Also, he seems to be the unwaivering center of a worldwide socio-political movement to protect your freedom and mine, sometimes at the cost of looking foolish to people who don't understand what he's doing.
No matter what OSS zealots might like to believe, GPL != "Freedom".
Remember that RMS *doesn't* really believe in less restrictive licenses like the BSDL, he tolerates them.
Just because they're a company doesn't mean they are required to be unethical shitheads that destroy entire industries because they have enough cash to do so.
Yes, it does. That's pretty much what public companies do. Fuck everyone else to maximise their profit.
What is it with you guys? Are you incapable of actually helping your customers (i.e., the people without whom you would be unemployed) fit a solution to their needs?
Yes. Which is why they usually[0] remain sysadmins instead of graudating up to consultants, architects, managers or CTOs.
[0] Thisis not to ignore the sysadmins who remain sysadmins because they want to, but still understand the concept of "service".
It's cute that you throw the word `cowboy' out there, like he's some sort of trigger happy renegade [...]
Seems like an appropriate term for someone who thinks it's a fine idea to upgrade production systems while they're in use.
... is perfectly safe to do while the system is in use, even if Thunderbird itself is in use right then.
Actually it may not be, and other comments in this thread have given examples of similar types of upgrades causing problems.
Now, comparing that to a service pack upgrade isn't really fair.
The issue is not the specific example, but the principles and thought processes behind it. Changing productions systems, while they're in production - particularly in the whip-the-tablecloth-out-from-underneath manner suggested - is just *asking* to get your arse kicked. I'm struggling to think of any justifiable reasons at all for doing it apart from "because I can and it works most of the time".
Just wait for the maintenance period. Murphy's Law dictates that one-in-a-hundred chance of it going wrong will happen at the worst possible time. Don't get into bad habits in the first place, and they won't get you into trouble in the future.
And on the issue of rebooting, if individual machine reboots are a problem for you, that's a great indicator your architecture isn't appropriate for your requirements.
But in any event, the Thunderbird upgrade done like this is perfectly safe. Most people don't do it that way (I do, but not most) but done that way is very nice. stow is a very simple and yet very convenient program for maintaing/usr/local like that.
Yes, I know about stow - the reason I make the comments I do is because I've used it myself to do the same thing in the past and been bitten doing so.
* Because Windows has traditionally been usable only from the console, Microsoft had to provide a sophisticated toolset for initiating and managing remote installations.
* There's no difference between local and remote access to a Unix system.
I've never understood why some people like to treat RDPing (or VNC, or whatever takes your fancy) into a Windows machine is any different to SSHing into a unix machine...
But a Unix admin can get a hell of a lot done with nothing more than some shell scripts and ssh, including things that the authors of the fancy GUIs never thought to implement.
The downside being, of course, that typically the *only* way a unix admin can get anything done is via some shell scripts and SSH...
Because neither are particularly intuitive if you've never used a mouse before.
Dragging is standard mouse usage.
Of course it is - once you've figured out how to do it. Which aspect of "discoverability" is difficult to understand ?
Right-click context menus are standard behavior for Windows and Linux desktops.
That doesn't mean they're easy to find.
The Windows UI guidelines specifically state that context menus are to be used as accelerators only, and that no functionality should be only exposed via a context menu. MacOS took some time to embrace context menus and even today, they're practically nonexistant. I assume - although I haven't read them - that KDE's and GNOME's UI guidelines have similar specifications.
The reason for this, is because context menus have - as I said - notoriously poor "discoverability".
As you point out yourself, double-clicking is hardly intuitive - it is simply the Windows way.
Stop using this as an excuse to exercise your bias. Double clicking is "the way" used (both presently and in the past) of the vast majority of every computer GUI ever made. It's not even *remotely* "the Windows way".
For icons, it makes more sense. It is not a matter of right or wrong - it's the way it is.
