1. If Vista is pointless, what does it matter if it's "overhyped and late"?
2. Would good does it do to send MS a message that XP is perfectly fine? Is any business going to stop developing new versions of sucessful products just because people liked the old version?
"Linux gave us a huge jumpstart on development because of it's open nature and the information we've garnered from public mailing lists."
Sure, because everyone knows than non-OSS operating systems don't have any documentation that allows programmers to easily develop for it and certainly not anything as comphrensive, consise, and organized as what you find on a public mailing list.
"The fact that these problems were found and documented by a third party who had unfettered access to the source seems to support the idea that source availability actually does improve quality."
Quality is not improved by finding problems, but by solving them.
I should have said it has nothing to do with "one's" opinion of MS. I brought this up because you said:
"The unfortunate thing about this debate is that depending on what you believe the end-user/MS is responsible for, no matter what you assert, you are correct (based off your assertations).
I was merely saying that the difference between security and stability doesn't depend on "what you believe".
"Serves them right... The problem is that there really are plenty of Microsoft trained drones out there who have absolutely no idea what exists outside of Microsoft's nice soft world for dummies, and no interest in learning anything ourside of Microsoft either."
My idea of a "dummy" is someone who doesn't use every advantage to get it done better, faster and cheaper because they fear they might be doing it the "soft" way. You can't live on programming "manliness".
If you think non-MS tools achieve that goal better, more power to you. But if those non-MS tools start looking "soft" someday, don't let that scare you from using them unless you find a more effective alternative.
The customer for a browser is the web surfer, not a standards commitee. A browser that is able to render badly written HTML is better for the customer than one that barfs on it. It's not the role of the browser to force people to write good HTML.
Well, I said "I think" because I didn't know for sure. The fact that it was the Alto rather than a Star doesn't affect my argument. Thanks for the Alto screenshots, but since I had my own Alto for several years, I'm quite familiar with them.
Smalltalk was just an application not the foundation of Xerox's GUI. The fundamentals of the user interface were developed on the Alto which was released (internally) in 1973. I think Jobs saw Smalltalk running on the Star which was introduced in 1981.
The Alto, Star, Lisa and Mac all had their differences, but the difference between the Apple II interface and the Star interface was much, much greater than the difference between the Star and the Mac.
That doesn't mean that Apple didn't make their own contributions, but clearly Xerox was the key player in the invention of the GUI. Apple's most significant accomplishment was making a GUI-based computer affordable. Well, at least more affordable.
Apple has plenty of questionable patents of its own. Here's a handful out of about 1000 that have been granted:
7,100,113: Systems and methods for using media upon insertion into a data processing system 7,099,869: Method and apparatus for managing file extensions in a digital processing system 7,086,008: Multiple personas for mobile devices 7,034,814: Methods and apparatuses using control indicators for data processing systems
Of course it depends on what features you want. If it were me I wouldn't select anything from the B list except the DVD player (unless it were free, of course).
As far as the A list is concerned, most wives don't look kindly on pausing the movie to lookup stuff from imdb. If you're married and your wife goes along with it, appreciate her. If you're single, it's another aspect to consider before getting married.
Of course building a PC from used parts is quite a different scenario than buying a new one. You might be able to buy a used $250 DVD player for under $100 too. As far as the LCD TV is concerned, any display is going to add to the price of both options.
"We would go as far as to say to get rid of your DVD player and connect a media centre PC to your LCD television!'"
If you're single and live studio apartment, this might make good economic sense if you really need high end graphics. You can just connect the PC to the TV and continue to use the PC for other purposes.
But in a typical family environment that media centre PC will have to be dedicated to entertainment purposes, so the real price comparison is the cost of the media PC + the graphics card vs. the high end DVD player. Then the comparison doesn't turn out to be that one-sided.
Or perhaps "need it for work" means you have to run one of the thousands of applications that run on Windows but aren't available for the Mac. I don't agree that the average Mac user is dumb, but let's not pretend that there are valid reasons to prefer Windows in certain circumstances.
