You may think mass transit is wonderful, I don't. I don't like being stuffed into a ugly, dirty, run-down, uncomfortable, built-by-the-lowest bidder government-run box crowded with a bunch of smelly, noisy, inconsiderate people, with no control over the temperature, the background noise, the amount of stuff I can bring, the departure time, what stops I make along the way, and a pre-selected range of choices for where I can go without having to switch trains.
Cars have their flaws too, but I still prefer them to mass transit.
Let's say you had two projectors, one pointing at the north pole and one at the south. The resolution would be terrible near the equator, because a very small part of the projected image would cover a large part of the globe surface.
In order for the resolution to be consistent over the entire globe, you have to either intentionally reduce the resolution of the projection near the poles, or add additional projectors.
This is going to confuse every single non-technical user on the planet, while benefiting pretty much no one. I can hear the questions now: "Where did they put the File menu?"
That's not the most annoying...
on
The CVS Cop-Out
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The most annoying is:
"That problem is fixed if you install Bob Smith's modified version of libsomething, that breaks several other applications and is only available from his slow, unreliable, often-unavailable personal website, then recompile our application using the three misformatted patches some yahoo posted to our mailing list across seven months back in the spring and summer of 2003. No, we don't have links to the posts, don't you know how to use the archive search?"
And of course, they have no plans to integrate any of these changes into their codebase: why should they, when the solution is so easy?
I'm amused at the number of people saying "I hate this one because it doesn't work in my favorite browser!"
Guys, we're concerned about picking the [i]best-looking[/i] design now, not the most compatible implementation. Once one of the designs is chosen, then we can worry about getting it to work in all browsers.
No, I question the credibility and the timing of these claims, and I find it disgraceful of MIT to be associated with what appears to be little more than a political stunt.
This is hardly the position of MIT as an institution. It is a single MIT professor's opinion.
Are you suggesting that it is disgraceful for MIT to employ professors who don't blindly parrot the majority opinion on scientific and political issues?
Give me a break. College students learn what on a Mac? No one goes to college and takes "Checking your email 101".
OS X is Unix on the desktop that works. That's why it's appealing to me.
I hated Macs for years until OS X comes out - I was a die-hard Linux user. But now, I have all the ease-of-use and hassle-free-ness of OS X, with access to every one of my favorite Unix/Linux applications when I need them.
There are other features, too: Spotlight is incredibly cool, for instance. And Expose is awesome.
Apple is going to make a killing...
on
Going To Boot Camp
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
To everyone who thinks this is going to be Apple's demise, you are completely wrong. No one buys a Mac for the hardware. Apple blathers on and on about how they're a hardware company, but that's bull. They're a software company, and they make the best desktop operating system on the planet.
No one is going to buy a Mac now to run Windows on it. They're going to buy a Mac because they've always wanted to try OS X, but they have a few stubborn applications that they need to run on Windows, and until now couldn't justify the risk of switching and losing access to them. People on here would say "Just keep a second computer!", but most people aren't interested in that.
It is absurd to suggest that Apple is going to die now that people can run Windows on their Mac. The whole point of a Mac is NOT to run Windows. That's why people pay Apple's high prices - for the ability to run OS X. Companies are not going to stop making OS X software just because Apples can run Windows - if people wanted Windows, they would've bought a freaking Dell!
What this does is make it possible, not convenient, for people to run any Windows applications that they still depend on. I don't understand why people think this means companies will stop porting applications to OS X - no one is going to tolerate dual-booting between OS X and Windows to use any major desktop application.
The only things that will be affected are utility programs from small companies that don't primarily make software - for instance, I have a GPS unit and Meade Telescope that can both only be updated from Windows. I'd imagine any plans for Mac ports of those utilities are going to be put on hold (I doubt they even existed). That's a little bit annoying, but you have to take the bad with good.
As for games, Mac gaming is not in an especially robust state at the moment anyway. I really don't care to see it die, I've never played a game on my Mac.
Take my dad, for instance. He loves to play chess against Fritz 8 and over the net with Playchess.com, which I bought him a few years ago. But it only runs on Windows. He's been wanting to get a Mac when his current computer dies, but until now he wouldn't be able to run his favorite software. He doesn't mind the hassle of dual-booting.