If you're trying to make a general statement, then no, it's not - as supported by my anecdotal evidence of personally preferring a double-click mechanism.
No, I said later, and I meant later. You were the one saying how all this had been proven by '97.
I didn't say anything had been "proven" by 1997. I said it had been tried out in Windows around 1997 and been soundly rejected by end users.
It was only a few years ago that KDE still had single-click activation. Apparently, the KDE developers (and I) still thought it was the better method.
OSS developers aren't exactly renowned for their HCI research. Even moreso back in that timeframe. UI features in OSS software tend to be a) what the developers want and/or b) what the technically-adept userbase wants.
That would more likely be a result of Apple's belief that mouse users have only one finger and that Apple systems ship with a one-button mouse.
If anything, Apple would be the *first* to start using a procedure that makes the UI easier.
Okay, your whole argument seems to be that MS received some negative feedback from beta testers.
No, my arguments are that Microsoft received negative feedback from just about everyone - beta testers, reviewers, end users (remember, this happened in the 1997 - 98 timeframe when IE was busily wiping the floor with netscape and doubling its userbase every couple of months), that the company known for careful HCI reserach and good UI and that usage of the single-click methodology - despite being an option in Windows for ~8 years - is extremely rare, all suggest that the vast majority of people do *not* think it is a better way.
There are also UI consistency problems. For example, if you can't single-click an icon without launching it, and right-clicking opens a context menu, how do you consistently deal with trying to select multiple non-contiguous icons (ie: Ctrl+clicking in Windows) ?
Well, some people just hate change. To me, single-click activation for icons (whether they are on the desktop or in the tray) seems more intuitive, and it's certainly more efficient. There is rarely a reason to "select" an icon, and I've yet to see one that couldn't be accomplished in another fashion.
Well, that's why the _option_ exists - for people who prefer it.
Just think how many clicks could be saved world-wide if single-clicking icons became the standard. All those saved fractional seconds could easily result in man-years of increased productivity. And then there's the reduction in repetitive stress injuries.:)
Ah, now this reminds of the standard Mac-zealot "how many clicks does it take to do this on Windows" "benchmarks":).
What possible manipulation is not available while using a two-button mouse and a right-click context menu or drag?
Don't move the goalposts.
Context menus and drag & drop are concepts with notoriously poor discoverability. Not that double-clicking is easy, but once that skill is learned, the "select, then manipulate" model of the desktop metaphor is consistent with it.
Quicklaunch buttons and the like are the exception - the inconsistency - not the rule.
Sure, I can cite a source - me.
This is about as valid as me saying you're wrong.
As a former (and sometimes still) Windows user, I thought the KDE single-click way was better, and KDE's usage was a lot later than '97.
I assume you mean "earlier" - and given the KDE project only started in late 1996, it couldn't have been much earlier than 1997 (KDE 1.0 was released 1998).
Cite a reputable source that says it's worse (other than your "Memphis" claim which I never heard of).
Sorry, I got my code names mixed up:
"Nashville" was the one I was thinking of - it was the name used for IE4 while it was in development (these development versions of IE4 and Windows were also bandied around warez groups as "Windows 96" and, later, "Windows 97"). This was the first integration of IE into Windows - particularly the UI - when they were trying to make everything look and feel like a web browser. So this was when the "single click launch" first reared its ugly head. A quick Google shows this page mentions it:
Internet conventions will be used throughout, so that a single mouse-click on an object--be it program shortcut, document shortcut or a filename in the file window--will start the originating application and load the file.
My memory is a bit hazy, but the first versions of "Nashville" were surfacing late 1997. That's when the first examples of "single click launching" on Windows would have been around.
I don't have any HCI research on hand about single-click launching, and I'm not going to waste hours researching something I really don't care about. However, I do remember quite well how unpopular it was during the IE4 betas and release - enough to have it changed to "off" as default by the time Windows 98 shipped. The fact that Apple has never tried it would also suggest their UI research indicated it was poorly received as well.