Come on. You seriously believe that the statement I quoted wasn't critical of GUIs? Even if he's trying to counter a myth, that doesn't make it a positive statement.
I'll state my position one last time and then I'll STFU: Both GUI and non-GUI UIs rely on abstractions, the abstractions can be good or bad, and the abstractions don't reveal a lot about the internals of the system.
I think the idea of any general purpose OS (Linux, Windows, OSX, etc) being used for an embedded system is a bad one unless the embedded system is really just a general purpose machine in non-traditional form-factor.
Of course we both know that I didn't claim anyone was "a lover of the command line" or implied that anyone was "out of touch". Yes, his original post did appear to be anti-GUI and unless you believe in the existance of a non-metaphoric GUI, at least one statement he made did imply that all GUIs have a problem ("And since we've discovered that even the simplest metaphoric GUI requires "training"). "Even the simplest" implies the simplest plus all the more complex ones, which means all.
The paper tape and punch cards comment was in response to your suggestion that a script could be a non-CLI, non-GUI, UI and I was just illustrating that there still had to be some way of creating the script, so I didn't think it qualified in the same sense as a CLI would.
Nothing I said implied that I wanted to claim that pure GUIs are better than pure CLIs or that I cared about purity at all. The strong reaction people have to the mere suggestion that a CLI might not be superior indicates that this issue is still of great interest.
Perhaps part of the problem is that some people only have experience with one CLI OS type: Unix (or its derivatives). I have experience using about 10 non-Unix CLIs so I know that the quality varies a lot.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
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A New Kind of OS
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Sorry, but that's not a proper example.
It would have to have been Coke-> Coke -> Coke -> etc
The fact is that the Coca-Cola company has introduced several new drinks in the Coke family after the failure of the New Coke.
1. If Vista is pointless, what does it matter if it's "overhyped and late"?
2. Would good does it do to send MS a message that XP is perfectly fine? Is any business going to stop developing new versions of sucessful products just because people liked the old version?
"Linux gave us a huge jumpstart on development because of it's open nature and the information we've garnered from public mailing lists."
Sure, because everyone knows than non-OSS operating systems don't have any documentation that allows programmers to easily develop for it and certainly not anything as comphrensive, consise, and organized as what you find on a public mailing list.
"The fact that these problems were found and documented by a third party who had unfettered access to the source seems to support the idea that source availability actually does improve quality."
Quality is not improved by finding problems, but by solving them.
"And it has nothing to do with my opinion of MS"
I should have said it has nothing to do with "one's" opinion of MS. I brought this up because you said:
"The unfortunate thing about this debate is that depending on what you believe the end-user/MS is responsible for, no matter what you assert, you are correct (based off your assertations).
I was merely saying that the difference between security and stability doesn't depend on "what you believe".
Virii are a security issue, not a stability issue. That fact doesn't change no matter what your opinion of MS is.
"Serves them right... The problem is that there really are plenty of Microsoft trained drones out there who have absolutely no idea what exists outside of Microsoft's nice soft world for dummies, and no interest in learning anything ourside of Microsoft either."
My idea of a "dummy" is someone who doesn't use every advantage to get it done better, faster and cheaper because they fear they might be doing it the "soft" way. You can't live on programming "manliness".
If you think non-MS tools achieve that goal better, more power to you. But if those non-MS tools start looking "soft" someday, don't let that scare you from using them unless you find a more effective alternative.
The customer for a browser is the web surfer, not a standards commitee. A browser that is able to render badly written HTML is better for the customer than one that barfs on it. It's not the role of the browser to force people to write good HTML.
Well, I said "I think" because I didn't know for sure. The fact that it was the Alto rather than a Star doesn't affect my argument. Thanks for the Alto screenshots, but since I had my own Alto for several years, I'm quite familiar with them.
Smalltalk was just an application not the foundation of Xerox's GUI. The fundamentals of the user interface were developed on the Alto which was released (internally) in 1973. I think Jobs saw Smalltalk running on the Star which was introduced in 1981.
