It seems fairly disingenious to behave in this manner when you're trying to embrace open source software via your OS/X operating system. I'm actually an Apple supporter, but this is not smart.
I can understand that its annoying to have ideas that you've payed for (i.e. paying for interface designers, ergonomic engineers and so on) and having people steal them. It seems that there will be more harm than good to come out of this though. Apple doesn't need any more animosity than it already has.
On the other hand notice that themes.org hasn't bothered to respond to requests for information on why the themes needed to be removed. Were there some simple demands (Don't use the Apple logo, its a trademark, don't use the term Mac in your themes, its a trademark as well) that they refused to comply with?
Unfortunately Apple generates its own FUD. Since themes.org won't elaborate I would reason that either a) there was a stipulation that they couldn't post the text of the letter b) themes.org is trying to hide something. By not having an official press release from Apple they've allowed the apple bashers to generate all the propoganda.
The command line is the least natural way to communicate, though that doesn't mean its always the least efficient.
When you get home at night, and you MOTAS/roomies ask how your day was, do you
A. Draw pictures and icons of how your day went.
B. Tell them in words how it went.
You tell them in words, but this is completely different than interacting with a device. Many of the words you use are iconic as well, i.e. figures of speech or metaphors. Consider that Lanier "pisses you off", its a metaphoric way of saying that his point of view is incompatible with yours. We understand what you mean even though "pisses you off" doesn't translate directly to "point of view is incompatible with mine". Body language can be purely non-verbal yet every bit as expressive as verbal communication.
Consider an interface to a common device, a home entertainment system. It's almost purely iconic in nature. You press the on button on your remote control, which may be labelled as "ON" or with "1/0" or just green. This is an icon that is seperating you from the real physical hardware and masking the complexity from you. You don't think in terms of "I'll insert a conductor into the circuit, thus completing it and allowing the flow of electrons". You think "I'm going to turn on the television". The interface to your VCR or DVD player is the same. There's a little triangle pointing to the right, you know that it means play, it doesn't say play and you don't command the player to "spin up the motor, focus the laser and detector assembly for optimal signal/noise ratio and start reading", you push the play button.
For most people this is how computers should be. They're tools, incredibly complex tools, but the complexity should be hidden behind simple metaphors. It isn't most peoples business to know about how computers do things, only that they do it. Programmers need to know the how, and they have languages that allow them to control it via a command line environment. Of course PERL, C++ and CSH are all metaphors. In reality you're controlling the flow of electrons through some 10's of millions of transistors. Oh, wait, the transistor is a metaphor too. If you want to be really accurate you're controlling the doping of semiconductors. But wait, there's more, thats a metaphore too, on the atomic level you're... Wash, rinse, repeat. The complexity never ends.
DiscoverCard has started this as well. It uses Java (or maybe it was JavaScript) which I would rather it didn't, but I like the idea. I would rather log into a web site and be able to pull a number and credit limit.
I've got a problem with all of these solutions though. They don't address the underlying problems. Creditcards.com showed a complete lack of competence and even a complete lack of accountability. It took FOUR MONTHS for them to go public and they had the audacity to say that customers credit cards weren't compromised.
Let me get this straight, an unknown third party might have my credit card information but it isn't compromised? I'm sorry, but at this point the COO, Michael Butts, should be brought up on charges of criminal negligence and if he maintains this stance in court, purgery and contempt of court as well.
This company deserves to go under, nothing less. They were in a position where due dilligence said they should operate in a certain manner (such as having no physical connection between the database of credit card numbers and the internet at all - or better yet - no database of credit card numbers) and they didn't.
I'm not excusing the cracker, he should be punished as well, but this company (and the bank that owns it) should go under. They aren't competent to operate in the banking industry.
Yeah, you're a troll and nobody should reply, but you raise a common question.
Even if Theo wants the products of his own labors stolen, what about the others who have contributed? Have they no say?
