I have a Mac that is, as of this morning, no longer state-of-the-art. It's got two 1 GHz G4's and a Radeon 9000 card. Is it "laggy?" No. It's faster than I am
Isn't that kind of like saying that purchasing two slices of pizza for $20 is fine instead of $20 for a whole pizza because two slices is all you need to fill you up? While that may be true I would think that paying $5 for two, if that's all you needed, would make more sense.
My point being, why would you want to buy something that cost more and is slower? If you want somthing that's just "fast enough" that's fine but that hardly makes it a superiour platform. It's just not a compelling marketing statement.You don't see Dell selling a Pentium II 266 on their website claiming that "It's fast enough!!!"
If you like your Mac because you think it's cool there is nothing wrong with that but don't try to justify it by making inane statements which 95% of earth people snicker at.
Ah.... finally someone that understands that Macs end up being CHEAPER than pcs in the long run
This is one of the most delusional statements that out of control Mac zealots like to claim in defense of them being forced to spend upwards of 33% more for slower machines.
I've got a two year old PIII 800 Mhz as my main machine which until the past year was probably as fast as any Mac that rolled off the line and I paid less than a grand for it. It hasn't "sped up" nor "slowed down" a bit over the past 2+ years, nor would any PowerMac 300 that came out back then. It was faster then and it would still be faster now than any Mac that was sold at the same time.
It wouldn't be very bright of me to claim that "I couldn't dream of better performance" for it because obviously I could dream of owning a P IIII 4 Ghz, but I will say that it's a more than capable machine for me. It will not slow down any more than any other machine as time goes on, that is to say not at all. It runs RH 8.0 very nicely and I anticpate it will serve me for another year before the upgrade itch overtakes me.
I suspect if I had paid two grand for a Mac two years ago it would certainly not be "speeding up" as time goes on and would certainly run slower than my old PIII which means that the upgrade itch would most likely come quicker as speed is usually the driving force behind an upgrade itch. Your argument holds no water what-so-ever and is void of logic.
It's not uncommon for a mac to last 7-8 years (being used actively).
Just so you know, that's one of the hand waving non-factual mantras that really tend to turn people against Mac zealots. You have no facts to back that up. Oh sure, you may have some anecdotal claim about your buddies Uncle who is using his Apple II or whatever, but that's hardly scientific proof. I would ask you to provide me with some cold hard scientific facts that show that statement to be true or else I'll assume you to have no credibility.
I was called to fix a person's Mac, to find out that they were still using an Apple ][e as one of their main computers!!
I have a number of old computers that I still use including an RS/6000 with a 233 PPC from 1997 and a Sun Sparcserver with a 150 Mhz hypersparc from 1995 and while both are functional (they have lasted 6 and 8 years thus far) I wouldn't want to use either of them as my main machine because of the obvious speed/architecture limitaions. If I were to use them as my main computer it would only be because I'm a freak, not because there was no compelling reason to to upgrade.
I don't have time to read the article but I have to wonder why the "geek" community doesn't just stop with all their complaining about their digital rights and start taking some action. Why not put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and perform some deliberate acts of civil disobediance. This is the best way to effect change if that is what you are really concerned with doing.
Quite frankly I don't think that most of you are really that concerned, beyond getting stuff for free and not geting caught that is.
How to bring this up with your boss??
on
Ask Donald Becker
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This reminds me of when I was working at Apple in the secret (heh... my NDA ran out and they did away with the division so it's no longer a secret...) two button mouse division. Basically we used open source tools, like Linux/Emacs and Linux/gcc because they were fast and very functional, but we could never get any of the team leaders to permit them company wide due to the fact that they didn't come shrink wrapped and thus were not officially supported. Now I know that you can get great support from Usenet but that's not good enough for the pinheads who are in upper management at Apple.
So, my question would be, what's the best way for an engineer at a large company to address this issue with the people they report to.
and a half dozen or so people representative of the customer population.
