Go try out iTunes, QuickTime, etc to see how much Apple thinks "Grey is out" (the window background is non-standard, and grey). iTunes and Quicktime also have custom title bars, and custom resizing gadgets.
Funny thing is, the "brushed metal" look is now a standard "theme" that any Cocoa app can use in Mac OS X 10.2 (this is why some.Mac apps are only for 10.2). So, "gray is out", but brushed metal is now officially in...
Anyone remember QuickTime 4? It had a single menu bar on MacOS - and on Windows too!
CodeWarrior for Windows does the same thing, but it uses the palette window to "hold" the menu bar, which is still IMHO much better and usable than the original Windows MDI, but still uggly.
That said, I can understand why they say not to use toolbars - they're not really a part of the MacOS feel, so they tend to stick out.
That's not what they say. They say that your toolbars, if used, should not be bloated bars with >30 button, half of which you'll never use.
However, the best thing to come out of this slashdot article is that I found out that Mr MacKido (the master of reasoned and unbiased argument) doesn't like MacOS X. The thought of him gnashing his teeth about OSX had me chuckling away for ages:)
A lot of the "old" Mac users, while they won't admit it, never wanted to use Windows because they got used to Mac OS before X and they can't adapt themselves to something new.
I'll say it here, because you won't see it anywhere else: Mac OS X is a step towards simplification. NOT backwards, not worse, simplified. Yet most users got used to the sh*tload of little gadgets that polluted Mac OS 9.
Yes, Mac OS X is less "usable", but that's because it's new and didn't have 15 years+ of refinements. And by "refinements" I don't mean gadgets sprinkled on top as an excuse for a confusing UI.
(Sorry for the rant. I hate it when people are nikpicking to hide that they are close-minded, like some "old school" mac fans... Between KDE3 and Blackbox, you can easily guess which window manager I prefer...)
IIRC, Jabber IM allows you to have your own IM server, free and open-source. Your ID is something like "user@server.com", making the system effectively distributed. Also, it can interoperate with AIM (well, on the old TOC protocol).
Is there any kind of "rootless" window manager for the Win32 port of XFree86? If you're using rootless Blackbox from Fink on XDarwin, you know what I'm talking about...
As I said in another post, a lot of code could be reused even if their purposes are different. GnuPG is a very good implementation of OpenPGP, and encryption of any kind is difficult enough.
But this is confusing me: making it impossible for anyone to decrypt the data as its stored on the disk
How can you encrypt data with a non-public key system that anyone can decrypt except when it is stored on disk? If it is impossible to decrypt, then it's because you don't have the key. You seem to be highly confused about encryptions, and is, in turn, confusing me...
Yep, it can do all of this (including Linux). Plus a lot of Linux stuff had been ported to Mac OS X: look at Fink. I use both Linux and Fink on my G4 all the time.
OK, maybe not too much games. Even though those that you mention are on Mac OS 9/X, most others are not ported.
But it's not worth the price if you're a regular Linux user/hacker. Macs shine for video/music/image editing and a bit for desktop publishing. If your needs don't fall in that (or the "digital hub" concept), then you're better off with a good x86. You don't really need the G4, Gigawire and Firewire stuff. And that "easy to use" stuff...;-)
And it's a "Mac fan" talking here, so I know what I'm talking about. OK, time to download iPhoto...
I say no. This is as ridiculous as telling me I can't rip a music CD to make mp3s, or that I can't loan a book to a friend, or that I can't use a corporate logo in a parody (all things corporations have tried to make us think were illegal). We still have the right to fair use. Corporations and their tools may want us to think these things are not only illegal but morally wrong and equivalent to theft at gunpoint, but I plan to leave their dreams of a cow-like consumer populace unfullfilled.
That's your opinion, and nothing more. Laws in the US says that this is illegal and like it or not, that's the law. Here.
True, it took me almost two months to get it (ground postal services from US to Canada through US Postal Service isn't great those days), but I got it.
OK, I already installed it because some guy gave me the update CD for a day or two, so I didn't tested it, but the user manual is neat...;-)
Open source means more people contribute to projects, more people fork and produce interesting variants of projects, and user choice improves - thus computing itself, measured from the user perspective, grows faster.
I think I now understand what you mean. If I understand correctly, software innovation comes faster from open-source software than from closed-source software. Hey, hacking is easier! For that you're right.
But, IMO, I still think that some technologies are so complex now that they are more the result of competition than "software hacks" in open-source. For example, 3D rendering, video compression, OCR, voice recognition and so on. But then, I'm sure some open-source coders start doing that as soon as they see the price tag on the commercial packages... but I'd be surprised if they match the commercial packages...
