It would probably be better to use a modifier in this situation, such as "not completely unacceptable" or "almost acceptable", since "not unacceptable" is a double negative in a certain sense.
I do agree that people who prgramme for a living might be more likely to complain about that than someone who reads and understands nuances in speech.
If they come from Texas though, I suspect that nothing will help.;)
Looking at the wording of your post, I got the feeling you must be in a PR or marketing department. Your use of phrases such as "I am excited about the prospect of Adobe developing Macromedia's assets" and "The artistic feature set of Flash" sounds for all the world to me like the press releases those departments would release.
I know it's just my paranoia, but I was wondering how Adobe would react to the largley negative reactions to this buyout, and one of those might be the old trick of astroturfing.
I just got to thinking that the only type of legal decision that would ever stop this satanic greed by the music industry would be a judge with the wisdom of King Solomon in the bible.
The story goes that two women pitch up at King Solomon's court, both claiming that a baby they have with them is theirs. King Solomon, realising that he doesn't have his DNA testing kit handy, deals out a judgement that both women have a right to the baby and that the baby should be cut in half with swords and each woman should get a half a baby. One woman then shrieks that the other woman should have the baby, and wise old Sol knows then that that is the true mother, gives the baby to her and sues the other woman for bad parenting or something like that.
Now, if a judge were to lay out a legal decision that ALL music, downloadable, online, on CD, or even over the radio should cost $10 per song minimum, that would be a fantastic decision. And it would be a fantastic decision because it would kill the music industry overnight as no one, literally no one, would buy music any more, and then the music industry would be reduced to rags and selling heroin and coke on dark streets and other shady crap like they did before the music business became a way to legally rape the entire population of the western world.
I intensely dislike what has become of Adobe, that's true. I dislike so many things about that company I don't know where to start. For starters:
1. The way that Adobe behaved when FCP came out. I know that corporations often behave like 5 year olds, but dropping Premier *because they afraid of competition* was about the most disgusting piece of crap I have seen in a long time.
2. As addendum to the point above, they way that Adobe is now powerful enough to dictate the market. They can basically tell you to go to hell and there's sweet f-all you can do about it.
3. Prices. Adobe, since it became so powerful that it was the only game left in town in various markets (read photoshop, i.e. image editing) can now, and does, charge as absolutely much as they possibly can. Look at the discrepancy between what PS costs and what Illustrator costs. In the professional image editing market, they have a monopoly, up until now, in the vector editing illustration market, they didn't. I am waiting to see what Illustrator will cost in the future. Adobe is even less controlled than Microsoft. They will basically bleed the market for what they feel the market can take.
4. Activation. While nobody feels piracy is right, Adobe was massively profitable before they came up with product activation. I'm less worried about the irritation value of activation than I am about the potential for abuse with it. In 3rd world countries, no one, and I mean, no one, has the money to pay for Adobe's ridiculous prices, which is why piracy with Adobe's stuff is so rampant there. Rather than doing something creative and innovative about it, such as lowering the barrier to entry in those markets, they introduced product activation.
5. I dislike Adobe's habit of killing off applications that are not wild successes but still popular. Live Motion was such a product. For Flash animation, not prgramming, but animation, it was way better than Flash itself and served as a useful addition to a lot of Flash designers. There are other products in that market, such as ToonBoomStudio, which also do Flash animation, and you don't see them killing off their product simply because it doesn't replace Flash entirely, now do you? I have been burnt once, badly, with mTropolis, which Quark killed after they bought it, and I'm pretty sure, just judging from the Adobe forums, where people almost crapped themselves when Adobe killed off Live Motion, that thousands more poor bastards were once again burnt by a big corporation. Yay for them.
6. Given Adobe's behaviour in recent years, where product bloat has replaced efficiency and raping designers for all they can is now standard practice, I don't see things getting better.
Flash, Contribute, ColdFusion are the reasons Adobe is buying Macormedia. ColdFusion is, amazingly, still selling because it has a very good IDE and makes web app development easier.
The other stuff is going to get canned in some way or another. Adobe will NOT develop Dreamweaver and GoLive concurrently. It makes no sense financially (two development teams who have to be paid) and it makes no sense competition wise. They might take over some of Dreamweaver's server side stuff (asp, php, jsp, cfm etc), but I can't see them keeping both.
Director is something I'm worried about. They might keep it, as it has its own niche market (Computer Based Teaching, interactive DVDs etc), but Adobe is nothing if not hyperefficient financially (anyone remember LiveMotion, PageMill, Style etc?) and they usually kill products that aren't major sellers.
Freehand is as good as dead. Period. And, given how Illustrator has become such as huge bloat app, that is a real pity.
I can see Adobe taking most of the web development features from Fireworks (easy drop down menus etc) adding them to Image Ready, and canning Fireworks.
Flash will almost certainly get the Adobe Workover(TM), which means a shiny new interface. Given how bad Flash's interface is, this might actually be a good thing. I actually hope they'll integrate some of Livemotion's interface in there, such as After Effect style timelines and easy paths. This might be the best result of the whole buy out.
Apple could not have bought Macromedia, for the simple reason that Adobe would have done its monopoly abuse act once again, and threatened to drop Photoshop, Illustrator and Golive for the Mac, like they did with Premier. I'm pretty sure Apple could have developed very powerful apps out of Macromedia's stuff, but the Adobe apps are industry standard, sadly. which would have meant a hefty kick in the soft parts for Apple's marketshare.
In fact, the only company that has both the resources and marketshare to compete with Adobe these days, is Microsoft. If Microsoft really wants, they could develop their own creative applications, bundle and sell them at low low prices, and kill Adobe.
