Although when you combine utility and asthetics like OS X, then you have a pretty good balance.
I was about to write a hefty comment on your posting 'till I read that sentence. Yes. The trouble with eye candy is that it is candy, if it is used wise or not and can be tasty and rotten your teeth or just rotten your teeth. I'm using OS X for about one year and a half now for desktop stuff (Linux and FreeBSD still rule for server tasks) and whenever I have to use Gnome or KDE or XP I miss some of that very useful eyecandy. Expose is a simple and beautiful thing and I desperately miss it on XP (and from what I've seen from Vista I don't doubt it will be looking great, but I doubt it will be useful). Not because it is pretty but because it solves the task at hand (showing me the desktop or all open windows) in a very natural, fluid way that is easily embedded in muscle memory and easy on the eyes and mind. And that's just an example. Don't get me started on Gnome or even KDE (Gnome has heard the shot at least, but they're still lacking the resources to get the truth nailed to the forehead of every developer out there).
Not that OS X is perfect (all OS's suck), but it just sucks so much less that I would moderate your post up just for that sentence if I had any moderator points available now.
Yes, being able to balance asthetics and eye candy and features in a way that makes the OS and the apps behave naturally and don't get in the way, that's the big problem. Highres screens and powerful graphics can help, but not by being highres and powerful but by being used in a wise manner. Vista doesn't look like that, sorry.
That is, the fact that you bought a pair of rubber pants the day after you wrote a check for a gallon-size jar of jalapenos is only interesting and available to the same people who would be investigating you for your security clearance. On the other hand, this guy published a bunch of information about himself and labelled it "stuff I did that I'm embarrassed about". It doesn't take an NSA-sized organization to uncover that dirt.
Point taken. Still, this guy blocked this information (it was meant not to be available to the public) and they still got at it. I have not much doubt that sooner or later all your data will be accessible to those with power/money. "Don't publish it" is a weak advise.
In short, if you must keep secrets about yourself, don't publish them online and still expect to get the sort of jobs that frown on them. This isn't rocket science.
As if there were still a clear distinction between "online" and "offline"! Where you've been, to whom you've talked on the phone and how often and how long (and maybe what), what you've bought and thousands other things end up more or less online. Follow your train of thought and you'll end up standing in some dark corner in your room, looking down, trying to keep your thoughts clean.
I do not say that I know how to handle that. I do know though that hiding isn't an option.
If apple switched to Windows they would strictly be overpriced hardware.
Doesn't matter, as long as the hardware is stylish and the marketing is right. Look at the iPod and ITMS. Any OS X in there? Apple's profits with OS X based hardware are already under 50% of their total profits. I can very well imagine that Apple has seen the advantages of targeting the mainstream and in computers the mainstream just means MS Windows. Why targeting the 5% Mac fans when you can target 90% of the market?
I don't think that Apple will "switch" to Windows, but I would be very surprised if Apple wouldn't come up with a stylish notebook or desktop running Windows and some proprietary apps within the next 5 years. It will totally depend on the success of these gadgets if OS X will become a niche product then or not.
And with regard to the Intel switch: I'm quite sure that "keeping one more option for the future" was another reason for that and this option is MS Windows. It might not have been the most important reason, but still.
Why can't I turn off the darn pain receptors? Why, as a (okay, this next bit is questionable, but just go with it) intelligent being can't I just acknowledge those signals, and snooze them or something? I know. It hurts. Leave me alone until I get to the hospital.
Well, you can. More or less. Nothing easier than that. When you're in a situation like that, just try to accept the pain. Fall into it. Become the pain. And it's gone. Try it. The major factor in pain is fear, not the pain itself. Get over the fear and you've mastered the pain. So accept it, probe into it, as if you'd be enjoying it and tell yourself "it's just a signal, no need to panic" and you will see that pain is easy to bear.
