I assume you're basing this on the flawed claim below.
My claim is not flawed, it is a reflection of reality.
MY files are the most important to me. This is why my.profile et al stay chmodded -r unless I need to edit them.
Are you saying that the only files you have write access to *in your entire organisation* are the ones in your home directory ?
A cow-orker (six of which I share a PC with, since we do 24-7 coverage) loses his files, I could care less. A family member (four of which share my PC): same deal.
OTOH, they will probably care a great deal, because their files are most important to them.
Or, as I said, the most important files on the machine are inherently the most vulnerable.
Having to reconfigure and re-tweak the OS is a colossal pain in the ass (though occasionally serves as an incentive to do a full upgrade instead of just peicemeal security patching)
Not as colossal a pain in the arse having to recreate from scratch a decade's worth of data is (assuming it's even possible).
I must work and live in fantasy-land then.
No, merely an uncommon environment.
So, the only conclusion left would be that you're wrong.
I would be wrong if I had said single-machine, multiuser-environments were nonexistant. However, I did not, I merely said they were extremely uncommon - which they are. A typical environment is a number of single-user (or, less commonly, multi-user) desktops accessing one or more servers that hold data. By necessity, these users typically must be able to write to significant proportions of this data.
Or, in other words, in a typical environment malicious code running as a regular user is quite capable of widespread damage/to data that actually matters/.
They are now some plastic in plastic. These CDs/DVDs will last less than 10 years (and probably closer to 5).
Even that's pretty generous IMHO. In my experience, recent blank CDs (and DVDs) are lucky to make out 18 months, and many of mine are delaminating or corroding after only 12. I've now gotten into the habit of burning two copies of everything I "archive", and re-burning them every 12 months. Thus far I've had errors, but never errors in the same place on each copy.
Contrast this to the good old "Kodak Gold" CDs I was burning onto back in 1996, almost all of which are still readable with 0% errors...
Because those still can only effect user-owned files.
Ah, so only the most important files on the system, then ?
Other users will notice the system crawls during that time, then go about their business.
I know it's cool on/. to say this sort of thing, but out in the real world places that aren't running user:machine ratios of 1:1 are pretty rare. Or, in other words, there aren't many boxes out there where "only affecting one users files" is much of a relief, because each machine only has one user.
It's not really something you can have "proof" for - you can't measure culture. It's like saying "European women are sexier".
And it appears that Australia and the US have pretty similar levels of violent crime.
Indeed. The difference is that victims of violent crime in Australia end up walking home with a bloody nose, or maybe in hospital, and victims of violent crime in America end up in the morgue.
(Obviously that's a bit tongue in cheek, but it's probably why we have similar levels of violent crime but vastly different levels of homicides).
Unfortunately your link was broken (pasted the wrong link it looks like) so I can't comment on it directly, however, I suspect one of the reasons some rates are so similar and others are not is simply differing definitions/segmentations of crimes.
However, it certainly takes it outside the realms of a private discussion - ie: one you don't want anyone else to see.
From what I understand that email was circulated far and wide due to poor use of the "Reply All" facility. As far as I'm concerned, by definition that moves it outside of any sort of private discussion and into the realms of "public consumption". That is certainly the opinion I would have if I were on a jury involved in such a case.
Certainly, I'm sure it wasn't expected to feature in a newspaper - but if you circulate a flame war to an office full of people, you should have no expectation they won't forward it onto people outside the company, any more than you should expect them not to talk about a fight two people had at the water cooler than the entire office overheard. If you want your private affairs to stay private, then don't seek to make them public because you have an urge to demonstrate your "superiority" to the world.
For that matter, given the insecurity of email a third party within the company could easily have copied the email of the company's intranet and published it.
Heh, and you say *I* overestimate the intelligence of lawyers.
A few studies have been published showing the laws have made a slight improvement in the rate of shooting deaths but it's harder than you think to measure.
Harder ? Personally I think it'd be damn near impossible to find any sort of causative relationship between the two. There's simply too many other influential variables. As I said, cultural and societal influences have _vastly_ more to do with death rates than easy access to weapons.
I also notice that general crime statistics are wose than they were before the new gun laws. I consider that to be a *far* more relevant observation than how many people have been shot.