In fact, as much as I dislike Microsoft, I would like to see this happen.
One thing that struck me from reading that article is the enormous amount of flexibility in both materials and design of the spacecraft then compared to spacecraft now. I know many many people here on slashdot have pointed out that the escape systems on the shuttles were dropped in order to save money, but that's not the entire problem.
From what I gather, the guys in mission control had to jump through many hoops to get things to work after the explosion, but firstly, they had practiced almost every possible problem, (the use of LM power to run the mission shortly after launch although it was blocked because of dead CM batteries and the CO2 filters which were recognised as necessary immediatley by one guy as soon as he heard the LM was to be used).
The design and materials were extremely primitive by today's standards, but relays are a lot easier to reconfigure than a modern computer chip and the simplicity of the filters meant that with basic materials they could be reconfigured.
In other words, the machines were vastly more robust than modern systems.
And then there's the planning. They had actually taken, although not seriously enough initially, but later someone had decided to check that contingency out all the same.
With the shuttles, there has never been a way to fix anything if the machine would fuck up in orbit. Nada. Costs too much. And what really absolutely amazes me is that NASA, that spends around $400 million on a single shuttle launch never thought about renting or buying 2 or 3 Russian Soyuz craft to be ready on a permanent basis in case something happened in orbit, and that even though Soyuz launches only cost a tiny fraction of shuttle launches, are far easier and faster to prepare and launch, and don't even cost much at all if they aren't launched and everything goes well.
And no one, even after Challenger in 86, thought about checking out the shuttle regularly in orbit.
In some ways, it's almost criminal neglect. What happened to NASA?
I notice quite a lot of the usual complaining about Apple charging for a point release of an operating system where Microsoft would give it for free.
While those people are right in that they are likely to get modded down by Mac fans, the complaints seldom offer much insight into what is a point release, what is a service pack and what is a full version number. To be fair, the OS vendors, both Apple and Microsoft, don't make it easy on the consumer either.
Apple generally gives out their version of point releases (10.x.x) for free, but those point releases usually don't offer much or any new functionality. (Currently I'm on OSX 10.3.9) which includes a new version of the Safari browser (1.3) but that is unusual. Apple also usually gives out point releases of the various software accompanying the OS for free (iTunes, QuickTime, iSight, iPod, Bluetooth etc) and they provide specific security patches as new exploits become available.(although there are currently about two hanging security issues that Apple really needs to fix)
Apple usually includes quite a lot of new extra functionality in the version upgrades (10.x). In the 10.3 Panther upgrade it was Expose, Fast User Switching, iChatAV and XCode and under the hood new APIs (Cocoa Bindings etc). in 10.4, it's Dashboard, Spotlight, XCode 2, Safari 2, Mail 2, Automator and a lot of new APIs (Core Data, Core Image etc.)
Microsoft is a little less consistent with its OS upgrades, pathces and service packs, but also follows a certain strategy. Generally, Microsoft offers API changes and some minor functionality changes in service packs, but rarely major new features. For example, WinNT went from sp1 to sp6 and actually gained a lot of the functionality that was in the Win98 and Win2k userspace, and NT users got those for free. Active Desktop for example (one can argue about how useful that was). Moving from NTSP6 to Win2k would not have entailed major changes for the common user, but, obviously, there was a lot that changed under the hood. Better security model, more stable, some minor UI changes, better networking etc. Obviously, for a user, it was worth paying for.
All the while, Microsoft also offered generally free upgrades to its bundled applications, such as IE, Outlook and WMP, although there was an outcry about the mp3 quality and MS' charging for better quality.
But can the same be said for the Win98SE to WinME upgrade? WinMe had a terrible reputation and was seen by many as an excuse by Microsoft to generate revenue.
And the Win2k to WinXP move, while also having some big under the hood changes (firewall, signed drivers etc), mostly had big UI changes (themes) and Fast User Switching, Automatic Updates (also in 2kSp3 onwards) etc. For the user, and the developer, it was probably worth the price. Since then Microsoft has offered two service packs, both free. SP1 had no visible change but fixed some glaring security and stability issues. During this time Microsoft has released literally hundreds of security patches, thankfully, free.
Now comes the part to argue over. XPSP2 offers a new security center and a firewall on by default. It also upgrades IE. SP2 is free. BUT, the security enhancements for SP2, including the IE upgrade, are not available for Win2k. Microsoft was getting a terrible rap with WinXP up to SP1. It was almost impossible to install a new machine on the net (activation) without getting hit by some of the rabid attacks going on within a few minutes. Microsoft HAD to do something, and, if they had charged for SP2, there would have been an even bigger outcry by an extremely digruntled public.
My personal opinion about Microsoft is that Microsoft, in a way that only Microsoft does well, decided to use the opportunity to both garner some lost respect by including the new security features, but also enforce upgrades amongst its userbase by excluding Win2k. This, I think, is something that Microsoft specialises at, prodding its userbase with new features, but including a catch somew
The only relevant thing in the interview
on
Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 2, Insightful
While it's pretty obvious that Allchin would tout the features of Longhorn, but the real importance of Allchin giving an interview right now, after Tiger's announcement, and then basically spending half the interview comparing Longhorn favourably to Tiger lies in exactly that: Tiger. I have no idea just how insecure OSX and Apple make Microsoft feel, but, given that it is usually suicide to mention a competitor in an interview, and the timimng make me think that Microsoft is beginning to feel afraid that they might lose one or two marketshare percent yet another OS apart from Linux.
