Look, until about a month ago I ran Linux on every machine I owned. I fucking built the distribution I ran on my powerbook (and still have on my G4 and iMac), from the ground up. So don't assume you know better than I do what is "fluff" and what isn't.
There are, actually, still plenty of mainstream apps for the Mac, including all of the ones people actually give a damn about. Frankly, I don't use any of them; I don't need them. It was just a point in the other poster's defense, and a fair one since at the time *BSD and OS X were being compared and Windows was nowhere in sight.
As for Aqua, you actually don't get the same sort of interface with *BSD/X. You can get jellybean widgets and striped titlebars, and if you run down a pair of bullet lists you'll probably find some other similar stuff, too, but Aqua is more than the sum of its parts. Would you tell a Windowmaker user he might as well use Blackbox, since it has the slit (or whatever they're calling it)?
If you think a nice interface is "fluff", I don't know what to say to you.
Honestly, none of those really do it for me aesthetically. They're better than your average PC midtower, but they don't approach even the G4 midtowers.
But even assuming I were to really like the look of that stuff, does it address any of the other points I listed? Not even close. Are these machines quiet? Do they come with simple, tightly integrated, slick-as-shit software? Do they integrate seamlessly with any peripherals I pick up for them, or do I have to fuck with drivers and resource collisions and half-assed or expensive software to use them together?
To be frank, it sort of pisses me off that you assumed I'm such a fool as to have based my opinion of Apple's product line on the looks alone. But then again, you either didn't read my post or chose to ignore it, and instead made some pretty asinine assumptions about its content, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
It actually makes a lot of sense. If you could run BSD and X stuff on an OS that also gives you mainstream consumer-desktop apps and nice Aqua stuff, well, that OS clearly has an advantage.
How exactly is OS X more powerful or flexible than winXP or Linux? Not only are winXP and Linux more powerful and flexible than OS X, but also have 100 times more available software, MUCH more cost effective on the supported hardware side. I cant understand why ANYONE would go the MAC route at this stage of the game, there is no advantage or upside!?!
Look, I never said OS X is more powerful or flexible than Linux, so calm the fuck down. I'm betting it tops WinXP simply because of Darwin, but not having tried WinXP, I can't say that with any certainty.
Come to think of it, I never said OS X was the most powerful or the most flexible OS available. I did that on purpose; it isn't. For my money, Linux is probably the most flexible OS available, and it's certainly among the most powerful. But this isn't a zero sum game. With OS X, Apple finally has an OS that doesn't bite.
In case you missed it, at home I don't need "100 times more available software". What I need is, in this order:
An ssh client
A web browser
Some music software
An IM client
Preferably, all of the above in a Unixy package. That's what makes me comfortable, that's what makes me happy.
Anything else is icing on the cake. When I get a digital camera (I have one, but it's old and frankly kinda sucks), I'll need software for that. Likewise if I get a digital video camera. I'm sure there will be other stuff, too.
Yeah, I can probably get all that stuff for Windows, and most of it for Linux, but the fact is that Windows has always been a pain in the ass to deal with (on any level), Linux just isn't as good in this niche as OS X, and Apple makes really smooth, classy shit.
And Apple gets this. They seem to understand the role a computer needs to fill in my home, and they're writing their playbook accordingly. Every new product Apple has released for the past two or three years has made me stop and decide whether I need one now or I can wait til later. That sure as hell hasn't happened with MS and company.
As for comparisons with Linux: I still use Linux for servers, for my workstations, and generally anywhere I need the sorts of things it does a better job of providing than OS X.
Y'know, despite the tone of parts of the Time Canada article, and despite the noise some of the Pragmatic Windows Users make around here, Apple really is doing it right.
Yeah, they could "pack in a Windows emulator", or try peddling OS X for Intel, or in some other way "embrace the Dark Side" (as Time Canada put it) and "find other bridges to the Windows-Intel world".
But crap, who the hell would buy Apple stuff if they turned into a More Of the Same company? Right now, I am in the process of "converting to Apple". I'm buying in. If I need a new PC, it's going to be a Mac. When the time comes for a new laptop, it'll be a Mac. Any peripherals that I buy-- the CD-RW drive I'm ordering, cameras (still or video), anything that can possibly be connected to a computer-- will damn well be Mac-compatible.
