I only said that Apple would treat Terra the same as they would any clonemaker. They see Terra as a threat, because they make PowerPC boxes, which Apple sees as its market.
Is this right? Hell no. The management at Apple has always been populated entirely by insane fools, and probably always will be. However, they're the ones running the place, and if they think of Terra as a threat, then they'll treat it like one.
The lack of clones isn't a problem, only a symptom of the problem. The problem is that Apple has no interest in competition, because their business model is totally dependent on their margins (which outstrip those of the rest of the industry by a huge margin). Clones are a symptom of this; because the existence of clones would force Apple to price more competitively, they muscle any cloner out.
Now, of course, these motherboards by TerraSoft couldn't considered "clones" by any reasonable person; after all, they don't run any OS that Apple's ever written (well, they might run MkLinux, but I think it's safe to say that Apple doesn't much care about that one anymore). But Apple doesn't see it that way. To them, anyone using even the same chip is a threat to their precious margins.
Why is the parent moderated as insightful when it is obviously a troll ?
It was not intended as a troll. I use Macs at every opportunity (i.e. everywhere except work, where I have to use a Wintel and a Sun box). However, while I love Macs, I loathe Apple, and this is one of the reasons.
Last I knew it took more than just a powerpc motherboard and chip to run Mac OS or OS X. It's not like PCs. Apples have yet more proprietary shit in them that keeps you from running their OS.
You forget: Apple considers itself a hardware company. To them, the OS is quite literally nothing more than a draw to get people running their hardware. Apple doesn't care about DEC Alpha machines because they don't sell DEC Alpha machines. But any PPC machine, whether or not it's capable of running OSX, is a threat to them. Or at least, they think it is. Are they wrong? Hell yes. But it's what they believe, and neither you nor I is going to be able to convince them otherwise.
So. Shut the hell up and stop and stop being an ignorant, repugnant, ham headed troll.
You know, this is probably the first time I've ever been called a troll. I must say, I'm rather disappointed. I was hoping for an impressive, or at least a passable, flame.
You know that, and I know that. But Apple doesn't know that. They still insist that they're a hardware company, and so they consider anything with remotely the same architecture to be a competitor.
Stupid? You bet. But it's how they perceive themselves to be.
Let's face it: what else could cause TerraSoft, which has a vested interest in being able to sell their own machines, from suddenly doing a complete 180 on selling PPC motherboards? Particularly when they speak of "learning a powerful lesson" when they never even managed to bring the boards to market?
Think about it. If Apple didn't step in, then how else could this have happened?
...but not entirely unexpected either. There's no way Apple would allow it, because God forbid they'd actually have to do something competitive.
It's true that the clones nearly killed Apple. But this wasn't because of some problem inherent in cloning, it was because Apple refused to compete with the cloners. Their whole plan, initially, was to continue their absurdly high margins by selling high-end machines and having the cloners produce low-end machines; they'd be in different markets and Apple would still basically have a monopoly in their own little AppleWorld.
This is the major problem with Apple, I think. And I doubt we'll see any increase in their marketshare, no matter how deserved it may be, until they get off their freaking high horse and start actually trying to compete in the open market.
Um... what about Symbian? Or Palm? Or even Pixo, for that matter?
And let us never forget the ever-popular Pom Pilot...
Unfortunately...
on
Legacy-Free PCs
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It seems as though the PC crowd has this obsession over the worry that someday they might have to use something which is twenty years old or more. Thus, in mainstream machines, you'll see things like ISA slots or floppy drives still. Heck; the whole x86 architecture is basically just bolt-on instructions to the previous architecture, with a lineage going all the way back to the Intel 4004. And while some of the backward-compatibility feats they've pulled are nothing short of miraculous, our blind insistence on backward-compatibility is at the point where it's holding back the state of the art more than advancing it.
This is the sort of thing emulation and hardware adapters were made for.
Think about it. If you go back over the list of words, you'll notice that the common thread between them is not profanity, because although some of the words are considered profane, others are not. The common thread is that all of the words are sexual in nature.
To not feel fear concerning terrorism would be stupid. I mean, they really are out there, and they really can hurt us. That is a fact. But to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by that fear -that is, to be afraid- has no point or meaning, because quite frankly, they cannot be stopped 100% of the time, and it is pointless to even try, because the only way to even approach 100% is by using means which make our lives not worth defending anyway.
