I have a 4 year old AMD K6II @ 450MHz, with a Voodoo 3 in it, and it serves my purposes well as a Windows box to check websites in over VNC from my Mac and for troubleshooting friends virus/spyware/printing etc problems.
I also have a 5 year old G3 Mac Powerbook @ 333MHz, which I still occaisionally use for some applications and retro games that never got ported to OSX (I'm now considering installing Linux on it with the WMI lightweight keyboard oriented WM on it).
These computers still have very good use to them, and I sometimes think it's a shame that people throw away old computers when they have a lot of potential for a good few people.
Just how fucking insane is our society anyway?
on
Would You Hire A Hacker?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The IT Director who made the Shipman comparison should be fucking fired. Just what kind of values does a man have when he equates a mass murderer with a teenage computer virus writer? My god, the kid is exactly that, a kid! He isn't a violent drug crazed sociopath, he's doing what many kids do, i.e. messing around to see what he can do and how far he can go, with the exception that he got caught.
This kind of fanatic mentality, where a stupid fucking computer (or a song or movie on the internet) becomes more valuable than people's lives, is a sad testament to the state of our society.
You think I'm over the top? Why is it that people who download songs from the internet get punished harder than the executives of corrupt and failing corporations?
If you give someone a chance, after he or she has messed up, especially as a teen, they might or might not do something useful with their lives. But if you dismiss them outright, you are condemning them for the rest of their lives.
If two planes had crashed as a result of the comminication loss, I think that the resulting lawsuits, both criminal and civil, against the FAA, Harris and Microsoft would have been large enough to possibly cripple the latter two.
I used to have to reboot our NT Servers due to memory leaks once a month. Although this problem seems related to the application software rather than Win2k, I really have to ask myself what the fucking hell Windows, any version, is doing in a life critical computing environment. Is Windows even licenced for operation in such areas???? And I'm saying Linux is better, but there are OS'es around that ARE licenced for such operation (Tru64 if I'm not mistaken).
And the fact that the system had to be regularly rebooted , and was actually used in the field although this fact was known is simply pathetic, added to which the fact that they couldn't even automate the reboot smacks of gross incomptence.
I don't know who modded you 'Interesting', since I think you were trolling, but have you ever had experience with new computer users or just plain normal people who use computers the same way we use cooking instructions? I bet you haven't, or that you're one of the elitest crowd that assumes people who don't know what 'make install' is are dumb bastards who shouldn't be let anywhere near a computer.
The large majority of people who use computers have almost no idea what the right mouse button is for. I know this, I've seen it time and time again. Apple caters to those people and lets those who want a normal two button mouse, like me, just plug the fucking thing in the USB port and use it.
Your comment about Apple transitioning to a Linux distro did make me laugh though. Comedy gold.
According to Brown University technology historian Steven Lubar, 'When the available technology converges at a certain performance threshold... consumers begin to base their choices on nontechnical considerations
This is one of the reasons Apple's products sell so well: The company puts an enormous amount of thought into the design. It's one of the reasons I have a Mac, the fact that the design, although not retro, is very smooth, the materials are top quality and Apple evens puts thought into the placment of screws. That and OSX, which exhibits the same processes, but in an OS.
Last night someone commenting on the idea of 3D avatars in IM software made the point that these things are fairly useless, but what would be really useful would be a kind of canvas next to the text area where one could just do simple black and white sketching, since a sketch is a wonderful way of getting and idea across when words fail one.
I thought about this and realised some points (which also relate to GAIM to bring this post on topic): 1. There have been some Flash and Shockwave based sketching chat ideas around for while but they aren't mainstream since they don't offer the simplicity and flexibility of mainstream IM apps. 2.The problem with a universal sketchpad in all IM apps is one of protocol. It would be hard to convince yahoo, MS and AOL to come up with a non-proprietry protocol that works everywhere. 3.The only application which runs on almost all platforms and supports most protocols is GAIM. 4.My idea is to make a fork of GAIM that has a Canvas with basic sketching utensils next to the text area (rectangle, oval, straight line and freehand, filled and empty with about 8 or 9 colours) 5.The protocol would be very simple: Text based, similar to a simplified postscript or html imagemap. 6.The protocol would simply send a small sequence of text characters indicating that what follows is to be interpreted as a sketch, with a similar sequence of characters at the end indicating that the sketch is over. Example: You draw a black empty rectangle with a line pointing to it and hit enter: The application sends the following as plain text: ##%%##%% color black-rect,unfilled:10,10,30,10,30,30,10,30-strlin e:20,30,20,50 ##%%##%%## The other IM client of your buddy interprets that as the same black unfilled rectangle with a line coming from it. 7.The GAIM fork would have a simple sketch on/off button to enable/disable sketching.