Why am I going down that road? Because after years of just not getting it, after years of selling overpriced semi-useful junk (sorry, but System before OS X definitely crippled their computers), Apple is getting it right and nobody else seems to. The power and flexibility of their new OS is outstanding, the simplicity and integration of their software and hardware is wondrous to behold, and their hardware itself is gorgeous and quiet and solidly built.
Of course, I'm only speaking of my home, at least for now. Apple's products do seem heavily geared toward the home user, and it shows in the design choices they make. Their stuff is not ideal for the work that I do professionally, and I hope it never is-- that would mean sacrificing some of the slickness and simplicity and beauty that it does have, and I need that kind of stuff in my house.
A beautiful mind was based on a true story and therefore is a different kind of movie however its subject is not wholely accurately represented, with large personality defects being airbrushed out
So? To be honest, while watching the movie I wasn't really making the association between the characters on screen and the real people they're based on. I did, to a certain extent, both before the movie and well afterward, but that could not have been a major source of its impact.
WARNING: Spoilers for "A Beautiful Mind" and FOTR ahead!
No, "A Beautiful Mind" created and developed characters whose fate one cared about. I understand that FOTR was not a character study, but being an adventure movie one should feel some suspense, tension, relief, excitement, something. Instead it was mostly "hey, that was kinda cool" or "Elrond is Agent Smith!". Even Gandalf's "death" was a complete emotional non-event.
Contrast that with the scenes in which Mrs. Nash visits her husband's office, goes to the decrepit mansion, discovers the shed full of news clippings; in which John realizes his friends aren't real, unwittingly endangers his child, receives the pens...
Sorry, but FOTR simply was not as good a movie. Despite its epic scope and impressive effects, it was merely entertaining, not engaging. "A Beautiful Mind" managed to be both.
"A Beautiful Mind" was easily the best movie of the year. It's very rare that a movie gets me really involved on an emotional level, but that one definitely did. I left the theater sort of stunned.
None of the other movies I saw this year had anywhere near that kind of impact, FOTR included.
How did you 'update' your PS2? Did you have to buy the $20 DVD remote, or is there some free method Sony has hidden from me of updating the DVD software without shelling out more cash?
I'd really like to watch my Aliens: Special Edition disc.
Re:I had WORSE problems with my PS2 at launch!
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XBox Defects Draw Ire
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· Score: 2
Sorry to say it, but you are part of the problem. You should have done what the store suggested in the first place: get a full refund, and take your business elsewhere (you'd have got one quicker, right?). That's what you're paying that retail markup for.
Um, no, he wouldn't have gotten one quicker. Remember that absurd supply shortage Sony had at launch? The one that lasted something like six months? He would have gotten his money back, and then waited six months for all the kids on waiting lists to get their units before he could even think about attempting a purchase again.
Either you're trolling, or you've had your head in the sand for ten years.
China began a transition to a market (read: "unplanned") economy in the early 1990s. About ten seconds with google will tell you that it hasn't taken long to get there.
Re:The most offensive Slashdot article _ever_
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Can China Pull An India?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
There is nothing ignorant or racist about his statement whatsoever.
Most software is made for U.S. and European markets. The software industry began and is strongly entrenched in the United States and Europe. Therefore, most software development is done by or for U.S. and European companies. Most of the "creative work", then, necessarily happens in the U.S. or Europe because (A) that's where the decision-makers in the developing companies are, and (B) these are the people who know the market well.
Most programming work that happens in India is "non-creative" work that's farmed out by U.S. and European companies because the labor is cheaper in India, and the benefits of proximity to the market are much smaller with that sort of work.
And it's a cycle that feeds on itself, as the system/market/whatever optimizes each locale's role.
It won't go on forever, of course, but there's no reason to pretend that this isn't the state of the industry now or that it's likely to change soon.
I know that's not what he wanted, I'm saying he should have just given it away, unadulterated. Of course he can do whatever he pleases, I just don't see that his current licensing scheme is all that helpful to anyone.
Ah... it's just that the context of the discussion up to that point had been his goals, not yours. Hence the confusion.
It's not really "open source" either, I don't think.
How do you figure? If you get Vim, you get the source and the right to modify it and redistribute those modifications. In fact, you're encouraged to distribute those modifications in source form, as distributing them solely as binaries requires that you negotiate with him and, presumably, make some form of "payment". So of course it's "open source"... it's just "open source" with the option to close, at the sole discretion of the original project's maintainer.