I had a time where I had some lengthy sessions with the dentist and learned that just by relaxing and looking right into it I could degrade pain to be nothing more than a sensory input among others. Trying to ignore it or to fight it is futile and makes it "painful" in the first place. Accept it instead and let it fill your mind and you'll see it's gone.
Our mind is based on complex chemical and electric processes and all drugs are like going with a soldering iron at a computer CPU. It's much easier to just re-adjust some lines of code or to change the priority of some process. Try it and you'll it works.
If this drug can keep us from actually needing to sleep, then it's just like my knee. I don't really need to sleep, but nobody's actually informed my body yet.
Just look at what file managers have become. They literally encourage putting everything in a hierarchy one level deep. Neither the Windows Explorer nor the Mac Finder can really cope with deep hierarchies -- you're just lost after two or three levels. So you put everything in a handful of "folders" in your ~ and then, well, then you'll be in need of a tool to find things.
Not that I think that meta-data is a bad thing. More than one way to get things organized is always a good thing. I think that while all this stuff is mostly PR, you and me will be able to put it to good use. Just ignore the hype and enjoy the fallout.
I do wish that Apple would extend this further and add hooks to the context or "right click" menu in the finder like Windows does. Again, this adds to direct manipulation of the files. I love the fact that you can choose to enqueue a media file or play the file via the context menu in Windows. There is no such thing in Apple land.
What? Mac OS X has CMI's (Contextual Menu Items). There's not much installed by default but go and look for them and you will find more than you ever need. Installing a CMI means just dropping it into "/Library/Contextual Menu Items".
GPL licenses do not. Essentialy I write GPL software and I cannot use it in any commercial projects.
This is plain wrong. If you have written that software and licensed it under the GPL and then want to use it in a commercial project you're free to do as you wish. You can even sell it under a non-GPL license. You can't do that with software written by others (naturally) but you can do whatever you want with your own software.
Putting them in the lower left quadrant makes it easy to use those button combos with your non-mousing hand without moving it across the keyboard. It's a reasonable thing to do if your mouse only has one button.
Err, except when you're left-handed. Exchanging mouse buttons functionality (in a mouse with more than one button) is easy and a mouse with 5 buttons or more works left-handed as well as right-handed.
Surely the Power Mac G5 is at least a little stylish...
I thought so, too. Until I saw a G5 for real the first time. Now I think that this thing is ugly as hell. When you look at something that actually looks like a TFT monitor you don't expect it to have really fat borders and to be half a handful of inches thick. Really, these Macs look good only as long as you manage to think constantly of "but, there is a whole computer in it!". Don't think a moment of this and it looks fat and ugly. Put it on a desk and the desk is full. Stylish? No. Just ask your girlfriend, she will probably know better what is stylish and what not, while not caring for geekish details like "they put the whole computer in".
My cheap & cheerful BenQ T904 (19" TFT, black, thin border, 349 EUR) looks way better. OK, it has an ugly, grey peecee hooked up on it under the desk, but, hey, I couldn't care less.
Digital camera displays could make some good use of that. Manual focus is almost impossible with most displays (you just see no difference), so you can't have a resolution good enough for that.
In cell phones this surely will lead to nothing else than anti-aliased text, more detailed icons and other useless stuff (I've got the impression for some years now that with every new generation of phones the usability gets degraded by adding more and more useless decoration).
First, Open Source or Free Software is not alone about free access to the source, it's also about helping each other. Even when in commercial settings this is not an option in all aspects, it can still help.
For example there is the Open Source Observatory -- when you do not trust OS zealots, you may trust more independent sources. There are documents (like the Open Source Migration Guidelines), case studies and events where you may meet others with similar questions.
In short: look around and get a clue. Helps enormously and makes much more things better than just software.
If they use the 'lifeboat' Soyuz, there are no explosive bolts to worry about there because they have already been fired.
No. The Soyuz docked to the ISS still consists of three parts: The orbital module (airlock, docking systems), the descent module (the actual capsule) and the service module (propulsion etc.). The bolt that has fired in ground testing was one of those connecting these three modules.