And therein lies the problem. My big beef with "usability" crap, and yes I think much of it's crap, is that different people think differently and there is no dozen people who can give you a fair representation of what the common user will find optimal. Because, there is no common user. There never will be. It's a myth, pure and simple.
Some people will be more able to understand a double click from a single click or a right click from a left click but it doesn't mean that one method is superior to the other. Nor are poets superior to mathemeticians. They're just wired differently. No, people have to learn how to use a computer interface just like they learn how to drive a car or use their VCR. A computer is a tool and you learn how to use it to complete your task and the more you use it the faster and easier it will become. Just like anything else in life.
Now then, I'm not saying that some interfaces aren't better than others, look at the Real Player for an example of that, just that the whole debate is mostly founded on speculation and hand waving and anecdotal evidence and "studies" that hold little water.
Plain and simple. People cut out the little extras when things go bad and CD's fall into that category. Plus most new music just friggin blows anyways. Really.
The main problem with that is that Sun makes money by selling sparcstations. They are a hardware company who makes they revenue from servers and service contracts. If they promote an OS for X86 they are competing against their cash-cow. Especially with the powerful chips that Intel now puts out. Of course the thing they missed a couple of years ago was the fact that Linux on X86 would make a killer low end server and thus take away a big chunk of that market from them anyways.
I remember how Mr. McNealy was anti-Linux in a very pompous way just a few short years ago. It's that "you can't touch us" attitude that ends up killing companies in the end in the tech industry. Not that Sun is dead by a long shot, but they are facing some serious challenges from MS and Linux on low and mid range servers and they haven't exactly been doing much innovating in that area as of late.
I have a big screen analog cell phone that I leave in the car too. But that's not the point. 3G doesn't affect the "phone" portion (ie., voice functions) as much as it does the "data" portion. We haven't seen the power of data on a wireless device (be it a cell phone or a PDA or a combination of the two) because the technology still sucks. When the technology stops sucking things will change. I think it would be great to have a little wireless phone/pda that I can suck data on demand into from a nice fat pipe. It will open up a lot of new innovations much like when the Internet took off and started to become used by average everyday Joes.
People think they won't want this stuff because they see the horrible WAP crap or the "wireless Internet" as it is today. The problem is that it really really sucks today, but it won't always be that way in the future.
I just maxed out all the options on a dual g4 tower and it turns out to be a very fast machine, but also very expensive
But, I could buy a PC that's faster, I'm guessing by at least 25%, for less money. And by faster I'm not talking about clock speed, I'm talking about running apps. So why should I spend a lot more money for less performance.
Now, this person could also buy a bike, which is good enough for what he needs, and this person really never has to worry about maintenance, not compared to a car anyway
But, the problem here is that they are paying more for that bike that, while it looks very different and it fits in the garage better, offers you less. Plus, there is no proof that it will need less maintanance. Most PC hardware, even the real cheap stuff, will work fine for a decent amount of time. Heck, I just threw out an old 486 66 last year that was still working just fine, I just had no use for it.
My point is that it doesn't make any sense to actively seek a compuer that offers less performance, unless your getting it on the cheap. The "well it's good enough" philosophy doesn't match the price tag.
Apple is positioning it's machines-at least it's iMac line- as "information appliances" now. Tools for certain jobs. Who cares how fast an information appliance is, as long as it's fast enough to do it's job?
That's the line that really gets me, "as long as it's fast enough"... Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for Apple and Macs, in fact I wish they would try to actually compete with MS as they could provide some much needed competition if they wanted to, but alas they choose to cater to the "Well, it's good enough" crowd.
It's not just you either, I see it all over these comments, "Well those speakers are good enough for most people" or "Most people don't need to expand their systems" or "Most people are blah blah blah". While this might have a shred of truth, it's not the way consumers think.
Here's an exmple, and this is what Katz (I can't believe I'm agreeing with him) is trying to say. If you are buying a car you look at a couple things, how much money do I want to spend, and what's the most car I can get for that amount. You don't think "I don't want the most car for my money, I just want something good enough..." No. Not the masses anyways. There might be, say, 4.5% of the population that is happy to pay a premium price for "good enough" but most people want the best bang for their buck. Hell, why shouldn't we?