Well no, that's not what he wanted, either. He wanted to be able to pick and choose who gets to keep their changes closed and who has to make their changes' source available (likely in the form of a merge into the main Vim tree). The BSD license doesn't give him that power over modifications.
Re:Guilt By Association, don't buy it
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Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 5, Funny
... make the Irish famine look like small potatoes...
Um, small potatoes would have been an improvement on the Irish situation.;)
Thanks... this was one of the points I should have made explicitly. The other is that even if he is the sole copyright holder, using the GPL hardly encourages others to come to him and negotiate a different license, whereas his license explicitly invites others to do so. The License is The Message, in effect.
No, he knows exactly what he's doing. He said specifically that he wants to have the power to decide whether or not someone who's made modifications (and intends to distribute the resulting binaries) has to release the source for their modifications or not.
The GPL does not allow him to decide... if the program is GPLed and someone modifies it and releases binaries, they have to give out source as well.
He doesn't think that's always reasonable, so he came up with a license that allows him to decide on a case-by-case basis whether it's fair for someone to profit by keeping their changes to themselves or the changes should be made public.
Whether it's well-implemented or not is perhaps debatable, but don't go away with the impression that he doesn't understand the GPL. He clearly does.
Funny, one of the things I really like about Vim is the modal editing. I do want to keep my hands on the keyboard... reaching for a mouse drives me nuts in "GUI editors". Keep in mind that the whole point of a text editor is text input, and that's what God made keyboards for.
In fact, the less I have to reach for my mouse to perform common tasks in a GUI, the better, I say. Don't you Alt-Tab between windows, use some key combo to switch desktops, etc? Why should it be different within your text editor? Providing menus for the editor's functions while leaving the keyboard controls in place makes sense, and that's what Vim does.
I agree that there's room for improvement, GUI-wise, but my thoughts are more along the lines of triggering mode switches with mouse input, not getting rid of mode switches. %-)
Not that I agree, I'm just positing the Gates perspective.
Re:Issues with the euro in day-to-day life
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The Euro
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
Hi! What's "spectator's day"? Do you European kids do matinees on a day-of-the-week basis instead of a time-of-day basis?
Re:Ahhh...a one Euro coin, not a dollar...
on
The Euro
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· Score: 2
Everyone I've talked to about the new dollar coin likes it a lot. It's not successful because you can't find the damned things. I never get them as change, my bank is constantly out of them, and everyone I ask about it tells me to go buy a book of stamps at the post office (as the machines there give the dollar coins as change).
Well, guess what? I don't go to the post office. Ever. I use the USPS for paying bills, and that's about it. I rarely have to buy stamps, since I only use a couple every month. When I do buy stamps, I buy them at the grocery store. (!)
Linking the distribution of a new currency to postage stamp vending machines is braindead, but it seems to effectively be the means the government has chosen.
Stamp some more of the damned things and send them to my bank instead of bills!
I think it translates to "Klaatu says not", but I'm basing that off of a half-assed knowledge of German ("nikto" -> "nicht"), the similarity between "barata" and "berate", and context. Maybe there's some kinda Latin thing in there somewhere, idunno. It's the instruction Klaatu tells Love Interest to give to Gort the robot, so he won't destroy the entire planet.
And since someone asked, yeah, that's the same line whatsisface has to use in "Army of Darkness", and it was the only part of that lame movie I can remember laughing at.
Now, the question is: Will I get modded down because this is actually offtopic as hell, or because I insulted "Army of Darkness"? %-)
Slashdot Mirror
There are, actually, still plenty of mainstream apps for the Mac, including all of the ones people actually give a damn about. Frankly, I don't use any of them; I don't need them. It was just a point in the other poster's defense, and a fair one since at the time *BSD and OS X were being compared and Windows was nowhere in sight.
As for Aqua, you actually don't get the same sort of interface with *BSD/X. You can get jellybean widgets and striped titlebars, and if you run down a pair of bullet lists you'll probably find some other similar stuff, too, but Aqua is more than the sum of its parts. Would you tell a Windowmaker user he might as well use Blackbox, since it has the slit (or whatever they're calling it)?
If you think a nice interface is "fluff", I don't know what to say to you.
But even assuming I were to really like the look of that stuff, does it address any of the other points I listed? Not even close. Are these machines quiet? Do they come with simple, tightly integrated, slick-as-shit software? Do they integrate seamlessly with any peripherals I pick up for them, or do I have to fuck with drivers and resource collisions and half-assed or expensive software to use them together?