Microsoft commissioned analyst firms to do reports to help you "get out the facts" about Linux. Are you still doing that? If someone says, "Hey, Customer X says, 'If I had this data, it will help me make a decision, comparing Microsoft to Linux.'" And I basically hop on the phone with all the folks [at the analyst firms] and say, "Hey, I talked to four or five customers in the last two months, and they all care about x versus y. It's something that I think people care about. Can you guys go do something?" And sometimes they come back and say, "Yup. We've heard that, too. We're going to go do some analysis." Or, they come back and say, "Actually, it's not that interesting to us, but if you care about it, we'll use our methodology and stand behind it, but you have to fund it, because it costs money to get the samples, get the customers, get everything." That's going to continue to be my process. If there are facts or things that are needed, I'm going to hope that I can entice the analyst firms to go do it on their own because they think it's also important. But if they don't, then I'll commission it.
I have an enormous amount of difficulty believing this guy when it comes to his answer to a question on Microsoft's FUD tactics. Him claiming that Microsoft is nice and easy going about the methodology used in Microsoft commissioned analyses and that Microsoft doesn't use financial pressure (or that Analyst firms don't offer to cook the report in exchange for cash) on analyst firms strikes me as a total lie.
For example, the most well known example of Micorosoft's lower TCO claim (and the one displayed prominently on MS' website) was made by comparing Linux on a mainframe vs. Windows on cheap x86 commodity harware. There was no mention of the reasons a customer would go for a mainframe (reliability, bandwidth, scalability), just the FUD about Win2k3 on a dell box.
I think this is just the new (old) MS tactic of pretending to be nice in public and fucking everyone over in private.
I don't mean to flamebait you, but really, just think about those amounts before you hail Bill's staggeringly big heart and love of humanity. As an example
He spends $25 million on an AIDS vaccine initiative. In South Africa alone, there are between 5 to 12 million people with HIV. In South Africa alone. There are known, generic, safe drugs that can keep those people who have AIDS alive. The third world generic versions made in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and India were under fire from the US government for "destroying IP" (where have we heard this disgusting fuckshit before? - hint:MS and SCO). The US government is lobbied heavily by the pharmaceutical industry. Guess how much your big hearted Bill Gates invested in that industry: $250 million.
If that's philanthropy, then I'm fucking Jesus and I can turn shit into bread.
I grew up in South Africa, where the major part of the country is above 1000meters above sea level. In the center of the country, the summers are hot (around 20 centigrade at night) and it rains on occasion (humid) and the winters are cold (below zero at night) and absolutely dry.
Because we lived in the countryside, I remember often watching the stars at night and the view is beautiful. What was interesting, and on topic in this case, is that the view of the night sky is much better on a cold winter night than in the middle of summer.
Oh, for crying out loud! Everyone and his mom are speculating about "teh bomb". Consider the options in a rational manner, for once, please. Even if this is the/dot:
Possibility number 1: A nuclear explosion. If it was a nuclear explosion, remember that it happened close North Koreas's north eastern border with China. If that is the case, remember that the prevailing winds will blow the fallout either north or west, in which case the fallout will cross over into China, and you can bet your sweet apple pie that China will not take lightly to radioactive fallout from a neighbouring country, or the winds blow the fallout east in which case both Japan and Russia (Yes, George, Russia is just across the way over there) will raise living hell, or the winds blow the fallout south in which case South Korea gets to crap their collective pants. Either way, the international media will find out really fast about it.
2. It was an accident such as the one a few months ago, when a train laden with chemicals went up into the air. Given that NK is poor as hell and workplace safety not a major concern, this is the most likely cause. If this is the case, it is possible that it will take a long while until the media discover it.