And that sadly, is really what has defined Microsoft from the very days of Billy G being clever enough to license the OS to IBM across Microsoft's threats against Apple's Basic back in the 80s to the Netscape killing in the 90s. Microsoft has always and always will exist mostly as a company that defines itself by its competition. The last time Microsoft really was innovative was in the early to mid 90s with WinNT and Win95, and even those were made to compete with Mac OS7 and Unix respectively.
Microsoft, facing a lack of competitors, always almost stalls and starts comming up with insane batshit like Software Assurance.
Note the before OSX Tiger and after OSX Tiger screenshots of Longhorn and how much Microsoft has done to copy Tigers featureset. It's actually sad.
Thankfully, Microsoft also did this with WinXP (the Luna scheme) to counter OSX 10.0, and it did nothing to stop OSX adoption. I doubt, seeing that Longhorn won't be here until next year, that it will hinder the adoption of OSX Tiger in any way.
Firstly, to get this out of the way, let me state that people who say Paul Thurrot's can be a fan and critical at the same time are right. That should be obvious to anyone who isn't waving their respective computer platform's flag. I would in fact argue that a review that isn't critical isn't a review, but mere company PR.
Good, that's out of the way. Now on to this review and why it irritates me intensely. Paul Thurrot might indeed be a closet Mac fan, although, from his previous articles, one would never guess it. The fact that he has numerous Macs, including a newish 12" Powerbook, and has in fact been running OSX since the 10.0 release indicate either someone who is obsessed with something he hates, a closet admirer, or, more to the point, someone who makes his money, aka his bread and butter, his moola, his bucks etc, by pumping out glorious reviews of Microsoft's software. I seriously doubt that the powers that be in Redmond would be happy to see Winsupersite (which is about as Microsoftish a name as one can come up with, but that's something for another post) offer scathing criticisms of Longhorn and general dissings for Microsoft's piss poor security record and abuse marketplace behaviour.
So, it might well be that he does like Macs and OSX in general, but can't afford to say so too loudly on a site that is mainly a mouthpiece for Microsoft OS betas.
I still find the review irritating, even in that light. The features he highlighted, such as Dashboard, Spotlight, Safari and Mail, are things one sees from a cursory 5 minute glance of the OS, but generally, one would expect a review to offer more depth than that. I am surprised (although maybe I shouldn't be, given his history) that he never mentioned Automator, XCode 2 or any of the new APIs, which, given that Micosoft has always aimed its OS squarely at developers, is a bit surprising.
You can argue till you're blue in the face about whether Dashboard is a Konfabulator ripoff or a Desk Accessory renewal, and you can argue that Windows has MSN search, Google Desktop etc, but the real new features in Tiger are under the hood and are aimed squarely at developers, just as Microsoft has always done, except that I think that Apple is doing it better (get to why in a sec)
The APIs, such as CoreImage/Video and CoreData make multimedia a breeze in development and embedded Database development incredibly easy (and you can't tell me that these two features are not needed by an enormous number of applications from media to business). XCode 2 offers automatic diagramming of class structures, pointing to the beginnings of a free CASE tool that comes with the OS, and I have yet to see Thurrot offer the tidbit that XCode comes free with the OS (he seesm to ignore this bit every time he does a review). So when will MS offer VS.Net for free? This is Apple's big hook with developers. The IDE is free and remains free, even when you're not a student anymore.
Add to that that Dashboard widgets are generally HTML/CSS/Javascript apps. There are literally millions of web developers who can make applications for Dashboard right off the bat, without learning a single new thing. And Automator for making a point and click batch processing app makes the OS very attracctive to those who need to automate daily tasks but can't code to save their lives.
Finally, I do find some of Thurrot's more superficial criticisms insightful. The new Look and Feel in Mail 2 now brings the total number of concurrent L&F's to 3 (White, Brushed Metal and Plastic). I feel this is terrible for consistency in the UI. His idea that this is some kind of service pack, however, is pure FUD. he KNOWS better than this, and if his reviews of Longhorn betas were anywhere near as critical as his reviews of OSX, I would take him more seriously.
Sadly, as is the case with Apple zealots, there are a lot of Windows zealots out there (generally the folk who feel hurt everytime an article about a new exploit for windows is published here on slashdot) who see Winsupersite and Thurrot as some kind of high priest, and they'll take him seriously.
I doubt that is the problem, since it's entirely up to the editors on slashdot as to which article gets accepted and which doesn't. Still, I've seen quite a few editors show incredible stupidity about articles in general (preferring politics, posting duplicates other general errors) so this one getting rejected doesn't say much about OSX users, but a lot about slashdot editors.
Bose Einstein Condensate? Uhm, according to Wikipedia and other places, this takes place at temeratures below 2 kelvin, aka -271 degrees centigrade, 2 degrees above absolute zero. Would someone please tell me how it could possibly be efficient to cool anything down that far and still use it for computing? I think only hypothetical beings out in the Oort cloud (around 3k noonday temperature) would appreciate this.
Maybe a mainframe dipped in liquid helium would be financially justifiable for critical computing but I don't see Intel or IBM using this in tomorrow's PC or Mac.
While you didn't mention it, a number of sites do mention that the moon has significant amounts of uranium. Mining that and using fission reactors to artificially create the missing hydrogen as a byproduct of the fission process might be a better and more flexible alternative to mining ice that may or may not be there in sufficient quantities.
I went seriously overboard in that post of mine, and I apologise. I totally misread your post and assumed you were trolling. My mistake.
Now, on to the (real) comparison. While, obviously, for web apps, and I mean large scale web apps, VS.Net is much better than XCode, I think it would not really be fair to compare the two for that purpose. If someone were writing largescale web apps on the Mac, i.e. enterprise stuff, they would almost certainly be doing it in Java, and for that they would most probably be using some of the Java app server tools and large Java IDE's. If they were constrained to Apple's products, they would be using WebObjects, which, while it isn't free and is in fact quite expensive, does compare more or less with asp+ in VS.Net.
