Most commercial Mac software exists in Windows, so you can run the Windows versions under WINE in Linux.
Most people who buy a Mac are even less inclined to tinker than a typical Windows user, and therefore much less likely to switch to Linux.
Every Apple computer extends the Steve Jobs reality distortion field to the computer user, ensuring lifelong devotion to the product. I haven't a clue why it doesn't affect you this way.
It's a fair bet the real answer is one or all of those.
Ah, one thing I forgot to mention: if you do go with Ubuntu, make sure you scan the unusually user-friendly and clear documentation and use the Ubuntu Forums when you need help. There are thousands of members logged on at any given time, and most of them are friendly and polite. These Ubuntu people... they've got this weird idea that normal people should be able to use Linux...
Can you tell I'm a fan?
Besides being pleasantly surprised at how the community has changed, you'll also be pleasantly surprised at how little you have to muck about on the command line. I haven't had to recompile a kernel in years, for example, nor manually edit the X configuration file. The default setups are generally usable and secure, and if you need to change something, there's almost always a GUI for it.
As far as VMWare goes - yes, do it, but burn an Ubuntu install CD first and boot from it normally. It doubles as a live CD, so you can get some idea how well your hardware is supported.
In my day, I had to write my first blog post by scratching the symbols on stone with my teeth. I did it in unary. With little bison as the digits. (Three bison followed by four means "mood: hungry".) If you wanted your post read, you removed it from the cave wall with your bare fingers and then traveled, beating people over the head with it.
Don't get me started on my grandpa's first blog post. He had to emit a chemical signal, which was released by wiggling his flagellum...
Recognition tasks are almost all inductive in nature, where performance on math is deductive. Human induction pretty well spanks machine induction at most of the things we take for granted - like recognizing and decoding faces, voices, speech, the sound of your walk, etc., etc., etc. The thing computers do least well is infer what bits of information are most important. We seem to excel at that.
Despite what the findings say, I stand by the faces thing. It sounds like the recognition algorithms got high-resolution 3D scans of human faces as input. Wake me when they can do as well as a human with low-resolution 2D scans.
That being said, it's great to see progress in this area. I can't wait until someone has to lop off my head and carry it with them in a plastic bag in order to break into my workplace. It's more grisly than taking a thumb, but much less likely to happen... I think...
C3PO is Luke's mother, and the stormtroopers are all Boba Fett's natural children. (He's an inspiration to us all.) Obi-Wan Kenobi thinks all astromech droids look alike (thus demonstrating a soft bigotry against mechanical beings). Darth Vader was incredibly angsty and annoying as a teenager. ("KHOOOOH... HSSSS... I don't wanna clean my room! KHOOOOH... HSSSS... You can't make me!") Killing a hundred sand people doesn't make you a bad person, because they look like mummies, even their children. The emperor's complexion has actually improved with age, IMO. Either that, or in his old age, he wanted a more natural look and stopped getting Botox.
I could tell you more, but I don't want to completely ruin it for you.
Why is it that people get so defensive about the fact that they have sex? I mean, congratulations, dude. You've managed to complete your default bodily programming. You win. I guess.
By the only arguably objective measurement we've got, his DNA is superior to yours.
It's not a [i]defensive[/i] play, it's an [i]offensive[/i] one.
I've got four children. I hope you and your attitude can do as well, padawan.
If I had been dead, I would have rolled over in my grave. As it was, I rolled over on the couch, which was much less ominous, but it did give me a good angle with which to chuck the book out the window.
Like a tool, I kept reading. But I was totally ready to defenestrate the thing.
Those people aren't crazy by any legal definition: They can tell right from wrong and they know exactly what they're doing; they just happen to be totally evil.
The word for it is psychopathy, which unfortunately isn't in the current DSM. But it has a great track record of predicting future criminal behavior in current inmates. It's characterized by a lack of ability to feel empathy. These people's brains are wired differently than most. There are millions of them, but most are small-time crooks and swindlers. Couple psychopathy with something more, and you've got potential for real tragedy.
There's a very good chance this is a semi-supervised machine learning thing.
(Un-disclaimer: I do research in machine learning.)
So you've got this algorithm that, if you give it a bunch of labeled data, it can predict labels for unseen data. (Maybe it labels current best-sellers as likely or unlikely to interest a customer based on his buying habits.) Great. Well, somebody's got to label that data. Human time is expensive. On the other hand, you need as much data as possible: the more the better.
Semi-supervised learning algorithms decide which bits of all their unlabeled data to present to a human for labeling based on how much knowledge it can expect to gain from it. You can get higher accuracy with less data that way.
Here's another problem, though: you don't have that many reliable humans to query. So you make it a game, and pay people based on their accuracy for known things, or on their agreement with humans you've already determined are reliable. Win for the humans: if they're accurate, they get paid. Win for the machine learning algorithm: it gets mounds more accurate, high-information, labeled data. Win for Amazon: they make more sales.
There's nothing scary about this, exactly. It's yet another method of eliciting information from humans that is otherwise very hard or expensive to obtain.