People seem to forget that the various government agencies get some ten to twenty terror threats a day. They don't have the resources to treat every one of them as a real threat, but fortunately, most of them are not. So they have to sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff first, and then deal with the genuine threats. This is a monumental task indeed. And yet, from 1997 - 2002 (as close as we can currently get to a five-year period surrounding 9/11). only one attack got through. That's well over a 99.99% success rate. And this was with several security procedures which were in place before 9/11 not even being followed. Even the government can't ask for better than that and honestly expect any improvement.
We are, in fact, no more secure than we were before 9/11. That's because it's basically impossible to get more secure. And that's a sobering thought, that for all the efforts at trying to "prevent" terrorism, it cannot be done perfectly, not without compromising everything that makes life in the US worth living. But that's something that's simply going to have to be dealt with. Too many people, it seems, have been raised to believe that the world is like some Disney movie where "common decency" is universal, everyone is capable of being reasoned with given enough time, and governments never abuse the power they are given. That would be great if it were -or could be- true, but there's this thing called reality that gets in the way. Maybe when more people realize this, the populace as a whole will start getting a little braver.
I don't believe there is any money to be made from hardware sales. The profit margin is too small. Apple's margins on its machines averaged 28% across all lines last quarter. Highest margins in the industry by an absurd degree. They seem to be doing fairly well with that.
Another victim of interface fundamentalism. A few decent points, but for the most part the guy sounds like he just wants his OS9 back. Rather disappointing; his articles are usually much more... hmm, how to put it... independent than this.
Look. Spatial orientation is a good paradigm. It is not, however, the be-all and end-all of interface design. This appears to be something that Tog and his apostles have yet to understand. There is a better way. I don't claim to know what it is; it's possible that it might not have even been discovered yet. But there's always a better way, and rather than slavishly imitating older designs we should be working to find newer ones.
The whole interesting thing about NeXT is that they managed to create a non-spatial interface paradigm that actually worked well. For all the theory behind spatial orientation being so much faster, it just doesn't hold up in the real world. In the end, they're basically equal, with each paradigm having its own advantages and disadvantages, but it all comes out in the wash. That's the interesting thing about the human mind: theory is good, but reality often breaks the rules. Would it be nice if the Finder actually remembered window positions and icons in a consistent manner? Yes, it would; it's rather convenient. I wouldn't mind seeing this fixed in OSX's finder, if it can be done in a manner that doesn't cripple its speed. But that's all it is: a convenience; there's nothing to show that it actually precipitates a fundamental, universal improvement in performance or usability.
Labels: Worse than useless, at least in the incarnation we know from OS9. Better systems can be devised, as the myriad workflow tools in existence have shown us.
Recordability: OK, touche on this one. I don't use AppleScript much myself, but recordability is a Very Good Thing in terms of convenience.
The "Finder Browser": I oppose the name pretty strongly, if only because it would likely spread the meme-virus common to Windows and the Linux desktop environments that the file manager and Web browser should be intertwined in the same app. Other than that, what I'd like to see, if Column View is taken out of the Finder, is an option to use it in place of the Finder, not just as a complement. It's a different paradigm, but for many people it's better, and so it should be able to replace the old.
Live Searches: Interesting, but I don't think these should be part of the Finder, per se. Don't make them folders; make them documents. Siracusa was wondering how to make them visually distinct from folders, and this would be the best way. Double-click, and it opens a new window, visually distinct from the Finder windows (and thus providing another contextual clue). The results are then displayed in a list format; since this is "non-spatial" there's no advantage to icon view and plenty of disadvantages, such as wasted screen space. In the space it takes to display twelve items arranged in a square for icon view, you could display 25 items or more in a list. That ability to see more items at once easily supercedes the advantage to icon-esque views, given the purpose of such searches.
Finder Plugins: These actually exist in OSX. They're very poorly documented, and almost no one knows about them; the only one I've ever seen was for viewing AppleWorks word-processing documents in the Finder.
Metadata: Hellz yeah. Metadata is a Great Thing, and needs to be used more extensively in OSX, not less.
OSX's lack of support for metadata: Um, OSX does support metadata. The problem is, as is the case with most of Apple's best stuff, there's no documentation on it, leaving developers out in the cold.