This will entice a huge population of people who have been teetering on the edge to make the switch. And now every time they reboot into OS X from Windows, or into Windows from OS X, the superiority of OS X will become clear. Even more so as time goes on, when the Windows installation becomes a spyware-infested, bloated piece of crap with fifteen different taskbar icons taking up 30MB of RAM each that starts to pause mysteriously after common tasks, and OS X just keeps humming along.
I didn't have any plans to upgrade my PowerBook before this, but I'm going to pick up a MacBook Pro this weekend.
It will definitely discourage game developers from porting to OS X. No one minds a two minute pause to reboot into Windows when they want to spend the next three hours playing a game.
It will not do anything to application developers, however. No one would tolerate a two minute pause when they want to run Photoshop, for example. And then a two minute pause when they want to check their email, and have to reboot again.
The ability to run Windows on a Mac does two things:
1) It makes it easy for people to play games. 2) It makes it possible for people to still run any Windows applications that they depend on. Not convenient, but possible.
#1 will impact Mac game sales, yeah. But I don't really give a shit about Mac games, they're overpriced and out of date. It's not like the industry was exactly thriving, anyway - most gamers with Macs have a PC.
To everyone who thinks this is going to be Apple's demise, you are completely wrong. No one buys a Mac for the hardware. Apple blathers on and on about how they're a hardware company, but that's bull. They're a software company, and they make the best desktop operating system on the planet.
No one is going to buy a Mac now to run Windows on it. They're going to buy a Mac because they've always wanted to try OS X, but they have a few stubborn applications that they need to run on Windows, and until now couldn't justify the risk of switching and losing access to them. People on here would say "Just keep a second computer!", but most people aren't interested in that.
It is absurd to suggest that Apple is going to die now that people can run Windows on their Mac. The whole point of a Mac is NOT to run Windows. That's why people pay Apple's high prices - for the ability to run OS X. Companies are not going to stop making OS X software just because Apples can run Windows - if people wanted Windows, they would've bought a freaking Dell!
Take my dad, for instance. He loves to play chess against Fritz 8 and over the net with Playchess.com, which I bought him a few years ago. But it only runs on Windows. He's been wanting to get a Mac when his current computer dies, but until now he wouldn't be able to run his favorite software. He doesn't mind the hassle of dual-booting.
This will entice a huge population of people who have been teetering on the edge to make the switch. And now every time they reboot into OS X from Windows, or into Windows from OS X, the superiority of OS X will become clear. Even more so as time goes on, when the Windows installation becomes a spyware-infested, bloated piece of crap with fifteen different taskbar icons taking up 30MB of RAM each that starts to pause mysteriously after common tasks, and OS X just keeps humming along.
I didn't have any plans to upgrade my PowerBook before this, but I'm going to pick up a MacBook Pro this weekend.
They had no other choice but to give in. There was an article in the WSJ today that talked about how many people were switching to competitor's products, just because of the uncertainty surrounding the Blackberry.
It will be interesting to see how easily they recover from this.
I have always liked Gentoo, but the install process is definitely time consuming. I don't do it often enough to have memorized all the steps, so I always have to print out the installation guide from the web when putting it on a new system. This graphical installer looks great, and it doesn't seem like they've dumbed anything down, just made it more convenient.
Other than the time it takes to compile packages, I think Gentoo really is the best distribution out there for the power user. I use it on all my desktops and servers (although some of the very important ones run Debian): the combination of one-command package installing, up-to-date packages (an area where Debian is lacking) and very fine-grained dependency control is hard to beat.
What this really illustrates is that drivers are bored with driving.
I solve that problem by driving everywhere at above-legal speeds.
I wonder if I can use that as an excuse the next time I get pulled over: "Well officer, I was speeding, but I was definitely paying attention to the road!"
I agree that specifying the conditions after the transaction is unfair, but that's a peripheral argument. I'm talking about cases where you know about the conditions upfront.
If GM will only sell you a vehicle on the condition that you never buy any other brand again, and they tell you this when you walk into the showroom, that's fine by me. Buy a Ford, or a Toyota instead. But if you buy a GM, and then buy another brand, then that's immoral.
Look at it another way: GM says they'll give you $10,000 "cash-back" on a new car if you promise to buy only new GM cars in the next ten years. Keeping the car you're buying now for ten years is fine (if the POS lasts that long), but you can't buy another brand. Even if they have no legal way to enforce this, if you take their money and then buy a Honda four years later, I think you're morally in the wrong.
"The next time I buy a car, should the previous owner get to dictate how I drive it? How I maintain it? When I buy a house, should the previous owner be able to dictate how I decorate it?"