So go ahead and buy one if you like it, hell, pay them $10,000 for it if it would make you feel better. But lets try to be grounded in reality here.
Ah yes, it's an LCD screen, thanks for reminding me. I didn't even mention that fact that you are stuck with that, regardless of the shortcomings of an LCD vs CRT with regards to picture quality, refresh rate, etc. Sure you save on space, but for people who use their computers quite a bit it would be nice to have an option to have a bulky CRT that *really* supports 16 million colors and looks good, as opposed to an LCD which doesn't look bad, but still can't match a mid range CRT or picture quality.
But then again, buying a Mac isn't about choice, it's about illusion.
1299 is a very reasonable price for a well designed, higher quality computer like an apple You Mac people are so so silly. First of all, anyone who says anything that you consider to be *bad* or *anti-Mac* are labeled as "Anti Mac Fanatics" or "Rabid Mac Bashers" etc. But then I guess it makes it easier to keep your head buried in lala land if you choose to disregard anyone who has a different opinion...
Secondly, lets see what you get for $1299, shall we: (Straight from the Apple Store webiste)
700Mhz PPC (what are the bogomips on that, say about that of a 1.2 Gigahrz P4? Capable, no boubt, but certainly average)
256 meg L2 cache - yawn
128 megs of Ram - heh pc100 ???
40 Gig HD - it doesn't say if it's a 7200 rpm drive or 5400 rpm..
CD-RW (yawn)
56K modem and a NIC - pretty standard stuff
15 inch monitor. Heh... reminds me of 1994 when I got my first 15 inch monitor, it seemed huge at the time.
GeForce2 - what's that, circa 1999???
Plus you're locked into having to have that blob sitting on your desk, unlike my generic PC that I stash on the floor and out of sight.
So really, if you're into that sort of thing, then by all means spend your $1299 and impress all your AOL buddies, but don't expect the rest of us techy types to get all excited about the great value being offered up by Mr. Jobs.
Re:Now you're just being a luddite
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 1
They were able to accomplish this without ruining the near-perfection of their user interface.
So, I have this model T car. It has an engine. It gets me where I want to go. That is all.
Well, yes indeedy, if you want to use a product that decreases your productivity and limits your functionality, then by all means, have at it. I prefer to use a system that gives me the freedom to use the enhanced functionality that todays modern OS's have to offer. Yes, use a three button mouse.
The Mac team realized that after becoming accustomed to a handicapped system, some users would need something to ease their transition into a better, more elegant system. They were able to accomplish this without ruining the near-perfection of their user interface.
You took the brown pill, didn't you?
Okay, repeat after me: "It's not 1985 anymore, it's not 1985 anymore, it's not 1985 anymore" There. The Mac interface was an innovative extension of some brilliant ideas from the boys at PARC, but lets face it, the myth of the Perfect Interface[tm] that the Church of Jobs likes to preach is just that, a myth. They were brilliant in there time, yes, but today they are just another way of doing things that is probabaly better in some ways and certainly limited in others. So in the end it's a wash.
Now excuse me while I get back to work on my lightening fast amazing stable $600 PC, and i know you need to get back to work on your ploddingly average, moderatly stable $1500 MAC:)
Now you're just being silly
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 1
Really.
The analogy I would make would be one of a electric screwdriver. If you are going to make one of those you might as well add a little switch to make it reversable too, and maybe one for different speeds/torque too. Your silly two headed hammer anlogoy is a Mac pundits admission of defeat.
Lets think about it, your simulating the right click by using a mouse and a keyboard combination, which is more confusing and troublesome than a simple right mouse click, so I would say that the design of the one button mouse is flawed. So yes, design is important and the one button mouse is a bad/flaweddesign.
Re:There's a good chance it's fake...
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 1
BLASPHEMY !!!!
