Uh.. how? I'm no expert but I thought that what distinguished a standard rifle from a machine gun was the bolt. A rifle doesn't need anything fancy, just a means of having the firing pin pierce the back of the round. A machine gun, on the other hand, needs a means of having the bolt slide back, remove the next round from the magazine, and chamber it.
Now, I agree it should be pretty easy in theory to turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon -- afterall, both have the critical feature of a bolt which chambers the next round. But you say that a regular hunting rifle can be easily converted to a machine gun with nothing but a wire hanger and a torch?
Anyhow, as to the licensing and banning of weapons, what do you think about licenses for cars? Do you think that anybody who has access to a car should be able to legally drive it? What about pilot's licenses? There are certain devices which have the potential to cause enough damage that people should not be allowed to use them unless they're suitably trained and certified, don't you think?
And where do you draw the line when it comes to weapons? Should anybody who can afford a grenade be allowed to get one? How about land mines, or rocket-propelled grenades? At some point, the potential damage from misuse of something has to outweigh a person's right to own it.
You lament the fact that gun laws punish criminals far less than people who are otherwise non-criminals. That is a shame. But, at the same time, how often are guns misused? How often is someone shot in the heat of the moment, or is a kid killed when playing with his father's gun, etc? What is the ratio of gun misuse to gun use? I honestly don't know.
I happen to think that all guns should be illegal. I don't think people have an inherent need to hunt with guns, and I don't think they make a valid means of self-defence. The risk to the general public is just too high.
So what if guns are banned completely. The well-armed citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan proved very well that the US military is no match for a citizen's militia armed with handguns. If you think the government is likely to use the army against you, there are probably more effective things you can do besides stockpiling guns.
Then how do they deal with the security issues of the MP3 being in a directory owned by another user? What if permissions for the data and/or applications don't allow the new user to access them? Does it do something similar with editors? If the first user was in the middle of editing something, will it still be opened for editing by the second user?
Has Microsoft actually solved these issues, or are they just using a very lax security model, as usual?
Ok, so your buddy asks you to help him fix his linux system. He thinks he's a hot HTML designer and has thus "configured" all his editors to use ugly-ass colours, fonts, and blinking.
If you're running OS X, there's a good chance you can copy your editor (one bundle only) over to his system and it will bring its preferences along with it. At that point you can use your editor to fix his sytem. Voila.
Now if you're running another OS, you'll have to copy not only your editor, but any configuration file(s), libraries, or anything else it needs. You sure as heck can't use his editor because it's all messed up.
Increasing logical volume size is sometimes not the easy way to go, depending on how a system is configured. You want to copy your entire system configuration over to an identical system, sure, copy over the/etc directory, but if you only want bits and pieces, or if the OS has changed, even by a minor revision, then you may overwrite system files. Sometimes what you want is stored in/etc/rc.d/init.d, sometimes it's in/etc/init.d, and messing that up can really screw the system over.
OS X isn't unix. Great, SCO doesn't own it. Whether or not an OS is good doesn't ride on it being Unix or not, it's whether or not it's well designed and useable. That's a test that OS X passes better than any other Unix I've used. Sure, some of its quirks annoy me, but they annoy me far less than quirks on other OSes.
Running out of space on a given partition. Deciding you want to put gcc, ld, and friends inside a "development" directory and "xpdf" inside a "viewers" directory. Keeping configuration files with the program that uses them so when you start using a new machine you can copy over one bundle of files and everything works the same...
Actually, for something more shocking, type su -c "rm -rf/". It prompts you for a password to ensure you want to be shocked, but it'll work on any Linux box that uses electrical power. Sorry Windows users, your system isn't as l33t.
(P.S. If you are dumb enough to run arbitrary commands posted on the internet without first checking to see what they actually do, please don't complain when they don't do precisely what you expect.)
Well, maybe, until you use
Ruby. At that point you realize that Python is by no means OO from the ground up. I like Python, it's one of my favourite languages, and it has been around for years... but while I like Python, I love Ruby because it is the most completely OO language I have ever used, and that is really handy. For a comparison, I'd recommend a
page on the ruby site which is linked to from the python site, and contains a posting to comp.lang.python, so I'm guessing it's not too biased either way.