Common-sense says a nut can no longer go hunting humans on a whim, the nuts now have to plan ahead, not to mention the extreme difficulty in finding the firearms and ammo on our island continent.
Uh, not really. A "nut" could just go to their local gun club where their half dozen handguns are stored, walk out with them, walk into a cafe and start shooting people. Or from a good position in a busy urban environment, start picking off people with a rifle.
Or they could wander through a busy nightclub with a knife quietly stabbing people.
Making it difficult for a nut to shoot multiple people in a short space of time is what the Port Aurthur laws were designed to accomplish and I think they have worked well.
I'd imagine someone one with half a dozen 6-shot revolvers on hand could do a fair bit of damage in a crowded shopping centre, if they were so inclined.
And just to play devil's advocate, I bet they would do a lot less damage if 3/4 of the people in the shopping centre were similarly armed;).
I have to agree that gun control is largely a cultural thing, but not all of it.
*Gun control* is not the issue, *violence* is the issue. Guns are just a tool.
I've noticed anti-gun people like to do this - focus solely on the guns aspect and ignore the rest, as if gun ownership were completely independent of anything else that happens in society. They quote changes in gun death statistics, but ignore other crime statistics.
For example, statistically (in the US) shootings are roughly 5X more lethal than stabbings so more "heat of the moment" events (including suicide) end in death when there is a loaded gun in the top draw of the dresser. Those who survive a gun shot wound are 20X more likely to be permenantly disabled in some way compared to a stabbing victim.
No argument there, but what proportion of such "events" happen with guns vs knives ? What's the _big picture_, rather than just a tiny portion of it ? You can't deal with guns in isolation, their presence and availability (or lack thereof) will have _deep_ repercussions throughout all aspects of society.
I've not done any sort of in-depth analysis, but a very quick look at some stats from 1995 - 2001 seem ot indication that will guns deaths are down, homicides are steady, assaults are up significantly, sexual assaults are up robberies have nearly doubled. So while fewer people might be getting shot, roughly the same amount are getting killed, a lot more are getting hurt and a hell of a lot more are getting robbed.
I have lived in Oz for 40+ years and I think the Gun laws have kept pace with our culture over that time.
I believe that handguns should be allowed both in private residences and for people to carry on their persons - not that permits for either should be easy to get - for self-defense reasons. Personally I consider self-defense the single best argument for owning a gun, outside of "job requirements" (eg: farmer, professional hunter, professional sports shooting). IMHO the "go and shoot rabbits if I want to" is probably the least justifiable reason for wanting to own a firearm.
There are three parts to your system: sending mail, receiving mail, and storing mail. Keep them separate.
I would argue that should be sending, receiving, accessing, storing. I'm not so sure sending and receiving need to be separated either.
The storage system has the data partitioned out so that all the data for one user would go to one server while all the data for another will go to a different one.
Uh, sounds to me like you're suggesting a storage system for every user. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but it's what you wrote:).
The storage system also has to provide POP and IMAP access. You may want a special setup where the IMAP or POP service known which server to go to. Investigate having one giant virtual filesystem so that the system isn't too complicated.
You should separate where the mail is stored from where the mail is accessed. Ie: your IMAP and POP servers access a mail store on a SAN or NAS. Depending on load, things like Webmail might require yet another layer of separation (ie: Webmail <-> IMAP <-> Storage).
It's really important to separate the mail access system(s) from where the mail is actually stored, otherwise you are building a system with single points of failure and performance bottlenecks.
All of these systems will be running sendmail.
That would be an absolute nightmare. Postfix is just as functional and orders of magnitude easier to administer.
Although, as I've said elsewhere, if this palce really does have a million-seat Exchange environment, they're almost certainly not going to be able to replace that with Squirrelmail, IMAP and Postfix. Exchange does a hell of a lot more than just sending emails back and forth.
Then they'll realise how good they had it with Exchange.
Which highlights another issue - I'd struggle to believe an existing implementation of that scale was using Exchange _only_ for email, so you're not really looking for/just/ an email system, you're probably looking for a groupware solution as well.
This is not a trivial thing to implement, and you're highly unlikely to get much worthwhile advice from Slashdot.