It's been an easily accessible option in Windows since IE4 was released and in bits of beta software since 1997 and talked about since 1996. If you can dig up either of the two official IE4 betas it's definitely on by default in them, and I'm pretty sure it was on by default in the initial release of IE4 as well.
You do raise a valid point - the double click *is* an unintuitive action. Learners *do* have trouble figuring it out.
However, once they do, being able to select objects without launching them is an important general behaviour. It's one of those cases where flexibility for the greater userbase wins out over simplicity for the learners.
Having the GUI use single-click by default merely enforces a consistent behavior across the system.
Only if you have the assumption that hyperlinks (or quicklaunch icons) == desktop icons. They don't. They look different. They're in a different place. They (typically) abstract different things (a shortcut - "pointer" - vs the actual object.
Everything on the desktop would use single-click. But if you use double-click (like Windows and OS X do), then you would have some things using double-click (icons on the desktop and filemanager) while others use single-click (links on websites, quick-launch-buttons). And it gets very confusing for users.
It's confusing until they learn to recognise the different types of UI objects (assuming someone bothers to try and teach them). The UI train wreck of the Dock makes the problem even worse, because the icons on it look just like the icons everywhere else, even though they don't behave the same way at all. At least in Windows there are some visual differences.
The problem with your reasoning is that you are using hyperlinks and quicklaunch icons as the rule, when they are the exception. The rule is that icons represent objects that need to be double clicked to open, the *exceptions* are elements like quicklaunch buttons and hyperlinks.
I have yet to find a way to upgrade Microsoft Windows packages that people are using at that moment without interrupting their work.
Changing production systems while they're in use is a fundamentally boneheaded thing to do. It's barely justifiable in bona fide emergencies, but as a SOP it's a bright red flag with "I am a bad sysadmin" written on it.
Luckily, my work was on the network, so I only lost half a day of work, but I lost a couple of days getting my machine back to the way it was, and I lost a bunch of misc files on my system that I probably couldn't get back.
The problem here is that your IT department is full of cowboys like the GP, who think it's "cool" to change production systems while they're in use.
I can even upgrade software people are using right at that moment (like rsyncing the newest thunderbird to/usr/local/thunderbird-1.0.7 while they use the thunderbird in/usr/local/thunderbird-1.0.6, and then moving the/usr/local/bin/thunderbird symbolic link to point to the new version).
In principle, this is a pretty stupid thing to do. Cowboys like you are how IT departments get a bad name.
On the windows side, I wander around bugging people to take an early lunch or whatever while I install/upgrade software on their machine.
Just because you don't know how to admin a Windows machine doesn't mean it can't be done.
At one point the KDE GUI seemed to be superior - you (the user) only needed to single-left-click an icon to start a program. Really, why would you wish to single-click an icon and have no reaction?
You do get an reaction - the icon is selected.
You don't always want to open something when you click on it. Sometimes (mostly, I'd wager) you just want to select it for further manipulation.
Why settle for a poor interface just because it's the Windows way? (No doubt there's a way to change KDE's default behavior, and perhaps someone will explain it.)
It wasn't changed because "it's the Windows way", it was changed because it makes more sense. Indeed, Windows tried the "single click to launch" way back in 1996-1997 or so, with "Memphis" (later became IE4) and it was soundly canned by pretty much everyone who used it. KDE copying this idea was not one of its smarter moments.
I'd be interested to see if you can cite any sources for "single-click" to be "better UI" (or even just a well-reasoned argument). Microsoft would have done the reasearch back when they tried it (and Apple probably did some on the same thing way back in the early 80s), but the results are probably not easy to find.
Even my iBook gets a brisk jogging pace up. It's not sprinting, but it's not doing so poorly either.