However, for common GUI code, XCode does compare quite well, especially with IB and Cocoa bindings, and above all, it is free and comes with every Mac, as you know.
Again, sorry about the flaming. If I could delete my post further up, I would.
The biggest problem of any Lunar undertaking is water, or more appropriately, hydrogen, as there's loads of Oxygen.
Now, what if there just isn't that much ice in those lunar polar craters. AFAIK, there's only speculation that there may be ice there, but nothing has been proven, has it? The data is inconclusive at the moment. And even if there is ice there, there seems to be good amount of evidence that it will not be all that much, ranging from one small lake to a "sea" the size of Connecticut.
A lot of industrial processes need water in large quantities and this may prove to be exhaustive of what little lunar ice there may be. In other words, lunar industry for water and rocket fuel might just deplete the moon's natural resources as fast as our need for oil does.
If this worst case scenario turns out to be true, what would possible solutions be? Would it be realistic to smash an ice asteroid into the moon? I don't think we are quite capable of that just yet.
What about artificially creating hydrogen as a by product of nuclear fission or some such process that strips a proton off an atom? According to a quick Google search, it is quite possible with today's technology and there seems to be quite a lot of Uranium on the moon as opposed to hydrogen.
I think that artificially generating hydrogen might actually make a lunar base more flexible with respect to positioning, although placing the base in a polar crater might help to shield it from Solar eruptions and meteor impacts.
"unlike AppleScript, which forces you to use Apple's horrible proprietary COBOL clone."
OSAX, which is simply a part of Applescript, enables you to use any language which has been made for it. Although it isn't that widely used, Javascript is available for use instead of Applescript. here it is http://www.latenightsw.com/freeware/JavaScriptOSA/ index.html
It's just WSH, where, at the moment, you can use VBS, JScript or Perl.
It shows how much you know, and why you're posting as an AC
Apple should hire, even if they never hire another person for their OSX team, Amit Singh. It is truly rare that someone as gifted as this appears on the scene and then even has a passion for the intricacies of a kernel that does not garner much attention in the OSS scene.
Given that all the immense amount of detail that Amit has given on OSX as shown on kernelthread and in his upcoming book has been done in his spare time, could you imagine what he could achieve if this was his job. Granted, I'm no HR person, but I would think that Apple should be chafing at the bit to get him on board. I know that if it was up to me, I would offer him an almost blank cheque to write his own salary on.
He is the person who could get OSX into the enterprise.
Of course, if he did work for Apple, then his website would surely suffer, what with NDAs and such. Perhaps it's better that he doesn't work at Apple.
WHICH GODDAMN GUI CODER IS GOING TO CODE IN FUCKING BBEDIT????? I have quickly skimmed through a number of replies here, and it seems that platform zealotry is once again out in force, with anyone mentioning Xcode being modded to +5 immediately and the same happening to anyone mentioning VS.Net. But the kicker is, and I think this is especially true in the parent's case, is that a fucking web application is not the same as GUI application.
The reason I think the parent is a web coder is because he mentions TexTEdit and BBedit for coding. WHICH GODDAMN GUI CODER IS GOING TO CODE IN FUCKING BBEDIT?????
Comparing a php app written in BBedit and an asp+ app written in VS.Net is less than fair and pure trollbait, since I cam write a php app in notepad on Windows as well, but I would need to be seriously dumb to do that wouldn't I?
Firstly, I do agree that while Americans can of course appreciate English humour, they're not very good at recreating it. Most Englishmen in Hollywood movies seem to be stereotyped versions of Lorded upper class types, although movies such as "Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels is changing that". Apart from that American humour, especially American Hollywood humour is usually based on extremely overdone gags, possibly because the producers feel they need to dumb the movie down enough so that vast audiences will understand it. Subtlety is not one of Hollywood's strengths.
In other words, this movie would probably never have worked out in the first place. Hollywood is not capable of subtlety, especially in humour, and good English humour involves subtlety.
I'm grateful for the review and all the spoilers. I won't be going to watch this film, although, to be honest, I knew that when I saw the trailer.
Bullshit. Look at your country with its politicians falling over themselves in their rush to condemn the secular judiciary. Look at your country with its religious bigots trying to enforce a view of the world on children that is backed by no evidence whatsoever, with the exception of one single book, and that not even in its original language (or do you understand Ancient Greek and Aramaic?)
You clowns and your persecution complex, that you always trot out when everything else fails because you're just too fucking stupid to argue logically, fail to note the extent of persecution of Muslims in your country, because that would take away one more illogical crutch from your persecution complex.
Jeebers, if you think that the GPL has it hard now with FUD from Yankee Didiot's, Microsoft TCO FUD, in fact especially Microsoft TCO FUD, then you can imagine how difficult it will then be if people have to pay simply to use modified GPL software (yes, yes, I know that it applies to stuff like web services etc).
It will also in all likelyhood do a great amount of damage to OSS, especially in enterprises and companies,even if it doesn't kill it outright there.
No, seriously. I woke up a couple of days ago and for some reason thought about Apple decamping from the USA to move to friendlier waters, such as Canada, the Uk or Australia. I have no idea why I thought this. Would be interesting if it did happen though.
The example you give, of Baarle, is within the EU, and within two Schengen agreement countries, which means there are no controlled borders in that community. The difficulties are ones of a bureaucratic nature, like post, telephone and taxes, but they aren't anything that will get your mail stopped or visitors arrested.
Slashdot Mirror
It would probably be better to use a modifier in this situation, such as "not completely unacceptable" or "almost acceptable", since "not unacceptable" is a double negative in a certain sense.