That said, the place to start is a *real* requirements specification. You need to figure out what services you need to provide, to how many users and at what availability level(s) (note that difference services might have completely different userbases and requirements). Once you've done that, you have all the information you need to either research everything yourself (without using things like Ask Slashdot), or hire someone else to do it for you. But until you know exactly what it is you're trying to build, you shouldn't be asking for advice on how to build it.
Every time I tried doing a 'make package', it went through all of the dependencies and did a 'make install' on them, which did me exactly 0 good, as I wanted them in package format for installation on another system.
As far as they were concerned it was not for public consumption.
Well at least one of them must have sent it to a third party...
The terms scapegoat and shafted come to mind. I hope their legal action succeeds.
Given they work for a legal firm - who I wouldn't expect to fire people willy-nilly without taking consequences into account - I wouldn't be betting on them. I suspect there's more going on behind the scenes here, and my guess is it has something to do with abusing company resources other than just email.
Guns aren't "banned" in Australia. They're merely not as easy to get as they are in some other countries - and it's highly doubtful the knee-jerk response to Port Arthur has made this country any safer.
Some of the problems in America could not happen in Australia as a result. (Oops probably a flamewar in the making)
They're probably less likely to happen - but it's got nothing to do with guns and everything to do with culture and society. The plethora of examples of countries with high gun ownership rates and low[er] gun crime rates (and vice versa) demonstrate quite plainly that it's got nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with people. As was handily demonstrated by the recent anarchy and violence after Katrina hit.
America is simply a violent culture. If they weren't shooting each other, they'd be stabbing and bludgeoning each other. The problem isn't mechanical, it's social (just to keep those flames burning)...
It would be nice, however, if they would actually perform virus scans at given times, on given days, in the background. I don't think it would be too difficult or too much to ask for this to happen.
I think it would be quite difficult, from a practical perspective - not to mention a frighteningly massive security hole - for your BIOS was able to access every filesystem on your machine.
I think you'll also find that once the [protected mode] OS has booted, the BIOS is never used again anyway.
Well, Mac OS does have different representations of the filesystem (icon view vs. list view vs. column view), but at least it doesn't have fake alternative hierarchies (e.g. "My Computer").
Yes, it does (eg: the Desktop).
The Finder can be spatial, although it doesn't work reliably (mostly due to.DS_Store files). I personally hate spatial mode, though, so it doesn't bother me.
Actually, it can't. The [OSX] Finder is not a spatial file browser (the Classic MacOS Finder is).
Despite what seems to be common belief here, "spatial" and "open a window for every new folder" are not the same thing.
The tablet PC shows some promise, but it is strange that the tablet part isn't offered as a peripheral to an honest computer. I mean, a nice LCD monitor that you can write on with a stylus.
I can think of fewer ways more fatiguing for typical use than something like this. Certainly, there are cases where it might be a better interface, but for the typical email/web browsing/wordprocessing usage mix, having to move your hand all over a screen - particularly one in a vertical plane - to do stuff would very quickly lead to sore, cramped muscles and higher incidences of RSI.
Pen interfaces are tolerable for quickly accessing data, for entering small amounts of data (ie: PDAs) and for fine, direct manipulation of the cursor (eg: image manipulation), but for sustained, general interaction, they *suck*.
There's been no serious search for new interface devices that do the jobs a modern person does on a modern computer in a quick and easy manner.
Movies love to come up with whiz-bang flashy interfaces for computers, usually so people go "wow, wouldn't it be cool if we could use our computers like that" (eg: Minority Report). I've yet to see a single one that would work with real-life usage patterns.
Simple reason we keep the keyboard and mouse around is beacuse they work, and work quite well (same reason we keep the steering wheel around). About the only major improvement close to feasibility I can think of would be sensors that track eye movement to position the cursor and/or change UI focus, eliminating the mouse (and even then, I suspect it would be annoying to many). But, key layouts aside, the keyboard is an excellent input device.
And why does it switch from Tools to Edit in the Windows/Linux versions of Firefox?
Because their respective UI standards say it should be in those places (I assume Firefox on Linux is following one of the major GUI's UI standards).
An application should follow the rules of the UI it is running under, *NOT* it's own little set of UI rules that it made up. I don't expect Office on OS X to behave just like Office on Windows, I expect it to behave like any other OS X app.
There is no universal place for tweaking OS settings - yes I know the 'Control Pannel' is supposed to do that, but thing how much stuff is burried in right click menus elsewhere. I would take the OSX 'System Preferences' or Gnome's GUI's and the/etc dir any day.