I wish I could say the same for my 1Ghz iBook, but quite frankly it's worthless for anything approaching "real work". Which is fine, as I only bought it for light on-the-road webbrowsing and email, getting photos off my digital camera and watching DVDs. However, I'd never describe OS X on my iBook as anything better than sluggish and from my (rather extensive) experience, it's the same on anything that isn't a G5 (or one of the new intel developer Macs).
I pity people who bought Mac Minis because their Mac using friends told them it would run OS X "fast".
Different strokes for different folks, however - what I call "sluggish" you may well call "fast". Indeed, from the OS X users I've known their idea of "fine" (typically talking about OS X on low end G4s or even G3s) is something I'd call "unusable".
I think college professors are overcompensated, so I'm going to take a seat in some of their classes without contributing a dime towards their income.
Against all odds, you've actually stumbled across a reasonable analogy. If you were talking about watching lectures online without being a paying student, it'd be perfect.
I also think that concerts cost too much, so I'm going to climb fences or break in through windows so I can get free entertainment. I mean, I just love some professors and some musicians - but as long as I don't have to look them directly in the eye, I can keep saying I like what they produce and still pretend like I'm teaching someone a lesson as I rip them off.
You need to calm down a bit.
Argue all you want. But your only ethical recourse is to stop doing business with those artists and the businesses they've chosen to represent them.
Where is the ethical problem with, say, downloading a song that's also been played on free to air radio ?
Don't pretend that you respect an artist enough to want them to entertain you, but then stop short of the one thing that artist is asking of you as you acquire your copies of what they work to produce.
I'm happy to pay for an artist to perform for me.
I'm less inclined to pay a copy of them performing that costs practically nothing to reproduce in effort on their part.
If you think the creators want to much for their time and creativity, walk away.
Oh, I don't think it's the creators at all.
The distributors, on the other hand...
But have the intellectual integrity to also walk away from their entertainment.
So for, say, Rosa Parks to have had "intellectual integrity", she shouldn't have gotten onto the bus at all ?
If you want to ignore their wishes, you must ignore your urge to run around with a copy of their work, too.
Then you might want to ask yourself who it is doing the compensation.
Consumers.
If consumers are paying the prices, then clearly they think the prices are fair.
I really do laugh every time someone brings up this line of reasoning when talking about people who copy music. Seriously, if they thought the prices were fair, do you think they'd be illegally downloading it ?
I think one of the reason Windows users are always complaining that using the mouse is slower than the keyboard is because putting the menu at the top of the window makes the mouse slower to use than if it were at the top of the screen.
No, its because "keyboardability" in Windows is excellent, whereas in MacOS (Classic or X) it's barely adequate.
The single menu bar is reasonable for single screens and relatively low multitasking loads, however, for multiple screens and high multitasking loads, it sucks. The MacOS GUI has never been particularly well designed for heavy multitasking (although Expose went a long way towards fixing that) and the overall sluggishness of OS X only exacerbates the basic problems.
(The Windows Taskbar suffers the same fault with multiple screens - as does the Dock - but since they're somewhat less important UI elements, the impact is smaller).
Now, if Apple had a handy little configuration setting that could put a menu bar and Dock on *every* screen, they'd get my attention.
(Smells a lot like a troll, but it's a quiet day so what the heck...)
Actually OSX works great on computers with a third of the power of a Mac Mini. Tiger is more than fine on my wife's 500Mhz iBook with just 300 megs of RAM.
That's a pretty loose definition of "fine".
(Which is to say, it might be "fine" for your wife, but it's not going to be "fine" for someone that hasn't had the bad luck to have been brainwashed into thinking the speed of OS X on a 500Mhz iBook is "fine").
And I saw a guy in the Apple Store today with a Wall Street edition Powerbook (read: under 300 MHz) and the tech was stunned to see how responsive and usable Tiger is on it.
The tech was probably awestruck that anyone could be masochistic enough to try and run OS X on a machine that old and slow. *Any* result that didn't require making a cup of coffee between clicking the mouse and getting a response would be "amazing".