As a final note: with a Unix system, it isn't possible to achieve the one-to-one relationships between icons and files seen in OS9 and such. You can do it with windows and folders, which seems to be Siracusa's main beef, but it's impossible with icons and files, which may be equally impor
The Finder is basically a file manager. Coming from a GNOME perspective, you could think of it as performing the same role as Nautilus, or gmc before that.
In Serial Experiments Lain, there's a whispering voice used to introduce the title of each episode. That voice is... you guesed it... Whisper from the Mac set of voices.
It's still there in OSX, in fact. Make up your own Lain episode titles!
Native != Cocoa, my friend. Or rather, not all native apps are Cocoa, nor are all Cocoa apps native (I doubt you'd call a Cocoa/Java app "native", for example).
Carbon is every bit as native as Cocoa. It is true that Apple was too lenient in its backward-compatibility measures; by not forcing developers to take advantage of new technologies while porting their apps, we've seen the rise of Bad Carbon Ports, epitomized by (ironically) AppleWorks but seen to lesser degrees in other apps as well. However, a Carbon app which actually uses OSX technologies can be not just every bit as fast as a Cocoa app, but even somewhat faster if it's done right.
Cocoa is good. Carbon can be good, though it does have some Bad Stuff that, regrettably, many porting jobs use. But an app is no better simply by virtue of being written in Cocoa or Carbon.
If you want proof of this, simply look at the fact that Apple is slowly re-implementing Cocoa on top of Carbon. Some of this work is already complete and is a part of Jaguar; more is coming. When it is finished, Cocoa will be little more than a layer of abstraction on top of Carbon. How can one be intrinsically better than the other, when this is possible?
Theoretically, one could already press charges of fraud, since the site is very demonstrably not what a reasonable person would interpret its site name as claiming to be.
Therefore, no further -and more to the point, no special- legislation should be necessary. This law is not needed.
That's part of the problem with legislative bodies: they're always looking to make new laws without bothering to do any real research as to whether or not an existing law can be considered applicable. IANAL, of course, but I think the legislative code could be much simpler, with all the same effects, if they'd just do that.
Seriously; this should be done on an insert or something like that. Just make a quick list of the rights infringed upon in any way by the copy protection schemes, with the additional mandate that the words "your right" must appear at least once in every item, and must be in bold and italics at every appearance. Here are a few examples:
Time-shifting is your right to use this media at a time of your choosing. The copy-protection scheme on this media restricts that right.
Space-shifting is your right to use this media at a location of your choosing. The copy-protection scheme on this media restricts that right.
...and so on, and so forth. In short, consumers must know that their rights are being violated. Sounds perfectly fair to me.
The real problem is that XML got so overhyped that now people want to use it for everything.
I mean, come on. XML is a good tool for a lot of things. But what reason is there to, for example, create a language which translates between XML formats in XML? That could just as easily have been done in another format, and would probably have come out looking a lot nicer.
As for the API's being too difficult: well, it is programming (which has some level of difficulty inherent in it, though it need not be absurdly tough). Besides which, the API's were meant to be generic, and you know what they say about jacks of all trades. Implement your own API, on top of SAX or the DOM (you'd probably get better efficiency if you used SAX, but the DOM may be easier for some programmers), and you'll have something what's easier to work with for your particular project, without sacrificing the portability that SAX and the DOM bring. Seriously, it's just a matter of coming up with creative solutions.
By the way, am I the only one who's thinking of doing a satirical cartoon zbout this mess? Like maybe a Barbie doll that says "XML Is Hard" or something like that?
However, my emotional response to your argument is that, compared to the scale of what's going on here, your having your commute disrupted is a pretty minor thing, and it seems kind of petty to complain about it.
Fair enough. However, I'd like to point out that at the moment, neither you nor I can directly affect what happens over there (to do that, we'd have to be there, or be in a position to directly give orders), whereas you can directly affect my commute by blockading traffic.
I mean, do Iraqi children have rights? Does your right to pursue your happiness override their right to life?
Certainly not. But my right to pursue my happiness has no bearing on their right to life. Whether or not I make it to work that day will not save or kill a single person. That puts it rather squarely outside the scope of your protest.
