren't tainted as much by irrelevant outbursts of emotion by O'Reilly or his guests.
You can always take the approach that has a very strong heritage in the Linux community, and has recently been catching on in some certain colleges: RTFM! READ THE FUCKING MANUAL!
Seriously, that is what some colleges are doing. You can be expelled for helping a struggling student; it falls under the same class as cheating or plaguarism. The idea is that they want to weed out all those who can't hack it on their own, so as to save them from wasting years of work. After all, programmers need to be able to get stuff done on their own, without asking for help every 5 minutes, right?
Well, I can understand this approach: programmers need to have some degree of independence. But everyone struggles with some things, and maybe this person has really great ideas for programs/algorithms, but just has problems putting them into computer language. It'd be a shame to waste such a person because (s)he couldn't get it right by rtfm'ing.
Also, in the real programming world, though much is done independently, no programmer is an island unto himself. No one can do everything, and the wise programmer seeks the advice of specialists in particular areas.
Personally, I think that you can only help other people understand something/solve something if you know how you do. You might solve a problem lickety-split. How? If you don't know how, you can't really help anyone. But if you can analyze your thought process and come up with exactly how you solved that problem, you can help other people think in the way you do about the problems (which is obviously a good way to think, since you solved it quickly). It might be a rigorous logical thought process, or a highly innovative one. Even if you are really good, you can benefit from this type of thing by understanding the thought processes of others who are really good, thus adding to your own thought processes.
I think even if you gained majority (i.e., 50+%) control, you still have to look out for the interests of the minority share-holders. You have an obligation to the minority share-holders to do what's in their best interest. Thus, if you OpenSourced all of MS' IP after acquiring it (yeah right), you'd be in for a major lawsuite.
I agree with you 100%. Most stuff on TV is really boring. You can get news online; why watch the O'Reilly Factor when you can read it? And as for the few movies you do like, you can get them on DVD and watch them on your computer.
This saves you a ton of money.
There should always be the stipulation that whatever was taken from the public domain be redistributed openly.
any other ideas?
Well, if a quantum computer can decrypt anything encrypted by a normal computer, why can't a quantum computer encrypt something in such a way that no quantum computer could crack it in a reasonable amount of time?
I didn't suggest security through obscurity. I suggested making something so that such when the encryption on it is cracked, you get jibberish, so the cracker thinks its just crap and discards it.
Btw, do you have any ideas?
Though I think that there's no basis for MS' complaints, all credability to them would be lost if MS released their additional improvements or modifications into the public domain or under the BSD license.
But the question is, can the government do that? According to the GPL, no. But, the owner of a copyright can grant exceptions to the license. Thus, Torvalds could grant an exception to the NSA regarding SE Linux, which would be as such: the original source code of the kernel/Linux upon which you based your modifications must still be released under the GPL; however, the modifications or additions you made may be released into the public domain or under the BSD license.
Furthermore, such would give the GPL license legal credability, as the government would be asking for an exception (though the NSA already gave the GPL license legal credability by releasing their modifications under the GPL).
That said, perhaps there should be some modifications of the GPL to allow people to release modifications under alternate licenses (which would include the public domain and OSI-certified or OSS licenses), if they can't possibly (due to legal restrictions) release it under the GPL. After all, its better that the modifications be released under a BSD-like license or the public domain (as opposed to the GPL), than not be released at all (which would ocur if the authors of the modifications were prevented from releasing modifications under the GPL).
SE Linux does not compete with private industry. Any corporation can take the techniques used to enhance linux (hence SE) and implement them in their own software. Any corporation can just grab the code and stick it in, provided they keep it separated from their proprietary code.
Any corporation can benefit from this by using it within their infrastructure.
MS' claims are absurd. The US government has the responsibility to do what is best for all of its citizens (while respecting the constitution and the amendments), not just what is best for corporate America. Granted, corporate America is a part of the picture, but its not all of it. SE Linux is a great benefit to the public as a whole.
The government has no obligation to subsidize obsolete products by buying them when it can make superior ones and use them; this -- subsidizing and using inferior products regarding security -- is dangerous to the security of the nation.
Futhermore, the results of government research should be available to all to use, whenver possible. In this case, the government based it off of the GPL, so it had to be GPL'ed. Never-the-less, it is available for all to use, with one restriction in that any modifications of it must also be GPL'ed. But MS whine the same complaint if the government did SE BSD: its competing with private industry. Bullshit.
If MS doesn't like the fact that this is hurting their business, they should make a more secure OS. But don't expect MY tax dollars to go towards buying an INSECURE OBSOLETE operating system, thus subsidizing a private industry (i.e., MS) which can't make it on its own.
Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business
Gee, imagine that -- the fruits of the research that the hard working taxpayers of America paid for is also provided to those very same citizens! Outrageous! It may be true that this research also benefits any other government or company in the world which may choose to use it; but more importantly, it can benefit any US citizen who chooses to implement it.
aggressive Microsoft lobbying efforts have contributed to a halt on any further work. "Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open-source software would compete with American proprietary software," said a source familiar with the complaints against the NSA who asked not to be identified.
Gee, imagine that -- the taxpayers get can get free access to the fruits of the research which their tax dollars made possible. Lets not forget, MS can also get access to this research and implement it: either the exact implementation, which would need to be separated (at a hands length) from other components of MS' OS, or the idea and make their own implementation, which they could license under any scheme they wanted.
Microsoft would not comment directly on its lobbying efforts, but did stress that it wanted to ensure the government continued to fund commercial ventures. "The federal government plays an important ro7le in funding basic software research," said a Microsoft representative. "Our interest is in helping to ensure that the government licenses its research in ways that take into account a stated goal of the U.S. government: to promote commercialization of public research."
That's interesting. According to MS, the government has an obligation to make taxpayers pay twice for the what their tax-dollars funded. Come on. Research is publicly funded because it can help all of the US, not just corporations like MS. Gee, tough concept there -- everyone pays taxes to support research, thus everyone should benefit from it, not just MS. Again, MS can make use of this research internally, thus benefit, or even put it in their OS at a hands length, or develop their own implementation of it.
In addition, the Common Criteria process, run jointly by the NSA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), is better suited to certify proprietary software coming from a single company. It's ill suited to deal with the myriad updates that the open-source community produces on a regular basis.
Then the solution is rather simple. We create a central organization of Linux volunteers to handle the mriad of updates, and they analyze and review those updates (quality-control), and submit them to the NSA and the NIAP.
Back to the government development of GPL'ed software. I think that whenever possible, the government should develop using the BSD-type license (actually, I think that the public domain should be redefined to be like the BSD-license, so that credit is always given and that the "source" of the originals are always distributed under that "license"). This is because the BSD-license allows all of the US taxpayers to implement the code in exactly the way they choose, even charge for it or make non-free modifications; but it also preserves the commons aspect of what was created by a public effort. In some cases, it may be necessary to develop under the GPL because that which your basing development off of is the GPL; such was the case in SE Linux.
Why couldn't a quantum computer create an encryption which another one couldn't break?
Just as an idea, we could use mathematical knots. There are some problems which simply cannot be solved -- period. Quantum computer or not. These are referred to as mathematical knots (though quantum computers may be able to test which ones really are mathematical knots). Why not use such a scheme to encrypt information?
Another possible idea is to encrypt something, then disperse it in a mass of static information (i.e., junk), and encrypt that. Should anything unencrypt it, it'll simply get a bunch of junk, and the person trying to spy would probably assume it was jibberish.
Also, lets not forget that quantum computers are still a ways off.
And lets remember that there are also many good things they'll be used for.