A script on the fsdn domain is causing command-click on links to load both the new tab and the original tab with the destination URL. Both firefox and safari.
I thought maybe it was just me. Happens in Firefox 21.0 on Mountain Lion. Seems like it started happening about a week or two ago. The funny thing is the links still open in a new tab, but the current tab also goes to the same link, forcing me to click the back button to get back to the Slashdot article. Half the time I wind up back at the top of the page and have to scroll back down and find my place again. That gets real old real fast. So what exactly is the point of this attempted Command+Click hijacking and/or blocking script? Why the hell did some jerkface even bother to write the code that does this?
The only other website (that I can think of) that does this to me is SportsmansGuide.com. Both here and there all this script really seems to do is make it extremely obnoxious to use the site.
I expect much better from a supposedly geek/tech oriented website. Silly me, right?
Fix it, Slashdot. Fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it FIX IT!!!!ONE!!!
I'm part of an award-winning writer's group, and several of the members swear by this book. They follow it meticulously--and it isn't even the first to do this. The Warrior's Journey describes how Disney and Pixar created all their big masterpieces, and then takes that technique and applies it to novel writing. And then there's the Nora Roberts/James Patterson formulaic ghost-writers, plus the Harlequin series, any of Dan Brown's books; heck 90% of the entire fiction market follows a formula similar to Save The Cat. Formulaic writing is nothing new. Authors and screenwriters follow this like it's a religion--they cling to to the formula because they fervently believe it's the best chance they have of getting their work published. Fortunately, there are two mitigating factors that I've found: 1) a good idea is a good idea and even a plot-writing formula won't ruin it; and 2) good writing is good writing.
Indeed. My father used to tell me, "There are only 32 stories (or maybe 36)." What he meant was that there are a very limited number of possible basic plot element combinations that will ever be of any interest to a human being. The formula itself exists because it works quite well as a basic structure to use when telling a story. What matters in the end however is exactly how well the story is being told, and whether the audience can identify with or empathize with the characters and allow themselves to become part of the story and enjoy it without analyzing it along the way.
The overly specific nature of the recipe in Save the Cat may make the resulting films somewhat more similar to each other than usual, but recent films are not failing because they are formulaic but rather because they are bad implementations of the underlying stories. The characters fail to connect with the audience due to boring plot lines and bad character writing. Every good movie that has ever been filmed has been made to a formula, but if it's a good movie people are too busy enjoying the film to notice the formulaic structure. It's only when it's a bad movie with uninteresting characters that you will notice how formulaic something is. Because that's precisely when things appear to be happening for no other reason than "the script says this should happen here".
Society was happier when people were focused on family and behaved in a (relatively) chaste manner.
Part of maintaining that structure requires a clear sexual values system, including a sense of what is normal.
When we go pluralistic, or make "anything goes" the new normal, this traditional order is threatened.
While I will never support the persecution of someone for being quietly gay, I think a lot of the excesses of that time were designed to counter-act the rising sexual liberation movement.
You suffer from the terrible misapprehension that there is such thing as "normal" when it comes to human sexuality, and that people have ever done anything more than pretend to conform to your mythical "chaste" behaviors. All of recorded history shows us that A) human sexuality is a spectrum that has always included things like homosexuality and B) humans are really not very good at being "chaste".
Also, last time I checked there were an awful lot of people inhabiting those "happier" time periods you refer to who were not happy at all. Quite the opposite in fact, since they were busy being persecuted for what they felt was perfectly normal.
It certainly sounds very much like you do support the persecution of anyone who doesn't fit your personal definition of "normal" or threatens your idea of harmonious social order.
More on topic: This whole thing with pardoning just Alan Turing because he happened to be a genius and helped to win a war makes me want to puke. If the law and the resulting persecution was wrong they should be apologizing and pardoning every single person who was ever prosecuted under that law. Not just Turing. What, those 49,000 others aren't good enough for a pardon? They weren't genius enough to earn an apology for being persecuted? Give me a break. If it was wrong, it was wrong. Otherwise it's just favoritism.
Let them actually implement it without knowing how it works? Oh, Hell no!
I'm not talking "Skynet" or anything here... but if it breaks, who's going to fix it?
If it breaks can't we just fall back to the current inefficient algorithms? With the performance and fluidity improvements promised by this approach it could be hugely beneficial to all kinds of networks, even if no one yet fully understands why it works better. They'll figure it out eventually.
This autorun vulnerability reminds me quite strongly of a sci-fi novel I read several years back called The Warriors of Dawn, by M. A. Foster. This novel contains three species, one of which is a sort of not super- or subspecies but a kind of "side" species of humans, created by genetic manipulation of the human genome. Another is a subspecies of humans that are kind of kept as slaves or playthings on an alien world. The third is of course, humans.
In the novel the subspecies (who had of all things the peculiarity of having thick orange fur on their lower legs) had the ability to use a certain device, a "toy", which was kind of described as a complex 3D lattice of thin wires with tiny beads on the wires. When a member of the subspecies looked into the device and tilted it this way and that, the patterns created would somehow interact with their brain structure through the optic nerve, and gave them the ability to answer questions about the future or other such things that seemed to almost violate the laws of causality. If a human looked into the device, all they would get is a vaguely disquieting sensation. It wouldn't work for humans the way it would work for the subspecies, but it was fascinating and difficult to look away once you looked into it.
Here's the tricky bit. Since the genetically manipulated "side" species had slightly more advanced brains than humans, the protagonists of the novel were able to trick a member of this species into looking into the device and tilting it, whereupon he was instantly transfixed into a mental state he couldn't escape from. In other words the device caused his brain to literally lock up, or "crash".
Point being, are we on the verge in the next few decades of being able to walk up to someone who has this kind of digital technology highly integrated into their life, show them a certain object or pattern and watch them fall into a coma? Methinks the answer is a rather disturbing "yes". We could end up in the future having an incident where someone creates a malicious pattern that's the equivalent of that Japanese cartoon episode that sent hundreds of children to the hospital, and then rickrolls ten million overly-trusting technology users into epileptic siezures. Many of whom may be doing things like operating moving vehicles at the time of their attack.
The future could be pretty lame for humanity if we can't learn a lesson as simple as "don't autorun content the user didn't explicitly ask for".
Someone needs to immediately release an app that allows us to begin geotagging "radicalized fearmongering enemies of freedom". First on the list to be tagged: Brett Stallbaum.
Watch how loudly the ideologues squeal about invasion of privacy, reckless endangerment and defamation of character when the shoe is on the other foot.
So my wife and I rented an RV for a trip through California last fall, and near the end of our trip we stopped and stayed a few days in a little place called Watsonville, at the Pinto Lake RV Park. It's a small park, very quiet, right by the side of a small freshwater lake. You can go out on the lake in a boat, and you can fish in the lake, but the park manager tells us there's no swimming allowed and you might not want to eat the fish you catch. Why? The entire lake is a deep, dark green color from a completely out of control algae bloom, and the algae is somehow poisonous to people and animals. All the waterfowl living in the lake would walk around the park leaving wads of bird poop all over the lawn, which were dark green instead of white due to all the algae in their diet. But besides the issue with the lake and a lack of shower/laundry facilities, it was a nice place.
The cause? Apparently, agricultural runoff from all the local farms in the area. In other words, excessive use of fertilizers.
I respectfully disagree that it is just an IT delay. Problem will still be here in 2015 and people will still not want to sign up, plus the insurance cost raises will continue in at least double digits, so this is ALL ABOUT reelecting Demos in 2014 midterms.
Obama, on the other hand, wants a broken system where everyone bitches, because he fully intends as he has said on camera before becoming President, that he wants to go to a single payer system (100% Gov't run healthcare), but just can't get there all at once.