Although I use Ruby all the time at home, I'm stuck using Python for some things at work now, but as soon as Ruby matures a little more, I'll start using it here too.
Erm, might I recommend
a more appropriate tool? RFID chips can be small and hard to find, on the other hand, the antennas are normally really big (on the order of 5cm). Cut one of them, and the tag is as good as dead.
I feel roughly the same way about FreeNet as I do about Java itself. I really like the concept but hate the implementation. The one time I tried to get FreeNet up and running it was a painful, painful process, and then it munched up far too much memory.
Have these issues been addressed? Is it going to remain a Java-only effort or is the spec such that an implmentation in another language is do-able? What about the installation process. Is ease-of-install and/or configuration a priority?
Finally, what are the prospects for a firewall-friendly type of P2P application? Both at work and at home, I'm stuck behind NAT boxes. I'd like to be able to be part of a network like this, but FreeNet and other similar things seem designed for always-on, non-NAT boxes. In theory it should be possible to design a program so that it can both download and upload from behind a NAT, using some kind of polling-type mechanism for the upload-side. Has anybody put any effort into this? I'm sure the number of users would jump if something similar were made available.
Or at least, last time I took a look it was. But then people are annoyed at having to use a password to install software, so they constantly run as Administrator...
No, George Bush has tot me the airur of my waze. Beefour I usta spel it like that, but his waee of dewing thingz has struk a kord in me like a nukulear bom going off. Now, I saye "misunderestimate" like a gud Amerikun.
Yeah, but it does make me really curious about a few things.
What is Microsoft's true impression of Linux as both an OS and as a competitor?
How clued in are the top-level people about the capabilities of Linux?
Will their strategy of ignoring it and spreading FUD change if Linux starts getting nearer to 10% market share?
I think the mere fact they talk about Linux in a USA Today interview with Gates says a lot. Besides, in the interview itself he isn't completely dismissive about Linux or OS/2. He said that OS/2 was serious competition because it had the weight of IBM behind it. If he's publicly saying the same thing about Linux then they are saying in public that it's a major threat.
Personally, I hope they misunderestimate Linux right until it kills them. I stand by my belief that once non-windows home computers have around 20% of the market share, MS is doomed. At that point, hardware manufacturers will be losing serious sales if they release products with only Windows drivers. Software manufacturers will either release only for Windows, or make the software multi-platform and increase their potential market by 20%. Game manufacturers will be in an even better situation. If they release for PC only, they hit a small market, if they make the game multi-platform, not only do they get the additional computers (Linux, OS X, etc.) but additional consoles as well. If MS loses the monopoly on Windows machines as game computers, and Apple decides to break their monopoly on Office by doing what they did with Safari... at that point MS is dead. Let's just hope they don't know it yet.
It's so strange. I look at the writeup for the new Netscape release, and when the poster talks about the new features, the links they provide are links to mozilla.org pages. I look at the
Netscape main page and I can't even tell that they make a browser. The "Downloads" link is tucked away in the upper-left corner. Even today, when they're releasing a new version, there's no hint of it even on their main page!! Instead the big deal is "10 things everyone should do before turning 30". Whaa?? Then, there's the awful pain of trying to install the Netscape version. The last time I installed a version of the Netscape-branded Mozilla, I had AOL crap littering my system everywhere.
On the other hand, when I go to the
Mozilla site everything is clear. It's obvious where to download the version of Mozilla I want for the platform I want. It's also normally 2 or 3 versions ahead of the Netscape-branded release, and the install process is clean and painless.
Given all that, who are the poor sods downloading and installing Netscape?? I guess they have enough knowledge of computers to be able to install an alternative to IE, but not enough to be able to know about Mozilla? Can there really be more than a handfull of these people, and can't they be rescued and re-educated?
So, tell me something. How hard would it be to include a defrag / partition resize as part of the OS install process? (From what I recall that doesn't currently happen). RedHat's current install process is dead easy, once you make the space on the drive -- if they (or somebody else) takes care of that issue, wouldn't it be a breeze to install and try out Linux?
The way I see it there should be about 3 steps:
Get a Knoppix or similar distro-on-a-CD and try it out, see if it works for you without changing your current system at all
Get an installable distro that handles all the difficult choices and jobs for you, from defragging, to resizing partitions. When you start this one up you get a little intro movie / flash-style demo, showing where all the things you might want to use are.