A lot of people are dying horrible, gruesome deaths right now, and you guys are complaining about traffic problems? Great green gods!
Let me put it this way. I cannot support something which could kill 25,000 innocent civilians (this seems to be the most pessimistic realistic estimate I could find). But an equal number of innocent Iraqis have already died this year, because of Saddam's abuse of the oil for food program, and 125,000 will follow them this year alone -as over two million have in the past- if we continue to sit back and do nothing. I cannot oppose soomething which will end that. Even if some people die by accident -a truly terrible thing- that is better than six times that number dying deliberately. Unless you really think this war can chew through more than 150,000 civilians, it will save many more lives than it takes. That is the only thing which keeps me from opposing this war; I can't support it either, but with numbers like that, it would seem immoral to continue inspections which costs some 13,000 innocent lives per month.
Do these children have a right to life? Yes. No one is deliberately trying to kill civilians. If you look at Baghdad now, after the "shock and awe" bombings, you'll note that the power, the water, the hospitals, and even most of the roads are still intact; civilian areas were carefully avoided. No one is trying to kill civilians. That something could happen by accident is no reason to be paralyzed, because accidents are by definition outside anyone's control.
Sometimes, accidents happen. You'll notice that thus far, these accidents have claimed the lives of more soldiers than civilians. That's a rather embarrassing thing -you'd think our military could be a little more competent than that- but it's an interesting point.
It is a sad, sick world where war can reduce death. But since when is this world anything other than sad and sick?
Even if they do this on Adult Swim only, it's going to get butchered. Admittedly, Love Hina would get it even worse, but still, Trigun's going to go through the freaking shredder.
Most anime just plain shouldn't be shown on TV at this point in time. Not until the culture is ready to take it uncut, or at least with minimal editing (I don't count dubbing as "editing" so much as necessity, given that relatively few people would be willing to watch this stuff subbed on TV). And that, I fear, isn't going to be for a long time.
Since when do you have a right not to have your life disrupted? Is not going to work a rather important part of "the pursuit of happiness"?
I do not have a right not to have my life disrupted. But you don't have a right to be the one doing the disrupting, any more than I would have a right to disrupt yours.
They have to get louder because they are being drowned out by all the "Go America" bullshit. The media has not given anything near equal voice to anti-war arguments as they have to pro-war rhetoric. Indeed not. If anything, anti-war rhetoric has gotten much more voice in the media.
The "Go America" bullshit isn't drowning you out. You (the antiwar protesters) are drowning yourselves out, by means of your tactics. People don't remember the message, they remember the jerks who sat down in the middle of the road and blocked traffic for hours, making many people late for work, most of them having nothing whatsoever to do with the war. Far from spreading the message to those who disagree, it only spreads resentment among those who disagree. In other words, the exact opposite of the intended effect.
If you're going to practice civil disobedience, fine. Be civil. As the old saying goes, you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. You want to "stop the anger" and "stop the hate"? Here's some honest advice: you could start by stopping it in yourself before going to stop it in others, because I can tell you right now, that is what the people see.
By the way, your statistics cut both ways. The very example you cite could easily be spun to say that a majority oppose the war, which is no more true than saying that a majority support it.
So you assume that just because we don't agree with you, we must be ignoring you? Why is that? Because you think you have some kind of monopoly on The Truth or something? You're no better than you claim Bush to be, if that's really your attitude.
You have rights. I have rights. I cannot interfere with your rights, and you cannot interfere with mine. And yes, that means that if you wish to protest, you must do so in such a way that doesn't disrupt people's lives. Not only are you not attracting converts by doing so, you're in fact breeding resentment among the very people you should be courting.
Yes, the so-called PATRIOT act is a gross violation of everything this nation stands for. That's no excuse to violate people's rights even further.
Remember, the BBC is operated by a government that has a direct hand in this war. Even their famed, so-called "impartiality" (which is really just an inability to see where their biases are), should be considered compromised in such a situation.
All media is biased, one way or another; the only difference is the direction of that bias. The most dangerous media outlets are the ones who claim to be unbiased, because they've lost sight of their bias in their arrogance.
So if you want a balanced view of the war, looking for a single source will do you no good, because no single source exists. Instead, get your news from multiple sources, always aware of each source's bias, and then think for yourself. The classic "CNN and the BBC" may not work well in this particular case, given that they're both located in nations with a direct hand in the attack. If you really want to walk on the wild side you could use Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore, but many people can't stomach either of them, much less both.