I mean, puleeeeze. If that's your argument then you may as well argue that you don't need a mouse at all. You can simply use the keyboard for everything.
The mouse is a tool, a tool that most computer users like to use, why wouldn't you want to make it the most usefull tool that you can???
Re:There's a good chance it's fake...
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
BLASPHEMY !!!
The assumption there is that Mac users can somehow manage to figure out how to use a keyboard with over one hundred little tiny keys yet they are too stupid to be able to figure out how to use a mouse with more than one button. I mean Sweet Jeusus at the bus stop, it would have been more innovative for them to sell mice with a great big "L" on the left button and a great big "R" on the right button. That way the Mac user could figure out the difference between a right click and a left click.
The whole "one button mouse is easier to figure out than a two button mouse" is one of the biggest urban myths ever propagated.
Is this some kind of conspiracy from Taco to post actuall trolls as stories to circumvent the noodnick trolls who post comments? First the slackwear troll and now this... I mean, really.
Well anyways, I LIKE CDE, ya rat jap bastards. It's light and fast, even on my butt slow sparcstation. I shudder in uncontrolable spasms to think of how KDE or Gnome would behave on my box. Yeah, CDE is far from pretty, but hell, it's running on solaris so it all makes perfect sense if you think about it.
I'm a core consultant for the eStrategis Group and I've been working with XP, in some beta/alpha/pre-release form for about a year now. Since, as your all aware, the eStrategis Group is still under NDA with Microsoft, I can't fully discuss the all the technical details, but I can give you all fair warning here.
The release version of Win XP has a few hidden, uh, features, built into it that weren't in any of the beta versions. Namely, their is a new hidden DLL, called io32.dll in your system directory. You have to go into your settings->advanced->view->legacy->all dialog box and select the "revert system files" box to be able to see it. Basically what it does is take the hardware UID of all your components and, the hex value of the registry hz_install key and send it via TCP/IP right back to good ol Redmond. Yep, this thing basically sends a database stream of all your software installs and hardware components to a huge MS database.
I would suggest running a network sniffer on your network (you can't run it from the Win XP box as they have a IP cloaker built into the dll) and watch all your info go right to the boys from Redmond.
As many of you know, I work for Microsoft in the Import/Export division, and I'm a member of the liason team that works directly with the UK division. While stories like this tend to generate buzz for the website that posts them, I can assure you it is a pure fabrication of the truth. The truth is that while there are additional UK surcharges we only put them their as a request of the British Parliment, and we then provide a non pro quo quid subsidy to counteract the charge, along with giving an actual discount.
This business practice, while on the surface seems a bit odd, was negotiated by the UK magistrate of foreign exports in good faith, I should add. We are not the bad guys here, we are simply doing what our customer wants us to do, and while we are happy that the UK government is interested in pushing our software onto the general public, I can assure you it is only because it's in the best interests of the British people, and is no way unethical or illegal. Of course even if the British were to pay an additional premium for the software, it would be negated by their increased productivity, thus making this a moot issue anyways.
What most people fail to understand is that accounting procedure are easy to misunderstand when you are dealing with foreign countries. I hope this clears things up.
As a core consultant developer for the *BSD kernel for 6 months last year I can't believe they are releaseing this. There are many issues which have not been resolved and are not being publicized to the public. The issues as I see them:
1) The implementation of threads still uses fine grain kernel level locking which does not adhere to POSIXX IEEE 811.2b level requirements, meaning this software is not, nor could it ever be certified for level 4 security.
2) The hash implementation which was used for prior backdoor's still exists and the modules which access it have not been auditied by third party engineers. This is a serious security violation which the dev team refuses to address. In fact they are doing all they can to sweep it underground, hoping people will just forget about it.
3) There is still no credible evidence that the new implementation of the TCP/IP stack is an improvement over the broken one they are trying to replace from the 4.3.xx series. The benchmarks I saw before leaving were just short of horrible and the potential for data loss was rated as QQQ on the topenhiemer algorithm.