Customizing and learning more
To make the move to Linux as smooth as possible, wouldn't it be cool if some "transition wizard" could mount a new user's FAT partition, hunt around for things like bookmarks, mail settings, documents, and everything else. That way when this new user opened up KMail / Evolution they wouldn't have to dig up their mail settings to configure the program, it would be already done. When they opened up their new web browser all their bookmarks would already be there. Heck, even peek around in the registry files and see if they had any network shares mounted from Windows and mount them through Samba.
I suspect that even fairly computer savvy people are sometimes turned off using Linux because they have to go through the pain of reconfiguring every type of application they use. If that difficulty was already handled they could be up and productive before having to delve into the guts of the system.
And that's why
Knoppix is so cool. You can hand someone a burned CD, say "just pop this in your drive and check it out." Chances are pretty good it will work, right off the bat. No partitioning is needed, no setup is needed, and when they're done, they simply take out the CD, reboot, and they're back to Windows.
It's a great way to show people that "Linux is cool" without having to worry about losing data, formatting disks, partitions or any of the other typical difficulties in using a new OS.
If your Windows-using buddy hands you back the CD and goes "yeah, well it was ok", that's fine. If he/she insists on keeping the CD and wants you to show him/her more... well that's when you can pull out the razor and start shaving legs (to mix some biking metaphors in)
I haven't used one of these "mo-dems" for a while, but currently on a friend's XP laptop, the only way to change wireless ESSIDs is to edit the registry by hand. Somehow plugging in the PCMCIA card works, it finds the driver, Windows Networking recognizes the interface, but the configuration interface is completely bustified. Whenever you bring up the configuration interface, everything except the "cancel" button is greyed out. Why? Who knows. We've tried removing the drivers and reinstalling them, we've tried changing PCMCIA slots, there's just something hiding somewhere in "Windows" that has decided that that program is not going to work right.
Under a unixish system there would be many alternatives to the GUI program. Under Linux it would be a pretty simple matter to isolate the flawed program/config files/drivers/whatever and completely remove them. If things were still broken there's always the source. Under OS X there are probably Unix tools you can use, if not, in theory you're as bad off as under Windows, but in practice things like this just don't seem to happen. But this is Windows. I guess it's time to reinstall the OS.
Everything photoshop does? Hrm, I've used both and I have some severe doubts that the GIMP does everything Photoshop does, and certainly not as cleanly.
But if you're willing to put up with some really odd interface quirks and really are not a professional artist, then I agree, there really isn't much point in paying for something other than the GIMP.
I remember reading a paper about biometric identification using the iris. The bit I remember is that it is really easy to tell if the eye you're scanning is alive or not. For example, as part of the scanning process the machine just needs to go from dark to bright in a short time. If it does that and the pupil doesn't narrow then the eye isn't attached to a living body. I can't speak for other body parts, but it's unlikely anybody will pluck out your eyes and scan them.
A bit offtopic, but what kind of heatsink do you have on it? I thought the C3s only worked with fanned heatsinks. If someone is selling heatsinks for it that don't have fans, then great.
As for the on-topic side, I'm currently working with an embedded Linux box that will eventually have 64 MB of RAM, but only 8 MB of storage.:)
See? Now this is the type of thing that us Linux-using, tech-savvy people have been trying to tell you zealots. Apple computers are no longer the GUI only, closed-source only, one-button only computers they used to be. I run zsh on my linux machine and my OS X box. I download stuff with wget on both. Basically any utility I commonly run on Linux is easily available on OS X with a simple fink or apt command.
For all those who badmouth OS X but have never used it, see if you can find out a way to try it out for a week before you comment on it. "Terminal" is in Applications/Utilities. Fink is at
http://fink.sourceforge.net/. Enabling the root account is as simple as sudo passwd root. Emacs builds on OS X right from their standard CVS repository, though it's not 100% perfect yet, more details here:
http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/, and I wouldn't be surprised if vi is out there too somewhere, but hey, while you're switching OSes why not switch to a better editor anyhow.;)
Seriously. Imagine Linux on a pretty computer, with no driver issues, and some pretty damn good closed-source programs to boot. Check it out, if you don't like it, that's cool, but at least you'll have an informed opinion.