To be frank, it sort of pisses me off that you assumed I'm such a fool as to have based my opinion of Apple's product line on the looks alone. But then again, you either didn't read my post or chose to ignore it, and instead made some pretty asinine assumptions about its content, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
It actually makes a lot of sense. If you could run BSD and X stuff on an OS that also gives you mainstream consumer-desktop apps and nice Aqua stuff, well, that OS clearly has an advantage.
Look, I never said OS X is more powerful or flexible than Linux, so calm the fuck down. I'm betting it tops WinXP simply because of Darwin, but not having tried WinXP, I can't say that with any certainty.
Come to think of it, I never said OS X was the most powerful or the most flexible OS available. I did that on purpose; it isn't. For my money, Linux is probably the most flexible OS available, and it's certainly among the most powerful. But this isn't a zero sum game. With OS X, Apple finally has an OS that doesn't bite.
In case you missed it, at home I don't need "100 times more available software". What I need is, in this order:
Anything else is icing on the cake. When I get a digital camera (I have one, but it's old and frankly kinda sucks), I'll need software for that. Likewise if I get a digital video camera. I'm sure there will be other stuff, too.
Yeah, I can probably get all that stuff for Windows, and most of it for Linux, but the fact is that Windows has always been a pain in the ass to deal with (on any level), Linux just isn't as good in this niche as OS X, and Apple makes really smooth, classy shit.
And Apple gets this. They seem to understand the role a computer needs to fill in my home, and they're writing their playbook accordingly. Every new product Apple has released for the past two or three years has made me stop and decide whether I need one now or I can wait til later. That sure as hell hasn't happened with MS and company.
As for comparisons with Linux: I still use Linux for servers, for my workstations, and generally anywhere I need the sorts of things it does a better job of providing than OS X.
Y'know, despite the tone of parts of the Time Canada article, and despite the noise some of the Pragmatic Windows Users make around here, Apple really is doing it right.
Yeah, they could "pack in a Windows emulator", or try peddling OS X for Intel, or in some other way "embrace the Dark Side" (as Time Canada put it) and "find other bridges to the Windows-Intel world".
But crap, who the hell would buy Apple stuff if they turned into a More Of the Same company? Right now, I am in the process of "converting to Apple". I'm buying in. If I need a new PC, it's going to be a Mac. When the time comes for a new laptop, it'll be a Mac. Any peripherals that I buy-- the CD-RW drive I'm ordering, cameras (still or video), anything that can possibly be connected to a computer-- will damn well be Mac-compatible.
Why am I going down that road? Because after years of just not getting it, after years of selling overpriced semi-useful junk (sorry, but System before OS X definitely crippled their computers), Apple is getting it right and nobody else seems to. The power and flexibility of their new OS is outstanding, the simplicity and integration of their software and hardware is wondrous to behold, and their hardware itself is gorgeous and quiet and solidly built.
Of course, I'm only speaking of my home, at least for now. Apple's products do seem heavily geared toward the home user, and it shows in the design choices they make. Their stuff is not ideal for the work that I do professionally, and I hope it never is-- that would mean sacrificing some of the slickness and simplicity and beauty that it does have, and I need that kind of stuff in my house.
The less intrusive a PC is, the better, IMO. Same goes for all home electronics. That's why people buy TV cabinets with doors on them.
So? To be honest, while watching the movie I wasn't really making the association between the characters on screen and the real people they're based on. I did, to a certain extent, both before the movie and well afterward, but that could not have been a major source of its impact.
WARNING: Spoilers for "A Beautiful Mind" and FOTR ahead!
No, "A Beautiful Mind" created and developed characters whose fate one cared about. I understand that FOTR was not a character study, but being an adventure movie one should feel some suspense, tension, relief, excitement, something. Instead it was mostly "hey, that was kinda cool" or "Elrond is Agent Smith!". Even Gandalf's "death" was a complete emotional non-event.
Contrast that with the scenes in which Mrs. Nash visits her husband's office, goes to the decrepit mansion, discovers the shed full of news clippings; in which John realizes his friends aren't real, unwittingly endangers his child, receives the pens...
Sorry, but FOTR simply was not as good a movie. Despite its epic scope and impressive effects, it was merely entertaining, not engaging. "A Beautiful Mind" managed to be both.