And in the end that means the Federal government and its enforcement arm, the IRS, will take whatever they need from you and me to support the care they give to everyone, whether we like it or not.
This is a quick review of what tyranny looks like; Pay what the Gov't says or you are a criminal as there is no other option but to leave the country. New Zealand, Australia, Chile; they are all looking better.
I don't think I will ever understand this attitude about universal government-run health care being some sort of horrible tyrannical thing. I have tried and tried and tried, but I just don't get it. Is it that you don't understand or accept that you are part of this "everyone", and that you yourself would benefit from such a system, no matter what your income level? Are the taxes that are taken from you and used for schools, roads, police and military forces and other public infrastructure also "tyrannical" in nature? Last time I checked the people who represent us to our government voted for all such taxes, so... I'm really struggling to understand how one more infrastructure tax voted for by the people and/or the peoples' representatives qualifies as tyrannical. Or is it that do you not consider a functioning health care system to be essential to a modern social infrastructure? It certainly is not "taxation without representation". Just because you were in a minority that did not approve of the tax does not suddenly turn freely-elected President Obama into King George III, Tyrannical Ruler-for-Life of the 50 American Colonies.
I guess what we need is universal health care with the ability for short-sighted individual assholes to opt out. The catch being if you opt out and can't pay for services with your own cash or private insurance you will be denied access to any health services, including the "free" emergency room service (which of course is not free at all, but payed for by taxes and/or higher insurance premiums). If you want to be independent of society then it is not society's job to keep you from dying on the sidewalk outside the hospital. I can't imagine why you would want to live in any country that would let people die because they can't afford expensive health care, but since that seems to be exactly what you desire, perhaps you should move to one of those "free" countries you mentioned. Just don't come crying back to us when those countries also pass universal health care legislation. Because it seems like every developed, supposedly civilized nation has been moving in that direction for several decades, and none that I know of have dismantled their universal health care to return to completely privatized health care.
No matter how many times I hear the "but he's making a statement!" argument, it never stops seeming retarded. You mean he's winning a symbolic victory? You can win all the symbolic victories you want - I'll take the real victories.
Last time I checked most "real" victories started with symbolic victories, or at the very least the challenging of the status quo. Your statement implies that one should never try to fight something unless one is already assured of winning. Good luck with that.
I think most commenters here will end up completely missing the point, just as I initially did. Of course it will be trivial to bypass any possible protection the font might briefly provide, but that isn't the point. The making of the font is a political statement against government machinery and software spying on us and taking our humanity away. As such, I'd say it's quite clever and attention-getting.
Now I'll sit back and watch 50 different people get up-modded for pedantically explaining how it will be trivial to train an OCR to recognize the font and how software reads the bytecodes and doesn't care about the font and blah blah blah...
Is that a giant whooshing sound I hear?
Either way, it's still lame. I mean the pedants are obnoxious but so are pointless political gestures.
Oh gosh, my sincerest apologies. I'll be sure to let everyone know that all political gestures need to be cleared by you first. You know, to make sure they're not "lame".
If his purpose was to invoke widespread discussion of governmental spying on everyday activities of citizens, I'd say it was far from pointless. But that's just my opinion.
And I will be writing all of my messages in crayon from now on because crayon will smudge up the scanner. It's only a point if it actually does something!
I cannot believe this was modded up as Insightful. A "point" does not have to accomplish something. A point can be, and in this case is, an idea or statement.
point (noun):
4. - a single item or detail in an extended discussion, list, or text - an argument or idea put forward by a person in discussion - (usu. the point) the significant or essential element of what is intended or being discussed
I think most commenters here will end up completely missing the point, just as I initially did. Of course it will be trivial to bypass any possible protection the font might briefly provide, but that isn't the point. The making of the font is a political statement against government machinery and software spying on us and taking our humanity away. As such, I'd say it's quite clever and attention-getting.
Now I'll sit back and watch 50 different people get up-modded for pedantically explaining how it will be trivial to train an OCR to recognize the font and how software reads the bytecodes and doesn't care about the font and blah blah blah...
How the fuck this comment is tagged Insightful? This is probably one of the biggest displays of ignorance I've seen in a long time. Do you even know how large data centers perform back ups. Using ****ing magnetic tapes(5TB by Fujitu being the biggest I've heard of). Tapes are big, slow as hell and one of the unreliable. A CD sized disk capable of 1PB is a god send. Life is much more than buying shitty DVDs at Costco. And that is only one of the obvious applications for this tech that comes to my mind.
The frothing at the mouth is uncalled for. My comment contains nothing that would disagree with that proposed usage. IF the media can remain readable for more than a couple of years and IF the read/write speed can be made reasonable, it would by all means be a great replacement for tapes.
But if these are "shitty" DVDs then all retail DVDs are "shitty", thus reinforcing my original point. Optical media sucks.
Good thing I bought a chinese knockoff of the stargate boxed set. I also got defective discs, but I didn't get robbed.
Optical media is use-once, maybe twice if you're cautious.
If you're having discs you burned go tits up on you when stored in a cool, dark place, then you should probably start researching the media a little more carefully. Or just buy whatever Verbatim wants the most money for. They made some of the best floppies, and guess what? They make the best optical media.
The few times that I have actually used writable CDs and DVDs to archive important things I have made sure to use gold archival quality media (with a theoretical 100-year lifetime), and burn two copies, and store them nicely away from light and heat. I know all about the limited lifetime of the less durable cheap optical media. The writable discs I have lost data on were either unimportant or were burned years ago before the gold archival media was even on the market.
But when I pay good money for factory pressed DVDs I expect them to be watchable for many years, at least as many years as I would have gotten out of a VHS tape. I watched this set a couple of years ago all the way through with no problems, so I am seriously miffed about the apparent bit rot that has occurred just a couple years later.
I've just about had it with all optical media in general. I've had numerous CDs and DVDs over the years that just stopped being readable without even having any visible damage. Both self-written and factory discs. I'm only halfway through re-watching a retail set of Stargate SG-1 DVDs I purchased at Costco for $179.99 just 3-4 years ago, and I've already encountered a handful of discs with serious defects. Learned my lesson not to buy physical media anymore. Once I finish torrenting a good pirated version of the series I'll probably never try to watch the DVDs again. The box is nice though.
Bottom line is even if one of these amazingly high density optical media schemes finally pans out, the media will need to be composed of pure diamond or something else incredibly durable, and have a filesystem with incredible levels of error correction and redundancy or it will be pointless to put even a terabyte of data on such a disc, much less a petabyte. And that's not even bringing up read/write speeds and other issues that have already made this type of media useless for many purposes.
* No, you don't need a CC# or iTunes account to keep OS X updated. You've misunderstood something. Badly.
* I've never seen an OS that doesn't need to be rebooted when doing things such as kernel updates. There are many software updates in OS X that do not require a reboot and oftentimes don't even require an administrator password to be applied.
* The Option key is the Alt key. It's even labeled that way on the keyboard.
* I haven't used the Insert key in like 20 years. Are you using Wordstar or something? Anyway apparently Fn+Enter is supposed to do the trick, on the full size keyboard. I'm sure it could be assigned to a function key on a laptop keyboard.
* The "Clear" button on the number pad is in the same place and functions as a Num Lock key if you're using the keyboard with Windows. In OS X of course there is no need for a Num Lock key since the number pad never pretends to be anything but a number pad.
* Scroll Lock is F15 on the full size Apple keyboard. Otherwise it's Fn+Shift+F12.
* Yes, the Home and End keys actually go to Home and End on the Mac. The beginning and end of a line can be reached with Cmd+Left and Cmd+Right, respectively. This seems pretty intuitive to me.
* As of Mountain Lion all windows can be resized from corners and edges. If you're seeing a resize cursor you should be able to resize the window.