I've used OS X on Macs like that Powerbook, and it's practically unusable. Heck, it's barely usable for anything more than trivial web browsing and email checking on my 1Ghz, 1.25GB RAM iBook (and it's also been upgraded with a 7200rpm hard disk, making it a damn fast 1Ghz iBook).
Fire up MacOS Classic on a Mac (assuming it's capable) if you want to see what "responsive" and "usable" really mean (shame about the stability and the multitasking).
So, aside from making assumptions and being misinformed, what was your point again?
Well, I'm quite well informed on OS X, having been tracking it's development since the NeXT acquistion and using it on a wide range of machines since it was still called Rhapsody.
OS X is dog slow on anything less than a G5. Even *with* a G5, you need a fairly fast one for the OS and GUI to be responsive and multitask well under any sort of "heavy" load.
Slashdot Mirror
No matter what OSS zealots might like to believe, GPL != "Freedom".
Remember that RMS *doesn't* really believe in less restrictive licenses like the BSDL, he tolerates them.
Yes, it does. That's pretty much what public companies do. Fuck everyone else to maximise their profit.
Thanks for that, looks very cool.
Yeah, because it's not like unix rootkits ever install their own versions of ps, top, et al, right ?
Yes. Which is why they usually[0] remain sysadmins instead of graudating up to consultants, architects, managers or CTOs.
[0] Thisis not to ignore the sysadmins who remain sysadmins because they want to, but still understand the concept of "service".
Seems like an appropriate term for someone who thinks it's a fine idea to upgrade production systems while they're in use.
Actually it may not be, and other comments in this thread have given examples of similar types of upgrades causing problems.
Now, comparing that to a service pack upgrade isn't really fair.
The issue is not the specific example, but the principles and thought processes behind it. Changing productions systems, while they're in production - particularly in the whip-the-tablecloth-out-from-underneath manner suggested - is just *asking* to get your arse kicked. I'm struggling to think of any justifiable reasons at all for doing it apart from "because I can and it works most of the time".
Just wait for the maintenance period. Murphy's Law dictates that one-in-a-hundred chance of it going wrong will happen at the worst possible time. Don't get into bad habits in the first place, and they won't get you into trouble in the future.
And on the issue of rebooting, if individual machine reboots are a problem for you, that's a great indicator your architecture isn't appropriate for your requirements.
But in any event, the Thunderbird upgrade done like this is perfectly safe. Most people don't do it that way (I do, but not most) but done that way is very nice. stow is a very simple and yet very convenient program for maintaing /usr/local like that.
Yes, I know about stow - the reason I make the comments I do is because I've used it myself to do the same thing in the past and been bitten doing so.
* There's no difference between local and remote access to a Unix system.
I've never understood why some people like to treat RDPing (or VNC, or whatever takes your fancy) into a Windows machine is any different to SSHing into a unix machine...
But a Unix admin can get a hell of a lot done with nothing more than some shell scripts and ssh, including things that the authors of the fancy GUIs never thought to implement.
The downside being, of course, that typically the *only* way a unix admin can get anything done is via some shell scripts and SSH...
Because neither are particularly intuitive if you've never used a mouse before.
Dragging is standard mouse usage.
Of course it is - once you've figured out how to do it. Which aspect of "discoverability" is difficult to understand ?
Right-click context menus are standard behavior for Windows and Linux desktops.
That doesn't mean they're easy to find.
The Windows UI guidelines specifically state that context menus are to be used as accelerators only, and that no functionality should be only exposed via a context menu. MacOS took some time to embrace context menus and even today, they're practically nonexistant. I assume - although I haven't read them - that KDE's and GNOME's UI guidelines have similar specifications.
The reason for this, is because context menus have - as I said - notoriously poor "discoverability".
As you point out yourself, double-clicking is hardly intuitive - it is simply the Windows way.
Stop using this as an excuse to exercise your bias. Double clicking is "the way" used (both presently and in the past) of the vast majority of every computer GUI ever made. It's not even *remotely* "the Windows way".