Sure. If you don't like it, find someone else to buy your car/house from. It's a free market, there will be plenty of people who are selling their house/car without these restrictions.
Similarly, if you post this notice at the top of a comment:
"ATTENTION: I have spent ten minutes of my time composing this comment. I think ten million dollars per reader is fair compensation for the time I have spent working on it. Even though I have no legal or electronic means of enforcing this request, I ask that you please respect my wishes and do not read beyond this line until you have Paypal'd me ten million dollars."
Then, I think it would be immoral to read further. I'm not saying I wouldn't read it, but I would do so with the understanding that what I was doing was immoral.
What if the amount were less extreme? What if it were ten cents, and you included a link within your posts that would securely, anonymously, and safely transfer ten cents into your bank account from mine within a second? And maybe you'd include a teaser paragraph, containing a sample of the blinding wit, logic and reason contained within: you seriously don't think it's immoral for someone to say "Screw that!" and read the rest of your post without paying you?
Never mind the fact that is unenforceable, and that your expectation that people will pay is naive and assumes way too much self-discipline on the part of the average Slashdot reader.
I know I've posted this same comment several times already, but here it is again:
"What's your opinion on academic or personal-use licenses, then?
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, what right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were."
The difference here is that Mattel does not ask you to strictly follow the rules at all times. They don't care. Apple, on the other hand, does: they are explicitly requesting that you not run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.
If Mattel sold you the game under the condition that you only play it in strict accordance with the rules, then yeah, you would be morally wrong in not obeying their request.
If you think that such a requirement is ridiculous, you are free not to buy the board game.
Slashdot Mirror
You may think mass transit is wonderful, I don't. I don't like being stuffed into a ugly, dirty, run-down, uncomfortable, built-by-the-lowest bidder government-run box crowded with a bunch of smelly, noisy, inconsiderate people, with no control over the temperature, the background noise, the amount of stuff I can bring, the departure time, what stops I make along the way, and a pre-selected range of choices for where I can go without having to switch trains.
Cars have their flaws too, but I still prefer them to mass transit.
Let's say you had two projectors, one pointing at the north pole and one at the south. The resolution would be terrible near the equator, because a very small part of the projected image would cover a large part of the globe surface.
In order for the resolution to be consistent over the entire globe, you have to either intentionally reduce the resolution of the projection near the poles, or add additional projectors.
This is going to confuse every single non-technical user on the planet, while benefiting pretty much no one. I can hear the questions now: "Where did they put the File menu?"
The most annoying is:
"That problem is fixed if you install Bob Smith's modified version of libsomething, that breaks several other applications and is only available from his slow, unreliable, often-unavailable personal website, then recompile our application using the three misformatted patches some yahoo posted to our mailing list across seven months back in the spring and summer of 2003. No, we don't have links to the posts, don't you know how to use the archive search?"
And of course, they have no plans to integrate any of these changes into their codebase: why should they, when the solution is so easy?
For someone who claims to have built a multi-million dollar organization, you sure have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
"You'll want to buy the more capable "Pro" version if there is much work you need to get done on a machine."
Please list something you can do on the MacBook Pro that you can't on the ordinary MacBook, other than play Quake 4.
I don't know about the MacBook Pro, but my two-year-old PowerBook G4 running OS X 10.4 handles WPA-PSK just fine.
Good for you. That's an explanation of how computers work. It's not an explanation of how complex software systems are.
I'm amused at the number of people saying "I hate this one because it doesn't work in my favorite browser!"
Guys, we're concerned about picking the [i]best-looking[/i] design now, not the most compatible implementation. Once one of the designs is chosen, then we can worry about getting it to work in all browsers.
Secure VoIP is impossible! The person you're talking to will always be able to intercept and listen in on your conversation!
No, I question the credibility and the timing of these claims, and I find it disgraceful of MIT to be associated with what appears to be little more than a political stunt.
This is hardly the position of MIT as an institution. It is a single MIT professor's opinion.
Are you suggesting that it is disgraceful for MIT to employ professors who don't blindly parrot the majority opinion on scientific and political issues?
Give me a break. College students learn what on a Mac? No one goes to college and takes "Checking your email 101".
OS X is Unix on the desktop that works. That's why it's appealing to me.
I hated Macs for years until OS X comes out - I was a die-hard Linux user. But now, I have all the ease-of-use and hassle-free-ness of OS X, with access to every one of my favorite Unix/Linux applications when I need them.