Look around, and you'll find something. Just remember this rule: don't let anyone do your thinking for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I only said that Apple would treat Terra the same as they would any clonemaker. They see Terra as a threat, because they make PowerPC boxes, which Apple sees as its market.
Is this right? Hell no. The management at Apple has always been populated entirely by insane fools, and probably always will be. However, they're the ones running the place, and if they think of Terra as a threat, then they'll treat it like one.
The lack of clones isn't a problem, only a symptom of the problem. The problem is that Apple has no interest in competition, because their business model is totally dependent on their margins (which outstrip those of the rest of the industry by a huge margin). Clones are a symptom of this; because the existence of clones would force Apple to price more competitively, they muscle any cloner out.
Now, of course, these motherboards by TerraSoft couldn't considered "clones" by any reasonable person; after all, they don't run any OS that Apple's ever written (well, they might run MkLinux, but I think it's safe to say that Apple doesn't much care about that one anymore). But Apple doesn't see it that way. To them, anyone using even the same chip is a threat to their precious margins.
Why is the parent moderated as insightful when it is obviously a troll ?
It was not intended as a troll. I use Macs at every opportunity (i.e. everywhere except work, where I have to use a Wintel and a Sun box). However, while I love Macs, I loathe Apple, and this is one of the reasons.
Last I knew it took more than just a powerpc motherboard and chip to run Mac OS or OS X. It's not like PCs. Apples have yet more proprietary shit in them that keeps you from running their OS.
You forget: Apple considers itself a hardware company. To them, the OS is quite literally nothing more than a draw to get people running their hardware. Apple doesn't care about DEC Alpha machines because they don't sell DEC Alpha machines. But any PPC machine, whether or not it's capable of running OSX, is a threat to them. Or at least, they think it is. Are they wrong? Hell yes. But it's what they believe, and neither you nor I is going to be able to convince them otherwise.
So. Shut the hell up and stop and stop being an ignorant, repugnant, ham headed troll.
You know, this is probably the first time I've ever been called a troll. I must say, I'm rather disappointed. I was hoping for an impressive, or at least a passable, flame.
You know that, and I know that. But Apple doesn't know that. They still insist that they're a hardware company, and so they consider anything with remotely the same architecture to be a competitor.
Stupid? You bet. But it's how they perceive themselves to be.
Let's face it: what else could cause TerraSoft, which has a vested interest in being able to sell their own machines, from suddenly doing a complete 180 on selling PPC motherboards? Particularly when they speak of "learning a powerful lesson" when they never even managed to bring the boards to market?
Think about it. If Apple didn't step in, then how else could this have happened?
...but not entirely unexpected either. There's no way Apple would allow it, because God forbid they'd actually have to do something competitive.
It's true that the clones nearly killed Apple. But this wasn't because of some problem inherent in cloning, it was because Apple refused to compete with the cloners. Their whole plan, initially, was to continue their absurdly high margins by selling high-end machines and having the cloners produce low-end machines; they'd be in different markets and Apple would still basically have a monopoly in their own little AppleWorld.
This is the major problem with Apple, I think. And I doubt we'll see any increase in their marketshare, no matter how deserved it may be, until they get off their freaking high horse and start actually trying to compete in the open market.
Um... what about Symbian? Or Palm? Or even Pixo, for that matter?
And let us never forget the ever-popular Pom Pilot...
It seems as though the PC crowd has this obsession over the worry that someday they might have to use something which is twenty years old or more. Thus, in mainstream machines, you'll see things like ISA slots or floppy drives still. Heck; the whole x86 architecture is basically just bolt-on instructions to the previous architecture, with a lineage going all the way back to the Intel 4004. And while some of the backward-compatibility feats they've pulled are nothing short of miraculous, our blind insistence on backward-compatibility is at the point where it's holding back the state of the art more than advancing it.
This is the sort of thing emulation and hardware adapters were made for.
Sounds more like hormones-as-philosophy to me.
Think about it. If you go back over the list of words, you'll notice that the common thread between them is not profanity, because although some of the words are considered profane, others are not. The common thread is that all of the words are sexual in nature.
This lady's a coward.
