You have a very distorted view of the Macintosh user community if you think that most of them ever touch Excel.
Apple's core market is graphics and desktop publishing. Their Docks (when they switch to OS X) will have Photoshop and/or Quark in them - what's that? They haven't shipped yet for OS X?
That must be why the typical mac user is still running MacOS 9. And even when they switch, they won't be running Excel, or Powerpoint - those are business suit apps. Most mac users are graphics/design/publishing pros - not much call for spreadsheets or boring presentation slideshows.
I moved to MacOS X a year ago, but that's because I *don't * use Photoshop for a living.
Re:Obviously Uninformed
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 1
And you, as a Microsoft employee, feel so free to express your own opinion, that you're posting here as an AC.
Re:Can't bring yourself to admit it?
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 1
"Apple (who ripped off Xerox)"
[sigh] Apple paid Xerox a licensing fee to use those aspects of the Alto which became part of the Mac WIMP GUI. When you pay someone for something is is not a "ripoff," but rather, a purchase.
" Languages like LISP cannot be compiled to bytecode because the JVM doesn't support tail-recursion.
Not that I want to write any.Net Lisp. or any lisp really."
It shows. The ANSI Common Lisp standard doesn't require compilers to optimize tail recursion, so some lisps don't - maybe you're thinking of scheme.
Taking your first point second, Lisp can be compiled to bytecode. The issue isn't whether it's possible - of course it is, you could even write a Common Lisp compiler in Java if you like. The issue is performance. The JVM and its restrictions make optimizing lisp code very difficult, so lisp compiled to java byte code, even if JITted, runs much more slowly than lisp compiled to native machine code.
"So you take a good look at the technology, go back to your own pool and recreate it there. "
... So far so good...
"Shark has spent all that money installing all those hi-tech equipment there and you essentially just collect the benefits without putting in as much effort. "
... OK, so far....
"And if it turns out that all of those hi-tech equipment don't work like planned you still have your own pool."
But when he changes certain key, and proprietary, aspects of his pool, and starts charging for their use, your pool won't interoperate with everyone else's pool (read, the 90% of desktops that run the Shark's OS, and.NET frameworks). So life passes you by.
You don't get eaten by the Shark, but the Shark has cleverly gotten you to waste several precious years when you might have kept pace with him in the important server space, where he still doesn't dominate.
Too bad, you fell for his ruse, and though he hasn't eaten you, he has eaten your lunch.
Although the parent is somewhat tongue in cheek, several of these are valid points.
In addition, realize that our immune systems are constantly under very strong selective pressure to be better able to respond to pandemic infectious diseases.
For example, we are all descended from those people whose immune systems were better able to cope with influenza. Remember, more people died in the 1919 Flu pandemic than in all the battles of World War I.
There are, or course, other examples. We are currently under strong selective pressure that favors those whose T cells do not have binding sites for HIV.
So, evolution most definitely continues, it's just that it isn't usually selecting for traits that are visible to the naked eye.
There's an application called OroborosX which allows window interleaving, and has a window manager that looks like aqua, so you can have X windows that behave like Aqua windows, freely interleave them in any order, etc. The only downside is that your X windows don't minimize to the Dock, but to a separate set of minimized tabs in a user defined location.
Pay no attention to the square brackets - slashcode thinks every http server has a three part name (some have more).
You'll also need XDarwin, of course, which should be installed before you install OroborosX.
1. Being a MONOPOLY
2. Criminally abusing that monopoly
This finding was upheld by
THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Microsoft is a monopoly, since nobody cares about your personal definition of "monopoly," but rather, that used by actual courts of law, with real Supreme Court Justices, no less.
I had a new XPrience recently too! My brother, who was travelling to Spain, bought a brand new Sony VAIO laptop, preloaded with Windows XP, and had it shipped to my house where he was staying.
He had all his documents on a CD he'd burned on his windows box back home. Popped it into the Vaio and...
XP refused to show it in explorer. It knew it was there, it even showed the name of every file on it as it scanned the disk, but simply did nothing when asked to open it in Windows Explorer.
We eventually "solved" the problem, by using the built in backup program to make a backup of the CD, then restoring this backup to the hard drive.
Can you even imagine a Mac that would mount a CD, but not show you it's contents, nor let you copy documents from it, when doulble clicked in the Finder?