;)
I do agree that people who prgramme for a living might be more likely to complain about that than someone who reads and understands nuances in speech.
If they come from Texas though, I suspect that nothing will help.
Looking at the wording of your post, I got the feeling you must be in a PR or marketing department. Your use of phrases such as "I am excited about the prospect of Adobe developing Macromedia's assets" and "The artistic feature set of Flash" sounds for all the world to me like the press releases those departments would release.
I know it's just my paranoia, but I was wondering how Adobe would react to the largley negative reactions to this buyout, and one of those might be the old trick of astroturfing.
I just got to thinking that the only type of legal decision that would ever stop this satanic greed by the music industry would be a judge with the wisdom of King Solomon in the bible.
The story goes that two women pitch up at King Solomon's court, both claiming that a baby they have with them is theirs. King Solomon, realising that he doesn't have his DNA testing kit handy, deals out a judgement that both women have a right to the baby and that the baby should be cut in half with swords and each woman should get a half a baby. One woman then shrieks that the other woman should have the baby, and wise old Sol knows then that that is the true mother, gives the baby to her and sues the other woman for bad parenting or something like that.
Now, if a judge were to lay out a legal decision that ALL music, downloadable, online, on CD, or even over the radio should cost $10 per song minimum, that would be a fantastic decision. And it would be a fantastic decision because it would kill the music industry overnight as no one, literally no one, would buy music any more, and then the music industry would be reduced to rags and selling heroin and coke on dark streets and other shady crap like they did before the music business became a way to legally rape the entire population of the western world.
I intensely dislike what has become of Adobe, that's true. I dislike so many things about that company I don't know where to start. For starters:
1. The way that Adobe behaved when FCP came out. I know that corporations often behave like 5 year olds, but dropping Premier *because they afraid of competition* was about the most disgusting piece of crap I have seen in a long time.
2. As addendum to the point above, they way that Adobe is now powerful enough to dictate the market. They can basically tell you to go to hell and there's sweet f-all you can do about it.
3. Prices. Adobe, since it became so powerful that it was the only game left in town in various markets (read photoshop, i.e. image editing) can now, and does, charge as absolutely much as they possibly can. Look at the discrepancy between what PS costs and what Illustrator costs. In the professional image editing market, they have a monopoly, up until now, in the vector editing illustration market, they didn't. I am waiting to see what Illustrator will cost in the future. Adobe is even less controlled than Microsoft. They will basically bleed the market for what they feel the market can take.
4. Activation. While nobody feels piracy is right, Adobe was massively profitable before they came up with product activation. I'm less worried about the irritation value of activation than I am about the potential for abuse with it. In 3rd world countries, no one, and I mean, no one, has the money to pay for Adobe's ridiculous prices, which is why piracy with Adobe's stuff is so rampant there. Rather than doing something creative and innovative about it, such as lowering the barrier to entry in those markets, they introduced product activation.
5. I dislike Adobe's habit of killing off applications that are not wild successes but still popular. Live Motion was such a product. For Flash animation, not prgramming, but animation, it was way better than Flash itself and served as a useful addition to a lot of Flash designers. There are other products in that market, such as ToonBoomStudio, which also do Flash animation, and you don't see them killing off their product simply because it doesn't replace Flash entirely, now do you? I have been burnt once, badly, with mTropolis, which Quark killed after they bought it, and I'm pretty sure, just judging from the Adobe forums, where people almost crapped themselves when Adobe killed off Live Motion, that thousands more poor bastards were once again burnt by a big corporation. Yay for them.
6. Given Adobe's behaviour in recent years, where product bloat has replaced efficiency and raping designers for all they can is now standard practice, I don't see things getting better.
Flash, Contribute, ColdFusion are the reasons Adobe is buying Macormedia. ColdFusion is, amazingly, still selling because it has a very good IDE and makes web app development easier.
The other stuff is going to get canned in some way or another. Adobe will NOT develop Dreamweaver and GoLive concurrently. It makes no sense financially (two development teams who have to be paid) and it makes no sense competition wise. They might take over some of Dreamweaver's server side stuff (asp, php, jsp, cfm etc), but I can't see them keeping both.
Director is something I'm worried about. They might keep it, as it has its own niche market (Computer Based Teaching, interactive DVDs etc), but Adobe is nothing if not hyperefficient financially (anyone remember LiveMotion, PageMill, Style etc?) and they usually kill products that aren't major sellers.
Freehand is as good as dead. Period. And, given how Illustrator has become such as huge bloat app, that is a real pity.
I can see Adobe taking most of the web development features from Fireworks (easy drop down menus etc) adding them to Image Ready, and canning Fireworks.
Flash will almost certainly get the Adobe Workover(TM), which means a shiny new interface. Given how bad Flash's interface is, this might actually be a good thing. I actually hope they'll integrate some of Livemotion's interface in there, such as After Effect style timelines and easy paths. This might be the best result of the whole buy out.
Apple could not have bought Macromedia, for the simple reason that Adobe would have done its monopoly abuse act once again, and threatened to drop Photoshop, Illustrator and Golive for the Mac, like they did with Premier. I'm pretty sure Apple could have developed very powerful apps out of Macromedia's stuff, but the Adobe apps are industry standard, sadly. which would have meant a hefty kick in the soft parts for Apple's marketshare.
In fact, the only company that has both the resources and marketshare to compete with Adobe these days, is Microsoft. If Microsoft really wants, they could develop their own creative applications, bundle and sell them at low low prices, and kill Adobe.
In fact, as much as I dislike Microsoft, I would like to see this happen.