* No, on the Mac the green "zoom" button has never been a maximize button, and coming from Windows myself I empathize with your maximize button withdrawal pangs. A partial solution is available in the form of a SIMBL plugin called SizeWell. It lets you turn the green button into a true maximize button that works well in almost all apps. SizeWell also lets you resize windows in various other ways through a context menu or keyboard shortcuts. Works great and it's free.
* For nearly a decade I've been replacing the old one-button Apple mouses with basic Microsoft scroll mouses (the only good product Microsoft makes). I've never had any trouble producing a right-click with the Magic Mouse like you're describing. All you have to do is lift your index finger when clicking. But if you can't learn to lift your index finger when right-clicking or have some other reasons you don't like the Apple Magic Mouse, there's nothing stopping you from using a different mouse. With the IntelliPoint drivers you can even use the ones with several buttons and adjustable dpi. But any basic USB scroll mouse will work perfectly with no drivers.
* In the Finder, click Go -> Go to Folder or Shift-Cmd-G to specify a folder to go to. This can be used to open even hidden folders like "~/Library".
* I've been using OS X for a decade and haven't seen copy/paste misbehaving as you indicate. Certainly nowhere near the realm of "50% of the time". Would love to know what you're talking about. Keyboard shortcut usefulness and consistency is one of the things that drew me to OS X years ago, and helps keep me here.
* I also haven't had the multi-monitor issues you seem to be having. Once I set up an external monitor's settings I've never had one lose its settings. And are you saying you have to force-reboot your Mac if you wake it up with no external monitors attached? I've never encountered that myself. I've always been amazed by how well OS X deals with dynamically attaching and detaching monitors.
* No, it isn't FreeBSD. Some minor elements of the OS were taken from FreeBSD years ago, but the kernel is based on a Mach microkernel architecture and the OS is very much its own beast with its own filesystem conventions which have been refined for over a decade new. The Mac OS X filesystem makes just as much sense as anyone else's filesystem. It's just different.
* I have to sign up for iTunes to keep my computer updated!?
* I HAVE TO GIVE ITUNES MY CC# TO KEEP MY COMPUTER UPDATED!?
I'm not an OSX user. Is this true?
And if it is, people put up with it?
Fascinating!
No. It isn't remotely true. Unless you've purchased one or more applications through the Mac App Store, in which case you would have had to set up a valid credit card to open an account and purchase the software in the first place.
At worst, if you have no purchased apps, Software Update will ask for a (free) valid AppleID in order to update some bundled apps like iPhoto (part of iLife which comes bundled with all new Macs). An AppleID is simply an email address and password that is registered with Apple. Setting up an AppleID does not require a credit card number.
If you just have a basic installation of OS X without the bundled apps, or if you choose to only install the system updates, the Software Update app won't ever ask for any kind of authorization, account or credit card numbers.
The GP is talking out his ass on this particular point, or severely misunderstanding something. The rest of his points are mostly correct though. Mostly.
Seems like having a predilection for something that kills you is not an instinct that should be selected for. If they are electrocuted by the electronics shouldn't this problem take care of itself sooner or later?
Yes. Absolutely. You and I are in total agreement. This problem will take care of itself quite quickly.
In fact, within a few short decades all of the electronic devices capable of being entered and short-circuited by endless swarms of ants will have been destroyed, and will become extinct.
Oh, you thought that endless quadrillions of fast-reproducing tiny insects would be forced to evolve just because a tiny percentage of them get zapped? How amusing. That is not the sort of selection pressure that causes evolution. At least not on time scales less than millions of years.
But seriously, this predilection for electronics and emission of alarm pheromones is their greatest weakness, and I'm quite surprised nobody has taken advantage of it already to build an effective ant-killing trap. According to a documentary I watched on Netflix, fire ants have the same weakness for electronics, and the same reaction of emitting alarm pheromones when zapped. Therefore, all one has to do in order to combat either species is to build a box with some basic electronics inside that attracts the ants, and then make the ants walk one-by-one through some type of self-cleaning zapper before they ever reach the "bait" electronics. I see no reason a device couldn't be constructed to kill thousands of ants per hour in this manner and virtually wipe out entire colonies in a matter of days.
If it works it could provide enough selection pressure to cause the surviving ants to either stop trying to eat electronics or stop responding so strongly to the alarm pheromones, or both. But if the resulting modified species didn't have some other traits that allowed them to out-compete the original species it would only have a localized effect.
Congratulations, folks... And welcome to the Future!
We had the era of paintings, then the era of photographs, then the era of moving pictures, then the "talkies" and (gasp!) colorized films, then direct-to-video home porn rental, and now we are entering the era of the "feelies".
And of course with each new era we have a lovely renewed bout of public "moral outrage" over the increased stimulation the viewer receives with each new technology, and how it contributes to moral depravity that will destroy our nation if it isn't stopped!
During the coming decade or so we will begin to hear whispers, then breaking news stories, and finally public outcry, hysteria and demands that the government "do something" about all this simulated violence and suicide our children are partaking in, before we tragically lose an entire generation to the "new drug" of Virtual Experiences.
After the story about Miguel de Icaza switching to Mac OS X, it got me thinking about my own history of operating systems. While I had happily used OS X for six and a half years, over that period of time I have drifted back in favor of Linux. This had less to do with new features being offered in Linux as it did with growing tired of foibles in OS X. Here are a list of some of the bigger issues:
- Beach Ball of Death (BBOD): While this didn't occur frequently, when it did it was more frustrating than a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). At least you knew you were fucked when you saw the BSOD. With the BBOD, sometimes you would recover from it and other times you could wait for up to ten minutes before realizing that you're never coming back. During that period, you are completely unable to access the System menu or start another app to find the proc that is chewing resources so that it can be killed. In 2013, this is completely unacceptable from an OS.
Agreed. Stability should be better. Hopefully that will improve with the new guy in charge of Mac OS X development.
But you mention being unable to access the System menu when you're getting the Beach Ball. In my experience the menu bar will be non-responsive in that situation, but only as long as the hanging app is in the foreground. Cmd+Tabbing to any other app or clicking somewhere on the desktop (which is part of the Finder, of course) will switch you away from the hanging app and allow you access to the menu bar, etc. If you're really unable to get away from a hanging app then you're experiencing a full system freeze, but in my several years of experience with OS X this is pretty rare. Also the Option+Cmd+Esc shortcut often works, which brings up a Force Quit dialog and usually a hanging app will be highlighted in red in the list.
- Mouse Acceleration: There is no way to modify the acceleration curve in OS X, let alone disable acceleration. This is not a problem when you are using a trackpad since the acceleration curve is one of the best out of all OS'es for that, but it is incredibly frustrating when using a mouse. I have gone through many forums and found many other users complaining about this issue, but no one has come up with a decent solution for disabling mouse acceleration. For situations in which I am better off with a mouse, I always hopped over to a non-OS X machine.
I've... never actually realized this was a problem in OS X. Spent several years using a Mac desktop with a mouse (a Microsoft mouse at that). I guess maybe I just adapted to whatever accelleration curve was there. I assume you're not talking about tracking speed, which is easily adjustable of course.
Yeah, you're right. Just plugged in a USB mouse to get another look at the mouse preferences. Tracking speed and scrolling speed are the only things that can be adjusted. Unfortunate.
A quick google indicates there might be more solutions to this issue than there used to be. Including one person who had good luck with a Microsoft Comfort Mouse and the IntelliPoint drivers that came with it.
- Poor Multi-Monitor Support: Since the menu for each application is in a detached panel that is only displayed on one monitor, this means you will be racking up a lot of mileage on your pointing device to hop between apps on the secondary monitor and their menu on the primary monitor.