I am currently petitioning the core dev team to remove my code from the project due to my differences with them, but they are the most pious and insufferable people I have ever worked with, so I doubt they will. Use this product at your own risk.
Same for me, for the most part. I had Howard Stern on until he went off around 12:30 est., I thought he did an amazing job given that he was just a few miles away from the WTC. I was also able to run upstairs to an aparment in the building where I work to watch bits of stuff on CNN.
I'll never forget watching the first tower collapse. I just kept thinking "did what I think just happen just happen?" It was without a doubt the saddest moment of my life.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't that kind of like saying that purchasing two slices of pizza for $20 is fine instead of $20 for a whole pizza because two slices is all you need to fill you up? While that may be true I would think that paying $5 for two, if that's all you needed, would make more sense.
My point being, why would you want to buy something that cost more and is slower? If you want somthing that's just "fast enough" that's fine but that hardly makes it a superiour platform. It's just not a compelling marketing statement.You don't see Dell selling a Pentium II 266 on their website claiming that "It's fast enough!!!"
If you like your Mac because you think it's cool there is nothing wrong with that but don't try to justify it by making inane statements which 95% of earth people snicker at.
This is one of the most delusional statements that out of control Mac zealots like to claim in defense of them being forced to spend upwards of 33% more for slower machines.
I've got a two year old PIII 800 Mhz as my main machine which until the past year was probably as fast as any Mac that rolled off the line and I paid less than a grand for it. It hasn't "sped up" nor "slowed down" a bit over the past 2+ years, nor would any PowerMac 300 that came out back then. It was faster then and it would still be faster now than any Mac that was sold at the same time.
It wouldn't be very bright of me to claim that "I couldn't dream of better performance" for it because obviously I could dream of owning a P IIII 4 Ghz, but I will say that it's a more than capable machine for me. It will not slow down any more than any other machine as time goes on, that is to say not at all. It runs RH 8.0 very nicely and I anticpate it will serve me for another year before the upgrade itch overtakes me.
I suspect if I had paid two grand for a Mac two years ago it would certainly not be "speeding up" as time goes on and would certainly run slower than my old PIII which means that the upgrade itch would most likely come quicker as speed is usually the driving force behind an upgrade itch. Your argument holds no water what-so-ever and is void of logic.
It's not uncommon for a mac to last 7-8 years (being used actively).
Just so you know, that's one of the hand waving non-factual mantras that really tend to turn people against Mac zealots. You have no facts to back that up. Oh sure, you may have some anecdotal claim about your buddies Uncle who is using his Apple II or whatever, but that's hardly scientific proof. I would ask you to provide me with some cold hard scientific facts that show that statement to be true or else I'll assume you to have no credibility.
I was called to fix a person's Mac, to find out that they were still using an Apple ][e as one of their main computers!!
I have a number of old computers that I still use including an RS/6000 with a 233 PPC from 1997 and a Sun Sparcserver with a 150 Mhz hypersparc from 1995 and while both are functional (they have lasted 6 and 8 years thus far) I wouldn't want to use either of them as my main machine because of the obvious speed/architecture limitaions. If I were to use them as my main computer it would only be because I'm a freak, not because there was no compelling reason to to upgrade.
I don't have time to read the article but I have to wonder why the "geek" community doesn't just stop with all their complaining about their digital rights and start taking some action. Why not put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and perform some deliberate acts of civil disobediance. This is the best way to effect change if that is what you are really concerned with doing.
Quite frankly I don't think that most of you are really that concerned, beyond getting stuff for free and not geting caught that is.
This reminds me of when I was working at Apple in the secret (heh... my NDA ran out and they did away with the division so it's no longer a secret...) two button mouse division. Basically we used open source tools, like Linux/Emacs and Linux/gcc because they were fast and very functional, but we could never get any of the team leaders to permit them company wide due to the fact that they didn't come shrink wrapped and thus were not officially supported. Now I know that you can get great support from Usenet but that's not good enough for the pinheads who are in upper management at Apple.