One thing that struck me from reading that article is the enormous amount of flexibility in both materials and design of the spacecraft then compared to spacecraft now. I know many many people here on slashdot have pointed out that the escape systems on the shuttles were dropped in order to save money, but that's not the entire problem.
From what I gather, the guys in mission control had to jump through many hoops to get things to work after the explosion, but firstly, they had practiced almost every possible problem, (the use of LM power to run the mission shortly after launch although it was blocked because of dead CM batteries and the CO2 filters which were recognised as necessary immediatley by one guy as soon as he heard the LM was to be used).
The design and materials were extremely primitive by today's standards, but relays are a lot easier to reconfigure than a modern computer chip and the simplicity of the filters meant that with basic materials they could be reconfigured.
In other words, the machines were vastly more robust than modern systems.
And then there's the planning. They had actually taken, although not seriously enough initially, but later someone had decided to check that contingency out all the same.
With the shuttles, there has never been a way to fix anything if the machine would fuck up in orbit. Nada. Costs too much. And what really absolutely amazes me is that NASA, that spends around $400 million on a single shuttle launch never thought about renting or buying 2 or 3 Russian Soyuz craft to be ready on a permanent basis in case something happened in orbit, and that even though Soyuz launches only cost a tiny fraction of shuttle launches, are far easier and faster to prepare and launch, and don't even cost much at all if they aren't launched and everything goes well.
And no one, even after Challenger in 86, thought about checking out the shuttle regularly in orbit.
In some ways, it's almost criminal neglect. What happened to NASA?
I think you might have noticed that I said the same thing if you had read a bit further into my post.
I notice quite a lot of the usual complaining about Apple charging for a point release of an operating system where Microsoft would give it for free.
While those people are right in that they are likely to get modded down by Mac fans, the complaints seldom offer much insight into what is a point release, what is a service pack and what is a full version number. To be fair, the OS vendors, both Apple and Microsoft, don't make it easy on the consumer either.
Apple generally gives out their version of point releases (10.x.x) for free, but those point releases usually don't offer much or any new functionality. (Currently I'm on OSX 10.3.9) which includes a new version of the Safari browser (1.3) but that is unusual. Apple also usually gives out point releases of the various software accompanying the OS for free (iTunes, QuickTime, iSight, iPod, Bluetooth etc) and they provide specific security patches as new exploits become available.(although there are currently about two hanging security issues that Apple really needs to fix)
Apple usually includes quite a lot of new extra functionality in the version upgrades (10.x). In the 10.3 Panther upgrade it was Expose, Fast User Switching, iChatAV and XCode and under the hood new APIs (Cocoa Bindings etc). in 10.4, it's Dashboard, Spotlight, XCode 2, Safari 2, Mail 2, Automator and a lot of new APIs (Core Data, Core Image etc.)
Microsoft is a little less consistent with its OS upgrades, pathces and service packs, but also follows a certain strategy. Generally, Microsoft offers API changes and some minor functionality changes in service packs, but rarely major new features. For example, WinNT went from sp1 to sp6 and actually gained a lot of the functionality that was in the Win98 and Win2k userspace, and NT users got those for free. Active Desktop for example (one can argue about how useful that was). Moving from NTSP6 to Win2k would not have entailed major changes for the common user, but, obviously, there was a lot that changed under the hood. Better security model, more stable, some minor UI changes, better networking etc. Obviously, for a user, it was worth paying for.
All the while, Microsoft also offered generally free upgrades to its bundled applications, such as IE, Outlook and WMP, although there was an outcry about the mp3 quality and MS' charging for better quality.
But can the same be said for the Win98SE to WinME upgrade? WinMe had a terrible reputation and was seen by many as an excuse by Microsoft to generate revenue.
And the Win2k to WinXP move, while also having some big under the hood changes (firewall, signed drivers etc), mostly had big UI changes (themes) and Fast User Switching, Automatic Updates (also in 2kSp3 onwards) etc. For the user, and the developer, it was probably worth the price. Since then Microsoft has offered two service packs, both free. SP1 had no visible change but fixed some glaring security and stability issues. During this time Microsoft has released literally hundreds of security patches, thankfully, free.
Now comes the part to argue over. XPSP2 offers a new security center and a firewall on by default. It also upgrades IE. SP2 is free. BUT, the security enhancements for SP2, including the IE upgrade, are not available for Win2k. Microsoft was getting a terrible rap with WinXP up to SP1. It was almost impossible to install a new machine on the net (activation) without getting hit by some of the rabid attacks going on within a few minutes. Microsoft HAD to do something, and, if they had charged for SP2, there would have been an even bigger outcry by an extremely digruntled public.
My personal opinion about Microsoft is that Microsoft, in a way that only Microsoft does well, decided to use the opportunity to both garner some lost respect by including the new security features, but also enforce upgrades amongst its userbase by excluding Win2k. This, I think, is something that Microsoft specialises at, prodding its userbase with new features, but including a catch somew
While it's pretty obvious that Allchin would tout the features of Longhorn, but the real importance of Allchin giving an interview right now, after Tiger's announcement, and then basically spending half the interview comparing Longhorn favourably to Tiger lies in exactly that: Tiger. I have no idea just how insecure OSX and Apple make Microsoft feel, but, given that it is usually suicide to mention a competitor in an interview, and the timimng make me think that Microsoft is beginning to feel afraid that they might lose one or two marketshare percent yet another OS apart from Linux.
And that sadly, is really what has defined Microsoft from the very days of Billy G being clever enough to license the OS to IBM across Microsoft's threats against Apple's Basic back in the 80s to the Netscape killing in the 90s. Microsoft has always and always will exist mostly as a company that defines itself by its competition. The last time Microsoft really was innovative was in the early to mid 90s with WinNT and Win95, and even those were made to compete with Mac OS7 and Unix respectively.