Yeah, that's definitely an issue sometimes. Just one more good reason to memorize as many keyboard shortcuts as possible.
Looks like there is an app called SecondBar that's a partial solution. Same guy makes an app called BetterSnapTool which may even be a better enhancement to window management than SizeWell.
- Updating Settings Behind Your Back: For me, this shit started with Microsoft and was one of the big reasons I left their OS. After an update, some of your settings would be changed to whatever
I'm going to put all my replies to this at the top here because there are too many layers of html tags in this for me to easily insert text by hand.
I'm also going to try and reply to your original post and provide a few more pointers to those issues.
Re: Cmd key needing to be released.
Never thought of this being an issue. As long as you hold the Cmd key you can tab or shift-tab through the list or even hit Esc and remain in the current app. Until you let go of the Cmd key you haven't actually switched apps. Cycling through open documents/windows is a completely separate keyboard shortcut. And, honestly, the window that I want is usually in the front when I switch to the app so I don't need to cycle between windows that much anyway.
Re: SIMBL
I also hesitate to use hacky things, and probably wouldn't install SIMBL on any kind of production/server Mac, but like I said I've used it for years now with no problems, and many other people do also. It doesn't seem to have any history of causing the kind of issues that were caused in the past by things like Unsanity's APE.
Re: Lack of underlines in menu
I agree it's far from perfect but I can't imagine it would take more than a few tries to become familiar with the key combinations to access any commonly used menu items.
Thanks for the gracious acceptance of my pointers. Best of luck with whatever OS you choose to use.
Thank you for the informative reply and for not taking offense to my gripes of your current OS of choice. Your display of maturity is a rarity these days!
How long has it been since you used OS X? I don't remember when it happened exactly but most apps let you resize from all edges and corners now. I can't remember when this wasn't the case with OS X, actually.
I stopped upgrading after 10.5.8 and as of that version you still need to resize windows in the bottom-right corner. Maybe they added resize from all edges in Snow Leopard.
App switching in OS X works like this: Cmd+Tab switches between applications, and Cmd+` (backtick, it's under the tilde and right above the Tab key) cycles between individual windows within an application
I just tried this and I think I learned it before and forgot it for two reasons: First, you have to switch to the app with Cmd+Tab, release Cmd, then Cmd+` to start switching windows. Add in the fact that at least one of the windows is usually minimized, and it's just easier to switch windows via the Dock.
There is a SIMBL plugin called SizeWell
I may have to try that sometime. I'm usually hesitant about plugins since they are usually half-baked and the integration is rarely up to par with native tools, but from your description this plugin sounds like an exception.
clicking a single radio button control in the Keyboard preferences enables full keyboard support for tabbing through buttons in dialogs and clicking buttons with the spacebar and so forth
Thanks for the tip! The setting was under the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab which I normally associate strictly with global OS keyboard shortcuts and not navigation via keyboard, but sure enough the option is available.
A few minutes of googling should have revealed that there is also a keyboard shortcut for accessing the menu bar, if you really can't remember the keyboard shortcuts for what you want to do in your app. Once you move focus to the menu bar you can move around with the arrow keys just fine
I found this under Keyboard Shortcuts - it's Ctrl+F2 (or Ctrl+Fn+F2 on my laptop). It works great for using the arrow keys, but the behavior is not predictable when pressing the first letter of the menu option since there can be more than one option with the same name.
These tips will definitely improve my user experience in OS X, but I'm still much more productive under
I hate to reply to myself, but I just thought of a few more biggies:
This reply is mainly for the benefit of those who still use OS X and may have some of these problems.
- Window Management: This wasn't as big of an issue until I discovered that Alt + Left Mouse Button allowed me to drag windows from anywhere inside of the window under Linux. After I learned that I could resize windows in Linux using Alt + Mouse Button 2 or 3 (button depends on your Window Manager), using OS X felt much more tedious. Even Microsoft Windows lets you resize a window by dragging any edge, but with OS X, you have to use the little corner in the bottom-right section of the window. In addition to this, switching apps on OS X with the keyboard shortcut doesn't restore iconified windows which means you still have to go down to the doc to get it. Better yet, you can not switch to one specific window of an app using the keyboard shortcut - instead, they all come to the front and then you have to find the window you want.
How long has it been since you used OS X? I don't remember when it happened exactly but most apps let you resize from all edges and corners now. I can't remember when this wasn't the case with OS X, actually.
App switching in OS X works like this: Cmd+Tab switches between applications, and Cmd+` (backtick, it's under the tilde and right above the Tab key) cycles between individual windows within an application. Took a while to give up the Windows-centric paradigm of treating each window as something totally separate to Alt-Tab through, but once I got used to treating each application as a set of grouped windows it was quite easy to work with. Without knowing the Cmd+` shortcut I'm sure it seems much more tedious to find the window you want quickly.
I think recent versions of Windows have improved window management, but my point is that window management on OS X is not nearly as bad as it is perceived to be. It's just different. Personally I find it remarkably efficient.
- Window Maximization: Some apps require a lot of real-estate and there is no way to maximize a window with a single button click in OS X. Intuitively you would press the green "+" button on the window, but that simply switches the window "between its standard state and its user state" and that behavior is always unpredictable. You can manually "maximize" the window by moving the mouse to the titlebar and dragging the window to the upper left portion of the screen and then moving the mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen to resize the window. I guess Apple figures if you have to do more work for something, you'll appreciate it more.
I have also been vexed by this issue after coming from the Windows and/or Linux world where maximize really means "use every available pixel to make this window as big as possible". I got used to it, and with the advent of larger screens over the years it's started to make quite a bit less sense for some apps (like web browsers where most web pages end up filling a small center strip of the window).
However, there is hope for those who can't get used to it: There is a SIMBL plugin called SizeWell that's been around a few years and almost completely solves this, bringing a true "maximize window" ability to the green/plus button in most applications. Both SIMBL and SizeWell are free and I've been using them both for at least a couple of years with no known problems. You can either assign "true maximize" as the default for the green button or have a right-click context menu that allows you to do all sorts of other things like sizing a window to a half/third/quarter of the screen, set windows to specific pixel sizes, change positioning or even move windows between different spaces. I use this all the time especially with Finder windows. It's awesome and significantly enhances the joy of using OS X. Spread the word.
Parent poster does an excellent job outlining all the ways in which both the grandparent poster and the original submitter of this Ask Slashdot are incorrect about the perceived "iOSification" of Mac OS X. He makes an excellent point about the recent removal of Scott Forstall, which will probably bring both the "skeumorphism" BS and any further iOSification of OS X to a complete halt.
The main thing that people like the original submitter seem to be worried about, that Mac OS X will become a locked-down walled garden in some future version, is so unlikely as to be preposterous until someone like Microsoft leads the way. There is a huge difference between creating a walled garden for maintaining control of a brand new software ecosystem on proprietary limited-function devices like tablets and phones, and locking down a previously-open general purpose operating system on a general purpose computer. It would be suicidal for Apple to do something so stupid with Mac OS X, and those who are expecting it to be right around the corner are just ideologues fighting an imaginary enemy. The backlash if either Microsoft or Apple tried this would be legendary.
I'll be the first to eat my hat if this really happens, and join the crowd moving away from Mac, but for now the submitter is a part of a very small group of zealots who have simply latched onto a cause without sufficient evidence. Mac OS X is still the best, most consistent and user-friendly desktop for something like 90% of the populace outside of the small group of people who are technically minded enough to deal with the remaining quirks of Linux and who need the better environment for programming work. There are a lot of technical folks here which makes it seem like there are a lot of people who don't like Mac anymore, but the rest of the population is doing just fine with both OS X and Windows 8. Honestly at least two thirds of the few posts I see on articles like this from people who moved away from Mac are always from some kind of programmer, and they don't seem to realize what a tiny fraction of computer users they represent.