Please don't talk to me about how "usable" Windows is. Even the latest and greatest is the usual nightmare of workarounds that the redmond crew have accustomed us to.
Aqua UI, Quartz 2D drawing/printing, & Quicktime - 3 essential elements of MacOS X that you'll never see a free port of, because they belong to Apple.
Like other posters in this thread you've failed to understand that Apple make their money by selling hardware. MacOS X is a net money _loser_ for Apple (they spend more to develop it than they make in sales). Apple make software so that their hardware is more attractive to buyers.
So why on earth would they want their software to run on hardware made by competitors?
There is a PDF file that details how to get and install fink, then xfree (with the rootless patch), then your favorite window manager.
Re:How many programmers!?!?!?
on
Mob Software
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· Score: 1
"I skimmed through the article... Where are you going to get that many programmers?
That's why you shouldn't skim if you're going to post. You should actually read the article.
Gabriel is talking about making the users of the system the coders. That means new tools that let everyone contribute to the system. Finding 2.6 million users would be easy. The hard part is going to be coming up with the new tools that let non-technical people contribute useful code.
Re:would you buy a used car from this model?
on
Mob Software
·
· Score: 1
"I can't imagine anyone being willing to buy a house that had been built with no architect, no blueprint and no foreman -- a house built by a bunch of construction workers doing whatever they thought was best that day, and not bothering to write down any of their decisions."
You've just described how the overwhelming majority of homes lived in by human beings throughout human history have been built. The first world ethno-centrism of the slashdot crowd would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
Fact is, most of the world's people are non-literate, so they couldn't "write down their decisions" if they wanted to. They build homes based on a common vision which they acquire by growing up inside the culture. Skilled craftspeople (carpenters, brick layers, etc.) do what they know how to do, and a finished and quite livable home comes together.
Interestingly, many of these homes are superior to modern architect designed houses, for example in seismic stability (i.e., they are less likely to collapse in an earthquake). Why, because they embody the collective wisdom and experience of generations of builders who know the local conditions implicitly. That which has failed in the past has been culled, that which stands for decades is copied. No rigid formalism is imposed on either the materials or the landscape.
To build software like this means:
1. We must be able to share our sucesses and what we have learned from our failures. This means open source.
2. We must build software in a context in which the users can write the software. This mean new tools that enable non-technical people to write useful code.
3. We must build software that can be joined with other useful software with minimal effort. This means software that is reflexive - it knows what it consists of and can tell other software, so that they can merge.
"IF YOU HAD 20 SPACE SHUTTLES TO THROW AWAY IN SPECTACULAR FIREBALLS BEFORE IT WAS FINISHED. "
Gabriel's point is that NASA did just exactly that; scores or rockets blew up in spectacular and sometimes lethal ways. Each of these disasters contibuted to NASA's accumulated knowlege of how to send people into space.
Even the Challenger disaster was part of this process - those people died and the shuttle was lost so that NASA could learn that O-rings fail in low ambient temperature situations.
You more or less totally missed the point of the article. The fact is, that whether you like it or not, Space Shuttles blowing up is an inevitable part of _great_ engineering feats. So also, catastrophic failures will be part of _great_ software development.
So, the only way to make truly _great_ software, is to not try to guard against the inevitable catasrophic failures by using some overly rigid "methodolgy." Instead, trust to the only proven method for great collective efforts - let lots of people with a common vision, sharing what they've learned along the way, hack at it. Note that I did not say "hack at it until it's done," because, really, it is never done.
Re:Many Hands Make Shite Work
on
Mob Software
·
· Score: 1
Really? I'd like a human level Artificial Intelligence please, with a user interface that customizes itself to whatever class of user interacts with it.
You can pick any 5 people you want.
When should I expect delivery?
(try never, blowhard).
Re:Many Hands Make Shite Work
on
Mob Software
·
· Score: 1
Anyone who could even mention a deeply thought out essay by Richard Gabriel in the same paragraph with "Inexperienced developers," is himself, wet behind the ears.
Do you even know who the author is, and how much software expertise and experience he has, both in academia and the business world?
Read carefully and think before shooting off your mouth.
No, ESR did *not* write the same thing in the Cathedral and The Bazaar.
Gabriel points out that Cathedrals were *not* built the way ESR says they were, but rather the way termites build termite mounds. You should actually read the essay carefully - it says things quite different than the current open source model.