Linux is for people who know computers really well and are not intimidated by having to take the time to learn something different, and are willing to put up with all its quirks. Linux is also for people who believe in the ideology of Open Source / Free Software.
OS X is for professional artists (sound, video, graphics, etc) or for people who aren't on a tight budget and who don't use their computers for gaming.
Windows is for everybody else, in particular people who have always used a version of windows and haven't yet found a really good reason to change; people who like playing games on computers rather than on consoles and for people who are on really tight budgets who get a cheap computer and a pirated OS.
I run all three on occasion. I play games in Windows, work all day in Linux and have an iBook running OS X which I use most of the rest of the time. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, OS X has amazing UI with a great Unix foundation. Linux has a wealth of free applications and a pretty good interface when you get used to it. Windows... well... most computer games I want to play only work on Windows, and it has good support for hardware.
I don't know if in the end there will be more OS X users or Linux users. I just know that there is a huge number of people out there who don't have a very good reason to use Windows and would be much happier using either OS X or Linux. I imagine that there will be a point when the combined market share of Linux and OS X is say 10% to 20% when Windows users will really start abandoning it. Once that happens, there will be no reason to use Windows. Gamers will be able to play on other platforms because it will no longer be cost-effective for manufacturers to develop only for Windows PCs. Hardware makers will start releasing drivers for other platforms because not doing so will cost them sales.
There's no chance in hell that Windows can stand on its own merits as an OS. The only thing it has going for it is directly related to its inertia. Once that goes, buhbye MS! I for one can't wait till that day. If in the end OS X has 80% market share, and Linux and others have the remaining 20% I'll cheer. If Linux has 80% and OS X and others share the remaining 20% I'll cheer. In the end, I'm convinced that the better products will beat the inferior one, and that's a great thing, no matter which one happens to come out on top.
So because you've never used OS X you don't like it? That's enlightened. Hint: if there's a little black triangle next to the dock icon that means the program associated with it is running.
So you're basing your "OSX users are delusional" comment on the fact that when you're acting as a "backseat mouser" with your cow-orkers that things take too long? It's pretty obvious that whoever you're watching isn't much of an expert with the OS. If he/she was they'd be using a multi-button mouse, or at the very least control / option clicking on things to bring up menus instantly.
If you have the chance, try using OS X for a week. If you still don't understand it and don't like it, fine. But don't judge based on watching someone else misuse it. That's like saying that a Ferrari is an awful car because your grandma has trouble with it.
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So you can't stop the MP3 player? That's uh... great. Really.
Uh.. how? I'm no expert but I thought that what distinguished a standard rifle from a machine gun was the bolt. A rifle doesn't need anything fancy, just a means of having the firing pin pierce the back of the round. A machine gun, on the other hand, needs a means of having the bolt slide back, remove the next round from the magazine, and chamber it.
Now, I agree it should be pretty easy in theory to turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon -- afterall, both have the critical feature of a bolt which chambers the next round. But you say that a regular hunting rifle can be easily converted to a machine gun with nothing but a wire hanger and a torch?
Anyhow, as to the licensing and banning of weapons, what do you think about licenses for cars? Do you think that anybody who has access to a car should be able to legally drive it? What about pilot's licenses? There are certain devices which have the potential to cause enough damage that people should not be allowed to use them unless they're suitably trained and certified, don't you think?
And where do you draw the line when it comes to weapons? Should anybody who can afford a grenade be allowed to get one? How about land mines, or rocket-propelled grenades? At some point, the potential damage from misuse of something has to outweigh a person's right to own it.
You lament the fact that gun laws punish criminals far less than people who are otherwise non-criminals. That is a shame. But, at the same time, how often are guns misused? How often is someone shot in the heat of the moment, or is a kid killed when playing with his father's gun, etc? What is the ratio of gun misuse to gun use? I honestly don't know.
I happen to think that all guns should be illegal. I don't think people have an inherent need to hunt with guns, and I don't think they make a valid means of self-defence. The risk to the general public is just too high.
So what if guns are banned completely. The well-armed citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan proved very well that the US military is no match for a citizen's militia armed with handguns. If you think the government is likely to use the army against you, there are probably more effective things you can do besides stockpiling guns.