The funniest part about all this is how many of these idealogues are "fleeing" Mac and going to Windows of all things, as if this is some sort of improvement that will protect their computing "freedom". It's a rather bizarre phenomenon.
Slashdot Mirror
Way OT but I'm really sick of this...
A script on the fsdn domain is causing command-click on links to load both the new tab and the original tab with the destination URL. Both firefox and safari.
I thought maybe it was just me. Happens in Firefox 21.0 on Mountain Lion. Seems like it started happening about a week or two ago. The funny thing is the links still open in a new tab, but the current tab also goes to the same link, forcing me to click the back button to get back to the Slashdot article. Half the time I wind up back at the top of the page and have to scroll back down and find my place again. That gets real old real fast. So what exactly is the point of this attempted Command+Click hijacking and/or blocking script? Why the hell did some jerkface even bother to write the code that does this?
The only other website (that I can think of) that does this to me is SportsmansGuide.com. Both here and there all this script really seems to do is make it extremely obnoxious to use the site.
I expect much better from a supposedly geek/tech oriented website. Silly me, right?
Fix it, Slashdot. Fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it FIX IT!!!!ONE!!!
I'm part of an award-winning writer's group, and several of the members swear by this book. They follow it meticulously--and it isn't even the first to do this. The Warrior's Journey describes how Disney and Pixar created all their big masterpieces, and then takes that technique and applies it to novel writing. And then there's the Nora Roberts/James Patterson formulaic ghost-writers, plus the Harlequin series, any of Dan Brown's books; heck 90% of the entire fiction market follows a formula similar to Save The Cat. Formulaic writing is nothing new. Authors and screenwriters follow this like it's a religion--they cling to to the formula because they fervently believe it's the best chance they have of getting their work published. Fortunately, there are two mitigating factors that I've found: 1) a good idea is a good idea and even a plot-writing formula won't ruin it; and 2) good writing is good writing.
Indeed. My father used to tell me, "There are only 32 stories (or maybe 36)." What he meant was that there are a very limited number of possible basic plot element combinations that will ever be of any interest to a human being. The formula itself exists because it works quite well as a basic structure to use when telling a story. What matters in the end however is exactly how well the story is being told, and whether the audience can identify with or empathize with the characters and allow themselves to become part of the story and enjoy it without analyzing it along the way.
The overly specific nature of the recipe in Save the Cat may make the resulting films somewhat more similar to each other than usual, but recent films are not failing because they are formulaic but rather because they are bad implementations of the underlying stories. The characters fail to connect with the audience due to boring plot lines and bad character writing. Every good movie that has ever been filmed has been made to a formula, but if it's a good movie people are too busy enjoying the film to notice the formulaic structure. It's only when it's a bad movie with uninteresting characters that you will notice how formulaic something is. Because that's precisely when things appear to be happening for no other reason than "the script says this should happen here".
Society was happier when people were focused on family and behaved in a (relatively) chaste manner.
Part of maintaining that structure requires a clear sexual values system, including a sense of what is normal.
When we go pluralistic, or make "anything goes" the new normal, this traditional order is threatened.
While I will never support the persecution of someone for being quietly gay, I think a lot of the excesses of that time were designed to counter-act the rising sexual liberation movement.
You suffer from the terrible misapprehension that there is such thing as "normal" when it comes to human sexuality, and that people have ever done anything more than pretend to conform to your mythical "chaste" behaviors. All of recorded history shows us that A) human sexuality is a spectrum that has always included things like homosexuality and B) humans are really not very good at being "chaste".
Also, last time I checked there were an awful lot of people inhabiting those "happier" time periods you refer to who were not happy at all. Quite the opposite in fact, since they were busy being persecuted for what they felt was perfectly normal.
It certainly sounds very much like you do support the persecution of anyone who doesn't fit your personal definition of "normal" or threatens your idea of harmonious social order.
More on topic: This whole thing with pardoning just Alan Turing because he happened to be a genius and helped to win a war makes me want to puke. If the law and the resulting persecution was wrong they should be apologizing and pardoning every single person who was ever prosecuted under that law. Not just Turing. What, those 49,000 others aren't good enough for a pardon? They weren't genius enough to earn an apology for being persecuted? Give me a break. If it was wrong, it was wrong. Otherwise it's just favoritism.
Allow a computer to design a faster TCP? Sure!
Let them actually implement it without knowing how it works? Oh, Hell no!
I'm not talking "Skynet" or anything here... but if it breaks, who's going to fix it?
If it breaks can't we just fall back to the current inefficient algorithms? With the performance and fluidity improvements promised by this approach it could be hugely beneficial to all kinds of networks, even if no one yet fully understands why it works better. They'll figure it out eventually.
This autorun vulnerability reminds me quite strongly of a sci-fi novel I read several years back called The Warriors of Dawn, by M. A. Foster. This novel contains three species, one of which is a sort of not super- or subspecies but a kind of "side" species of humans, created by genetic manipulation of the human genome. Another is a subspecies of humans that are kind of kept as slaves or playthings on an alien world. The third is of course, humans.
In the novel the subspecies (who had of all things the peculiarity of having thick orange fur on their lower legs) had the ability to use a certain device, a "toy", which was kind of described as a complex 3D lattice of thin wires with tiny beads on the wires. When a member of the subspecies looked into the device and tilted it this way and that, the patterns created would somehow interact with their brain structure through the optic nerve, and gave them the ability to answer questions about the future or other such things that seemed to almost violate the laws of causality. If a human looked into the device, all they would get is a vaguely disquieting sensation. It wouldn't work for humans the way it would work for the subspecies, but it was fascinating and difficult to look away once you looked into it.
Here's the tricky bit. Since the genetically manipulated "side" species had slightly more advanced brains than humans, the protagonists of the novel were able to trick a member of this species into looking into the device and tilting it, whereupon he was instantly transfixed into a mental state he couldn't escape from. In other words the device caused his brain to literally lock up, or "crash".
Point being, are we on the verge in the next few decades of being able to walk up to someone who has this kind of digital technology highly integrated into their life, show them a certain object or pattern and watch them fall into a coma? Methinks the answer is a rather disturbing "yes". We could end up in the future having an incident where someone creates a malicious pattern that's the equivalent of that Japanese cartoon episode that sent hundreds of children to the hospital, and then rickrolls ten million overly-trusting technology users into epileptic siezures. Many of whom may be doing things like operating moving vehicles at the time of their attack.
The future could be pretty lame for humanity if we can't learn a lesson as simple as "don't autorun content the user didn't explicitly ask for".
Two can play at this game.
Someone needs to immediately release an app that allows us to begin geotagging "radicalized fearmongering enemies of freedom". First on the list to be tagged: Brett Stallbaum.
Watch how loudly the ideologues squeal about invasion of privacy, reckless endangerment and defamation of character when the shoe is on the other foot.
So my wife and I rented an RV for a trip through California last fall, and near the end of our trip we stopped and stayed a few days in a little place called Watsonville, at the Pinto Lake RV Park. It's a small park, very quiet, right by the side of a small freshwater lake. You can go out on the lake in a boat, and you can fish in the lake, but the park manager tells us there's no swimming allowed and you might not want to eat the fish you catch. Why? The entire lake is a deep, dark green color from a completely out of control algae bloom, and the algae is somehow poisonous to people and animals. All the waterfowl living in the lake would walk around the park leaving wads of bird poop all over the lawn, which were dark green instead of white due to all the algae in their diet. But besides the issue with the lake and a lack of shower/laundry facilities, it was a nice place.
The cause? Apparently, agricultural runoff from all the local farms in the area. In other words, excessive use of fertilizers.