There are other features, too: Spotlight is incredibly cool, for instance. And Expose is awesome.
To everyone who thinks this is going to be Apple's demise, you are completely wrong. No one buys a Mac for the hardware. Apple blathers on and on about how they're a hardware company, but that's bull. They're a software company, and they make the best desktop operating system on the planet.
No one is going to buy a Mac now to run Windows on it. They're going to buy a Mac because they've always wanted to try OS X, but they have a few stubborn applications that they need to run on Windows, and until now couldn't justify the risk of switching and losing access to them. People on here would say "Just keep a second computer!", but most people aren't interested in that.
It is absurd to suggest that Apple is going to die now that people can run Windows on their Mac. The whole point of a Mac is NOT to run Windows. That's why people pay Apple's high prices - for the ability to run OS X. Companies are not going to stop making OS X software just because Apples can run Windows - if people wanted Windows, they would've bought a freaking Dell!
What this does is make it possible, not convenient, for people to run any Windows applications that they still depend on. I don't understand why people think this means companies will stop porting applications to OS X - no one is going to tolerate dual-booting between OS X and Windows to use any major desktop application.
The only things that will be affected are utility programs from small companies that don't primarily make software - for instance, I have a GPS unit and Meade Telescope that can both only be updated from Windows. I'd imagine any plans for Mac ports of those utilities are going to be put on hold (I doubt they even existed). That's a little bit annoying, but you have to take the bad with good.
As for games, Mac gaming is not in an especially robust state at the moment anyway. I really don't care to see it die, I've never played a game on my Mac.
Take my dad, for instance. He loves to play chess against Fritz 8 and over the net with Playchess.com, which I bought him a few years ago. But it only runs on Windows. He's been wanting to get a Mac when his current computer dies, but until now he wouldn't be able to run his favorite software. He doesn't mind the hassle of dual-booting.
This will entice a huge population of people who have been teetering on the edge to make the switch. And now every time they reboot into OS X from Windows, or into Windows from OS X, the superiority of OS X will become clear. Even more so as time goes on, when the Windows installation becomes a spyware-infested, bloated piece of crap with fifteen different taskbar icons taking up 30MB of RAM each that starts to pause mysteriously after common tasks, and OS X just keeps humming along.
I didn't have any plans to upgrade my PowerBook before this, but I'm going to pick up a MacBook Pro this weekend.
It will definitely discourage game developers from porting to OS X. No one minds a two minute pause to reboot into Windows when they want to spend the next three hours playing a game.
It will not do anything to application developers, however. No one would tolerate a two minute pause when they want to run Photoshop, for example. And then a two minute pause when they want to check their email, and have to reboot again.
The ability to run Windows on a Mac does two things:
1) It makes it easy for people to play games.
2) It makes it possible for people to still run any Windows applications that they depend on. Not convenient, but possible.
#1 will impact Mac game sales, yeah. But I don't really give a shit about Mac games, they're overpriced and out of date. It's not like the industry was exactly thriving, anyway - most gamers with Macs have a PC.
To everyone who thinks this is going to be Apple's demise, you are completely wrong. No one buys a Mac for the hardware. Apple blathers on and on about how they're a hardware company, but that's bull. They're a software company, and they make the best desktop operating system on the planet.
No one is going to buy a Mac now to run Windows on it. They're going to buy a Mac because they've always wanted to try OS X, but they have a few stubborn applications that they need to run on Windows, and until now couldn't justify the risk of switching and losing access to them. People on here would say "Just keep a second computer!", but most people aren't interested in that.
It is absurd to suggest that Apple is going to die now that people can run Windows on their Mac. The whole point of a Mac is NOT to run Windows. That's why people pay Apple's high prices - for the ability to run OS X. Companies are not going to stop making OS X software just because Apples can run Windows - if people wanted Windows, they would've bought a freaking Dell!
Take my dad, for instance. He loves to play chess against Fritz 8 and over the net with Playchess.com, which I bought him a few years ago. But it only runs on Windows. He's been wanting to get a Mac when his current computer dies, but until now he wouldn't be able to run his favorite software. He doesn't mind the hassle of dual-booting.
This will entice a huge population of people who have been teetering on the edge to make the switch. And now every time they reboot into OS X from Windows, or into Windows from OS X, the superiority of OS X will become clear. Even more so as time goes on, when the Windows installation becomes a spyware-infested, bloated piece of crap with fifteen different taskbar icons taking up 30MB of RAM each that starts to pause mysteriously after common tasks, and OS X just keeps humming along.