Then how do they deal with the security issues of the MP3 being in a directory owned by another user? What if permissions for the data and/or applications don't allow the new user to access them? Does it do something similar with editors? If the first user was in the middle of editing something, will it still be opened for editing by the second user?
Has Microsoft actually solved these issues, or are they just using a very lax security model, as usual?
Sadly, some of us have had systems running for far longer than LVM has been stable. :)
Ok, so your buddy asks you to help him fix his linux system. He thinks he's a hot HTML designer and has thus "configured" all his editors to use ugly-ass colours, fonts, and blinking.
If you're running OS X, there's a good chance you can copy your editor (one bundle only) over to his system and it will bring its preferences along with it. At that point you can use your editor to fix his sytem. Voila.
Now if you're running another OS, you'll have to copy not only your editor, but any configuration file(s), libraries, or anything else it needs. You sure as heck can't use his editor because it's all messed up.
Increasing logical volume size is sometimes not the easy way to go, depending on how a system is configured. You want to copy your entire system configuration over to an identical system, sure, copy over the /etc directory, but if you only want bits and pieces, or if the OS has changed, even by a minor revision, then you may overwrite system files. Sometimes what you want is stored in /etc/rc.d/init.d, sometimes it's in /etc/init.d, and messing that up can really screw the system over.
OS X isn't unix. Great, SCO doesn't own it. Whether or not an OS is good doesn't ride on it being Unix or not, it's whether or not it's well designed and useable. That's a test that OS X passes better than any other Unix I've used. Sure, some of its quirks annoy me, but they annoy me far less than quirks on other OSes.
And what is it exactly about professional sports that's creative?
Running out of space on a given partition. Deciding you want to put gcc, ld, and friends inside a "development" directory and "xpdf" inside a "viewers" directory. Keeping configuration files with the program that uses them so when you start using a new machine you can copy over one bundle of files and everything works the same...
Actually, for something more shocking, type su -c "rm -rf /". It prompts you for a password to ensure you want to be shocked, but it'll work on any Linux box that uses electrical power. Sorry Windows users, your system isn't as l33t.
(P.S. If you are dumb enough to run arbitrary commands posted on the internet without first checking to see what they actually do, please don't complain when they don't do precisely what you expect.)
Well, maybe, until you use Ruby. At that point you realize that Python is by no means OO from the ground up. I like Python, it's one of my favourite languages, and it has been around for years... but while I like Python, I love Ruby because it is the most completely OO language I have ever used, and that is really handy. For a comparison, I'd recommend a page on the ruby site which is linked to from the python site, and contains a posting to comp.lang.python, so I'm guessing it's not too biased either way.
Although I use Ruby all the time at home, I'm stuck using Python for some things at work now, but as soon as Ruby matures a little more, I'll start using it here too.
Erm, might I recommend a more appropriate tool? RFID chips can be small and hard to find, on the other hand, the antennas are normally really big (on the order of 5cm). Cut one of them, and the tag is as good as dead.
I feel roughly the same way about FreeNet as I do about Java itself. I really like the concept but hate the implementation. The one time I tried to get FreeNet up and running it was a painful, painful process, and then it munched up far too much memory.
Have these issues been addressed? Is it going to remain a Java-only effort or is the spec such that an implmentation in another language is do-able? What about the installation process. Is ease-of-install and/or configuration a priority?
Finally, what are the prospects for a firewall-friendly type of P2P application? Both at work and at home, I'm stuck behind NAT boxes. I'd like to be able to be part of a network like this, but FreeNet and other similar things seem designed for always-on, non-NAT boxes. In theory it should be possible to design a program so that it can both download and upload from behind a NAT, using some kind of polling-type mechanism for the upload-side. Has anybody put any effort into this? I'm sure the number of users would jump if something similar were made available.
Or at least, last time I took a look it was. But then people are annoyed at having to use a password to install software, so they constantly run as Administrator...
No, George Bush has tot me the airur of my waze. Beefour I usta spel it like that, but his waee of dewing thingz has struk a kord in me like a nukulear bom going off. Now, I saye "misunderestimate" like a gud Amerikun.
Yeah, but it does make me really curious about a few things.