I respectfully disagree that it is just an IT delay. Problem will still be here in 2015 and people will still not want to sign up, plus the insurance cost raises will continue in at least double digits, so this is ALL ABOUT reelecting Demos in 2014 midterms.
Obama, on the other hand, wants a broken system where everyone bitches, because he fully intends as he has said on camera before becoming President, that he wants to go to a single payer system (100% Gov't run healthcare), but just can't get there all at once.
And in the end that means the Federal government and its enforcement arm, the IRS, will take whatever they need from you and me to support the care they give to everyone, whether we like it or not.
This is a quick review of what tyranny looks like; Pay what the Gov't says or you are a criminal as there is no other option but to leave the country. New Zealand, Australia, Chile; they are all looking better.
I don't think I will ever understand this attitude about universal government-run health care being some sort of horrible tyrannical thing. I have tried and tried and tried, but I just don't get it. Is it that you don't understand or accept that you are part of this "everyone", and that you yourself would benefit from such a system, no matter what your income level? Are the taxes that are taken from you and used for schools, roads, police and military forces and other public infrastructure also "tyrannical" in nature? Last time I checked the people who represent us to our government voted for all such taxes, so... I'm really struggling to understand how one more infrastructure tax voted for by the people and/or the peoples' representatives qualifies as tyrannical. Or is it that do you not consider a functioning health care system to be essential to a modern social infrastructure? It certainly is not "taxation without representation". Just because you were in a minority that did not approve of the tax does not suddenly turn freely-elected President Obama into King George III, Tyrannical Ruler-for-Life of the 50 American Colonies.
I guess what we need is universal health care with the ability for short-sighted individual assholes to opt out. The catch being if you opt out and can't pay for services with your own cash or private insurance you will be denied access to any health services, including the "free" emergency room service (which of course is not free at all, but payed for by taxes and/or higher insurance premiums). If you want to be independent of society then it is not society's job to keep you from dying on the sidewalk outside the hospital. I can't imagine why you would want to live in any country that would let people die because they can't afford expensive health care, but since that seems to be exactly what you desire, perhaps you should move to one of those "free" countries you mentioned. Just don't come crying back to us when those countries also pass universal health care legislation. Because it seems like every developed, supposedly civilized nation has been moving in that direction for several decades, and none that I know of have dismantled their universal health care to return to completely privatized health care.
No matter how many times I hear the "but he's making a statement!" argument, it never stops seeming retarded. You mean he's winning a symbolic victory? You can win all the symbolic victories you want - I'll take the real victories.
Last time I checked most "real" victories started with symbolic victories, or at the very least the challenging of the status quo. Your statement implies that one should never try to fight something unless one is already assured of winning. Good luck with that.
I think most commenters here will end up completely missing the point, just as I initially did. Of course it will be trivial to bypass any possible protection the font might briefly provide, but that isn't the point. The making of the font is a political statement against government machinery and software spying on us and taking our humanity away. As such, I'd say it's quite clever and attention-getting.
Now I'll sit back and watch 50 different people get up-modded for pedantically explaining how it will be trivial to train an OCR to recognize the font and how software reads the bytecodes and doesn't care about the font and blah blah blah...
Is that a giant whooshing sound I hear?
Either way, it's still lame. I mean the pedants are obnoxious but so are pointless political gestures.
Oh gosh, my sincerest apologies. I'll be sure to let everyone know that all political gestures need to be cleared by you first. You know, to make sure they're not "lame".
If his purpose was to invoke widespread discussion of governmental spying on everyday activities of citizens, I'd say it was far from pointless. But that's just my opinion.
And I will be writing all of my messages in crayon from now on because crayon will smudge up the scanner. It's only a point if it actually does something!
I cannot believe this was modded up as Insightful. A "point" does not have to accomplish something. A point can be, and in this case is, an idea or statement.
point (noun):
4.
- a single item or detail in an extended discussion, list, or text
- an argument or idea put forward by a person in discussion
- (usu. the point) the significant or essential element of what is intended or being discussed
I think most commenters here will end up completely missing the point, just as I initially did. Of course it will be trivial to bypass any possible protection the font might briefly provide, but that isn't the point. The making of the font is a political statement against government machinery and software spying on us and taking our humanity away. As such, I'd say it's quite clever and attention-getting.
Now I'll sit back and watch 50 different people get up-modded for pedantically explaining how it will be trivial to train an OCR to recognize the font and how software reads the bytecodes and doesn't care about the font and blah blah blah...
Is that a giant whooshing sound I hear?
How the fuck this comment is tagged Insightful? This is probably one of the biggest displays of ignorance I've seen in a long time. Do you even know how large data centers perform back ups. Using ****ing magnetic tapes(5TB by Fujitu being the biggest I've heard of). Tapes are big, slow as hell and one of the unreliable. A CD sized disk capable of 1PB is a god send. Life is much more than buying shitty DVDs at Costco. And that is only one of the obvious applications for this tech that comes to my mind.
The frothing at the mouth is uncalled for. My comment contains nothing that would disagree with that proposed usage. IF the media can remain readable for more than a couple of years and IF the read/write speed can be made reasonable, it would by all means be a great replacement for tapes.
But if these are "shitty" DVDs then all retail DVDs are "shitty", thus reinforcing my original point. Optical media sucks.
Good thing I bought a chinese knockoff of the stargate boxed set. I also got defective discs, but I didn't get robbed.
Optical media is use-once, maybe twice if you're cautious.
If you're having discs you burned go tits up on you when stored in a cool, dark place, then you should probably start researching the media a little more carefully. Or just buy whatever Verbatim wants the most money for. They made some of the best floppies, and guess what? They make the best optical media.
The few times that I have actually used writable CDs and DVDs to archive important things I have made sure to use gold archival quality media (with a theoretical 100-year lifetime), and burn two copies, and store them nicely away from light and heat. I know all about the limited lifetime of the less durable cheap optical media. The writable discs I have lost data on were either unimportant or were burned years ago before the gold archival media was even on the market.
But when I pay good money for factory pressed DVDs I expect them to be watchable for many years, at least as many years as I would have gotten out of a VHS tape. I watched this set a couple of years ago all the way through with no problems, so I am seriously miffed about the apparent bit rot that has occurred just a couple years later.
I've just about had it with all optical media in general. I've had numerous CDs and DVDs over the years that just stopped being readable without even having any visible damage. Both self-written and factory discs. I'm only halfway through re-watching a retail set of Stargate SG-1 DVDs I purchased at Costco for $179.99 just 3-4 years ago, and I've already encountered a handful of discs with serious defects. Learned my lesson not to buy physical media anymore. Once I finish torrenting a good pirated version of the series I'll probably never try to watch the DVDs again. The box is nice though.
Bottom line is even if one of these amazingly high density optical media schemes finally pans out, the media will need to be composed of pure diamond or something else incredibly durable, and have a filesystem with incredible levels of error correction and redundancy or it will be pointless to put even a terabyte of data on such a disc, much less a petabyte. And that's not even bringing up read/write speeds and other issues that have already made this type of media useless for many purposes.
* No, you don't need a CC# or iTunes account to keep OS X updated. You've misunderstood something. Badly.
* I've never seen an OS that doesn't need to be rebooted when doing things such as kernel updates. There are many software updates in OS X that do not require a reboot and oftentimes don't even require an administrator password to be applied.
* The Option key is the Alt key. It's even labeled that way on the keyboard.
* I haven't used the Insert key in like 20 years. Are you using Wordstar or something? Anyway apparently Fn+Enter is supposed to do the trick, on the full size keyboard. I'm sure it could be assigned to a function key on a laptop keyboard.
* The "Clear" button on the number pad is in the same place and functions as a Num Lock key if you're using the keyboard with Windows. In OS X of course there is no need for a Num Lock key since the number pad never pretends to be anything but a number pad.