3. It was a military accident at a missile site, where one exploding missile set off the rest, a la Chinese firecrackers. If this is the case, the NK's will probably try to keep it as secret as possible as it would be hugely embarrassing to the fuckers who routinely make huge boasts about their military and have this obsession with saving face.
You definitely have an inflated sense of self when it comes to your nation. I think the US has made fantastic strides in space exploration and manned space travel, but they weren't alone. The Russians also had plans for a manned Mars mission in the 70's and right now, there is a serious group of Russian space engineers working on a nuclear powered Mars mission, for the simple reason that nuclear power is the most feasible and has the greatest amount of leeway.
Again, at the moment, the Russians are the only ones launching manned space vehicles on a regular basis, and then we get to the Chinese who have also started launching manned missions and will probably eventually start launching on a regular basis.
Not only that but even ESA has started working on a new shuttle of its own, called Phoenix, which should see its first launch around 2015 or so.
When MS allows their Music device to be used from a Mac, then I'll write to Apple, not before. MS is simply going to do the old embrace and extend (hallo activeX), and I'd rather not go that route.
However, I suppose MS will do their very best to try and kill iTunes and the iPod so that they can dominate the market. If they ever do kill off iTunes and the iPod, I am willing to bet that MS will make sure that 3rd paty players such as RIO etc will not have the full functionality of MS' store and player.
Although I started off my desktop career in the late 80's with PC's using DOS and Windows 2.11, I've used Macs in DTP and grpahics jobs and Windows in programming jobs and in my last job was a Windows admin. At home I use both, but chiefly Macs with OSX.
The things I think you'll need to know: 1.As many others have stated, get a 3rd party multi button mouse. Right button works just as it does in Windows. 2.The GUI will probably seem easier after a while. It is definitely cleaner than Windows. You'll get used to the menu always at the top in no time as it's like a maximised app in windows. 3.The dock will be one of those things on the Mac that shows you a profound difference between Windows and OSX. Just drag apps that you want to have permanently there to it and others that you don't just drag off the dock. Drag 'n drop is a fundamental feature of the Mac. 4.Since there is no start menu, you might miss having your applications available at a click. Just drag the applications folder to the right side of the dock separator and you can then right click on the folder there to access your apps. This works with all folders. 5.You'll probably be using Expose extensively soon. Try the keys F9, F10 and F11 to get a fell for what it does. It's a great way of grabbing a file you need in an application. 6.Cmd-Tab is the way of switching applications. Both here and in Expose, drag and drop make it very useful. 7.OSX uses a lot of meta keys and combinations. Cmd, alt, ctrl, shift and the space bar in various combinations work in various ways, but usually consistantly in various apps, such as alt-drag in the finder to copy a file or cmd-click to select various non consecutive files in the finder. 8.The finder has a columns view that is not available in windows. Some prefer it, some don't. I do. try alt dragging the little area below the scroll bars. 9.The finder lets you place favourites in the area to the left. In order to navigate the finder by keyboard, use cmd-up arrow to move up the folder hierarchy. 10.Minimising places windows on the right side of the dock. alt-double click will place all that applications windows in the dock. 11.Cmd-h will hide an application from view, including its minimised windows form the dock. 12.What are control panels in windows are the system preferences in osx. The app with a light swtich icon. It is considerably simpler to use than Windows contorl panels. 13.The firewall is on by default, and networking services and file sharing are configured here and are fairly simple to do compared to windows. You'll be able to set up a windows share to get data from your windows computer. 14.Printer setup is also easy. Just plug it in usually. 15.You'll need a root account on rare occasions. This can be set up using the Netinfo manager utility in Applications->Utilities. 16.The terminal is a full fledged unix commandline environment and is extremely useful for power users. Bash is the default shell. 17.There are many many sites out there that offer advice and troubleshooting. One that springs to mind is osxhints. The MacNN forums also offer really good help for newcomers.
Jesus, that Rio carbon is ugly, I say. I hear you, the true geek say, "Yes, but it has so many features and control buttons". And I say, you still don't get it. The iPod unites three, for your average person important qualities: 1.Beautiful, simple design. 2.Simple interface. 3.Easy to use software.