Microsoft, facing a lack of competitors, always almost stalls and starts comming up with insane batshit like Software Assurance.
Note the before OSX Tiger and after OSX Tiger screenshots of Longhorn and how much Microsoft has done to copy Tigers featureset. It's actually sad.
Thankfully, Microsoft also did this with WinXP (the Luna scheme) to counter OSX 10.0, and it did nothing to stop OSX adoption. I doubt, seeing that Longhorn won't be here until next year, that it will hinder the adoption of OSX Tiger in any way.
The space station doesn't need to generate its own rocket fuel from the water it holds.
Firstly, to get this out of the way, let me state that people who say Paul Thurrot's can be a fan and critical at the same time are right. That should be obvious to anyone who isn't waving their respective computer platform's flag. I would in fact argue that a review that isn't critical isn't a review, but mere company PR.
Good, that's out of the way. Now on to this review and why it irritates me intensely. Paul Thurrot might indeed be a closet Mac fan, although, from his previous articles, one would never guess it. The fact that he has numerous Macs, including a newish 12" Powerbook, and has in fact been running OSX since the 10.0 release indicate either someone who is obsessed with something he hates, a closet admirer, or, more to the point, someone who makes his money, aka his bread and butter, his moola, his bucks etc, by pumping out glorious reviews of Microsoft's software. I seriously doubt that the powers that be in Redmond would be happy to see Winsupersite (which is about as Microsoftish a name as one can come up with, but that's something for another post) offer scathing criticisms of Longhorn and general dissings for Microsoft's piss poor security record and abuse marketplace behaviour.
So, it might well be that he does like Macs and OSX in general, but can't afford to say so too loudly on a site that is mainly a mouthpiece for Microsoft OS betas.
I still find the review irritating, even in that light. The features he highlighted, such as Dashboard, Spotlight, Safari and Mail, are things one sees from a cursory 5 minute glance of the OS, but generally, one would expect a review to offer more depth than that. I am surprised (although maybe I shouldn't be, given his history) that he never mentioned Automator, XCode 2 or any of the new APIs, which, given that Micosoft has always aimed its OS squarely at developers, is a bit surprising.
You can argue till you're blue in the face about whether Dashboard is a Konfabulator ripoff or a Desk Accessory renewal, and you can argue that Windows has MSN search, Google Desktop etc, but the real new features in Tiger are under the hood and are aimed squarely at developers, just as Microsoft has always done, except that I think that Apple is doing it better (get to why in a sec)
The APIs, such as CoreImage/Video and CoreData make multimedia a breeze in development and embedded Database development incredibly easy (and you can't tell me that these two features are not needed by an enormous number of applications from media to business). XCode 2 offers automatic diagramming of class structures, pointing to the beginnings of a free CASE tool that comes with the OS, and I have yet to see Thurrot offer the tidbit that XCode comes free with the OS (he seesm to ignore this bit every time he does a review). So when will MS offer VS.Net for free? This is Apple's big hook with developers. The IDE is free and remains free, even when you're not a student anymore.
Add to that that Dashboard widgets are generally HTML/CSS/Javascript apps. There are literally millions of web developers who can make applications for Dashboard right off the bat, without learning a single new thing. And Automator for making a point and click batch processing app makes the OS very attracctive to those who need to automate daily tasks but can't code to save their lives.
Finally, I do find some of Thurrot's more superficial criticisms insightful. The new Look and Feel in Mail 2 now brings the total number of concurrent L&F's to 3 (White, Brushed Metal and Plastic). I feel this is terrible for consistency in the UI. His idea that this is some kind of service pack, however, is pure FUD. he KNOWS better than this, and if his reviews of Longhorn betas were anywhere near as critical as his reviews of OSX, I would take him more seriously.
Sadly, as is the case with Apple zealots, there are a lot of Windows zealots out there (generally the folk who feel hurt everytime an article about a new exploit for windows is published here on slashdot) who see Winsupersite and Thurrot as some kind of high priest, and they'll take him seriously.
I doubt that is the problem, since it's entirely up to the editors on slashdot as to which article gets accepted and which doesn't. Still, I've seen quite a few editors show incredible stupidity about articles in general (preferring politics, posting duplicates other general errors) so this one getting rejected doesn't say much about OSX users, but a lot about slashdot editors.
Bose Einstein Condensate? Uhm, according to Wikipedia and other places, this takes place at temeratures below 2 kelvin, aka -271 degrees centigrade, 2 degrees above absolute zero. Would someone please tell me how it could possibly be efficient to cool anything down that far and still use it for computing? I think only hypothetical beings out in the Oort cloud (around 3k noonday temperature) would appreciate this.
Maybe a mainframe dipped in liquid helium would be financially justifiable for critical computing but I don't see Intel or IBM using this in tomorrow's PC or Mac.
While you didn't mention it, a number of sites do mention that the moon has significant amounts of uranium. Mining that and using fission reactors to artificially create the missing hydrogen as a byproduct of the fission process might be a better and more flexible alternative to mining ice that may or may not be there in sufficient quantities.
I went seriously overboard in that post of mine, and I apologise. I totally misread your post and assumed you were trolling. My mistake.
Now, on to the (real) comparison. While, obviously, for web apps, and I mean large scale web apps, VS.Net is much better than XCode, I think it would not really be fair to compare the two for that purpose. If someone were writing largescale web apps on the Mac, i.e. enterprise stuff, they would almost certainly be doing it in Java, and for that they would most probably be using some of the Java app server tools and large Java IDE's. If they were constrained to Apple's products, they would be using WebObjects, which, while it isn't free and is in fact quite expensive, does compare more or less with asp+ in VS.Net.