* Scroll Lock is F15 on the full size Apple keyboard. Otherwise it's Fn+Shift+F12.
* Yes, the Home and End keys actually go to Home and End on the Mac. The beginning and end of a line can be reached with Cmd+Left and Cmd+Right, respectively. This seems pretty intuitive to me.
* As of Mountain Lion all windows can be resized from corners and edges. If you're seeing a resize cursor you should be able to resize the window.
* No, on the Mac the green "zoom" button has never been a maximize button, and coming from Windows myself I empathize with your maximize button withdrawal pangs. A partial solution is available in the form of a SIMBL plugin called SizeWell. It lets you turn the green button into a true maximize button that works well in almost all apps. SizeWell also lets you resize windows in various other ways through a context menu or keyboard shortcuts. Works great and it's free.
* For nearly a decade I've been replacing the old one-button Apple mouses with basic Microsoft scroll mouses (the only good product Microsoft makes). I've never had any trouble producing a right-click with the Magic Mouse like you're describing. All you have to do is lift your index finger when clicking. But if you can't learn to lift your index finger when right-clicking or have some other reasons you don't like the Apple Magic Mouse, there's nothing stopping you from using a different mouse. With the IntelliPoint drivers you can even use the ones with several buttons and adjustable dpi. But any basic USB scroll mouse will work perfectly with no drivers.
* In the Finder, click Go -> Go to Folder or Shift-Cmd-G to specify a folder to go to. This can be used to open even hidden folders like "~/Library".
* I've been using OS X for a decade and haven't seen copy/paste misbehaving as you indicate. Certainly nowhere near the realm of "50% of the time". Would love to know what you're talking about. Keyboard shortcut usefulness and consistency is one of the things that drew me to OS X years ago, and helps keep me here.
* I also haven't had the multi-monitor issues you seem to be having. Once I set up an external monitor's settings I've never had one lose its settings. And are you saying you have to force-reboot your Mac if you wake it up with no external monitors attached? I've never encountered that myself. I've always been amazed by how well OS X deals with dynamically attaching and detaching monitors.
* No, it isn't FreeBSD. Some minor elements of the OS were taken from FreeBSD years ago, but the kernel is based on a Mach microkernel architecture and the OS is very much its own beast with its own filesystem conventions which have been refined for over a decade new. The Mac OS X filesystem makes just as much sense as anyone else's filesystem. It's just different.
I'm not an OSX user. Is this true?
And if it is, people put up with it?
Fascinating!
No. It isn't remotely true. Unless you've purchased one or more applications through the Mac App Store, in which case you would have had to set up a valid credit card to open an account and purchase the software in the first place.
At worst, if you have no purchased apps, Software Update will ask for a (free) valid AppleID in order to update some bundled apps like iPhoto (part of iLife which comes bundled with all new Macs). An AppleID is simply an email address and password that is registered with Apple. Setting up an AppleID does not require a credit card number.
If you just have a basic installation of OS X without the bundled apps, or if you choose to only install the system updates, the Software Update app won't ever ask for any kind of authorization, account or credit card numbers.
The GP is talking out his ass on this particular point, or severely misunderstanding something. The rest of his points are mostly correct though. Mostly.
Seems like having a predilection for something that kills you is not an instinct that should be selected for. If they are electrocuted by the electronics shouldn't this problem take care of itself sooner or later?
Yes. Absolutely. You and I are in total agreement. This problem will take care of itself quite quickly.
In fact, within a few short decades all of the electronic devices capable of being entered and short-circuited by endless swarms of ants will have been destroyed, and will become extinct.
Oh, you thought that endless quadrillions of fast-reproducing tiny insects would be forced to evolve just because a tiny percentage of them get zapped? How amusing. That is not the sort of selection pressure that causes evolution. At least not on time scales less than millions of years.
But seriously, this predilection for electronics and emission of alarm pheromones is their greatest weakness, and I'm quite surprised nobody has taken advantage of it already to build an effective ant-killing trap. According to a documentary I watched on Netflix, fire ants have the same weakness for electronics, and the same reaction of emitting alarm pheromones when zapped. Therefore, all one has to do in order to combat either species is to build a box with some basic electronics inside that attracts the ants, and then make the ants walk one-by-one through some type of self-cleaning zapper before they ever reach the "bait" electronics. I see no reason a device couldn't be constructed to kill thousands of ants per hour in this manner and virtually wipe out entire colonies in a matter of days.
If it works it could provide enough selection pressure to cause the surviving ants to either stop trying to eat electronics or stop responding so strongly to the alarm pheromones, or both. But if the resulting modified species didn't have some other traits that allowed them to out-compete the original species it would only have a localized effect.
Congratulations, folks... And welcome to the Future!
We had the era of paintings, then the era of photographs, then the era of moving pictures, then the "talkies" and (gasp!) colorized films, then direct-to-video home porn rental, and now we are entering the era of the "feelies".
And of course with each new era we have a lovely renewed bout of public "moral outrage" over the increased stimulation the viewer receives with each new technology, and how it contributes to moral depravity that will destroy our nation if it isn't stopped!
During the coming decade or so we will begin to hear whispers, then breaking news stories, and finally public outcry, hysteria and demands that the government "do something" about all this simulated violence and suicide our children are partaking in, before we tragically lose an entire generation to the "new drug" of Virtual Experiences.
Brace yourselves, folks.
Simple solution: Stop giving Amazon money if you don't like their service.
Hell of a day, innit? De-do-doo.
After the story about Miguel de Icaza switching to Mac OS X, it got me thinking about my own history of operating systems. While I had happily used OS X for six and a half years, over that period of time I have drifted back in favor of Linux. This had less to do with new features being offered in Linux as it did with growing tired of foibles in OS X. Here are a list of some of the bigger issues:
- Beach Ball of Death (BBOD): While this didn't occur frequently, when it did it was more frustrating than a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). At least you knew you were fucked when you saw the BSOD. With the BBOD, sometimes you would recover from it and other times you could wait for up to ten minutes before realizing that you're never coming back. During that period, you are completely unable to access the System menu or start another app to find the proc that is chewing resources so that it can be killed. In 2013, this is completely unacceptable from an OS.
Agreed. Stability should be better. Hopefully that will improve with the new guy in charge of Mac OS X development.
But you mention being unable to access the System menu when you're getting the Beach Ball. In my experience the menu bar will be non-responsive in that situation, but only as long as the hanging app is in the foreground. Cmd+Tabbing to any other app or clicking somewhere on the desktop (which is part of the Finder, of course) will switch you away from the hanging app and allow you access to the menu bar, etc. If you're really unable to get away from a hanging app then you're experiencing a full system freeze, but in my several years of experience with OS X this is pretty rare. Also the Option+Cmd+Esc shortcut often works, which brings up a Force Quit dialog and usually a hanging app will be highlighted in red in the list.
- Mouse Acceleration: There is no way to modify the acceleration curve in OS X, let alone disable acceleration. This is not a problem when you are using a trackpad since the acceleration curve is one of the best out of all OS'es for that, but it is incredibly frustrating when using a mouse. I have gone through many forums and found many other users complaining about this issue, but no one has come up with a decent solution for disabling mouse acceleration. For situations in which I am better off with a mouse, I always hopped over to a non-OS X machine.
I've... never actually realized this was a problem in OS X. Spent several years using a Mac desktop with a mouse (a Microsoft mouse at that). I guess maybe I just adapted to whatever accelleration curve was there. I assume you're not talking about tracking speed, which is easily adjustable of course.
Yeah, you're right. Just plugged in a USB mouse to get another look at the mouse preferences. Tracking speed and scrolling speed are the only things that can be adjusted. Unfortunate.