The Alto, Star, Lisa and Mac all had their differences, but the difference between the Apple II interface and the Star interface was much, much greater than the difference between the Star and the Mac.
That doesn't mean that Apple didn't make their own contributions, but clearly Xerox was the key player in the invention of the GUI. Apple's most significant accomplishment was making a GUI-based computer affordable. Well, at least more affordable.
Apple has plenty of questionable patents of its own. Here's a handful out of about 1000 that have been granted:
7,100,113: Systems and methods for using media upon insertion into a data processing system
7,099,869: Method and apparatus for managing file extensions in a digital processing system
7,086,008: Multiple personas for mobile devices
7,034,814: Methods and apparatuses using control indicators for data processing systems
That was about the same experience I had with DVDs at first. And forget renting a DVD in those days.
Of course it depends on what features you want. If it were me I wouldn't select anything from the B list except the DVD player (unless it were free, of course).
As far as the A list is concerned, most wives don't look kindly on pausing the movie to lookup stuff from imdb. If you're married and your wife goes along with it, appreciate her. If you're single, it's another aspect to consider before getting married.
It sounds like you're talking about building a system, which is naturally going to be cheaper than buying. Even so, it sounds like $300 is a bit low.
Yeah, my ranges are probably off for both. But I think there's still an overlap in price ranges between the 2 options.
Of course building a PC from used parts is quite a different scenario than buying a new one. You might be able to buy a used $250 DVD player for under $100 too. As far as the LCD TV is concerned, any display is going to add to the price of both options.
$300 for a media center PC sounds like a great deal. Do you have a link to where I can buy one at that price?
Realistically I think we're talking about a $1000-$2000 media center PC vs. $1000-$2000 high-end DVD player.
"We would go as far as to say to get rid of your DVD player and connect a media centre PC to your LCD television!'"
If you're single and live studio apartment, this might make good economic sense if you really need high end graphics. You can just connect the PC to the TV and continue to use the PC for other purposes.
But in a typical family environment that media centre PC will have to be dedicated to entertainment purposes, so the real price comparison is the cost of the media PC + the graphics card vs. the high end DVD player. Then the comparison doesn't turn out to be that one-sided.
Or perhaps "need it for work" means you have to run one of the thousands of applications that run on Windows but aren't available for the Mac. I don't agree that the average Mac user is dumb, but let's not pretend that there are valid reasons to prefer Windows in certain circumstances.
I didn't know middle school students hand to submit their papers to a college.
Come on. You seriously believe that the statement I quoted wasn't critical of GUIs? Even if he's trying to counter a myth, that doesn't make it a positive statement.
I'll state my position one last time and then I'll STFU: Both GUI and non-GUI UIs rely on abstractions, the abstractions can be good or bad, and the abstractions don't reveal a lot about the internals of the system.
Just trying treat myself as I treat others.
I think the idea of any general purpose OS (Linux, Windows, OSX, etc) being used for an embedded system is a bad one unless the embedded system is really just a general purpose machine in non-traditional form-factor.
Of course we both know that I didn't claim anyone was "a lover of the command line" or implied that anyone was "out of touch". Yes, his original post did appear to be anti-GUI and unless you believe in the existance of a non-metaphoric GUI, at least one statement he made did imply that all GUIs have a problem ("And since we've discovered that even the simplest metaphoric GUI requires "training"). "Even the simplest" implies the simplest plus all the more complex ones, which means all.
The paper tape and punch cards comment was in response to your suggestion that a script could be a non-CLI, non-GUI, UI and I was just illustrating that there still had to be some way of creating the script, so I didn't think it qualified in the same sense as a CLI would.
Nothing I said implied that I wanted to claim that pure GUIs are better than pure CLIs or that I cared about purity at all. The strong reaction people have to the mere suggestion that a CLI might not be superior indicates that this issue is still of great interest.
Perhaps part of the problem is that some people only have experience with one CLI OS type: Unix (or its derivatives). I have experience using about 10 non-Unix CLIs so I know that the quality varies a lot.
Sure, geeks are known for their fondness for outdoor activities, heavy lifting and a refined pallet.