I think this is begging the question - do we know for sure that an entirely free-software-based computing sector cannot grow and thrive just as well as a partly or entirely
proprietary one?
Not all commercial software are proprietary. There's a huge difference between open-source software and "based on open standards software". While I agree that something totally proprietary is bad, this is a different topic.
The biggest thing now about open-source is not about open standards but about the right that we have to protect and charge for getting access to some source code. Coding is difficult, takes huge amounts of work, so we cannot expect everyone to just give that away for free and find some other "trick" to get paid.
Economy is now the whole point of open-source software. Software is difficult to make, so how can we make a living out of it? There will always be some people with enough free time to produce things, but we cannot expect computing to be built up on the leisure time of individuals. Maybe that was true 30 years ago, but not anymore. And up to now, no one found a way to make a living out of open-source alone, at least something as good as in the industry. Like it or not, this is true.
It seems to me that computing has grown faster as free software (and even open source software) has become more prominent.
Sorry, but it's only open standards that made the difference. Remember: the first web browsers were commercial, but it's the open standards that allowed competition. Even open-source software may not be based on open standards, so they could be a pain to learn, manage and change. Learn to use Linux, then tell me if it's easy to learn. Same thing for Microsoft Office.
From memory, everything that went fast in computing was the result of either:
Tons of money; (sometimes happens)
Brillant computer scientists; (very rare)
or Open standards. (often happens)
I haven't seen one example where making the software open-source made it's development faster. And I know what I'm talking about (see my site).
what's to stop the use of the Win32 emacs (which I use daily and enjoy) and Samba on the Apache serve
There is a simple answer: Win32 is not "fully" supported by most open-source projects. If you think that there isn't enough software on Mac OS, try to count the number of open-source apps in Win32 compared to Linux.
Even on Linux, using a PowerPC machine is a real pain. Most open-source projects are not fully cross-platform and become totally unstable on non-Intel chips. And we're still on Linux here. Now, try to think what happens when making the Mac OS 9 or the Win32 version. Ouch.
In the end, using the "real" thing is important if you care about "support" and updates, and we cannot expect the open-source developers to support several, totally incompatible development platforms. So, having to use the "real", slightly patched thing makes a big difference.
If some day GNOME, GCC, GNU Emacs, and all of GNU are obsolete and forgotten, but computer users generally are free to share and change the software they use, these programs will have done their job well. If, on the other hand, GNOME and the rest of the GNU system are widely used, but mainly in combination with proprietary software, they will have succeeded only part-way, and a big task will remain ahead of us.
As implied, their goal is that your whole computing experience is based only on "free" software. This is crazy. Computing can grow only if you have both commercial and "free" software. Remove one of the two and you have something like technology without science, or science without technology. We have to be realistic.
I almost always mix "free" and non-free software without rebooting, and I'm OK with that. At least I have the freedom of writing GPL, Shareware or commercial software if I want to. That's what I don't like about Linux: you feel "forced" to write only "free" software...
The point of Fink (well, for me) is to allow users to make GNOME co-exist with truely commercial software, something that's almost non-existing until now (except some "OK" Win32 ports).
Doing web pages with the *real* Emacs or vi and using Illustrator for the images (and GoLive for the rest) at the same time is something that a lot of people thought to be impossible until now.
Apple uses it's own kind of "package management", which is simply remembering what was installed. No dependencies checks, no uninstall scipts, nothing. Barely enough information to use their software update thingy, and that's it.
But that's OK, since Mac OS X's apps are almost always self-contained, making installation a simple drag and drop from a disk image. (Apps in Mac OS X are actualy directories full of stuff that, with a bit in the file system, will behave like a single file.) Only some "weird" apps and Apple's own stuff use the standard installer of Mac OS X.
But for the UNIX stuff, Fink does a great job, with the help of the Debian package manager (you know, "dselect"). Installing a rootless XWindows and Gnome is almost too easy.
Here's the Abstract. The weird thing is that if you read the patent, you have to admit that no one else ever used that, because it's too annoying to hear a continuous sound while you drag something...
Systems and methods for providing an enhanced auditory behavior to a graphical user interface are described. Control elements portrayed by the graphical user interface on a display are associated with at least two states. When transitioning between states, a sound effect specified for that transition can be provided to provide further user or designer customization of the interface appearance. Movement of objects can be accompanied by a repeated sound effect. Characteristics of both sound effects can be easily adjusted in volume, pitch and frequency.
Sorry, the Panasonic is not planned to be released for North America:
"The bad news is that the system is only going to be available in Japan for the time being according to one of the representatives at the show. He commented that it would be too expensive to bring it stateside."