So, my question would be, what's the best way for an engineer at a large company to address this issue with the people they report to.
and a half dozen or so people representative of the customer population.
And therein lies the problem. My big beef with "usability" crap, and yes I think much of it's crap, is that different people think differently and there is no dozen people who can give you a fair representation of what the common user will find optimal. Because, there is no common user. There never will be. It's a myth, pure and simple.
Some people will be more able to understand a double click from a single click or a right click from a left click but it doesn't mean that one method is superior to the other. Nor are poets superior to mathemeticians. They're just wired differently. No, people have to learn how to use a computer interface just like they learn how to drive a car or use their VCR. A computer is a tool and you learn how to use it to complete your task and the more you use it the faster and easier it will become. Just like anything else in life.
Now then, I'm not saying that some interfaces aren't better than others, look at the Real Player for an example of that, just that the whole debate is mostly founded on speculation and hand waving and anecdotal evidence and "studies" that hold little water.
Plain and simple. People cut out the little extras when things go bad and CD's fall into that category. Plus most new music just friggin blows anyways. Really.
I remember how Mr. McNealy was anti-Linux in a very pompous way just a few short years ago. It's that "you can't touch us" attitude that ends up killing companies in the end in the tech industry. Not that Sun is dead by a long shot, but they are facing some serious challenges from MS and Linux on low and mid range servers and they haven't exactly been doing much innovating in that area as of late.
I have a big screen analog cell phone that I leave in the car too. But that's not the point. 3G doesn't affect the "phone" portion (ie., voice functions) as much as it does the "data" portion. We haven't seen the power of data on a wireless device (be it a cell phone or a PDA or a combination of the two) because the technology still sucks. When the technology stops sucking things will change. I think it would be great to have a little wireless phone/pda that I can suck data on demand into from a nice fat pipe. It will open up a lot of new innovations much like when the Internet took off and started to become used by average everyday Joes.
People think they won't want this stuff because they see the horrible WAP crap or the "wireless Internet" as it is today. The problem is that it really really sucks today, but it won't always be that way in the future.
Those are the same people who thought they would never fill their 340 meg hard drive. It's just a bit ahead of the curve right now.
But, I could buy a PC that's faster, I'm guessing by at least 25%, for less money. And by faster I'm not talking about clock speed, I'm talking about running apps. So why should I spend a lot more money for less performance.
Now, this person could also buy a bike, which is good enough for what he needs, and this person really never has to worry about maintenance, not compared to a car anyway
But, the problem here is that they are paying more for that bike that, while it looks very different and it fits in the garage better, offers you less. Plus, there is no proof that it will need less maintanance. Most PC hardware, even the real cheap stuff, will work fine for a decent amount of time. Heck, I just threw out an old 486 66 last year that was still working just fine, I just had no use for it.
My point is that it doesn't make any sense to actively seek a compuer that offers less performance, unless your getting it on the cheap. The "well it's good enough" philosophy doesn't match the price tag.
Apple is positioning it's machines-at least it's iMac line- as "information appliances" now. Tools for certain jobs. Who cares how fast an information appliance is, as long as it's fast enough to do it's job?
That's the line that really gets me, "as long as it's fast enough"... Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for Apple and Macs, in fact I wish they would try to actually compete with MS as they could provide some much needed competition if they wanted to, but alas they choose to cater to the "Well, it's good enough" crowd.
It's not just you either, I see it all over these comments, "Well those speakers are good enough for most people" or "Most people don't need to expand their systems" or "Most people are blah blah blah". While this might have a shred of truth, it's not the way consumers think.
Here's an exmple, and this is what Katz (I can't believe I'm agreeing with him) is trying to say. If you are buying a car you look at a couple things, how much money do I want to spend, and what's the most car I can get for that amount. You don't think "I don't want the most car for my money, I just want something good enough..." No. Not the masses anyways. There might be, say, 4.5% of the population that is happy to pay a premium price for "good enough" but most people want the best bang for their buck. Hell, why shouldn't we?