I guess this means that we'll see Windows XP2 (Longhorn) SE (Search Edition) With WinFS to instantly find all your data around 2007 or 2008.
I really, and I'm not trolling, expect that MS saw what Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger's Spotlight technology was capable of and realised that WinFS was not going to make the huge dent that they first thought it would. I assume that they scrapped the original SQL based technology and started from scratch using Spotlight's abilities as a guide.
That said, I can see the wisdom of getting Longhorn out the door with Avalon. Home users, gamers and newbies are bought and sold on eye candy and Avalon promises to bring loads of that and it is probably extremely important for MS to compete there finally with OSX (which has been around for 3 years now).
Being able to have one of these in a standard office that doesn't need a server room setup is the major factor, as I see it. It means that the company saves on racks, rackspace, the cost of electricity (which is going up as you may have noticed by the price of oil being over $40 per barrel), administrator costs (his salary alone will be worth it) and air conditioning for the server room.
Think of a small CG effects movie company (say around 5 to 10 employees): They want to be able to render their CG movie frames as quickly as possible in order to save money, but don't have the capital to buy and maintain an expensive server room setup along with the requisite admin type to look after it. These machines provide and effective alternative: 1 or 2 of the 12 CPU machines for the guys who do the rendering of small snippets and 1 96 CPU unit as an office renderer for resource expensive renderers.
I truly feel for you, and can imagine that your life has also not been a total bed of roses. I also had numerous operations and long periods in hospital before getting my artificial hips.
I have no idea if this phone was designed in Germany or in some outsourcing place in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, but it says, to my mind, a lot about the pressure the engineers and designers are under, in order to keep costs low and deadlines held. So much so that, in order for the phone to make it to market in time, some marketing fuckhead decided to skip the QA altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a 4 year old AMD K6II @ 450MHz, with a Voodoo 3 in it, and it serves my purposes well as a Windows box to check websites in over VNC from my Mac and for troubleshooting friends virus/spyware/printing etc problems.
I also have a 5 year old G3 Mac Powerbook @ 333MHz, which I still occaisionally use for some applications and retro games that never got ported to OSX (I'm now considering installing Linux on it with the WMI lightweight keyboard oriented WM on it).
These computers still have very good use to them, and I sometimes think it's a shame that people throw away old computers when they have a lot of potential for a good few people.
The IT Director who made the Shipman comparison should be fucking fired. Just what kind of values does a man have when he equates a mass murderer with a teenage computer virus writer? My god, the kid is exactly that, a kid! He isn't a violent drug crazed sociopath, he's doing what many kids do, i.e. messing around to see what he can do and how far he can go, with the exception that he got caught.
This kind of fanatic mentality, where a stupid fucking computer (or a song or movie on the internet) becomes more valuable than people's lives, is a sad testament to the state of our society.
You think I'm over the top? Why is it that people who download songs from the internet get punished harder than the executives of corrupt and failing corporations?
If you give someone a chance, after he or she has messed up, especially as a teen, they might or might not do something useful with their lives. But if you dismiss them outright, you are condemning them for the rest of their lives.
Way to go fuckers.
If two planes had crashed as a result of the comminication loss, I think that the resulting lawsuits, both criminal and civil, against the FAA, Harris and Microsoft would have been large enough to possibly cripple the latter two.
I used to have to reboot our NT Servers due to memory leaks once a month. Although this problem seems related to the application software rather than Win2k, I really have to ask myself what the fucking hell Windows, any version, is doing in a life critical computing environment. Is Windows even licenced for operation in such areas???? And I'm saying Linux is better, but there are OS'es around that ARE licenced for such operation (Tru64 if I'm not mistaken).
And the fact that the system had to be regularly rebooted , and was actually used in the field although this fact was known is simply pathetic, added to which the fact that they couldn't even automate the reboot smacks of gross incomptence.
I don't know who modded you 'Interesting', since I think you were trolling, but have you ever had experience with new computer users or just plain normal people who use computers the same way we use cooking instructions? I bet you haven't, or that you're one of the elitest crowd that assumes people who don't know what 'make install' is are dumb bastards who shouldn't be let anywhere near a computer.