They've got a say, only release their code under the GPL. As amazing of a concept as it may sound programmers have the right to release under whatever license they want. Is the GPL to restrictive? Try BSD. Do you feel BSD is too corporation friendly? Try GPL. If you can't justify releasing the source code release your binaries under whatever license you want.
This is something I screwed around with a bit when I had a Mac. I liked the power of unix pipes and redirects and was wondering if a graphical implementation would be interesting so I grabbed codewarrior and wrote a rudimentary graphical interface to pipe and redirect.
I wrote some small applications that did a few limited examples of unix commands, like grep, cat and sort. I didn't aim for full functionality at all (well, except for cat I guess).
The gui interface was a number of boxes that you could drag files or commands into. So you could for instance drag a file into the first box, set the next box to a pipe, drag the grep application into the box after that, double click it and type in the word you were grepping for, set the next box to a redirect, double click it and set a filename.
It seemed like a neat idea but I didn't keep my PowerMac long enough after that to really go anywhere with it. My eventual idea was that you'd be able to drag AppleScripts into it to, and for instance do a pipeline that would perform filter operations on a set of files using PhotoShop.
Yes, for me at least, it would be worth the extra processing power. My previous workstation was a Silicon Graphics O2. It wasn't the most powerful workstation in the world but the display quality was amazing.
The reports I currently am working with require me to analyze them and make decisions based on the information within them. The problem is that these files are about 220 characters wide.
I could reduce the point size on my O2 and still easily read these files. The whole line is available at once, no horizontal scrolling. Very convenient.
I recently 'upgraded' to a linux box. The power in this box absolutely dwarfs my O2, but I can no longer use these small fonts and read stuff. I'm forced to work around it by using a text editor with horizontal scrolling rather than a simple terminal window and 'less'.
I'm still using the same monitor from my O2, so that isn't where the weakness is. Arguably the video card could be spitting out less sharp graphics (nVidia quadro or whatever its called) but most of the impact seems to be from the lack of anti-aliasing.
You've always got the option of not using it, but to make a blanket statement that it isn't useful is inane.
I don't see that the Open Source community means that the XCF or clubs such as it will die. If it is dying it is probably more of a case of no longer having a champion who is willing to go the extra mile to keep it running.
Localized groups of people with above average expertise (or willing to work to learn the above average expertise) can have a strong advantage over an equally sized distributed Open Source project. Being able to walk down a hall or spin your chair 180 degrees and bounce ideas back and forth is a very powerful winnowing tool. The entrance requirements to the XCF help to maintain a high caliber of members (propose a major project).
Levin's method is pretty ingeneous: determine whether anything is 'breathing' by giving it radio-active carbon dioxide to exhale.
NASA's answer, while possibly worded too strictly, was correct though. Levin's test gives circumstantial evidence that would support the possibility of life. There are other mechanisms (such as those provided by NASA) which can be used to explain it. All by itself this experiment can't be used as proof of life on mars.
It would take a number of different tests, enough tests so that explaining the results without invoking the saying "it's alive" would require an impossibly narrow set of conditions to reproduce the results otherwise.
Considering that the blokes could have bought exactly one copy of - say - SuSE Linux and deploy it (including most
applications) as they saw fit. That should have left a bunch of cash to hire good Linux administrators, especially
considering the manpower you need to maintain and administer an NT network.
Yes, you're technically correct. They could've purchased one copy of SuSE and deployed it and had money left over for Linux administrators.
Most applications however would be unavaible. There are not many serious replacements for Microsoft's applications. There are numerous contendors for the replacement of the operating system.
I use Linux because in general I don't require Microsoft applications. In fact I can safely delete almost all the crud that gets sent to me in that format. Sometimes I can't however, and I haven't even found a MS Word compatible word processor thats really MS Word compatible on Linux. Sure I can reliably save documents that people with MS Word can read, but I can't reliably open documents that MS Word can produce.