To not feel fear concerning terrorism would be stupid. I mean, they really are out there, and they really can hurt us. That is a fact. But to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by that fear -that is, to be afraid- has no point or meaning, because quite frankly, they cannot be stopped 100% of the time, and it is pointless to even try, because the only way to even approach 100% is by using means which make our lives not worth defending anyway.
People seem to forget that the various government agencies get some ten to twenty terror threats a day. They don't have the resources to treat every one of them as a real threat, but fortunately, most of them are not. So they have to sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff first, and then deal with the genuine threats. This is a monumental task indeed. And yet, from 1997 - 2002 (as close as we can currently get to a five-year period surrounding 9/11). only one attack got through. That's well over a 99.99% success rate. And this was with several security procedures which were in place before 9/11 not even being followed. Even the government can't ask for better than that and honestly expect any improvement.
We are, in fact, no more secure than we were before 9/11. That's because it's basically impossible to get more secure. And that's a sobering thought, that for all the efforts at trying to "prevent" terrorism, it cannot be done perfectly, not without compromising everything that makes life in the US worth living. But that's something that's simply going to have to be dealt with. Too many people, it seems, have been raised to believe that the world is like some Disney movie where "common decency" is universal, everyone is capable of being reasoned with given enough time, and governments never abuse the power they are given. That would be great if it were -or could be- true, but there's this thing called reality that gets in the way. Maybe when more people realize this, the populace as a whole will start getting a little braver.
I don't believe there is any money to be made from hardware sales. The profit margin is too small.
Apple's margins on its machines averaged 28% across all lines last quarter. Highest margins in the industry by an absurd degree. They seem to be doing fairly well with that.
Another victim of interface fundamentalism. A few decent points, but for the most part the guy sounds like he just wants his OS9 back. Rather disappointing; his articles are usually much more... hmm, how to put it... independent than this.
Look. Spatial orientation is a good paradigm. It is not, however, the be-all and end-all of interface design. This appears to be something that Tog and his apostles have yet to understand. There is a better way. I don't claim to know what it is; it's possible that it might not have even been discovered yet. But there's always a better way, and rather than slavishly imitating older designs we should be working to find newer ones.
The whole interesting thing about NeXT is that they managed to create a non-spatial interface paradigm that actually worked well. For all the theory behind spatial orientation being so much faster, it just doesn't hold up in the real world. In the end, they're basically equal, with each paradigm having its own advantages and disadvantages, but it all comes out in the wash. That's the interesting thing about the human mind: theory is good, but reality often breaks the rules. Would it be nice if the Finder actually remembered window positions and icons in a consistent manner? Yes, it would; it's rather convenient. I wouldn't mind seeing this fixed in OSX's finder, if it can be done in a manner that doesn't cripple its speed. But that's all it is: a convenience; there's nothing to show that it actually precipitates a fundamental, universal improvement in performance or usability.
Labels: Worse than useless, at least in the incarnation we know from OS9. Better systems can be devised, as the myriad workflow tools in existence have shown us.
Recordability: OK, touche on this one. I don't use AppleScript much myself, but recordability is a Very Good Thing in terms of convenience.
The "Finder Browser": I oppose the name pretty strongly, if only because it would likely spread the meme-virus common to Windows and the Linux desktop environments that the file manager and Web browser should be intertwined in the same app. Other than that, what I'd like to see, if Column View is taken out of the Finder, is an option to use it in place of the Finder, not just as a complement. It's a different paradigm, but for many people it's better, and so it should be able to replace the old.
Live Searches: Interesting, but I don't think these should be part of the Finder, per se. Don't make them folders; make them documents. Siracusa was wondering how to make them visually distinct from folders, and this would be the best way. Double-click, and it opens a new window, visually distinct from the Finder windows (and thus providing another contextual clue). The results are then displayed in a list format; since this is "non-spatial" there's no advantage to icon view and plenty of disadvantages, such as wasted screen space. In the space it takes to display twelve items arranged in a square for icon view, you could display 25 items or more in a list. That ability to see more items at once easily supercedes the advantage to icon-esque views, given the purpose of such searches.
Finder Plugins: These actually exist in OSX. They're very poorly documented, and almost no one knows about them; the only one I've ever seen was for viewing AppleWorks word-processing documents in the Finder.