However, for common GUI code, XCode does compare quite well, especially with IB and Cocoa bindings, and above all, it is free and comes with every Mac, as you know.
Again, sorry about the flaming. If I could delete my post further up, I would.
The biggest problem of any Lunar undertaking is water, or more appropriately, hydrogen, as there's loads of Oxygen.
Now, what if there just isn't that much ice in those lunar polar craters. AFAIK, there's only speculation that there may be ice there, but nothing has been proven, has it? The data is inconclusive at the moment. And even if there is ice there, there seems to be good amount of evidence that it will not be all that much, ranging from one small lake to a "sea" the size of Connecticut.
A lot of industrial processes need water in large quantities and this may prove to be exhaustive of what little lunar ice there may be. In other words, lunar industry for water and rocket fuel might just deplete the moon's natural resources as fast as our need for oil does.
If this worst case scenario turns out to be true, what would possible solutions be? Would it be realistic to smash an ice asteroid into the moon? I don't think we are quite capable of that just yet.
What about artificially creating hydrogen as a by product of nuclear fission or some such process that strips a proton off an atom? According to a quick Google search, it is quite possible with today's technology and there seems to be quite a lot of Uranium on the moon as opposed to hydrogen.
I think that artificially generating hydrogen might actually make a lunar base more flexible with respect to positioning, although placing the base in a polar crater might help to shield it from Solar eruptions and meteor impacts.
"unlike AppleScript, which forces you to use Apple's horrible proprietary COBOL clone."
/ index.html
OSAX, which is simply a part of Applescript, enables you to use any language which has been made for it. Although it isn't that widely used, Javascript is available for use instead of Applescript. here it is http://www.latenightsw.com/freeware/JavaScriptOSA
It's just WSH, where, at the moment, you can use VBS, JScript or Perl.
It shows how much you know, and why you're posting as an AC
Apple should hire, even if they never hire another person for their OSX team, Amit Singh. It is truly rare that someone as gifted as this appears on the scene and then even has a passion for the intricacies of a kernel that does not garner much attention in the OSS scene.
Given that all the immense amount of detail that Amit has given on OSX as shown on kernelthread and in his upcoming book has been done in his spare time, could you imagine what he could achieve if this was his job. Granted, I'm no HR person, but I would think that Apple should be chafing at the bit to get him on board. I know that if it was up to me, I would offer him an almost blank cheque to write his own salary on.
He is the person who could get OSX into the enterprise.
Of course, if he did work for Apple, then his website would surely suffer, what with NDAs and such. Perhaps it's better that he doesn't work at Apple.
WHICH GODDAMN GUI CODER IS GOING TO CODE IN FUCKING BBEDIT????? I have quickly skimmed through a number of replies here, and it seems that platform zealotry is once again out in force, with anyone mentioning Xcode being modded to +5 immediately and the same happening to anyone mentioning VS.Net. But the kicker is, and I think this is especially true in the parent's case, is that a fucking web application is not the same as GUI application.
The reason I think the parent is a web coder is because he mentions TexTEdit and BBedit for coding. WHICH GODDAMN GUI CODER IS GOING TO CODE IN FUCKING BBEDIT?????
Comparing a php app written in BBedit and an asp+ app written in VS.Net is less than fair and pure trollbait, since I cam write a php app in notepad on Windows as well, but I would need to be seriously dumb to do that wouldn't I?
Firstly, I do agree that while Americans can of course appreciate English humour, they're not very good at recreating it. Most Englishmen in Hollywood movies seem to be stereotyped versions of Lorded upper class types, although movies such as "Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels is changing that". Apart from that American humour, especially American Hollywood humour is usually based on extremely overdone gags, possibly because the producers feel they need to dumb the movie down enough so that vast audiences will understand it. Subtlety is not one of Hollywood's strengths.
In other words, this movie would probably never have worked out in the first place. Hollywood is not capable of subtlety, especially in humour, and good English humour involves subtlety.
I'm grateful for the review and all the spoilers. I won't be going to watch this film, although, to be honest, I knew that when I saw the trailer.
Bullshit. Look at your country with its politicians falling over themselves in their rush to condemn the secular judiciary. Look at your country with its religious bigots trying to enforce a view of the world on children that is backed by no evidence whatsoever, with the exception of one single book, and that not even in its original language (or do you understand Ancient Greek and Aramaic?)
You clowns and your persecution complex, that you always trot out when everything else fails because you're just too fucking stupid to argue logically, fail to note the extent of persecution of Muslims in your country, because that would take away one more illogical crutch from your persecution complex.
Jeebers, if you think that the GPL has it hard now with FUD from Yankee Didiot's, Microsoft TCO FUD, in fact especially Microsoft TCO FUD, then you can imagine how difficult it will then be if people have to pay simply to use modified GPL software (yes, yes, I know that it applies to stuff like web services etc).
It will also in all likelyhood do a great amount of damage to OSS, especially in enterprises and companies,even if it doesn't kill it outright there.
So, again, NO!
No, seriously. I woke up a couple of days ago and for some reason thought about Apple decamping from the USA to move to friendlier waters, such as Canada, the Uk or Australia. I have no idea why I thought this. Would be interesting if it did happen though.
Terribly sorry to hear about your family's plight and especially that of your cousin. Hang on in there.
The example you give, of Baarle, is within the EU, and within two Schengen agreement countries, which means there are no controlled borders in that community. The difficulties are ones of a bureaucratic nature, like post, telephone and taxes, but they aren't anything that will get your mail stopped or visitors arrested.