Yep. IBM talks about "Linux". Do they mean the kernel? Well, the kernel alone is useless. Do they mean whatever is running on Linux? That's a fucking lot and includes lots and lots of software that has never been checked for patents it may conflict with.
So, having IBM talk about Linux with regard to patents does mean nothing. Make IBM say "we will never use patents against any Free Software" and we can start to discuss. Just that we will never hear that from IBM, because you can be sure that IBM (and anyone else) will use patents against any Free Software that starts to threat their own profits. That's just business.
What IBM actually says is "we will not use patents against any software as long as we profit from doing so" which does mean nothing else than "we won't use patents against ourselves", which actually goes without saying.
Software patents are being registered in the EU for quite a time now. This is actually not legally backed yet, but as always with most software patents: When you are in a situation you have to defend your rights in a court, it's too late for your product.
There is a tendency to make the developers of Free Software responsible for hunting after every and any feature and idea MS and Apple care to implement to fish for users that is really annoying.
First, all Unix file systems since some decades have proved to just fit the bill quite fine. Searchable Metadata and other "features" is actually application-level stuff. 98% of the data on an average Desktop Unix system (and 99.5% of the data on a server) does not need that, because it rarely changes and is of no special interest for the user at all. And if it does, application-level data is better integrated, faster, and more flexible.
What is happening here (and in many other recent discussions) is dragging the Free Software community into an arms race it can not win. You can't make Linux/Gnome (or FreeBSD/KDE or whatever your favorite Open Source system may be) into a system that is just like Longhorn or Tiger but gratis and free. Never. What Free Software really needs, now more than ever, is to be picky about its users, its uses and its features. Better offer 10% of all users a system that is better than offer 90% of them a system that is a poor emulation of the OS they get for free with their PC anyway.
This is a point that the Free Software community has to (re)learn, better today than tomorrow.
Slashdot Mirror
Although when you combine utility and asthetics like OS X, then you have a pretty good balance.
I was about to write a hefty comment on your posting 'till I read that sentence. Yes. The trouble with eye candy is that it is candy, if it is used wise or not and can be tasty and rotten your teeth or just rotten your teeth. I'm using OS X for about one year and a half now for desktop stuff (Linux and FreeBSD still rule for server tasks) and whenever I have to use Gnome or KDE or XP I miss some of that very useful eyecandy. Expose is a simple and beautiful thing and I desperately miss it on XP (and from what I've seen from Vista I don't doubt it will be looking great, but I doubt it will be useful). Not because it is pretty but because it solves the task at hand (showing me the desktop or all open windows) in a very natural, fluid way that is easily embedded in muscle memory and easy on the eyes and mind. And that's just an example. Don't get me started on Gnome or even KDE (Gnome has heard the shot at least, but they're still lacking the resources to get the truth nailed to the forehead of every developer out there).
Not that OS X is perfect (all OS's suck), but it just sucks so much less that I would moderate your post up just for that sentence if I had any moderator points available now.
Yes, being able to balance asthetics and eye candy and features in a way that makes the OS and the apps behave naturally and don't get in the way, that's the big problem. Highres screens and powerful graphics can help, but not by being highres and powerful but by being used in a wise manner. Vista doesn't look like that, sorry.
Point taken. Still, this guy blocked this information (it was meant not to be available to the public) and they still got at it. I have not much doubt that sooner or later all your data will be accessible to those with power/money. "Don't publish it" is a weak advise.
In short, if you must keep secrets about yourself, don't publish them online and still expect to get the sort of jobs that frown on them. This isn't rocket science.
As if there were still a clear distinction between "online" and "offline"! Where you've been, to whom you've talked on the phone and how often and how long (and maybe what), what you've bought and thousands other things end up more or less online. Follow your train of thought and you'll end up standing in some dark corner in your room, looking down, trying to keep your thoughts clean.