Other applications don't fare any better: Gnumeric isn't a replacement for Exel, not by a long shot. It only qualifies as a toy until I'm able to save graphs alonside the data. I haven't seen a single project management tool for Linux that is both compatible with MS Project and doesn't suck.
More likely the next stage of evolution will be us using our technological expertise to repair or augment ourselves. In effect we'd be taking up the roll of creator and god in the various myths that serve as religion. Evolution at its heart is just the alteration of a species over time due to environmental change.
For the first time in history we are arguably the largest impact on our own environment. We control the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the climate we live in through our own choices. Eventually we'll be able to control it in a more meaningful manner, or we'll die.
Technology will also allow us to change whats in our genetic makeup; to essentially hit the backspace key over genetic defects that once would've been chalked up to fate, karma or god's will.
It's not for everybody, but the era we live in now isn't for everybody. There are cultures in the U.S. that choose not to take part in technology beyond the horse and carriage.
it mentions that it works by providing light intensity 15X that of a standard wearable display unit. Wouldn't there be a problem with persistance of vision, just like when you look at a light source or anything else brighter than ambient light?
I'm not trying to condemn the technology or anything. I think its great that there's the potential that people who normally couldn't have their vision corrected will see an improvement. I'd like to see a more in depth article though, this one is not any better than an infomercial.
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I can understand that its annoying to have ideas that you've payed for (i.e. paying for interface designers, ergonomic engineers and so on) and having people steal them. It seems that there will be more harm than good to come out of this though. Apple doesn't need any more animosity than it already has.
On the other hand notice that themes.org hasn't bothered to respond to requests for information on why the themes needed to be removed. Were there some simple demands (Don't use the Apple logo, its a trademark, don't use the term Mac in your themes, its a trademark as well) that they refused to comply with?
Unfortunately Apple generates its own FUD. Since themes.org won't elaborate I would reason that either a) there was a stipulation that they couldn't post the text of the letter b) themes.org is trying to hide something. By not having an official press release from Apple they've allowed the apple bashers to generate all the propoganda.
You tell them in words, but this is completely different than interacting with a device. Many of the words you use are iconic as well, i.e. figures of speech or metaphors. Consider that Lanier "pisses you off", its a metaphoric way of saying that his point of view is incompatible with yours. We understand what you mean even though "pisses you off" doesn't translate directly to "point of view is incompatible with mine". Body language can be purely non-verbal yet every bit as expressive as verbal communication.
Consider an interface to a common device, a home entertainment system. It's almost purely iconic in nature. You press the on button on your remote control, which may be labelled as "ON" or with "1/0" or just green. This is an icon that is seperating you from the real physical hardware and masking the complexity from you. You don't think in terms of "I'll insert a conductor into the circuit, thus completing it and allowing the flow of electrons". You think "I'm going to turn on the television". The interface to your VCR or DVD player is the same. There's a little triangle pointing to the right, you know that it means play, it doesn't say play and you don't command the player to "spin up the motor, focus the laser and detector assembly for optimal signal/noise ratio and start reading", you push the play button.
For most people this is how computers should be. They're tools, incredibly complex tools, but the complexity should be hidden behind simple metaphors. It isn't most peoples business to know about how computers do things, only that they do it. Programmers need to know the how, and they have languages that allow them to control it via a command line environment. Of course PERL, C++ and CSH are all metaphors. In reality you're controlling the flow of electrons through some 10's of millions of transistors. Oh, wait, the transistor is a metaphor too. If you want to be really accurate you're controlling the doping of semiconductors. But wait, there's more, thats a metaphore too, on the atomic level you're... Wash, rinse, repeat. The complexity never ends.
I've got a problem with all of these solutions though. They don't address the underlying problems. Creditcards.com showed a complete lack of competence and even a complete lack of accountability. It took FOUR MONTHS for them to go public and they had the audacity to say that customers credit cards weren't compromised.
Let me get this straight, an unknown third party might have my credit card information but it isn't compromised? I'm sorry, but at this point the COO, Michael Butts, should be brought up on charges of criminal negligence and if he maintains this stance in court, purgery and contempt of court as well.