For icons, it makes more sense. It is not a matter of right or wrong - it's the way it is.
If you're trying to make a general statement, then no, it's not - as supported by my anecdotal evidence of personally preferring a double-click mechanism.
No, I said later, and I meant later. You were the one saying how all this had been proven by '97.
I didn't say anything had been "proven" by 1997. I said it had been tried out in Windows around 1997 and been soundly rejected by end users.
It was only a few years ago that KDE still had single-click activation. Apparently, the KDE developers (and I) still thought it was the better method.
OSS developers aren't exactly renowned for their HCI research. Even moreso back in that timeframe. UI features in OSS software tend to be a) what the developers want and/or b) what the technically-adept userbase wants.
That would more likely be a result of Apple's belief that mouse users have only one finger and that Apple systems ship with a one-button mouse.
If anything, Apple would be the *first* to start using a procedure that makes the UI easier.
Okay, your whole argument seems to be that MS received some negative feedback from beta testers.
No, my arguments are that Microsoft received negative feedback from just about everyone - beta testers, reviewers, end users (remember, this happened in the 1997 - 98 timeframe when IE was busily wiping the floor with netscape and doubling its userbase every couple of months), that the company known for careful HCI reserach and good UI and that usage of the single-click methodology - despite being an option in Windows for ~8 years - is extremely rare, all suggest that the vast majority of people do *not* think it is a better way.
There are also UI consistency problems. For example, if you can't single-click an icon without launching it, and right-clicking opens a context menu, how do you consistently deal with trying to select multiple non-contiguous icons (ie: Ctrl+clicking in Windows) ?
Well, some people just hate change. To me, single-click activation for icons (whether they are on the desktop or in the tray) seems more intuitive, and it's certainly more efficient. There is rarely a reason to "select" an icon, and I've yet to see one that couldn't be accomplished in another fashion.
Well, that's why the _option_ exists - for people who prefer it.
Just think how many clicks could be saved world-wide if single-clicking icons became the standard. All those saved fractional seconds could easily result in man-years of increased productivity. And then there's the reduction in repetitive stress injuries. :)
Ah, now this reminds of the standard Mac-zealot "how many clicks does it take to do this on Windows" "benchmarks" :).
Don't move the goalposts.
Context menus and drag & drop are concepts with notoriously poor discoverability. Not that double-clicking is easy, but once that skill is learned, the "select, then manipulate" model of the desktop metaphor is consistent with it.
Quicklaunch buttons and the like are the exception - the inconsistency - not the rule.
Sure, I can cite a source - me.
This is about as valid as me saying you're wrong.
As a former (and sometimes still) Windows user, I thought the KDE single-click way was better, and KDE's usage was a lot later than '97.
I assume you mean "earlier" - and given the KDE project only started in late 1996, it couldn't have been much earlier than 1997 (KDE 1.0 was released 1998).
Cite a reputable source that says it's worse (other than your "Memphis" claim which I never heard of).
Sorry, I got my code names mixed up:
"Nashville" was the one I was thinking of - it was the name used for IE4 while it was in development (these development versions of IE4 and Windows were also bandied around warez groups as "Windows 96" and, later, "Windows 97"). This was the first integration of IE into Windows - particularly the UI - when they were trying to make everything look and feel like a web browser. So this was when the "single click launch" first reared its ugly head. A quick Google shows this page mentions it:
My memory is a bit hazy, but the first versions of "Nashville" were surfacing late 1997. That's when the first examples of "single click launching" on Windows would have been around.
I don't have any HCI research on hand about single-click launching, and I'm not going to waste hours researching something I really don't care about. However, I do remember quite well how unpopular it was during the IE4 betas and release - enough to have it changed to "off" as default by the time Windows 98 shipped. The fact that Apple has never tried it would also suggest their UI research indicated it was poorly received as well.