A quick google indicates there might be more solutions to this issue than there used to be. Including one person who had good luck with a Microsoft Comfort Mouse and the IntelliPoint drivers that came with it.
- Poor Multi-Monitor Support: Since the menu for each application is in a detached panel that is only displayed on one monitor, this means you will be racking up a lot of mileage on your pointing device to hop between apps on the secondary monitor and their menu on the primary monitor.
Yeah, that's definitely an issue sometimes. Just one more good reason to memorize as many keyboard shortcuts as possible.
Looks like there is an app called SecondBar that's a partial solution. Same guy makes an app called BetterSnapTool which may even be a better enhancement to window management than SizeWell.
- Updating Settings Behind Your Back: For me, this shit started with Microsoft and was one of the big reasons I left their OS. After an update, some of your settings would be changed to whatever
I'm going to put all my replies to this at the top here because there are too many layers of html tags in this for me to easily insert text by hand.
I'm also going to try and reply to your original post and provide a few more pointers to those issues.
Re: Cmd key needing to be released.
Never thought of this being an issue. As long as you hold the Cmd key you can tab or shift-tab through the list or even hit Esc and remain in the current app. Until you let go of the Cmd key you haven't actually switched apps. Cycling through open documents/windows is a completely separate keyboard shortcut. And, honestly, the window that I want is usually in the front when I switch to the app so I don't need to cycle between windows that much anyway.
Re: SIMBL
I also hesitate to use hacky things, and probably wouldn't install SIMBL on any kind of production/server Mac, but like I said I've used it for years now with no problems, and many other people do also. It doesn't seem to have any history of causing the kind of issues that were caused in the past by things like Unsanity's APE.
Re: Lack of underlines in menu
I agree it's far from perfect but I can't imagine it would take more than a few tries to become familiar with the key combinations to access any commonly used menu items.
Thanks for the gracious acceptance of my pointers. Best of luck with whatever OS you choose to use.
Thank you for the informative reply and for not taking offense to my gripes of your current OS of choice. Your display of maturity is a rarity these days!
I stopped upgrading after 10.5.8 and as of that version you still need to resize windows in the bottom-right corner. Maybe they added resize from all edges in Snow Leopard.
I just tried this and I think I learned it before and forgot it for two reasons: First, you have to switch to the app with Cmd+Tab, release Cmd, then Cmd+` to start switching windows. Add in the fact that at least one of the windows is usually minimized, and it's just easier to switch windows via the Dock.
I may have to try that sometime. I'm usually hesitant about plugins since they are usually half-baked and the integration is rarely up to par with native tools, but from your description this plugin sounds like an exception.
Thanks for the tip! The setting was under the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab which I normally associate strictly with global OS keyboard shortcuts and not navigation via keyboard, but sure enough the option is available.
I found this under Keyboard Shortcuts - it's Ctrl+F2 (or Ctrl+Fn+F2 on my laptop). It works great for using the arrow keys, but the behavior is not predictable when pressing the first letter of the menu option since there can be more than one option with the same name.
These tips will definitely improve my user experience in OS X, but I'm still much more productive under
I hate to reply to myself, but I just thought of a few more biggies:
This reply is mainly for the benefit of those who still use OS X and may have some of these problems.
- Window Management: This wasn't as big of an issue until I discovered that Alt + Left Mouse Button allowed me to drag windows from anywhere inside of the window under Linux. After I learned that I could resize windows in Linux using Alt + Mouse Button 2 or 3 (button depends on your Window Manager), using OS X felt much more tedious. Even Microsoft Windows lets you resize a window by dragging any edge, but with OS X, you have to use the little corner in the bottom-right section of the window. In addition to this, switching apps on OS X with the keyboard shortcut doesn't restore iconified windows which means you still have to go down to the doc to get it. Better yet, you can not switch to one specific window of an app using the keyboard shortcut - instead, they all come to the front and then you have to find the window you want.
How long has it been since you used OS X? I don't remember when it happened exactly but most apps let you resize from all edges and corners now. I can't remember when this wasn't the case with OS X, actually.
App switching in OS X works like this: Cmd+Tab switches between applications, and Cmd+` (backtick, it's under the tilde and right above the Tab key) cycles between individual windows within an application. Took a while to give up the Windows-centric paradigm of treating each window as something totally separate to Alt-Tab through, but once I got used to treating each application as a set of grouped windows it was quite easy to work with. Without knowing the Cmd+` shortcut I'm sure it seems much more tedious to find the window you want quickly.
I think recent versions of Windows have improved window management, but my point is that window management on OS X is not nearly as bad as it is perceived to be. It's just different. Personally I find it remarkably efficient.
- Window Maximization: Some apps require a lot of real-estate and there is no way to maximize a window with a single button click in OS X. Intuitively you would press the green "+" button on the window, but that simply switches the window "between its standard state and its user state" and that behavior is always unpredictable. You can manually "maximize" the window by moving the mouse to the titlebar and dragging the window to the upper left portion of the screen and then moving the mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen to resize the window. I guess Apple figures if you have to do more work for something, you'll appreciate it more.
I have also been vexed by this issue after coming from the Windows and/or Linux world where maximize really means "use every available pixel to make this window as big as possible". I got used to it, and with the advent of larger screens over the years it's started to make quite a bit less sense for some apps (like web browsers where most web pages end up filling a small center strip of the window).
However, there is hope for those who can't get used to it: There is a SIMBL plugin called SizeWell that's been around a few years and almost completely solves this, bringing a true "maximize window" ability to the green/plus button in most applications. Both SIMBL and SizeWell are free and I've been using them both for at least a couple of years with no known problems. You can either assign "true maximize" as the default for the green button or have a right-click context menu that allows you to do all sorts of other things like sizing a window to a half/third/quarter of the screen, set windows to specific pixel sizes, change positioning or even move windows between different spaces. I use this all the time especially with Finder windows. It's awesome and significantly enhances the joy of using OS X. Spread the word.
Bonus: Most of the SizeWel
Parent poster does an excellent job outlining all the ways in which both the grandparent poster and the original submitter of this Ask Slashdot are incorrect about the perceived "iOSification" of Mac OS X. He makes an excellent point about the recent removal of Scott Forstall, which will probably bring both the "skeumorphism" BS and any further iOSification of OS X to a complete halt.
The main thing that people like the original submitter seem to be worried about, that Mac OS X will become a locked-down walled garden in some future version, is so unlikely as to be preposterous until someone like Microsoft leads the way. There is a huge difference between creating a walled garden for maintaining control of a brand new software ecosystem on proprietary limited-function devices like tablets and phones, and locking down a previously-open general purpose operating system on a general purpose computer. It would be suicidal for Apple to do something so stupid with Mac OS X, and those who are expecting it to be right around the corner are just ideologues fighting an imaginary enemy. The backlash if either Microsoft or Apple tried this would be legendary.
I'll be the first to eat my hat if this really happens, and join the crowd moving away from Mac, but for now the submitter is a part of a very small group of zealots who have simply latched onto a cause without sufficient evidence. Mac OS X is still the best, most consistent and user-friendly desktop for something like 90% of the populace outside of the small group of people who are technically minded enough to deal with the remaining quirks of Linux and who need the better environment for programming work. There are a lot of technical folks here which makes it seem like there are a lot of people who don't like Mac anymore, but the rest of the population is doing just fine with both OS X and Windows 8. Honestly at least two thirds of the few posts I see on articles like this from people who moved away from Mac are always from some kind of programmer, and they don't seem to realize what a tiny fraction of computer users they represent.
The funniest part about all this is how many of these idealogues are "fleeing" Mac and going to Windows of all things, as if this is some sort of improvement that will protect their computing "freedom". It's a rather bizarre phenomenon.