" you dont notice it though because its generally pressing in equally from all sides"
No, actually, you don't notice it because your body has an internal pressure equal to sea level air pressure (14 psi). This is why astronauts wear pressure suits (mere SCUBA gear won't do). If they didn't their eyeballs would bulge out, their tongues would swell, noses bleed, etc.
Art, as opposed to nature, is nothing but human intent. This is what differentiates art from nature. Nature is often very beautiful, often more beautiful than most art. But it was not created by a human being with the intent to evoke certain feelings in fellow human beings.
Art is a *human* activity, created with the purpose of evoking certain reactions in other people. So inferring the intent of the artist is what viewing art is all about. The artist's intention to evoke certain subjective responses is the only thing that makes the artist's work art, as opposed to a beautiful slice of nature.
If you take the view that human activity is just a particular subset of nature, then there is no need for the word art (or nature) at all, since both become conflated into the word "everything." This is certainly a valid ontology, but not a very productive one, since all discussion of art must end when everything that is, is lumped into the same category.
Not designed to be read on a monitor? What makes you say that? Does your platform lack a decent PDF viewer? They have TOCs, hyperlinks, can be scaled to any size (fit page, fit width, fit visible, or arbitrary % magnification).
I have *never* printed out a.pdf file, *ever*.
I always read them on my monitor.
Or did you mean they can't be read on a text console?
You didn't read the whole web site. Even the contestant admits that he didn't compress anything. In other words, his "solution" was not based on finding somthing "recognizable" in the single random data file, but rather by putting part of the random data file in the file names of each of the many smaller files he broke it into.
In other words, he used a loophole in the way the challenge was stated. The challenge doesn't explicitly forbid "hiding" data in file names, even though that is specifically mentioned in the comp.compression FAQ. By his own admission, the contestant didn't even attempt to compress the data itself, simply hide some of it in the names of the smaller files.
Apple may be defending their theme engine patent. Apple may or may not care if you create a Kaleidoscope theme, but they sure care if you try to create a product that does essentially what they recieved a patent for - a system for themeing the GUI.
Apple has at least one other theme related patent from around the same time, IIRC, and this cease and desist letter may a defense of that patent as well. As always, it's important to know the details before lobbing verbal hand grenades.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a very distorted view of the Macintosh user community if you think that most of them ever touch Excel.
Apple's core market is graphics and desktop publishing. Their Docks (when they switch to OS X) will have Photoshop and/or Quark in them - what's that? They haven't shipped yet for OS X?
That must be why the typical mac user is still running MacOS 9. And even when they switch, they won't be running Excel, or Powerpoint - those are business suit apps. Most mac users are graphics/design/publishing pros - not much call for spreadsheets or boring presentation slideshows.
I moved to MacOS X a year ago, but that's because I *don't * use Photoshop for a living.
And you, as a Microsoft employee, feel so free to express your own opinion, that you're posting here as an AC.
"Apple (who ripped off Xerox)"
[sigh] Apple paid Xerox a licensing fee to use those aspects of the Alto which became part of the Mac WIMP GUI. When you pay someone for something is is not a "ripoff," but rather, a purchase.
" Languages like LISP cannot be compiled to bytecode because the JVM doesn't support tail-recursion. .Net Lisp. or any lisp really."
Not that I want to write any
It shows. The ANSI Common Lisp standard doesn't require compilers to optimize tail recursion, so some lisps don't - maybe you're thinking of scheme.
Taking your first point second, Lisp can be compiled to bytecode. The issue isn't whether it's possible - of course it is, you could even write a Common Lisp compiler in Java if you like. The issue is performance. The JVM and its restrictions make optimizing lisp code very difficult, so lisp compiled to java byte code, even if JITted, runs much more slowly than lisp compiled to native machine code.
"So you take a good look at the technology, go back to your own pool and recreate it there. "
.NET frameworks). So life passes you by.
... So far so good...
"Shark has spent all that money installing all those hi-tech equipment there and you essentially just collect the benefits without putting in as much effort. "
... OK, so far....
"And if it turns out that all of those hi-tech equipment don't work like planned you still have your own pool."
But when he changes certain key, and proprietary, aspects of his pool, and starts charging for their use, your pool won't interoperate with everyone else's pool (read, the 90% of desktops that run the Shark's OS, and
You don't get eaten by the Shark, but the Shark has cleverly gotten you to waste several precious years when you might have kept pace with him in the important server space, where he still doesn't dominate.