I think that's rather unfair. All systems have various preferences and options for various things spread out in numerous locations.
Using the default install for most programs out there will give you a HUGELY cluttered start menu of installers/uninstallers/help files, organized in a bizzare heirarchy defined by the manufacturer (usualy company name->product->more junk)... I just want a fsking link to the program! KDE/Gnome did this right.
There's not really much the OS can do about this sort of thing - it's solely in the hands of the applications developers how they choose to create their entries in the Start Menu (or equivalents on other OSes). Heck, it's not uncommon with KDE and GNOME to not get a menu icon at all after installing something.
But for those lesser-used programs the options are either clutter your dock, or have to open and sort through the app folder every time.
This is yet another example of how the Dock was a UI train wreck and should never have been created. The workaround is to drag the Applications folder into your Dock - then you can right click it, and after the obligatory OS X UI sluggishness, pick any app from the popup menu.
Closing the last window of a program doesn't terminate the program - quite different than other OS's - and it means I have to rember apple-Q instead of clicking the x to actually quit.
The real UI problem here is that _sometimes_ closing an application's [last] window quites the app and sometimes it doesn't. I could handle things not quitting if *everything* behaved like that.
My version: abolish open/save dialogs and just use Finder/Explorer.
How are you planning on handling things like saving web pages and downloading files with some semblence of intuitiveness.
Or, to put it more generically, what's your UI going to be for saving data from within applications originating from outside the scope of the "local machine" ?
Pretty much what was done by IBM to Microsoft later, when one IBM team created specifications of MS-DOS and handed those over to another team that created the compatible DR-DOS based on those specifications without having been involved in the reverse engineering (or even having used MS-DOS at all, don't remember exactly).
IBM didn't make DR-DOS. IBM sold PC-DOS, which was just a very slightly modified version of MS-DOS they licensed from Microsoft.
Intel is right to an extent. AMD has always had trouble with production and all that.
Historically, AMD's biggest problem has always been decent supporting hardware (ie: motherboards - in particular, VIA chipsets), especially at the higher end.
Ironically, there are now a lot of kick-arse high end Opteron motherboards available, but much of the market has moved towards many low-powered machines rather than a small number of high powered machines - and there aren't any decent low-end Opteron motherboards (for server use, ie: with multiple PCI buses, or even PCI-X).
Slashdot Mirror
My claim is not flawed, it is a reflection of reality.
MY files are the most important to me. This is why my .profile et al stay chmodded -r unless I need to edit them.
Are you saying that the only files you have write access to *in your entire organisation* are the ones in your home directory ?
A cow-orker (six of which I share a PC with, since we do 24-7 coverage) loses his files, I could care less. A family member (four of which share my PC): same deal.
OTOH, they will probably care a great deal, because their files are most important to them.
Or, as I said, the most important files on the machine are inherently the most vulnerable.
Having to reconfigure and re-tweak the OS is a colossal pain in the ass (though occasionally serves as an incentive to do a full upgrade instead of just peicemeal security patching)
Not as colossal a pain in the arse having to recreate from scratch a decade's worth of data is (assuming it's even possible).
I must work and live in fantasy-land then.
No, merely an uncommon environment.
So, the only conclusion left would be that you're wrong.
I would be wrong if I had said single-machine, multiuser-environments were nonexistant. However, I did not, I merely said they were extremely uncommon - which they are. A typical environment is a number of single-user (or, less commonly, multi-user) desktops accessing one or more servers that hold data. By necessity, these users typically must be able to write to significant proportions of this data.
Or, in other words, in a typical environment malicious code running as a regular user is quite capable of widespread damage /to data that actually matters/.
Even that's pretty generous IMHO. In my experience, recent blank CDs (and DVDs) are lucky to make out 18 months, and many of mine are delaminating or corroding after only 12. I've now gotten into the habit of burning two copies of everything I "archive", and re-burning them every 12 months. Thus far I've had errors, but never errors in the same place on each copy.
Contrast this to the good old "Kodak Gold" CDs I was burning onto back in 1996, almost all of which are still readable with 0% errors...
Ah, so only the most important files on the system, then ?
Other users will notice the system crawls during that time, then go about their business.