None of the other movies I saw this year had anywhere near that kind of impact, FOTR included.
I'd really like to watch my Aliens: Special Edition disc.
Um, no, he wouldn't have gotten one quicker. Remember that absurd supply shortage Sony had at launch? The one that lasted something like six months? He would have gotten his money back, and then waited six months for all the kids on waiting lists to get their units before he could even think about attempting a purchase again.
China began a transition to a market (read: "unplanned") economy in the early 1990s. About ten seconds with google will tell you that it hasn't taken long to get there.
Most software is made for U.S. and European markets. The software industry began and is strongly entrenched in the United States and Europe. Therefore, most software development is done by or for U.S. and European companies. Most of the "creative work", then, necessarily happens in the U.S. or Europe because (A) that's where the decision-makers in the developing companies are, and (B) these are the people who know the market well.
Most programming work that happens in India is "non-creative" work that's farmed out by U.S. and European companies because the labor is cheaper in India, and the benefits of proximity to the market are much smaller with that sort of work.
And it's a cycle that feeds on itself, as the system/market/whatever optimizes each locale's role.
It won't go on forever, of course, but there's no reason to pretend that this isn't the state of the industry now or that it's likely to change soon.
I hope this patent stifles the shit out of the email-a-link industry.
Ah... it's just that the context of the discussion up to that point had been his goals, not yours. Hence the confusion.
It's not really "open source" either, I don't think.
How do you figure? If you get Vim, you get the source and the right to modify it and redistribute those modifications. In fact, you're encouraged to distribute those modifications in source form, as distributing them solely as binaries requires that you negotiate with him and, presumably, make some form of "payment". So of course it's "open source"... it's just "open source" with the option to close, at the sole discretion of the original project's maintainer.
Well no, that's not what he wanted, either. He wanted to be able to pick and choose who gets to keep their changes closed and who has to make their changes' source available (likely in the form of a merge into the main Vim tree). The BSD license doesn't give him that power over modifications.
Um, small potatoes would have been an improvement on the Irish situation. ;)
Thanks... this was one of the points I should have made explicitly. The other is that even if he is the sole copyright holder, using the GPL hardly encourages others to come to him and negotiate a different license, whereas his license explicitly invites others to do so. The License is The Message, in effect.
The GPL does not allow him to decide... if the program is GPLed and someone modifies it and releases binaries, they have to give out source as well.
He doesn't think that's always reasonable, so he came up with a license that allows him to decide on a case-by-case basis whether it's fair for someone to profit by keeping their changes to themselves or the changes should be made public.
Whether it's well-implemented or not is perhaps debatable, but don't go away with the impression that he doesn't understand the GPL. He clearly does.
In fact, the less I have to reach for my mouse to perform common tasks in a GUI, the better, I say. Don't you Alt-Tab between windows, use some key combo to switch desktops, etc? Why should it be different within your text editor? Providing menus for the editor's functions while leaving the keyboard controls in place makes sense, and that's what Vim does.
I agree that there's room for improvement, GUI-wise, but my thoughts are more along the lines of triggering mode switches with mouse input, not getting rid of mode switches. %-)
Not that I agree, I'm just positing the Gates perspective.
Hi! What's "spectator's day"? Do you European kids do matinees on a day-of-the-week basis instead of a time-of-day basis?
Well, guess what? I don't go to the post office. Ever. I use the USPS for paying bills, and that's about it. I rarely have to buy stamps, since I only use a couple every month. When I do buy stamps, I buy them at the grocery store. (!)
Linking the distribution of a new currency to postage stamp vending machines is braindead, but it seems to effectively be the means the government has chosen.
Stamp some more of the damned things and send them to my bank instead of bills!
doh! My eye skipped right over the 'd' both times. Apologies.
Y'know, all you had to do was click the link...
I think it translates to "Klaatu says not", but I'm basing that off of a half-assed knowledge of German ("nikto" -> "nicht"), the similarity between "barata" and "berate", and context. Maybe there's some kinda Latin thing in there somewhere, idunno. It's the instruction Klaatu tells Love Interest to give to Gort the robot, so he won't destroy the entire planet.
And since someone asked, yeah, that's the same line whatsisface has to use in "Army of Darkness", and it was the only part of that lame movie I can remember laughing at.
Now, the question is: Will I get modded down because this is actually offtopic as hell, or because I insulted "Army of Darkness"? %-)