I do not say that I know how to handle that. I do know though that hiding isn't an option.
Look here or here for a video of a flysuited skydiver gliding to the ground. This is not exactly new or even untested.
If apple switched to Windows they would strictly be overpriced hardware.
Doesn't matter, as long as the hardware is stylish and the marketing is right. Look at the iPod and ITMS. Any OS X in there? Apple's profits with OS X based hardware are already under 50% of their total profits. I can very well imagine that Apple has seen the advantages of targeting the mainstream and in computers the mainstream just means MS Windows. Why targeting the 5% Mac fans when you can target 90% of the market?
I don't think that Apple will "switch" to Windows, but I would be very surprised if Apple wouldn't come up with a stylish notebook or desktop running Windows and some proprietary apps within the next 5 years. It will totally depend on the success of these gadgets if OS X will become a niche product then or not.
And with regard to the Intel switch: I'm quite sure that "keeping one more option for the future" was another reason for that and this option is MS Windows. It might not have been the most important reason, but still.
Why can't I turn off the darn pain receptors?
Why, as a (okay, this next bit is questionable, but just go with it) intelligent being can't I just acknowledge those signals, and snooze them or something?
I know. It hurts. Leave me alone until I get to the hospital.
Well, you can. More or less. Nothing easier than that. When you're in a situation like that, just try to accept the pain. Fall into it. Become the pain. And it's gone. Try it. The major factor in pain is fear, not the pain itself. Get over the fear and you've mastered the pain. So accept it, probe into it, as if you'd be enjoying it and tell yourself "it's just a signal, no need to panic" and you will see that pain is easy to bear.
I had a time where I had some lengthy sessions with the dentist and learned that just by relaxing and looking right into it I could degrade pain to be nothing more than a sensory input among others. Trying to ignore it or to fight it is futile and makes it "painful" in the first place. Accept it instead and let it fill your mind and you'll see it's gone.
Our mind is based on complex chemical and electric processes and all drugs are like going with a soldering iron at a computer CPU. It's much easier to just re-adjust some lines of code or to change the priority of some process. Try it and you'll it works.
If this drug can keep us from actually needing to sleep, then it's just like my knee. I don't really need to sleep, but nobody's actually informed my body yet.
Hah! You don't have a body, you are a body!
Just look at what file managers have become. They literally encourage putting everything in a hierarchy one level deep. Neither the Windows Explorer nor the Mac Finder can really cope with deep hierarchies -- you're just lost after two or three levels. So you put everything in a handful of "folders" in your ~ and then, well, then you'll be in need of a tool to find things.
Not that I think that meta-data is a bad thing. More than one way to get things organized is always a good thing. I think that while all this stuff is mostly PR, you and me will be able to put it to good use. Just ignore the hype and enjoy the fallout.
I do wish that Apple would extend this further and add hooks to the context or "right click" menu in the finder like Windows does. Again, this adds to direct manipulation of the files. I love the fact that you can choose to enqueue a media file or play the file via the context menu in Windows. There is no such thing in Apple land.
What? Mac OS X has CMI's (Contextual Menu Items). There's not much installed by default but go and look for them and you will find more than you ever need. Installing a CMI means just dropping it into "/Library/Contextual Menu Items".
Create a file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict with this content:
{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
}
GPL licenses do not. Essentialy I write GPL software and I cannot use it in any commercial projects.
This is plain wrong. If you have written that software and licensed it under the GPL and then want to use it in a commercial project you're free to do as you wish. You can even sell it under a non-GPL license. You can't do that with software written by others (naturally) but you can do whatever you want with your own software.
Putting them in the lower left quadrant makes it easy to use those button combos with your non-mousing hand without moving it across the keyboard. It's a reasonable thing to do if your mouse only has one button.
Err, except when you're left-handed. Exchanging mouse buttons functionality (in a mouse with more than one button) is easy and a mouse with 5 buttons or more works left-handed as well as right-handed.
Surely the Power Mac G5 is at least a little stylish...