I know it's cool on /. to say this sort of thing, but out in the real world places that aren't running user:machine ratios of 1:1 are pretty rare. Or, in other words, there aren't many boxes out there where "only affecting one users files" is much of a relief, because each machine only has one user.
It's not really something you can have "proof" for - you can't measure culture. It's like saying "European women are sexier".
And it appears that Australia and the US have pretty similar levels of violent crime.
Indeed. The difference is that victims of violent crime in Australia end up walking home with a bloody nose, or maybe in hospital, and victims of violent crime in America end up in the morgue.
(Obviously that's a bit tongue in cheek, but it's probably why we have similar levels of violent crime but vastly different levels of homicides).
Unfortunately your link was broken (pasted the wrong link it looks like) so I can't comment on it directly, however, I suspect one of the reasons some rates are so similar and others are not is simply differing definitions/segmentations of crimes.
However, it certainly takes it outside the realms of a private discussion - ie: one you don't want anyone else to see.
From what I understand that email was circulated far and wide due to poor use of the "Reply All" facility. As far as I'm concerned, by definition that moves it outside of any sort of private discussion and into the realms of "public consumption". That is certainly the opinion I would have if I were on a jury involved in such a case.
Certainly, I'm sure it wasn't expected to feature in a newspaper - but if you circulate a flame war to an office full of people, you should have no expectation they won't forward it onto people outside the company, any more than you should expect them not to talk about a fight two people had at the water cooler than the entire office overheard. If you want your private affairs to stay private, then don't seek to make them public because you have an urge to demonstrate your "superiority" to the world.
For that matter, given the insecurity of email a third party within the company could easily have copied the email of the company's intranet and published it.
Heh, and you say *I* overestimate the intelligence of lawyers.
You might also want to try man ports then :).
Harder ? Personally I think it'd be damn near impossible to find any sort of causative relationship between the two. There's simply too many other influential variables. As I said, cultural and societal influences have _vastly_ more to do with death rates than easy access to weapons.
I also notice that general crime statistics are wose than they were before the new gun laws. I consider that to be a *far* more relevant observation than how many people have been shot.
Common-sense says a nut can no longer go hunting humans on a whim, the nuts now have to plan ahead, not to mention the extreme difficulty in finding the firearms and ammo on our island continent.
Uh, not really. A "nut" could just go to their local gun club where their half dozen handguns are stored, walk out with them, walk into a cafe and start shooting people. Or from a good position in a busy urban environment, start picking off people with a rifle.
Or they could wander through a busy nightclub with a knife quietly stabbing people.
Making it difficult for a nut to shoot multiple people in a short space of time is what the Port Aurthur laws were designed to accomplish and I think they have worked well.
I'd imagine someone one with half a dozen 6-shot revolvers on hand could do a fair bit of damage in a crowded shopping centre, if they were so inclined.
And just to play devil's advocate, I bet they would do a lot less damage if 3/4 of the people in the shopping centre were similarly armed ;).
I have to agree that gun control is largely a cultural thing, but not all of it.
*Gun control* is not the issue, *violence* is the issue. Guns are just a tool.
I've noticed anti-gun people like to do this - focus solely on the guns aspect and ignore the rest, as if gun ownership were completely independent of anything else that happens in society. They quote changes in gun death statistics, but ignore other crime statistics.
For example, statistically (in the US) shootings are roughly 5X more lethal than stabbings so more "heat of the moment" events (including suicide) end in death when there is a loaded gun in the top draw of the dresser. Those who survive a gun shot wound are 20X more likely to be permenantly disabled in some way compared to a stabbing victim.
No argument there, but what proportion of such "events" happen with guns vs knives ? What's the _big picture_, rather than just a tiny portion of it ? You can't deal with guns in isolation, their presence and availability (or lack thereof) will have _deep_ repercussions throughout all aspects of society.
I've not done any sort of in-depth analysis, but a very quick look at some stats from 1995 - 2001 seem ot indication that will guns deaths are down, homicides are steady, assaults are up significantly, sexual assaults are up robberies have nearly doubled. So while fewer people might be getting shot, roughly the same amount are getting killed, a lot more are getting hurt and a hell of a lot more are getting robbed.
I have lived in Oz for 40+ years and I think the Gun laws have kept pace with our culture over that time.