So go ahead and buy one if you like it, hell, pay them $10,000 for it if it would make you feel better. But lets try to be grounded in reality here.
But then again, buying a Mac isn't about choice, it's about illusion.
1299 is a very reasonable price for a well designed, higher quality computer like an apple
You Mac people are so so silly. First of all, anyone who says anything that you consider to be *bad* or *anti-Mac* are labeled as "Anti Mac Fanatics" or "Rabid Mac Bashers" etc. But then I guess it makes it easier to keep your head buried in lala land if you choose to disregard anyone who has a different opinion...
Secondly, lets see what you get for $1299, shall we: (Straight from the Apple Store webiste)
700Mhz PPC (what are the bogomips on that, say about that of a 1.2 Gigahrz P4? Capable, no boubt, but certainly average)
256 meg L2 cache - yawn
128 megs of Ram - heh pc100 ???
40 Gig HD - it doesn't say if it's a 7200 rpm drive or 5400 rpm..
CD-RW (yawn)
56K modem and a NIC - pretty standard stuff
15 inch monitor. Heh... reminds me of 1994 when I got my first 15 inch monitor, it seemed huge at the time.
GeForce2 - what's that, circa 1999???
Plus you're locked into having to have that blob sitting on your desk, unlike my generic PC that I stash on the floor and out of sight.
So really, if you're into that sort of thing, then by all means spend your $1299 and impress all your AOL buddies, but don't expect the rest of us techy types to get all excited about the great value being offered up by Mr. Jobs.
So, I have this model T car. It has an engine. It gets me where I want to go. That is all.
Well, yes indeedy, if you want to use a product that decreases your productivity and limits your functionality, then by all means, have at it. I prefer to use a system that gives me the freedom to use the enhanced functionality that todays modern OS's have to offer. Yes, use a three button mouse.
The Mac team realized that after becoming accustomed to a handicapped system, some users would need something to ease their transition into a better, more elegant system. They were able to accomplish this without ruining the near-perfection of their user interface.
You took the brown pill, didn't you?
Okay, repeat after me: "It's not 1985 anymore, it's not 1985 anymore, it's not 1985 anymore" There. The Mac interface was an innovative extension of some brilliant ideas from the boys at PARC, but lets face it, the myth of the Perfect Interface[tm] that the Church of Jobs likes to preach is just that, a myth. They were brilliant in there time, yes, but today they are just another way of doing things that is probabaly better in some ways and certainly limited in others. So in the end it's a wash.
Now excuse me while I get back to work on my lightening fast amazing stable $600 PC, and i know you need to get back to work on your ploddingly average, moderatly stable $1500 MAC :)
The analogy I would make would be one of a electric screwdriver. If you are going to make one of those you might as well add a little switch to make it reversable too, and maybe one for different speeds/torque too. Your silly two headed hammer anlogoy is a Mac pundits admission of defeat.
Lets think about it, your simulating the right click by using a mouse and a keyboard combination, which is more confusing and troublesome than a simple right mouse click, so I would say that the design of the one button mouse is flawed. So yes, design is important and the one button mouse is a bad/flaweddesign.
I mean, puleeeeze. If that's your argument then you may as well argue that you don't need a mouse at all. You can simply use the keyboard for everything.
The mouse is a tool, a tool that most computer users like to use, why wouldn't you want to make it the most usefull tool that you can???
The assumption there is that Mac users can somehow manage to figure out how to use a keyboard with over one hundred little tiny keys yet they are too stupid to be able to figure out how to use a mouse with more than one button. I mean Sweet Jeusus at the bus stop, it would have been more innovative for them to sell mice with a great big "L" on the left button and a great big "R" on the right button. That way the Mac user could figure out the difference between a right click and a left click.
The whole "one button mouse is easier to figure out than a two button mouse" is one of the biggest urban myths ever propagated.
And, just because I have a somewhat mis-understood past doesn't mean I can't change and start using my powers for good instead of evil...:)
What do you do if you don't have a successful harvest?