Too bad, you fell for his ruse, and though he hasn't eaten you, he has eaten your lunch.
Although the parent is somewhat tongue in cheek, several of these are valid points.
In addition, realize that our immune systems are constantly under very strong selective pressure to be better able to respond to pandemic infectious diseases.
For example, we are all descended from those people whose immune systems were better able to cope with influenza. Remember, more people died in the 1919 Flu pandemic than in all the battles of World War I.
There are, or course, other examples. We are currently under strong selective pressure that favors those whose T cells do not have binding sites for HIV.
So, evolution most definitely continues, it's just that it isn't usually selecting for traits that are visible to the naked eye.
Pay no attention to the square brackets - slashcode thinks every http server has a three part name (some have more).
You'll also need XDarwin, of course, which should be installed before you install OroborosX.
"First off, Microsoft does not have a monopoly."
Monopoly is a term DEFINED BY LAW.
Microsoft was found guilty of
1. Being a MONOPOLY
2. Criminally abusing that monopoly
This finding was upheld by
THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Microsoft is a monopoly, since nobody cares about your personal definition of "monopoly," but rather, that used by actual courts of law, with real Supreme Court Justices, no less.
Except an OS that's actually usable.
TiBooks look much nicer than ThinkPads too, and they're faster, especially at media compression.
"Hasn't anybody yet learned that Katz is simply a sanctioned troll?"
Please mod this up!
And fire Katz while you're at it %8^)^
I had a new XPrience recently too! My brother, who was travelling to Spain, bought a brand new Sony VAIO laptop, preloaded with Windows XP, and had it shipped to my house where he was staying.
He had all his documents on a CD he'd burned on his windows box back home. Popped it into the Vaio and...
XP refused to show it in explorer. It knew it was there, it even showed the name of every file on it as it scanned the disk, but simply did nothing when asked to open it in Windows Explorer.
We eventually "solved" the problem, by using the built in backup program to make a backup of the CD, then restoring this backup to the hard drive.
Can you even imagine a Mac that would mount a CD, but not show you it's contents, nor let you copy documents from it, when doulble clicked in the Finder?
Please don't talk to me about how "usable" Windows is. Even the latest and greatest is the usual nightmare of workarounds that the redmond crew have accustomed us to.
"Finale, music notation software, simply has nothing equal."
Igor Envraver, runs on the Mac.
http://www.noteheads.com/
Aqua UI, Quartz 2D drawing/printing, & Quicktime - 3 essential elements of MacOS X that you'll never see a free port of, because they belong to Apple.
Like other posters in this thread you've failed to understand that Apple make their money by selling hardware. MacOS X is a net money _loser_ for Apple (they spend more to develop it than they make in sales). Apple make software so that their hardware is more attractive to buyers.
So why on earth would they want their software to run on hardware made by competitors?
The easiest way to do this is to go to:
http://www.macosxhints.com
There is a PDF file that details how to get and install fink, then xfree (with the rootless patch), then your favorite window manager.
"I skimmed through the article... Where are you going to get that many programmers?
That's why you shouldn't skim if you're going to post. You should actually read the article.
Gabriel is talking about making the users of the system the coders. That means new tools that let everyone contribute to the system. Finding 2.6 million users would be easy. The hard part is going to be coming up with the new tools that let non-technical people contribute useful code.
"I can't imagine anyone being willing to buy a house that had been built with no architect, no blueprint and no foreman -- a house built by a bunch of construction workers doing whatever they thought was best that day, and not bothering to write down any of their decisions."
You've just described how the overwhelming majority of homes lived in by human beings throughout human history have been built. The first world ethno-centrism of the slashdot crowd would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
Fact is, most of the world's people are non-literate, so they couldn't "write down their decisions" if they wanted to. They build homes based on a common vision which they acquire by growing up inside the culture. Skilled craftspeople (carpenters, brick layers, etc.) do what they know how to do, and a finished and quite livable home comes together.
Interestingly, many of these homes are superior to modern architect designed houses, for example in seismic stability (i.e., they are less likely to collapse in an earthquake). Why, because they embody the collective wisdom and experience of generations of builders who know the local conditions implicitly. That which has failed in the past has been culled, that which stands for decades is copied. No rigid formalism is imposed on either the materials or the landscape.