I don't really know that it's a weakness. Having pretty candy might attract some new people to linux, but I for one have never been found thinking "gee, if only I had some shiny translucent three-dimensional, shadowed, foldable, fancy interface".
I like my bling, I run Beryl, and I've got windows that go up in blue flames when I close them. (Nifty.) There are some really great usability improvements, though, that are only marginally related to special effects:
Shadows behind windows make it easy to see where one window ends and another one begins. It's yet another visual cue, adapted to our already-stellar ability to interpret depth under varying lighting conditions. A cluttered desktop seems less so automatically. Big UI win, here.
Transparency of moving windows. It's easy to see exactly where to place them to maximize on-screen information.
Windows zoom in when created. Because I can see the animation, I never lose track of whether a web site opened a new window when I clicked on a link. (I run Firefox maximized on one of my monitors.)
Scaling windows. I hit F8, and see every window in full. Nice.
Switcher previews. When Alt-Tabbing, I see what's on every window.
Desktop cube. This gives multiple desktops a kind of continuity and relative placement that a desktop pager could only dream of having. I actually use multiple desktops when I have this.
Zoom. I have a friend whose eyesight is degrading rapidly, and he uses this a lot. It's ten times better than any kind of desktop magnifier. Also, my eyesight is great, and I like small fonts. When I want to show him something, I can hold down Super and scroll the mouse wheel up so he can read it.
I also do image processing research, so that last one is great when I need to see fine detail. None of these by themselves are any great reason to have an OpenGL desktop (except Zoom if you've got bad eyesight), but they make a very compelling case in the aggregate.
Everyone's a sheep. Modern neuroscience pretty much confirms that most of us run on autopilot most of the time. The real question is, who's your shepherd?
I think the average Slashdotter mostly agrees with Jesus about this. The difference is, the average Slashdotter believes that he's not a sheep, and sees this as insulting. Well, reality check. You are. But who's your shepherd? If there's a single most important decision you can make in your life, it's this. Is it Jesus? Mohammad? Richard Stallman? Pamela Jones? Jimmy Carter? Al Gore? Brad Pitt? Your parents? A good friend? A friendly and knowledgeable professor at school?
A little bit back on topic, is anyone else disturbed that unwavering belief in the theory of evolution has become a litmus test for intelligence?
So instead, we'll have Wisconsin first, and they'll have to suck up to them first. For a year leading up to the caucuses we'll hear no end of... whatever the crap it is they make in Wisconsin. Cheese? Beer?
... a scientific reason why we/.ers should not leave the darkness of our parents' basements and our computer monitors, and continue to avoid the dreaded realm known as "outside".
You mean that big, blue room?
I dunno about you, but I have problems going in there in the first place. That room is big. And it's got that huge, moving light that radiates heat. Probably, what, 1000 watts? Boggles the mind.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a fair bet the real answer is one or all of those.
You're welcome!
Ah, one thing I forgot to mention: if you do go with Ubuntu, make sure you scan the unusually user-friendly and clear documentation and use the Ubuntu Forums when you need help. There are thousands of members logged on at any given time, and most of them are friendly and polite. These Ubuntu people... they've got this weird idea that normal people should be able to use Linux...
Can you tell I'm a fan?
Besides being pleasantly surprised at how the community has changed, you'll also be pleasantly surprised at how little you have to muck about on the command line. I haven't had to recompile a kernel in years, for example, nor manually edit the X configuration file. The default setups are generally usable and secure, and if you need to change something, there's almost always a GUI for it.
As far as VMWare goes - yes, do it, but burn an Ubuntu install CD first and boot from it normally. It doubles as a live CD, so you can get some idea how well your hardware is supported.
Everything's gotten tons better since RedHat 4. Try Ubuntu - it seems to work with almost everything, and has a very large and helpful user base.
Yeah, if you have friends.
You types creep me out.
And what's wrang wi' Glaswegians but? I'm no ashamed e my Scottish tongue!
Maybe we could neuter them instead, or find some other way to remove their sex drives.
I'm still not sure how serious I'm being right now.
You were lucky.
In my day, I had to write my first blog post by scratching the symbols on stone with my teeth. I did it in unary. With little bison as the digits. (Three bison followed by four means "mood: hungry".) If you wanted your post read, you removed it from the cave wall with your bare fingers and then traveled, beating people over the head with it.
Don't get me started on my grandpa's first blog post. He had to emit a chemical signal, which was released by wiggling his flagellum...
INTEL [twirling evil black mustache, laughing]: Another! Another!
AMD [producing rabbit after rabbit]: I'm going as fast as I can!
INTEL: You'll pull more, or I'll cook... THIS GOOSE!
[Shot of lone GOOSE in a cage, legs in handcuffs.]
GOOSE [dejected]: Honk.
AMD: No-o-o-o-o-o-o!
(I had to. Your metaphors made me do it.)
Right.
Recognition tasks are almost all inductive in nature, where performance on math is deductive. Human induction pretty well spanks machine induction at most of the things we take for granted - like recognizing and decoding faces, voices, speech, the sound of your walk, etc., etc., etc. The thing computers do least well is infer what bits of information are most important. We seem to excel at that.