It's been an easily accessible option in Windows since IE4 was released and in bits of beta software since 1997 and talked about since 1996. If you can dig up either of the two official IE4 betas it's definitely on by default in them, and I'm pretty sure it was on by default in the initial release of IE4 as well.
You do raise a valid point - the double click *is* an unintuitive action. Learners *do* have trouble figuring it out.
However, once they do, being able to select objects without launching them is an important general behaviour. It's one of those cases where flexibility for the greater userbase wins out over simplicity for the learners.
Having the GUI use single-click by default merely enforces a consistent behavior across the system.
Only if you have the assumption that hyperlinks (or quicklaunch icons) == desktop icons. They don't. They look different. They're in a different place. They (typically) abstract different things (a shortcut - "pointer" - vs the actual object.
Everything on the desktop would use single-click. But if you use double-click (like Windows and OS X do), then you would have some things using double-click (icons on the desktop and filemanager) while others use single-click (links on websites, quick-launch-buttons). And it gets very confusing for users.
It's confusing until they learn to recognise the different types of UI objects (assuming someone bothers to try and teach them). The UI train wreck of the Dock makes the problem even worse, because the icons on it look just like the icons everywhere else, even though they don't behave the same way at all. At least in Windows there are some visual differences.
The problem with your reasoning is that you are using hyperlinks and quicklaunch icons as the rule, when they are the exception. The rule is that icons represent objects that need to be double clicked to open, the *exceptions* are elements like quicklaunch buttons and hyperlinks.
This:
Use a bigger block size (a few megabytes at least - bs=4m) and performance will increase dramatically.
Changing production systems while they're in use is a fundamentally boneheaded thing to do. It's barely justifiable in bona fide emergencies, but as a SOP it's a bright red flag with "I am a bad sysadmin" written on it.
The problem here is that your IT department is full of cowboys like the GP, who think it's "cool" to change production systems while they're in use.
In principle, this is a pretty stupid thing to do. Cowboys like you are how IT departments get a bad name.
On the windows side, I wander around bugging people to take an early lunch or whatever while I install/upgrade software on their machine.
Just because you don't know how to admin a Windows machine doesn't mean it can't be done.
You do get an reaction - the icon is selected.
You don't always want to open something when you click on it. Sometimes (mostly, I'd wager) you just want to select it for further manipulation.
Why settle for a poor interface just because it's the Windows way? (No doubt there's a way to change KDE's default behavior, and perhaps someone will explain it.)
It wasn't changed because "it's the Windows way", it was changed because it makes more sense. Indeed, Windows tried the "single click to launch" way back in 1996-1997 or so, with "Memphis" (later became IE4) and it was soundly canned by pretty much everyone who used it. KDE copying this idea was not one of its smarter moments.
I'd be interested to see if you can cite any sources for "single-click" to be "better UI" (or even just a well-reasoned argument). Microsoft would have done the reasearch back when they tried it (and Apple probably did some on the same thing way back in the early 80s), but the results are probably not easy to find.
This is because Redhat are trying to run a business, not a charity.
You can with an OS as well - just not Windows.
I wish I could say the same for my 1Ghz iBook, but quite frankly it's worthless for anything approaching "real work". Which is fine, as I only bought it for light on-the-road webbrowsing and email, getting photos off my digital camera and watching DVDs. However, I'd never describe OS X on my iBook as anything better than sluggish and from my (rather extensive) experience, it's the same on anything that isn't a G5 (or one of the new intel developer Macs).
I pity people who bought Mac Minis because their Mac using friends told them it would run OS X "fast".
Different strokes for different folks, however - what I call "sluggish" you may well call "fast". Indeed, from the OS X users I've known their idea of "fine" (typically talking about OS X on low end G4s or even G3s) is something I'd call "unusable".
Against all odds, you've actually stumbled across a reasonable analogy. If you were talking about watching lectures online without being a paying student, it'd be perfect.