I believe that handguns should be allowed both in private residences and for people to carry on their persons - not that permits for either should be easy to get - for self-defense reasons. Personally I consider self-defense the single best argument for owning a gun, outside of "job requirements" (eg: farmer, professional hunter, professional sports shooting). IMHO the "go and shoot rabbits if I want to" is probably the least justifiable reason for wanting to own a firearm.
Canada has higher per-capita gun ownership than America and a much lower homicide rate.
Switzerland is another good example of high levels of gun ownership and low levels of violent crime.
Conversely, Japan has very low gun ownership, but high rates of homicide, assault and suicide.
Or, as I keep trying to say, IT'S NOT THE GUNS, IT'S THE PEOPLE.
I would argue that should be sending, receiving, accessing, storing. I'm not so sure sending and receiving need to be separated either.
The storage system has the data partitioned out so that all the data for one user would go to one server while all the data for another will go to a different one.
Uh, sounds to me like you're suggesting a storage system for every user. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but it's what you wrote :).
The storage system also has to provide POP and IMAP access. You may want a special setup where the IMAP or POP service known which server to go to. Investigate having one giant virtual filesystem so that the system isn't too complicated.
You should separate where the mail is stored from where the mail is accessed. Ie: your IMAP and POP servers access a mail store on a SAN or NAS. Depending on load, things like Webmail might require yet another layer of separation (ie: Webmail <-> IMAP <-> Storage).
It's really important to separate the mail access system(s) from where the mail is actually stored, otherwise you are building a system with single points of failure and performance bottlenecks.
All of these systems will be running sendmail.
That would be an absolute nightmare. Postfix is just as functional and orders of magnitude easier to administer.
Although, as I've said elsewhere, if this palce really does have a million-seat Exchange environment, they're almost certainly not going to be able to replace that with Squirrelmail, IMAP and Postfix. Exchange does a hell of a lot more than just sending emails back and forth.
Which highlights another issue - I'd struggle to believe an existing implementation of that scale was using Exchange _only_ for email, so you're not really looking for /just/ an email system, you're probably looking for a groupware solution as well.
This is not a trivial thing to implement, and you're highly unlikely to get much worthwhile advice from Slashdot.
That said, the place to start is a *real* requirements specification. You need to figure out what services you need to provide, to how many users and at what availability level(s) (note that difference services might have completely different userbases and requirements). Once you've done that, you have all the information you need to either research everything yourself (without using things like Ask Slashdot), or hire someone else to do it for you. But until you know exactly what it is you're trying to build, you shouldn't be asking for advice on how to build it.
Same way they backed up 40MB drives 15 years ago...
make package-recursive
Well at least one of them must have sent it to a third party...
The terms scapegoat and shafted come to mind. I hope their legal action succeeds.
Given they work for a legal firm - who I wouldn't expect to fire people willy-nilly without taking consequences into account - I wouldn't be betting on them. I suspect there's more going on behind the scenes here, and my guess is it has something to do with abusing company resources other than just email.
Guns aren't "banned" in Australia. They're merely not as easy to get as they are in some other countries - and it's highly doubtful the knee-jerk response to Port Arthur has made this country any safer.
Some of the problems in America could not happen in Australia as a result. (Oops probably a flamewar in the making)
They're probably less likely to happen - but it's got nothing to do with guns and everything to do with culture and society. The plethora of examples of countries with high gun ownership rates and low[er] gun crime rates (and vice versa) demonstrate quite plainly that it's got nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with people. As was handily demonstrated by the recent anarchy and violence after Katrina hit.
America is simply a violent culture. If they weren't shooting each other, they'd be stabbing and bludgeoning each other. The problem isn't mechanical, it's social (just to keep those flames burning)...
I think it would be quite difficult, from a practical perspective - not to mention a frighteningly massive security hole - for your BIOS was able to access every filesystem on your machine.
I think you'll also find that once the [protected mode] OS has booted, the BIOS is never used again anyway.
Well, Mac OS does have different representations of the filesystem (icon view vs. list view vs. column view), but at least it doesn't have fake alternative hierarchies (e.g. "My Computer").
Yes, it does (eg: the Desktop).
The Finder can be spatial, although it doesn't work reliably (mostly due to .DS_Store files). I personally hate spatial mode, though, so it doesn't bother me.