I thought so, too. Until I saw a G5 for real the first time. Now I think that this thing is ugly as hell. When you look at something that actually looks like a TFT monitor you don't expect it to have really fat borders and to be half a handful of inches thick. Really, these Macs look good only as long as you manage to think constantly of "but, there is a whole computer in it!". Don't think a moment of this and it looks fat and ugly. Put it on a desk and the desk is full. Stylish? No. Just ask your girlfriend, she will probably know better what is stylish and what not, while not caring for geekish details like "they put the whole computer in".
My cheap & cheerful BenQ T904 (19" TFT, black, thin border, 349 EUR) looks way better. OK, it has an ugly, grey peecee hooked up on it under the desk, but, hey, I couldn't care less.
Digital camera displays could make some good use of that. Manual focus is almost impossible with most displays (you just see no difference), so you can't have a resolution good enough for that.
In cell phones this surely will lead to nothing else than anti-aliased text, more detailed icons and other useless stuff (I've got the impression for some years now that with every new generation of phones the usability gets degraded by adding more and more useless decoration).
First, Open Source or Free Software is not alone about free access to the source, it's also about helping each other. Even when in commercial settings this is not an option in all aspects, it can still help.
For example there is the Open Source Observatory -- when you do not trust OS zealots, you may trust more independent sources. There are documents (like the Open Source Migration Guidelines), case studies and events where you may meet others with similar questions.
In short: look around and get a clue. Helps enormously and makes much more things better than just software.
If they use the 'lifeboat' Soyuz, there are no explosive bolts to worry about there because they have already been fired.
No. The Soyuz docked to the ISS still consists of three parts: The orbital module (airlock, docking systems), the descent module (the actual capsule) and the service module (propulsion etc.). The bolt that has fired in ground testing was one of those connecting these three modules.
Yep. IBM talks about "Linux". Do they mean the kernel? Well, the kernel alone is useless. Do they mean whatever is running on Linux? That's a fucking lot and includes lots and lots of software that has never been checked for patents it may conflict with.
So, having IBM talk about Linux with regard to patents does mean nothing. Make IBM say "we will never use patents against any Free Software" and we can start to discuss. Just that we will never hear that from IBM, because you can be sure that IBM (and anyone else) will use patents against any Free Software that starts to threat their own profits. That's just business.
What IBM actually says is "we will not use patents against any software as long as we profit from doing so" which does mean nothing else than "we won't use patents against ourselves", which actually goes without saying.
In short: Forget it.
Software patents are being registered in the EU for quite a time now. This is actually not legally backed yet, but as always with most software patents: When you are in a situation you have to defend your rights in a court, it's too late for your product.
They don't need to actually do something. The fact that they could is enough to spread FUD.
Why can I go to google and search the entire web for something and get an answer in less than 1 sec, and I can't do that on my computer or lan?
Because you can do so much more with your computer and your LAN and your applications than with the web.
There is a tendency to make the developers of Free Software responsible for hunting after every and any feature and idea MS and Apple care to implement to fish for users that is really annoying.
First, all Unix file systems since some decades have proved to just fit the bill quite fine. Searchable Metadata and other "features" is actually application-level stuff. 98% of the data on an average Desktop Unix system (and 99.5% of the data on a server) does not need that, because it rarely changes and is of no special interest for the user at all. And if it does, application-level data is better integrated, faster, and more flexible.
What is happening here (and in many other recent discussions) is dragging the Free Software community into an arms race it can not win. You can't make Linux/Gnome (or FreeBSD/KDE or whatever your favorite Open Source system may be) into a system that is just like Longhorn or Tiger but gratis and free. Never. What Free Software really needs, now more than ever, is to be picky about its users, its uses and its features. Better offer 10% of all users a system that is better than offer 90% of them a system that is a poor emulation of the OS they get for free with their PC anyway.
This is a point that the Free Software community has to (re)learn, better today than tomorrow.