I think the mere fact they talk about Linux in a USA Today interview with Gates says a lot. Besides, in the interview itself he isn't completely dismissive about Linux or OS/2. He said that OS/2 was serious competition because it had the weight of IBM behind it. If he's publicly saying the same thing about Linux then they are saying in public that it's a major threat.
Personally, I hope they misunderestimate Linux right until it kills them. I stand by my belief that once non-windows home computers have around 20% of the market share, MS is doomed. At that point, hardware manufacturers will be losing serious sales if they release products with only Windows drivers. Software manufacturers will either release only for Windows, or make the software multi-platform and increase their potential market by 20%. Game manufacturers will be in an even better situation. If they release for PC only, they hit a small market, if they make the game multi-platform, not only do they get the additional computers (Linux, OS X, etc.) but additional consoles as well. If MS loses the monopoly on Windows machines as game computers, and Apple decides to break their monopoly on Office by doing what they did with Safari... at that point MS is dead. Let's just hope they don't know it yet.
It's so strange. I look at the writeup for the new Netscape release, and when the poster talks about the new features, the links they provide are links to mozilla.org pages. I look at the Netscape main page and I can't even tell that they make a browser. The "Downloads" link is tucked away in the upper-left corner. Even today, when they're releasing a new version, there's no hint of it even on their main page!! Instead the big deal is "10 things everyone should do before turning 30". Whaa?? Then, there's the awful pain of trying to install the Netscape version. The last time I installed a version of the Netscape-branded Mozilla, I had AOL crap littering my system everywhere.
On the other hand, when I go to the Mozilla site everything is clear. It's obvious where to download the version of Mozilla I want for the platform I want. It's also normally 2 or 3 versions ahead of the Netscape-branded release, and the install process is clean and painless.
Given all that, who are the poor sods downloading and installing Netscape?? I guess they have enough knowledge of computers to be able to install an alternative to IE, but not enough to be able to know about Mozilla? Can there really be more than a handfull of these people, and can't they be rescued and re-educated?
So, tell me something. How hard would it be to include a defrag / partition resize as part of the OS install process? (From what I recall that doesn't currently happen). RedHat's current install process is dead easy, once you make the space on the drive -- if they (or somebody else) takes care of that issue, wouldn't it be a breeze to install and try out Linux?
The way I see it there should be about 3 steps:
To make the move to Linux as smooth as possible, wouldn't it be cool if some "transition wizard" could mount a new user's FAT partition, hunt around for things like bookmarks, mail settings, documents, and everything else. That way when this new user opened up KMail / Evolution they wouldn't have to dig up their mail settings to configure the program, it would be already done. When they opened up their new web browser all their bookmarks would already be there. Heck, even peek around in the registry files and see if they had any network shares mounted from Windows and mount them through Samba.
I suspect that even fairly computer savvy people are sometimes turned off using Linux because they have to go through the pain of reconfiguring every type of application they use. If that difficulty was already handled they could be up and productive before having to delve into the guts of the system.
Anyhow, tis just a thought.
And that's why Knoppix is so cool. You can hand someone a burned CD, say "just pop this in your drive and check it out." Chances are pretty good it will work, right off the bat. No partitioning is needed, no setup is needed, and when they're done, they simply take out the CD, reboot, and they're back to Windows.
It's a great way to show people that "Linux is cool" without having to worry about losing data, formatting disks, partitions or any of the other typical difficulties in using a new OS.
If your Windows-using buddy hands you back the CD and goes "yeah, well it was ok", that's fine. If he/she insists on keeping the CD and wants you to show him/her more... well that's when you can pull out the razor and start shaving legs (to mix some biking metaphors in)
I haven't used one of these "mo-dems" for a while, but currently on a friend's XP laptop, the only way to change wireless ESSIDs is to edit the registry by hand. Somehow plugging in the PCMCIA card works, it finds the driver, Windows Networking recognizes the interface, but the configuration interface is completely bustified. Whenever you bring up the configuration interface, everything except the "cancel" button is greyed out. Why? Who knows. We've tried removing the drivers and reinstalling them, we've tried changing PCMCIA slots, there's just something hiding somewhere in "Windows" that has decided that that program is not going to work right.