Architecture is *the* point
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
Most memory read/writes in games are random except those for textures and 3d models. And for textures, it's better to have a separate bus with its own caching (as it is the case with GC). Let me put it another way. Unified memory for game consoles is *BAD*, because the memory has to support two completly different kinds of accesses: streamed, high-bandwidth (textures, models), and random, low-latency (the rest).
While I don't have the numbers near me, the RAM used for "main" memory (not texture memory) has lower latency in the GC, while the texture memory on the GC has a higher bandwidth (yet higher latency) because it is embedded on the 3d chip, and I/O can be done (from disk to texture cache) without the need to go through the "main" bus, the "main" memory or worse, the CPU. I'd drool to have that on my PC (or the X-Box).
Overall, memory speed is equivalent on both GC and X-Box, but there is less need for code optimizations on the GC, because the caching systems takes care of all that for you. So, for the GC, slightly lower performance, WAY lower cost, and easier to code for.
So, this is why I'm slightly "against" the X-Box: it's architecture is a step *backwards* in hardware design.
Slashdot Mirror
Media Skins
- Benad
Funny thing is, the "brushed metal" look is now a standard "theme" that any Cocoa app can use in Mac OS X 10.2 (this is why some .Mac apps are only for 10.2). So, "gray is out", but brushed metal is now officially in...
Anyone remember QuickTime 4? It had a single menu bar on MacOS - and on Windows too!
CodeWarrior for Windows does the same thing, but it uses the palette window to "hold" the menu bar, which is still IMHO much better and usable than the original Windows MDI, but still uggly.
That said, I can understand why they say not to use toolbars - they're not really a part of the MacOS feel, so they tend to stick out.
That's not what they say. They say that your toolbars, if used, should not be bloated bars with >30 button, half of which you'll never use.
However, the best thing to come out of this slashdot article is that I found out that Mr MacKido (the master of reasoned and unbiased argument) doesn't like MacOS X. The thought of him gnashing his teeth about OSX had me chuckling away for ages :)
A lot of the "old" Mac users, while they won't admit it, never wanted to use Windows because they got used to Mac OS before X and they can't adapt themselves to something new.
I'll say it here, because you won't see it anywhere else: Mac OS X is a step towards simplification. NOT backwards, not worse, simplified. Yet most users got used to the sh*tload of little gadgets that polluted Mac OS 9.
Yes, Mac OS X is less "usable", but that's because it's new and didn't have 15 years+ of refinements. And by "refinements" I don't mean gadgets sprinkled on top as an excuse for a confusing UI.
(Sorry for the rant. I hate it when people are nikpicking to hide that they are close-minded, like some "old school" mac fans... Between KDE3 and Blackbox, you can easily guess which window manager I prefer...)
- Benad
http://www.jabber.org/
- Benad
Is there any kind of "rootless" window manager for the Win32 port of XFree86?
If you're using rootless Blackbox from Fink on XDarwin, you know what I'm talking about...
- Benad
You're totally right.
He's a moron, and I've wasted enough time reading his trolling.
Now, I'll forget his name. Wait... Dvorak... Isn't that some kind of keyboard?
- Benad
That's *exactly* what the menu says on Mac OS X ("Quit Mozilla")...
- Benad
But this is confusing me:
making it impossible for anyone to decrypt the data as its stored on the disk
How can you encrypt data with a non-public key system that anyone can decrypt except when it is stored on disk? If it is impossible to decrypt, then it's because you don't have the key. You seem to be highly confused about encryptions, and is, in turn, confusing me...
- Benad
Freenet needs encryption and digital signatures, GPG already does that. Even if their goals are different, a lot of code can be safely reused.
- Benad
- Benad
I still can't beleive that encryption, digital signatures and random key generators can be both fast and secure in Java...
- Benad
OK, maybe not too much games. Even though those that you mention are on Mac OS 9/X, most others are not ported.
But it's not worth the price if you're a regular Linux user/hacker. Macs shine for video/music/image editing and a bit for desktop publishing. If your needs don't fall in that (or the "digital hub" concept), then you're better off with a good x86. You don't really need the G4, Gigawire and Firewire stuff. And that "easy to use" stuff... ;-)
And it's a "Mac fan" talking here, so I know what I'm talking about. OK, time to download iPhoto...
- Benad
It's not a bug!
So, I paid for something, and I get less dangerous bugs than something free. OK. How can I laugh now? Hmmm...
Hey, when I want to re-install Mac OS X 10.1, I can do it in one step! It's a hidden feature!