Despite what the findings say, I stand by the faces thing. It sounds like the recognition algorithms got high-resolution 3D scans of human faces as input. Wake me when they can do as well as a human with low-resolution 2D scans.
That being said, it's great to see progress in this area. I can't wait until someone has to lop off my head and carry it with them in a plastic bag in order to break into my workplace. It's more grisly than taking a thumb, but much less likely to happen... I think...
C3PO is Luke's mother, and the stormtroopers are all Boba Fett's natural children. (He's an inspiration to us all.) Obi-Wan Kenobi thinks all astromech droids look alike (thus demonstrating a soft bigotry against mechanical beings). Darth Vader was incredibly angsty and annoying as a teenager. ("KHOOOOH... HSSSS... I don't wanna clean my room! KHOOOOH... HSSSS... You can't make me!") Killing a hundred sand people doesn't make you a bad person, because they look like mummies, even their children. The emperor's complexion has actually improved with age, IMO. Either that, or in his old age, he wanted a more natural look and stopped getting Botox.
I could tell you more, but I don't want to completely ruin it for you.
By the only arguably objective measurement we've got, his DNA is superior to yours.
It's not a [i]defensive[/i] play, it's an [i]offensive[/i] one.
I've got four children. I hope you and your attitude can do as well, padawan.
That was so cheap.
If I had been dead, I would have rolled over in my grave. As it was, I rolled over on the couch, which was much less ominous, but it did give me a good angle with which to chuck the book out the window.
Like a tool, I kept reading. But I was totally ready to defenestrate the thing.
Tea-totaler, thanks.
Oh, wait, not even tea. Why would anyone drink dishwater?
We all agree on what now?
Thanks for that - very helpful.
Things like this are why I still come to Slashdot.
Or perpetrating mixed metaphors?
Nah. I've got an even better one:
But once you let the inmates run the asylum, the game is over: you've bought the farm and now you'll sleep in it.
That depends on the situation. What if someone put the smoking gun in the pudding?
In Soviet Russia, "in Soviet Russia" joke work on YOU!
Haha! Take that, you stroppy old bostid!
The word for it is psychopathy, which unfortunately isn't in the current DSM. But it has a great track record of predicting future criminal behavior in current inmates. It's characterized by a lack of ability to feel empathy. These people's brains are wired differently than most. There are millions of them, but most are small-time crooks and swindlers. Couple psychopathy with something more, and you've got potential for real tragedy.
Turns out Eric Harris was a psychopath.
I believe he said "I'm high."
There's a very good chance this is a semi-supervised machine learning thing.
(Un-disclaimer: I do research in machine learning.)
So you've got this algorithm that, if you give it a bunch of labeled data, it can predict labels for unseen data. (Maybe it labels current best-sellers as likely or unlikely to interest a customer based on his buying habits.) Great. Well, somebody's got to label that data. Human time is expensive. On the other hand, you need as much data as possible: the more the better.
Semi-supervised learning algorithms decide which bits of all their unlabeled data to present to a human for labeling based on how much knowledge it can expect to gain from it. You can get higher accuracy with less data that way.
Here's another problem, though: you don't have that many reliable humans to query. So you make it a game, and pay people based on their accuracy for known things, or on their agreement with humans you've already determined are reliable. Win for the humans: if they're accurate, they get paid. Win for the machine learning algorithm: it gets mounds more accurate, high-information, labeled data. Win for Amazon: they make more sales.
There's nothing scary about this, exactly. It's yet another method of eliciting information from humans that is otherwise very hard or expensive to obtain.
I like my bling, I run Beryl, and I've got windows that go up in blue flames when I close them. (Nifty.) There are some really great usability improvements, though, that are only marginally related to special effects:
I also do image processing research, so that last one is great when I need to see fine detail. None of these by themselves are any great reason to have an OpenGL desktop (except Zoom if you've got bad eyesight), but they make a very compelling case in the aggregate.
Everyone's a sheep. Modern neuroscience pretty much confirms that most of us run on autopilot most of the time. The real question is, who's your shepherd?
I think the average Slashdotter mostly agrees with Jesus about this. The difference is, the average Slashdotter believes that he's not a sheep, and sees this as insulting. Well, reality check. You are. But who's your shepherd? If there's a single most important decision you can make in your life, it's this. Is it Jesus? Mohammad? Richard Stallman? Pamela Jones? Jimmy Carter? Al Gore? Brad Pitt? Your parents? A good friend? A friendly and knowledgeable professor at school?
A little bit back on topic, is anyone else disturbed that unwavering belief in the theory of evolution has become a litmus test for intelligence?
Where are my mod points when I need them?
There's no food supply problem. It's all a distribution problem. Castro most likely knows this, but that "starving people" card is awfully effective.
So instead, we'll have Wisconsin first, and they'll have to suck up to them first. For a year leading up to the caucuses we'll hear no end of... whatever the crap it is they make in Wisconsin. Cheese? Beer?
You mean that big, blue room?
I dunno about you, but I have problems going in there in the first place. That room is big. And it's got that huge, moving light that radiates heat. Probably, what, 1000 watts? Boggles the mind.