The large majority of people who use computers have almost no idea what the right mouse button is for. I know this, I've seen it time and time again. Apple caters to those people and lets those who want a normal two button mouse, like me, just plug the fucking thing in the USB port and use it.
Your comment about Apple transitioning to a Linux distro did make me laugh though. Comedy gold.
According to Brown University technology historian Steven Lubar, 'When the available technology converges at a certain performance threshold ... consumers begin to base their choices on nontechnical considerations
This is one of the reasons Apple's products sell so well: The company puts an enormous amount of thought into the design. It's one of the reasons I have a Mac, the fact that the design, although not retro, is very smooth, the materials are top quality and Apple evens puts thought into the placment of screws. That and OSX, which exhibits the same processes, but in an OS.
Last night someone commenting on the idea of 3D avatars in IM software made the point that these things are fairly useless, but what would be really useful would be a kind of canvas next to the text area where one could just do simple black and white sketching, since a sketch is a wonderful way of getting and idea across when words fail one.
n e:20,30,20,50
I thought about this and realised some points (which also relate to GAIM to bring this post on topic):
1. There have been some Flash and Shockwave based sketching chat ideas around for while but they aren't mainstream since they don't offer the simplicity and flexibility of mainstream IM apps.
2.The problem with a universal sketchpad in all IM apps is one of protocol. It would be hard to convince yahoo, MS and AOL to come up with a non-proprietry protocol that works everywhere.
3.The only application which runs on almost all platforms and supports most protocols is GAIM.
4.My idea is to make a fork of GAIM that has a Canvas with basic sketching utensils next to the text area (rectangle, oval, straight line and freehand, filled and empty with about 8 or 9 colours)
5.The protocol would be very simple: Text based, similar to a simplified postscript or html imagemap.
6.The protocol would simply send a small sequence of text characters indicating that what follows is to be interpreted as a sketch, with a similar sequence of characters at the end indicating that the sketch is over.
Example:
You draw a black empty rectangle with a line pointing to it and hit enter:
The application sends the following as plain text:
##%%##%%
color black-rect,unfilled:10,10,30,10,30,30,10,30-strli
##%%##%%##
The other IM client of your buddy interprets that as the same black unfilled rectangle with a line coming from it.
7.The GAIM fork would have a simple sketch on/off button to enable/disable sketching.
OpenBSD
Microsoft commissioned analyst firms to do reports to help you "get out the facts" about Linux. Are you still doing that? If someone says, "Hey, Customer X says, 'If I had this data, it will help me make a decision, comparing Microsoft to Linux.'" And I basically hop on the phone with all the folks [at the analyst firms] and say, "Hey, I talked to four or five customers in the last two months, and they all care about x versus y. It's something that I think people care about. Can you guys go do something?" And sometimes they come back and say, "Yup. We've heard that, too. We're going to go do some analysis." Or, they come back and say, "Actually, it's not that interesting to us, but if you care about it, we'll use our methodology and stand behind it, but you have to fund it, because it costs money to get the samples, get the customers, get everything." That's going to continue to be my process. If there are facts or things that are needed, I'm going to hope that I can entice the analyst firms to go do it on their own because they think it's also important. But if they don't, then I'll commission it.
I have an enormous amount of difficulty believing this guy when it comes to his answer to a question on Microsoft's FUD tactics. Him claiming that Microsoft is nice and easy going about the methodology used in Microsoft commissioned analyses and that Microsoft doesn't use financial pressure (or that Analyst firms don't offer to cook the report in exchange for cash) on analyst firms strikes me as a total lie.
For example, the most well known example of Micorosoft's lower TCO claim (and the one displayed prominently on MS' website) was made by comparing Linux on a mainframe vs. Windows on cheap x86 commodity harware. There was no mention of the reasons a customer would go for a mainframe (reliability, bandwidth, scalability), just the FUD about Win2k3 on a dell box.
I think this is just the new (old) MS tactic of pretending to be nice in public and fucking everyone over in private.