I also think that concerts cost too much, so I'm going to climb fences or break in through windows so I can get free entertainment. I mean, I just love some professors and some musicians - but as long as I don't have to look them directly in the eye, I can keep saying I like what they produce and still pretend like I'm teaching someone a lesson as I rip them off.
You need to calm down a bit.
Argue all you want. But your only ethical recourse is to stop doing business with those artists and the businesses they've chosen to represent them.
Where is the ethical problem with, say, downloading a song that's also been played on free to air radio ?
Don't pretend that you respect an artist enough to want them to entertain you, but then stop short of the one thing that artist is asking of you as you acquire your copies of what they work to produce.
I'm happy to pay for an artist to perform for me.
I'm less inclined to pay a copy of them performing that costs practically nothing to reproduce in effort on their part.
If you think the creators want to much for their time and creativity, walk away.
Oh, I don't think it's the creators at all.
The distributors, on the other hand...
But have the intellectual integrity to also walk away from their entertainment.
So for, say, Rosa Parks to have had "intellectual integrity", she shouldn't have gotten onto the bus at all ?
If you want to ignore their wishes, you must ignore your urge to run around with a copy of their work, too.
Consumers.
If consumers are paying the prices, then clearly they think the prices are fair.
I really do laugh every time someone brings up this line of reasoning when talking about people who copy music. Seriously, if they thought the prices were fair, do you think they'd be illegally downloading it ?
The so-called "free market".
One might argue that the "attitudes" are that the "creators" have been getting overcompensated...
You're *walking* OS X on a 466 G3. OS X doesn't "run" on anything short of a dual processor G5.
No, its because "keyboardability" in Windows is excellent, whereas in MacOS (Classic or X) it's barely adequate.
The single menu bar is reasonable for single screens and relatively low multitasking loads, however, for multiple screens and high multitasking loads, it sucks. The MacOS GUI has never been particularly well designed for heavy multitasking (although Expose went a long way towards fixing that) and the overall sluggishness of OS X only exacerbates the basic problems.
(The Windows Taskbar suffers the same fault with multiple screens - as does the Dock - but since they're somewhat less important UI elements, the impact is smaller).
Now, if Apple had a handy little configuration setting that could put a menu bar and Dock on *every* screen, they'd get my attention.
(Smells a lot like a troll, but it's a quiet day so what the heck...)
Actually OSX works great on computers with a third of the power of a Mac Mini. Tiger is more than fine on my wife's 500Mhz iBook with just 300 megs of RAM.
That's a pretty loose definition of "fine".
(Which is to say, it might be "fine" for your wife, but it's not going to be "fine" for someone that hasn't had the bad luck to have been brainwashed into thinking the speed of OS X on a 500Mhz iBook is "fine").
And I saw a guy in the Apple Store today with a Wall Street edition Powerbook (read: under 300 MHz) and the tech was stunned to see how responsive and usable Tiger is on it.
The tech was probably awestruck that anyone could be masochistic enough to try and run OS X on a machine that old and slow. *Any* result that didn't require making a cup of coffee between clicking the mouse and getting a response would be "amazing".
I've used OS X on Macs like that Powerbook, and it's practically unusable. Heck, it's barely usable for anything more than trivial web browsing and email checking on my 1Ghz, 1.25GB RAM iBook (and it's also been upgraded with a 7200rpm hard disk, making it a damn fast 1Ghz iBook).
Fire up MacOS Classic on a Mac (assuming it's capable) if you want to see what "responsive" and "usable" really mean (shame about the stability and the multitasking).
So, aside from making assumptions and being misinformed, what was your point again?
Well, I'm quite well informed on OS X, having been tracking it's development since the NeXT acquistion and using it on a wide range of machines since it was still called Rhapsody.
OS X is dog slow on anything less than a G5. Even *with* a G5, you need a fairly fast one for the OS and GUI to be responsive and multitask well under any sort of "heavy" load.