Great Scott,
Is this some kind of conspiracy from Taco to post actuall trolls as stories to circumvent the noodnick trolls who post comments? First the slackwear troll and now this... I mean, really.
Well anyways, I LIKE CDE, ya rat jap bastards. It's light and fast, even on my butt slow sparcstation. I shudder in uncontrolable spasms to think of how KDE or Gnome would behave on my box. Yeah, CDE is far from pretty, but hell, it's running on solaris so it all makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Okay, so there you go, IHBT, IHL, HAND.
|.- - - -- - - -.| ." ". /(o)-(o)\
/_)| / | / /\ /\ `\ | /\ / |
| |
| Bababooey |
| to you all |
| _ _ _ _ __ _ |
' - -- . . - - - '
| _|/
|
|
|_)| '- |
\_)\ '.___.' / |\/|_
| \ \_/ / _| '/
|_\ \.___./ \ )
\ \_/\__/\__ ==|
\ \
\ \\// \ |
`\
; | \____/
| | |
The release version of Win XP has a few hidden, uh, features, built into it that weren't in any of the beta versions. Namely, their is a new hidden DLL, called io32.dll in your system directory. You have to go into your settings->advanced->view->legacy->all dialog box and select the "revert system files" box to be able to see it. Basically what it does is take the hardware UID of all your components and, the hex value of the registry hz_install key and send it via TCP/IP right back to good ol Redmond. Yep, this thing basically sends a database stream of all your software installs and hardware components to a huge MS database.
I would suggest running a network sniffer on your network (you can't run it from the Win XP box as they have a IP cloaker built into the dll) and watch all your info go right to the boys from Redmond.
As many of you know, I work for Microsoft in the Import/Export division, and I'm a member of the liason team that works directly with the UK division. While stories like this tend to generate buzz for the website that posts them, I can assure you it is a pure fabrication of the truth. The truth is that while there are additional UK surcharges we only put them their as a request of the British Parliment, and we then provide a non pro quo quid subsidy to counteract the charge, along with giving an actual discount.
This business practice, while on the surface seems a bit odd, was negotiated by the UK magistrate of foreign exports in good faith, I should add. We are not the bad guys here, we are simply doing what our customer wants us to do, and while we are happy that the UK government is interested in pushing our software onto the general public, I can assure you it is only because it's in the best interests of the British people, and is no way unethical or illegal. Of course even if the British were to pay an additional premium for the software, it would be negated by their increased productivity, thus making this a moot issue anyways.
What most people fail to understand is that accounting procedure are easy to misunderstand when you are dealing with foreign countries. I hope this clears things up.
As a core consultant developer for the *BSD kernel for 6 months last year I can't believe they are releaseing this. There are many issues which have not been resolved and are not being publicized to the public. The issues as I see them:
1) The implementation of threads still uses fine grain kernel level locking which does not adhere to POSIXX IEEE 811.2b level requirements, meaning this software is not, nor could it ever be certified for level 4 security.
2) The hash implementation which was used for prior backdoor's still exists and the modules which access it have not been auditied by third party engineers. This is a serious security violation which the dev team refuses to address. In fact they are doing all they can to sweep it underground, hoping people will just forget about it.
3) There is still no credible evidence that the new implementation of the TCP/IP stack is an improvement over the broken one they are trying to replace from the 4.3.xx series. The benchmarks I saw before leaving were just short of horrible and the potential for data loss was rated as QQQ on the topenhiemer algorithm.
I am currently petitioning the core dev team to remove my code from the project due to my differences with them, but they are the most pious and insufferable people I have ever worked with, so I doubt they will. Use this product at your own risk.
Same for me, for the most part. I had Howard Stern on until he went off around 12:30 est., I thought he did an amazing job given that he was just a few miles away from the WTC. I was also able to run upstairs to an aparment in the building where I work to watch bits of stuff on CNN.
I'll never forget watching the first tower collapse. I just kept thinking "did what I think just happen just happen?" It was without a doubt the saddest moment of my life.