I don't mean to flamebait you, but really, just think about those amounts before you hail Bill's staggeringly big heart and love of humanity. As an example
He spends $25 million on an AIDS vaccine initiative. In South Africa alone, there are between 5 to 12 million people with HIV. In South Africa alone. There are known, generic, safe drugs that can keep those people who have AIDS alive. The third world generic versions made in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and India were under fire from the US government for "destroying IP" (where have we heard this disgusting fuckshit before? - hint:MS and SCO). The US government is lobbied heavily by the pharmaceutical industry. Guess how much your big hearted Bill Gates invested in that industry: $250 million.
If that's philanthropy, then I'm fucking Jesus and I can turn shit into bread.
I grew up in South Africa, where the major part of the country is above 1000meters above sea level. In the center of the country, the summers are hot (around 20 centigrade at night) and it rains on occasion (humid) and the winters are cold (below zero at night) and absolutely dry.
Because we lived in the countryside, I remember often watching the stars at night and the view is beautiful. What was interesting, and on topic in this case, is that the view of the night sky is much better on a cold winter night than in the middle of summer.
From the BBC article: "A crater caused by the blast could be seen from a satellite, an unnamed official in Beijing was quoted by Yonhap as saying."
;)
Forest fires cause lots of damage, but generally they don't make huge craters visible from space.
Oh, for crying out loud! Everyone and his mom are speculating about "teh bomb". Consider the options in a rational manner, for once, please. Even if this is the /dot:
Possibility number 1: A nuclear explosion. If it was a nuclear explosion, remember that it happened close North Koreas's north eastern border with China. If that is the case, remember that the prevailing winds will blow the fallout either north or west, in which case the fallout will cross over into China, and you can bet your sweet apple pie that China will not take lightly to radioactive fallout from a neighbouring country, or the winds blow the fallout east in which case both Japan and Russia (Yes, George, Russia is just across the way over there) will raise living hell, or the winds blow the fallout south in which case South Korea gets to crap their collective pants. Either way, the international media will find out really fast about it.
2. It was an accident such as the one a few months ago, when a train laden with chemicals went up into the air. Given that NK is poor as hell and workplace safety not a major concern, this is the most likely cause. If this is the case, it is possible that it will take a long while until the media discover it.
3. It was a military accident at a missile site, where one exploding missile set off the rest, a la Chinese firecrackers. If this is the case, the NK's will probably try to keep it as secret as possible as it would be hugely embarrassing to the fuckers who routinely make huge boasts about their military and have this obsession with saving face.
whoooooooosaaaaaa!
welcome to xhtml.
Translates into Arabic as Al Qaeda.
Ironic, isn't it.
I've found someone who will buy my old G4Powerbook 667MHz for $1200. If that isn't a good resale value, then I don't know what is.
You definitely have an inflated sense of self when it comes to your nation. I think the US has made fantastic strides in space exploration and manned space travel, but they weren't alone. The Russians also had plans for a manned Mars mission in the 70's and right now, there is a serious group of Russian space engineers working on a nuclear powered Mars mission, for the simple reason that nuclear power is the most feasible and has the greatest amount of leeway.
Again, at the moment, the Russians are the only ones launching manned space vehicles on a regular basis, and then we get to the Chinese who have also started launching manned missions and will probably eventually start launching on a regular basis.
Not only that but even ESA has started working on a new shuttle of its own, called Phoenix, which should see its first launch around 2015 or so.
When MS allows their Music device to be used from a Mac, then I'll write to Apple, not before. MS is simply going to do the old embrace and extend (hallo activeX), and I'd rather not go that route.
However, I suppose MS will do their very best to try and kill iTunes and the iPod so that they can dominate the market. If they ever do kill off iTunes and the iPod, I am willing to bet that MS will make sure that 3rd paty players such as RIO etc will not have the full functionality of MS' store and player.
Those who trust MS have only themselves to blame.
Although I started off my desktop career in the late 80's with PC's using DOS and Windows 2.11, I've used Macs in DTP and grpahics jobs and Windows in programming jobs and in my last job was a Windows admin. At home I use both, but chiefly Macs with OSX.
The things I think you'll need to know:
1.As many others have stated, get a 3rd party multi button mouse. Right button works just as it does in Windows.
2.The GUI will probably seem easier after a while. It is definitely cleaner than Windows. You'll get used to the menu always at the top in no time as it's like a maximised app in windows.