To build software like this means:
1. We must be able to share our sucesses and what we have learned from our failures. This means open source.
2. We must build software in a context in which the users can write the software. This mean new tools that enable non-technical people to write useful code.
3. We must build software that can be joined with other useful software with minimal effort. This means software that is reflexive - it knows what it consists of and can tell other software, so that they can merge.
"IF YOU HAD 20 SPACE SHUTTLES TO THROW AWAY IN SPECTACULAR FIREBALLS BEFORE IT WAS FINISHED. "
Gabriel's point is that NASA did just exactly that; scores or rockets blew up in spectacular and sometimes lethal ways. Each of these disasters contibuted to NASA's accumulated knowlege of how to send people into space.
Even the Challenger disaster was part of this process - those people died and the shuttle was lost so that NASA could learn that O-rings fail in low ambient temperature situations.
You more or less totally missed the point of the article. The fact is, that whether you like it or not, Space Shuttles blowing up is an inevitable part of _great_ engineering feats. So also, catastrophic failures will be part of _great_ software development.
So, the only way to make truly _great_ software, is to not try to guard against the inevitable catasrophic failures by using some overly rigid "methodolgy." Instead, trust to the only proven method for great collective efforts - let lots of people with a common vision, sharing what they've learned along the way, hack at it. Note that I did not say "hack at it until it's done," because, really, it is never done.
Really? I'd like a human level Artificial Intelligence please, with a user interface that customizes itself to whatever class of user interacts with it.
You can pick any 5 people you want.
When should I expect delivery?
(try never, blowhard).
Anyone who could even mention a deeply thought out essay by Richard Gabriel in the same paragraph with "Inexperienced developers," is himself, wet behind the ears.
Do you even know who the author is, and how much software expertise and experience he has, both in academia and the business world?
Read carefully and think before shooting off your mouth.
No, ESR did *not* write the same thing in the Cathedral and The Bazaar.
Gabriel points out that Cathedrals were *not* built the way ESR says they were, but rather the way termites build termite mounds. You should actually read the essay carefully - it says things quite different than the current open source model.
" you dont notice it though because its generally pressing in equally from all sides"
No, actually, you don't notice it because your body has an internal pressure equal to sea level air pressure (14 psi). This is why astronauts wear pressure suits (mere SCUBA gear won't do). If they didn't their eyeballs would bulge out, their tongues would swell, noses bleed, etc.
Art, as opposed to nature, is nothing but human intent. This is what differentiates art from nature. Nature is often very beautiful, often more beautiful than most art. But it was not created by a human being with the intent to evoke certain feelings in fellow human beings.
Art is a *human* activity, created with the purpose of evoking certain reactions in other people. So inferring the intent of the artist is what viewing art is all about. The artist's intention to evoke certain subjective responses is the only thing that makes the artist's work art, as opposed to a beautiful slice of nature.
If you take the view that human activity is just a particular subset of nature, then there is no need for the word art (or nature) at all, since both become conflated into the word "everything." This is certainly a valid ontology, but not a very productive one, since all discussion of art must end when everything that is, is lumped into the same category.
Not designed to be read on a monitor? What makes you say that? Does your platform lack a decent PDF viewer? They have TOCs, hyperlinks, can be scaled to any size (fit page, fit width, fit visible, or arbitrary % magnification).
.pdf file, *ever*.
I have *never* printed out a
I always read them on my monitor.
Or did you mean they can't be read on a text console?
You didn't read the whole web site. Even the contestant admits that he didn't compress anything. In other words, his "solution" was not based on finding somthing "recognizable" in the single random data file, but rather by putting part of the random data file in the file names of each of the many smaller files he broke it into.
In other words, he used a loophole in the way the challenge was stated. The challenge doesn't explicitly forbid "hiding" data in file names, even though that is specifically mentioned in the comp.compression FAQ. By his own admission, the contestant didn't even attempt to compress the data itself, simply hide some of it in the names of the smaller files.
For the USPTO page on Apple's theme engine patent see: U.S. Patent # 6,104,391
Apple has at least one other theme related patent from around the same time, IIRC, and this cease and desist letter may a defense of that patent as well. As always, it's important to know the details before lobbing verbal hand grenades.