Actually, it can't. The [OSX] Finder is not a spatial file browser (the Classic MacOS Finder is).
Despite what seems to be common belief here, "spatial" and "open a window for every new folder" are not the same thing.
I can think of fewer ways more fatiguing for typical use than something like this. Certainly, there are cases where it might be a better interface, but for the typical email/web browsing/wordprocessing usage mix, having to move your hand all over a screen - particularly one in a vertical plane - to do stuff would very quickly lead to sore, cramped muscles and higher incidences of RSI.
Pen interfaces are tolerable for quickly accessing data, for entering small amounts of data (ie: PDAs) and for fine, direct manipulation of the cursor (eg: image manipulation), but for sustained, general interaction, they *suck*.
There's been no serious search for new interface devices that do the jobs a modern person does on a modern computer in a quick and easy manner.
Movies love to come up with whiz-bang flashy interfaces for computers, usually so people go "wow, wouldn't it be cool if we could use our computers like that" (eg: Minority Report). I've yet to see a single one that would work with real-life usage patterns.
Simple reason we keep the keyboard and mouse around is beacuse they work, and work quite well (same reason we keep the steering wheel around). About the only major improvement close to feasibility I can think of would be sensors that track eye movement to position the cursor and/or change UI focus, eliminating the mouse (and even then, I suspect it would be annoying to many). But, key layouts aside, the keyboard is an excellent input device.
Because their respective UI standards say it should be in those places (I assume Firefox on Linux is following one of the major GUI's UI standards).
An application should follow the rules of the UI it is running under, *NOT* it's own little set of UI rules that it made up. I don't expect Office on OS X to behave just like Office on Windows, I expect it to behave like any other OS X app.
There is no universal place for tweaking OS settings - yes I know the 'Control Pannel' is supposed to do that, but thing how much stuff is burried in right click menus elsewhere. I would take the OSX 'System Preferences' or Gnome's GUI's and the /etc dir any day.
I think that's rather unfair. All systems have various preferences and options for various things spread out in numerous locations.
Using the default install for most programs out there will give you a HUGELY cluttered start menu of installers/uninstallers/help files, organized in a bizzare heirarchy defined by the manufacturer (usualy company name->product->more junk)... I just want a fsking link to the program! KDE/Gnome did this right.
There's not really much the OS can do about this sort of thing - it's solely in the hands of the applications developers how they choose to create their entries in the Start Menu (or equivalents on other OSes). Heck, it's not uncommon with KDE and GNOME to not get a menu icon at all after installing something.
But for those lesser-used programs the options are either clutter your dock, or have to open and sort through the app folder every time.
This is yet another example of how the Dock was a UI train wreck and should never have been created. The workaround is to drag the Applications folder into your Dock - then you can right click it, and after the obligatory OS X UI sluggishness, pick any app from the popup menu.
Closing the last window of a program doesn't terminate the program - quite different than other OS's - and it means I have to rember apple-Q instead of clicking the x to actually quit.
The real UI problem here is that _sometimes_ closing an application's [last] window quites the app and sometimes it doesn't. I could handle things not quitting if *everything* behaved like that.
How are you planning on handling things like saving web pages and downloading files with some semblence of intuitiveness.
Or, to put it more generically, what's your UI going to be for saving data from within applications originating from outside the scope of the "local machine" ?
Slow down there, tiger. "Fossil fuels" are used for a hell of a lot more things than powering cars. Making plastics and fertilizer, for example.
When[/if] they oil crunch *really* arrives, the difficulty in fuelling cars will probably be one of the /smaller/ problems.
FYI (from the rsync man page):
IBM didn't make DR-DOS. IBM sold PC-DOS, which was just a very slightly modified version of MS-DOS they licensed from Microsoft.
In theory, maybe. Practically speaking it's always a crime because common business practices are illegal if you're a monopoly.
Historically, AMD's biggest problem has always been decent supporting hardware (ie: motherboards - in particular, VIA chipsets), especially at the higher end.
Ironically, there are now a lot of kick-arse high end Opteron motherboards available, but much of the market has moved towards many low-powered machines rather than a small number of high powered machines - and there aren't any decent low-end Opteron motherboards (for server use, ie: with multiple PCI buses, or even PCI-X).