3.The dock will be one of those things on the Mac that shows you a profound difference between Windows and OSX. Just drag apps that you want to have permanently there to it and others that you don't just drag off the dock. Drag 'n drop is a fundamental feature of the Mac.
4.Since there is no start menu, you might miss having your applications available at a click. Just drag the applications folder to the right side of the dock separator and you can then right click on the folder there to access your apps. This works with all folders.
5.You'll probably be using Expose extensively soon. Try the keys F9, F10 and F11 to get a fell for what it does. It's a great way of grabbing a file you need in an application.
6.Cmd-Tab is the way of switching applications. Both here and in Expose, drag and drop make it very useful.
7.OSX uses a lot of meta keys and combinations. Cmd, alt, ctrl, shift and the space bar in various combinations work in various ways, but usually consistantly in various apps, such as alt-drag in the finder to copy a file or cmd-click to select various non consecutive files in the finder.
8.The finder has a columns view that is not available in windows. Some prefer it, some don't. I do. try alt dragging the little area below the scroll bars.
9.The finder lets you place favourites in the area to the left. In order to navigate the finder by keyboard, use cmd-up arrow to move up the folder hierarchy.
10.Minimising places windows on the right side of the dock. alt-double click will place all that applications windows in the dock.
11.Cmd-h will hide an application from view, including its minimised windows form the dock.
12.What are control panels in windows are the system preferences in osx. The app with a light swtich icon. It is considerably simpler to use than Windows contorl panels.
13.The firewall is on by default, and networking services and file sharing are configured here and are fairly simple to do compared to windows. You'll be able to set up a windows share to get data from your windows computer.
14.Printer setup is also easy. Just plug it in usually.
15.You'll need a root account on rare occasions. This can be set up using the Netinfo manager utility in Applications->Utilities.
16.The terminal is a full fledged unix commandline environment and is extremely useful for power users. Bash is the default shell.
17.There are many many sites out there that offer advice and troubleshooting. One that springs to mind is osxhints. The MacNN forums also offer really good help for newcomers.
Lastly, good luck.
Jesus, that Rio carbon is ugly, I say. I hear you, the true geek say, "Yes, but it has so many features and control buttons". And I say, you still don't get it. The iPod unites three, for your average person important qualities:
1.Beautiful, simple design.
2.Simple interface.
3.Easy to use software.
That's why it's so popular.
I guess this means that we'll see Windows XP2 (Longhorn) SE (Search Edition) With WinFS to instantly find all your data around 2007 or 2008.
I really, and I'm not trolling, expect that MS saw what Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger's Spotlight technology was capable of and realised that WinFS was not going to make the huge dent that they first thought it would. I assume that they scrapped the original SQL based technology and started from scratch using Spotlight's abilities as a guide.
That said, I can see the wisdom of getting Longhorn out the door with Avalon. Home users, gamers and newbies are bought and sold on eye candy and Avalon promises to bring loads of that and it is probably extremely important for MS to compete there finally with OSX (which has been around for 3 years now).
Being able to have one of these in a standard office that doesn't need a server room setup is the major factor, as I see it. It means that the company saves on racks, rackspace, the cost of electricity (which is going up as you may have noticed by the price of oil being over $40 per barrel), administrator costs (his salary alone will be worth it) and air conditioning for the server room.
Think of a small CG effects movie company (say around 5 to 10 employees): They want to be able to render their CG movie frames as quickly as possible in order to save money, but don't have the capital to buy and maintain an expensive server room setup along with the requisite admin type to look after it. These machines provide and effective alternative: 1 or 2 of the 12 CPU machines for the guys who do the rendering of small snippets and 1 96 CPU unit as an office renderer for resource expensive renderers.
I truly feel for you, and can imagine that your life has also not been a total bed of roses. I also had numerous operations and long periods in hospital before getting my artificial hips.
Here's to wishing for a cure for us both!
Thanks a million. And to think they say there are no nice people on slashdot.
I have no idea if this phone was designed in Germany or in some outsourcing place in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, but it says, to my mind, a lot about the pressure the engineers and designers are under, in order to keep costs low and deadlines held. So much so that, in order for the phone to make it to market in time, some marketing fuckhead decided to skip the QA altogether.
I bet he's looking for a new job now.