Metadata: Hellz yeah. Metadata is a Great Thing, and needs to be used more extensively in OSX, not less.
OSX's lack of support for metadata: Um, OSX does support metadata. The problem is, as is the case with most of Apple's best stuff, there's no documentation on it, leaving developers out in the cold.
As a final note: with a Unix system, it isn't possible to achieve the one-to-one relationships between icons and files seen in OS9 and such. You can do it with windows and folders, which seems to be Siracusa's main beef, but it's impossible with icons and files, which may be equally impor
The Finder is basically a file manager. Coming from a GNOME perspective, you could think of it as performing the same role as Nautilus, or gmc before that.
In Serial Experiments Lain, there's a whispering voice used to introduce the title of each episode. That voice is... you guesed it... Whisper from the Mac set of voices.
It's still there in OSX, in fact. Make up your own Lain episode titles!
Native != Cocoa, my friend. Or rather, not all native apps are Cocoa, nor are all Cocoa apps native (I doubt you'd call a Cocoa/Java app "native", for example).
Carbon is every bit as native as Cocoa. It is true that Apple was too lenient in its backward-compatibility measures; by not forcing developers to take advantage of new technologies while porting their apps, we've seen the rise of Bad Carbon Ports, epitomized by (ironically) AppleWorks but seen to lesser degrees in other apps as well. However, a Carbon app which actually uses OSX technologies can be not just every bit as fast as a Cocoa app, but even somewhat faster if it's done right.
Cocoa is good. Carbon can be good, though it does have some Bad Stuff that, regrettably, many porting jobs use. But an app is no better simply by virtue of being written in Cocoa or Carbon.
If you want proof of this, simply look at the fact that Apple is slowly re-implementing Cocoa on top of Carbon. Some of this work is already complete and is a part of Jaguar; more is coming. When it is finished, Cocoa will be little more than a layer of abstraction on top of Carbon. How can one be intrinsically better than the other, when this is possible?
Theoretically, one could already press charges of fraud, since the site is very demonstrably not what a reasonable person would interpret its site name as claiming to be.
Therefore, no further -and more to the point, no special- legislation should be necessary. This law is not needed.
That's part of the problem with legislative bodies: they're always looking to make new laws without bothering to do any real research as to whether or not an existing law can be considered applicable. IANAL, of course, but I think the legislative code could be much simpler, with all the same effects, if they'd just do that.
The real problem is that XML got so overhyped that now people want to use it for everything.
I mean, come on. XML is a good tool for a lot of things. But what reason is there to, for example, create a language which translates between XML formats in XML? That could just as easily have been done in another format, and would probably have come out looking a lot nicer.
As for the API's being too difficult: well, it is programming (which has some level of difficulty inherent in it, though it need not be absurdly tough). Besides which, the API's were meant to be generic, and you know what they say about jacks of all trades. Implement your own API, on top of SAX or the DOM (you'd probably get better efficiency if you used SAX, but the DOM may be easier for some programmers), and you'll have something what's easier to work with for your particular project, without sacrificing the portability that SAX and the DOM bring. Seriously, it's just a matter of coming up with creative solutions.
By the way, am I the only one who's thinking of doing a satirical cartoon zbout this mess? Like maybe a Barbie doll that says "XML Is Hard" or something like that?
However, my emotional response to your argument is that, compared to the scale of what's going on here, your having your commute disrupted is a pretty minor thing, and it seems kind of petty to complain about it.
Fair enough. However, I'd like to point out that at the moment, neither you nor I can directly affect what happens over there (to do that, we'd have to be there, or be in a position to directly give orders), whereas you can directly affect my commute by blockading traffic.
I mean, do Iraqi children have rights? Does your right to pursue your happiness override their right to life?
Certainly not. But my right to pursue my happiness has no bearing on their right to life. Whether or not I make it to work that day will not save or kill a single person. That puts it rather squarely outside the scope of your protest.
A lot of people are dying horrible, gruesome deaths right now, and you guys are complaining about traffic problems? Great green gods!