Under a unixish system there would be many alternatives to the GUI program. Under Linux it would be a pretty simple matter to isolate the flawed program/config files/drivers/whatever and completely remove them. If things were still broken there's always the source. Under OS X there are probably Unix tools you can use, if not, in theory you're as bad off as under Windows, but in practice things like this just don't seem to happen. But this is Windows. I guess it's time to reinstall the OS.
Everything photoshop does? Hrm, I've used both and I have some severe doubts that the GIMP does everything Photoshop does, and certainly not as cleanly.
But if you're willing to put up with some really odd interface quirks and really are not a professional artist, then I agree, there really isn't much point in paying for something other than the GIMP.
I remember reading a paper about biometric identification using the iris. The bit I remember is that it is really easy to tell if the eye you're scanning is alive or not. For example, as part of the scanning process the machine just needs to go from dark to bright in a short time. If it does that and the pupil doesn't narrow then the eye isn't attached to a living body. I can't speak for other body parts, but it's unlikely anybody will pluck out your eyes and scan them.
A bit offtopic, but what kind of heatsink do you have on it? I thought the C3s only worked with fanned heatsinks. If someone is selling heatsinks for it that don't have fans, then great.
As for the on-topic side, I'm currently working with an embedded Linux box that will eventually have 64 MB of RAM, but only 8 MB of storage. :)
She's clipart.
See? Now this is the type of thing that us Linux-using, tech-savvy people have been trying to tell you zealots. Apple computers are no longer the GUI only, closed-source only, one-button only computers they used to be. I run zsh on my linux machine and my OS X box. I download stuff with wget on both. Basically any utility I commonly run on Linux is easily available on OS X with a simple fink or apt command.
For all those who badmouth OS X but have never used it, see if you can find out a way to try it out for a week before you comment on it. "Terminal" is in Applications/Utilities. Fink is at http://fink.sourceforge.net/. Enabling the root account is as simple as sudo passwd root. Emacs builds on OS X right from their standard CVS repository, though it's not 100% perfect yet, more details here: http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/, and I wouldn't be surprised if vi is out there too somewhere, but hey, while you're switching OSes why not switch to a better editor anyhow. ;)
Seriously. Imagine Linux on a pretty computer, with no driver issues, and some pretty damn good closed-source programs to boot. Check it out, if you don't like it, that's cool, but at least you'll have an informed opinion.
My version:
I run all three on occasion. I play games in Windows, work all day in Linux and have an iBook running OS X which I use most of the rest of the time. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, OS X has amazing UI with a great Unix foundation. Linux has a wealth of free applications and a pretty good interface when you get used to it. Windows... well... most computer games I want to play only work on Windows, and it has good support for hardware.
I don't know if in the end there will be more OS X users or Linux users. I just know that there is a huge number of people out there who don't have a very good reason to use Windows and would be much happier using either OS X or Linux. I imagine that there will be a point when the combined market share of Linux and OS X is say 10% to 20% when Windows users will really start abandoning it. Once that happens, there will be no reason to use Windows. Gamers will be able to play on other platforms because it will no longer be cost-effective for manufacturers to develop only for Windows PCs. Hardware makers will start releasing drivers for other platforms because not doing so will cost them sales.
There's no chance in hell that Windows can stand on its own merits as an OS. The only thing it has going for it is directly related to its inertia. Once that goes, buhbye MS! I for one can't wait till that day. If in the end OS X has 80% market share, and Linux and others have the remaining 20% I'll cheer. If Linux has 80% and OS X and others share the remaining 20% I'll cheer. In the end, I'm convinced that the better products will beat the inferior one, and that's a great thing, no matter which one happens to come out on top.
So because you've never used OS X you don't like it? That's enlightened. Hint: if there's a little black triangle next to the dock icon that means the program associated with it is running.
So you're basing your "OSX users are delusional" comment on the fact that when you're acting as a "backseat mouser" with your cow-orkers that things take too long? It's pretty obvious that whoever you're watching isn't much of an expert with the OS. If he/she was they'd be using a multi-button mouse, or at the very least control / option clicking on things to bring up menus instantly.
If you have the chance, try using OS X for a week. If you still don't understand it and don't like it, fine. But don't judge based on watching someone else misuse it. That's like saying that a Ferrari is an awful car because your grandma has trouble with it.