I didn't have any plans to upgrade my PowerBook before this, but I'm going to pick up a MacBook Pro this weekend.
Because they stand to make something on the order of one billion dollars?
I mean, how freaking interesting can running that site be? I'd be happy to dump it and get on to something more worthwhile.
I'm not so poor that I'm willing to deal with the pain-in-the-ass that is peer-to-peer to save a lousy $10 / month.
Hell, if you value your time at more than, say, $20 / hour, you come out ahead anyway.
Please show me where I can download the entire show, as it aired on a given night, as a single unbroken clip, at either of those links.
They had no other choice but to give in. There was an article in the WSJ today that talked about how many people were switching to competitor's products, just because of the uncertainty surrounding the Blackberry.
It will be interesting to see how easily they recover from this.
2. the power brick's connector goes green when plugged in to the laptop, and then the light goes brown. This isn't very intuitive.
The light is green when the battery is fully charged, and orange/brown when it is charging.
It takes a few seconds to begin charging the battery, I guess.
I have always liked Gentoo, but the install process is definitely time consuming. I don't do it often enough to have memorized all the steps, so I always have to print out the installation guide from the web when putting it on a new system. This graphical installer looks great, and it doesn't seem like they've dumbed anything down, just made it more convenient.
Other than the time it takes to compile packages, I think Gentoo really is the best distribution out there for the power user. I use it on all my desktops and servers (although some of the very important ones run Debian): the combination of one-command package installing, up-to-date packages (an area where Debian is lacking) and very fine-grained dependency control is hard to beat.
What this really illustrates is that drivers are bored with driving.
I solve that problem by driving everywhere at above-legal speeds.
I wonder if I can use that as an excuse the next time I get pulled over: "Well officer, I was speeding, but I was definitely paying attention to the road!"
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem...
I agree that specifying the conditions after the transaction is unfair, but that's a peripheral argument. I'm talking about cases where you know about the conditions upfront.
If GM will only sell you a vehicle on the condition that you never buy any other brand again, and they tell you this when you walk into the showroom, that's fine by me. Buy a Ford, or a Toyota instead. But if you buy a GM, and then buy another brand, then that's immoral.
Look at it another way: GM says they'll give you $10,000 "cash-back" on a new car if you promise to buy only new GM cars in the next ten years. Keeping the car you're buying now for ten years is fine (if the POS lasts that long), but you can't buy another brand. Even if they have no legal way to enforce this, if you take their money and then buy a Honda four years later, I think you're morally in the wrong.
"The next time I buy a car, should the previous owner get to dictate how I drive it? How I maintain it? When I buy a house, should the previous owner be able to dictate how I decorate it?"
Sure. If you don't like it, find someone else to buy your car/house from. It's a free market, there will be plenty of people who are selling their house/car without these restrictions.
Similarly, if you post this notice at the top of a comment:
"ATTENTION: I have spent ten minutes of my time composing this comment. I think ten million dollars per reader is fair compensation for the time I have spent working on it. Even though I have no legal or electronic means of enforcing this request, I ask that you please respect my wishes and do not read beyond this line until you have Paypal'd me ten million dollars."
Then, I think it would be immoral to read further. I'm not saying I wouldn't read it, but I would do so with the understanding that what I was doing was immoral.
What if the amount were less extreme? What if it were ten cents, and you included a link within your posts that would securely, anonymously, and safely transfer ten cents into your bank account from mine within a second? And maybe you'd include a teaser paragraph, containing a sample of the blinding wit, logic and reason contained within: you seriously don't think it's immoral for someone to say "Screw that!" and read the rest of your post without paying you?
Never mind the fact that is unenforceable, and that your expectation that people will pay is naive and assumes way too much self-discipline on the part of the average Slashdot reader.
I know I would click the link.
I know I've posted this same comment several times already, but here it is again:
"What's your opinion on academic or personal-use licenses, then?
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, what right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were."
The difference here is that Mattel does not ask you to strictly follow the rules at all times. They don't care. Apple, on the other hand, does: they are explicitly requesting that you not run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.
If Mattel sold you the game under the condition that you only play it in strict accordance with the rules, then yeah, you would be morally wrong in not obeying their request.
If you think that such a requirement is ridiculous, you are free not to buy the board game.