Let me put it this way. I cannot support something which could kill 25,000 innocent civilians (this seems to be the most pessimistic realistic estimate I could find). But an equal number of innocent Iraqis have already died this year, because of Saddam's abuse of the oil for food program, and 125,000 will follow them this year alone -as over two million have in the past- if we continue to sit back and do nothing. I cannot oppose soomething which will end that. Even if some people die by accident -a truly terrible thing- that is better than six times that number dying deliberately. Unless you really think this war can chew through more than 150,000 civilians, it will save many more lives than it takes. That is the only thing which keeps me from opposing this war; I can't support it either, but with numbers like that, it would seem immoral to continue inspections which costs some 13,000 innocent lives per month.
Do these children have a right to life? Yes. No one is deliberately trying to kill civilians. If you look at Baghdad now, after the "shock and awe" bombings, you'll note that the power, the water, the hospitals, and even most of the roads are still intact; civilian areas were carefully avoided. No one is trying to kill civilians. That something could happen by accident is no reason to be paralyzed, because accidents are by definition outside anyone's control.
Sometimes, accidents happen. You'll notice that thus far, these accidents have claimed the lives of more soldiers than civilians. That's a rather embarrassing thing -you'd think our military could be a little more competent than that- but it's an interesting point.
It is a sad, sick world where war can reduce death. But since when is this world anything other than sad and sick?
Trigun, of all things? Trigun!
Even if they do this on Adult Swim only, it's going to get butchered. Admittedly, Love Hina would get it even worse, but still, Trigun's going to go through the freaking shredder.
Most anime just plain shouldn't be shown on TV at this point in time. Not until the culture is ready to take it uncut, or at least with minimal editing (I don't count dubbing as "editing" so much as necessity, given that relatively few people would be willing to watch this stuff subbed on TV). And that, I fear, isn't going to be for a long time.
Since when do you have a right not to have your life disrupted?
Is not going to work a rather important part of "the pursuit of happiness"?
I do not have a right not to have my life disrupted. But you don't have a right to be the one doing the disrupting, any more than I would have a right to disrupt yours.
They have to get louder because they are being drowned out by all the "Go America" bullshit. The media has not given anything near equal voice to anti-war arguments as they have to pro-war rhetoric.
Indeed not. If anything, anti-war rhetoric has gotten much more voice in the media.
The "Go America" bullshit isn't drowning you out. You (the antiwar protesters) are drowning yourselves out, by means of your tactics. People don't remember the message, they remember the jerks who sat down in the middle of the road and blocked traffic for hours, making many people late for work, most of them having nothing whatsoever to do with the war. Far from spreading the message to those who disagree, it only spreads resentment among those who disagree. In other words, the exact opposite of the intended effect.
If you're going to practice civil disobedience, fine. Be civil. As the old saying goes, you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. You want to "stop the anger" and "stop the hate"? Here's some honest advice: you could start by stopping it in yourself before going to stop it in others, because I can tell you right now, that is what the people see.
By the way, your statistics cut both ways. The very example you cite could easily be spun to say that a majority oppose the war, which is no more true than saying that a majority support it.
So you assume that just because we don't agree with you, we must be ignoring you? Why is that? Because you think you have some kind of monopoly on The Truth or something? You're no better than you claim Bush to be, if that's really your attitude.
You have rights. I have rights. I cannot interfere with your rights, and you cannot interfere with mine. And yes, that means that if you wish to protest, you must do so in such a way that doesn't disrupt people's lives. Not only are you not attracting converts by doing so, you're in fact breeding resentment among the very people you should be courting.
Yes, the so-called PATRIOT act is a gross violation of everything this nation stands for. That's no excuse to violate people's rights even further.
Remember, the BBC is operated by a government that has a direct hand in this war. Even their famed, so-called "impartiality" (which is really just an inability to see where their biases are), should be considered compromised in such a situation.
"Unbiased media" is an oxymoron.
All media is biased, one way or another; the only difference is the direction of that bias. The most dangerous media outlets are the ones who claim to be unbiased, because they've lost sight of their bias in their arrogance.
So if you want a balanced view of the war, looking for a single source will do you no good, because no single source exists. Instead, get your news from multiple sources, always aware of each source's bias, and then think for yourself. The classic "CNN and the BBC" may not work well in this particular case, given that they're both located in nations with a direct hand in the attack. If you really want to walk on the wild side you could use Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore, but many people can't stomach either of them, much less both.
Look around, and you'll find something. Just remember this rule: don't let anyone do your thinking for you.