This company deserves to go under, nothing less. They were in a position where due dilligence said they should operate in a certain manner (such as having no physical connection between the database of credit card numbers and the internet at all - or better yet - no database of credit card numbers) and they didn't.
I'm not excusing the cracker, he should be punished as well, but this company (and the bank that owns it) should go under. They aren't competent to operate in the banking industry.
I wrote some small applications that did a few limited examples of unix commands, like grep, cat and sort. I didn't aim for full functionality at all (well, except for cat I guess).
The gui interface was a number of boxes that you could drag files or commands into. So you could for instance drag a file into the first box, set the next box to a pipe, drag the grep application into the box after that, double click it and type in the word you were grepping for, set the next box to a redirect, double click it and set a filename.
It seemed like a neat idea but I didn't keep my PowerMac long enough after that to really go anywhere with it. My eventual idea was that you'd be able to drag AppleScripts into it to, and for instance do a pipeline that would perform filter operations on a set of files using PhotoShop.
The reports I currently am working with require me to analyze them and make decisions based on the information within them. The problem is that these files are about 220 characters wide.
I could reduce the point size on my O2 and still easily read these files. The whole line is available at once, no horizontal scrolling. Very convenient.
I recently 'upgraded' to a linux box. The power in this box absolutely dwarfs my O2, but I can no longer use these small fonts and read stuff. I'm forced to work around it by using a text editor with horizontal scrolling rather than a simple terminal window and 'less'.
I'm still using the same monitor from my O2, so that isn't where the weakness is. Arguably the video card could be spitting out less sharp graphics (nVidia quadro or whatever its called) but most of the impact seems to be from the lack of anti-aliasing.
You've always got the option of not using it, but to make a blanket statement that it isn't useful is inane.
Localized groups of people with above average expertise (or willing to work to learn the above average expertise) can have a strong advantage over an equally sized distributed Open Source project. Being able to walk down a hall or spin your chair 180 degrees and bounce ideas back and forth is a very powerful winnowing tool. The entrance requirements to the XCF help to maintain a high caliber of members (propose a major project).
NASA's answer, while possibly worded too strictly, was correct though. Levin's test gives circumstantial evidence that would support the possibility of life. There are other mechanisms (such as those provided by NASA) which can be used to explain it. All by itself this experiment can't be used as proof of life on mars.
It would take a number of different tests, enough tests so that explaining the results without invoking the saying "it's alive" would require an impossibly narrow set of conditions to reproduce the results otherwise.
Most applications however would be unavaible. There are not many serious replacements for Microsoft's applications. There are numerous contendors for the replacement of the operating system.
I use Linux because in general I don't require Microsoft applications. In fact I can safely delete almost all the crud that gets sent to me in that format. Sometimes I can't however, and I haven't even found a MS Word compatible word processor thats really MS Word compatible on Linux. Sure I can reliably save documents that people with MS Word can read, but I can't reliably open documents that MS Word can produce.
Other applications don't fare any better: Gnumeric isn't a replacement for Exel, not by a long shot. It only qualifies as a toy until I'm able to save graphs alonside the data. I haven't seen a single project management tool for Linux that is both compatible with MS Project and doesn't suck.
For the first time in history we are arguably the largest impact on our own environment. We control the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the climate we live in through our own choices. Eventually we'll be able to control it in a more meaningful manner, or we'll die.
Technology will also allow us to change whats in our genetic makeup; to essentially hit the backspace key over genetic defects that once would've been chalked up to fate, karma or god's will.
It's not for everybody, but the era we live in now isn't for everybody. There are cultures in the U.S. that choose not to take part in technology beyond the horse and carriage.
I'm not trying to condemn the technology or anything. I think its great that there's the potential that people who normally couldn't have their vision corrected will see an improvement. I'd like to see a more in depth article though, this one is not any better than an infomercial.