- Benad
That's your opinion, and nothing more. Laws in the US says that this is illegal and like it or not, that's the law. Here.
- Benad
OK, I already installed it because some guy gave me the update CD for a day or two, so I didn't tested it, but the user manual is neat... ;-)
- Benad
But, IMO, I still think that some technologies are so complex now that they are more the result of competition than "software hacks" in open-source. For example, 3D rendering, video compression, OCR, voice recognition and so on. But then, I'm sure some open-source coders start doing that as soon as they see the price tag on the commercial packages... but I'd be surprised if they match the commercial packages...
- Benad
The biggest thing now about open-source is not about open standards but about the right that we have to protect and charge for getting access to some source code. Coding is difficult, takes huge amounts of work, so we cannot expect everyone to just give that away for free and find some other "trick" to get paid.
Economy is now the whole point of open-source software. Software is difficult to make, so how can we make a living out of it? There will always be some people with enough free time to produce things, but we cannot expect computing to be built up on the leisure time of individuals. Maybe that was true 30 years ago, but not anymore. And up to now, no one found a way to make a living out of open-source alone, at least something as good as in the industry. Like it or not, this is true.
Sorry, but it's only open standards that made the difference. Remember: the first web browsers were commercial, but it's the open standards that allowed competition. Even open-source software may not be based on open standards, so they could be a pain to learn, manage and change. Learn to use Linux, then tell me if it's easy to learn. Same thing for Microsoft Office.From memory, everything that went fast in computing was the result of either:
- Tons of money; (sometimes happens)
- Brillant computer scientists; (very rare)
- or Open standards. (often happens)
I haven't seen one example where making the software open-source made it's development faster. And I know what I'm talking about (see my site).- Benad
Even on Linux, using a PowerPC machine is a real pain. Most open-source projects are not fully cross-platform and become totally unstable on non-Intel chips. And we're still on Linux here. Now, try to think what happens when making the Mac OS 9 or the Win32 version. Ouch.
In the end, using the "real" thing is important if you care about "support" and updates, and we cannot expect the open-source developers to support several, totally incompatible development platforms. So, having to use the "real", slightly patched thing makes a big difference.
- Benad
I almost always mix "free" and non-free software without rebooting, and I'm OK with that. At least I have the freedom of writing GPL, Shareware or commercial software if I want to. That's what I don't like about Linux: you feel "forced" to write only "free" software...
- Benad
Doing web pages with the *real* Emacs or vi and using Illustrator for the images (and GoLive for the rest) at the same time is something that a lot of people thought to be impossible until now.
- Benad
But that's OK, since Mac OS X's apps are almost always self-contained, making installation a simple drag and drop from a disk image. (Apps in Mac OS X are actualy directories full of stuff that, with a bit in the file system, will behave like a single file.) Only some "weird" apps and Apple's own stuff use the standard installer of Mac OS X.
But for the UNIX stuff, Fink does a great job, with the help of the Debian package manager (you know, "dselect"). Installing a rootless XWindows and Gnome is almost too easy.
- Benad
- Benad
"The bad news is that the system is only going to be available in Japan for the time being according to one of the representatives at the show. He commented that it would be too expensive to bring it stateside."
http://cube.ign.com/news/37782.html
- Benad
Just remove the space in the link. Damn word wrap.
- Benad
http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Apple_Bandai_pippin/a pple_bandai_pippin.html
- Benad
Most memory read/writes in games are random except those for textures and 3d models. And for textures, it's better to have a separate bus with its own caching (as it is the case with GC). Let me put it another way. Unified memory for game consoles is *BAD*, because the memory has to support two completly different kinds of accesses: streamed, high-bandwidth (textures, models), and random, low-latency (the rest).
n /a pple_bandai_pippin.html
While I don't have the numbers near me, the RAM used for "main" memory (not texture memory) has lower latency in the GC, while the texture memory on the GC has a higher bandwidth (yet higher latency) because it is embedded on the 3d chip, and I/O can be done (from disk to texture cache) without the need to go through the "main" bus, the "main" memory or worse, the CPU. I'd drool to have that on my PC (or the X-Box).
Overall, memory speed is equivalent on both GC and X-Box, but there is less need for code optimizations on the GC, because the caching systems takes care of all that for you. So, for the GC, slightly lower performance, WAY lower cost, and easier to code for.
So, this is why I'm slightly "against" the X-Box: it's architecture is a step *backwards* in hardware design.
Hint:
http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Apple_Bandai_pippi
It kicked PlayStation's a** (performance-wise), but guess what? Felt too much like a computer (worse, a Mac).
- Benad