Hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management are vocational courses of study. There are only so many places at universities, so someone has to be excluded.
So why should the "someones" have to be the ones without testicles, as opposed to, say, the ones with the lower entrance exam test scores?
1) Want to make me mad? Announce 77 of fucking something then not detail what those 77 things are! Argh!
TFA doesn't have a full list, but they give as examples "English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management".
But I think most of us are being too "ethnocentric" here. If this is their culture then that is all there is to it. As a sovereign nation they are deciding (for whatever reasons) that women should not be in those fields.
Who are "they"? As TFA states, "The new policy has also been criticised by Iranian parliamentarians, who summoned the deputy science and higher education minister to explain.", so "they" doesn't include at least some members of "their" parliament. It also doesn't include rather a lot of citizens of that nation, given that a lot of Iranian women have gone into those fields in the past.
Note that previously they were allowed, the change is due to the reality of the workplace - they aren't being hired. So in one regard you can see it as "helpful" to steer women away from certain failure within their culture as it would literally be a waste of their time and talent and end up not benefiting anyone.
"They aren't being hired", according to TFA, in two or so of the 77 fields in question:
The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.
Nothing was said in TFA about women not being hired in the other 75 or so fields.
Sure most of us in the west would prefer that the women be given the choice to pursue whatever they desire academically, but that's just us. And it isn't up to us.
It's not "up to us" in the sense that we don't have a veto on the actions of the Iranian government, but there's no good reason whatsoever for "us" not to object to it. (I'm assuming here that you didn't just construct the article to mock extreme cultural relativism; if you did, just let my criticisms pass through directly to any extreme cultural relativists who would agree with what was stated in your post.)
Um, yes. Did you even read my post? I mean, all the way to the end?
Yes, to both questions - and no, that's not inconsistent with my pointing out that it's not all wiring.
Here's the second half:
Neither inclination seems to have much to do with how good either sex is at science and engineering in general, nor even how good a particular member of one sex might be at a particular job.
Note, "inclination".
My point was to note that even the inclination isn't completely hard-wired (as stated by the authors) - what part of it comes from wiring is further reinforced by socialization. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the socialization were reduced or removed.
Wait, Title IX is Islamic? I knew that Obama was a Muslim.
Well, if an Islamic (or Christian or Jewish or...) institution were to argue that the requirements of 20 USC 1681, which is the the first part of changes to the U. S. Code introduced by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, "would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization", then those requirements wouldn't apply to that institution, so I guess it's at least accommodating to Muslims (and Christians and Jews and...).
It's not "Islamic" in the sense of the sex discrimination DarkOx says is holding back the Islamic world, though, given that 20 USC 1681 starts out saying "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance", which is banning sex discrimination.
I do trust that serious/critical bugs will get fixed almost immediately (sometimes even the same day a discovery is made) versus other vendors that can take months or years to fix (if they ever fix it at all, Microsoft is an example here, dunno about Apple.)
So what's the typical difference between time-of-developer-being-informed and time-of-fix for, say, Firefox or $PICK_YOUR_DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENTS_PDF_VIEWER or $PICK_YOUR_OTHER_FREE_SOFTWARE_BROWSER? This particular PDF vulnerability was reported to the vendor (the Xpdf developers, presumably) on 2007-10-17, and a KDE fix was announced on 2007-11-07, so that delta was about 3 weeks.
You really should be careful about constructing sexual stereotypes from things like differences in general natural preferences, aptitudes and behaviours though. It's dangerous and probably at least partially responsible for some of society's most unjust problems.
And, as the paper in question (from two girl, not boy, scientists:-)) notes:
There is considerable evidence that sex differences in toy preferences reflect postnatal social experience as well as innate factors (see, e.g., Hines, 2004; Ruble et al., 2006). Influences of socialization are suggested by studies showing that parents, peers and teachers encourage girls and boys to play with sex-typical toys, and discourage boys in particular from playing with cross-gendered toys (Fagot & Patterson, 1969; Fagot, 1978; Fagot & Hagan, 1991; Langlois & Downs, 1980; Lytton & Romney, 1991; Pasterski et al., 2005). In addition, children respond to information that objects (e.g., xylophones or balloons of a particular color) are for girls or for boys, by showing a preference for the ones labelled as for their own sex (Masters et al., 1979). They also are more likely to prefer objects after observing models of their own sex choose them, and these effects are again particularly marked in boys (Masters et al., 1979; Perry & Bussey, 1979). Thus, sex differences in children’s toy preferences appear to be multiply determined; innate influences are augmented by social encouragement, particularly in boys.
(emphasis mine), i.e. there's wiring but it's not all wiring.
(BTW, if anybody's curious why vervet monkey boys have more of a preference for car toys than vervet monkey girls, see the speculation at the end of section 4.1 of their earlier paper; tl;dr version is "males hunt for food or mates so they're into motion and stuff that can be moved", rather than "males are wired to go for wheeled vehicles invented millions of years after they evolved".)
Of course, women should be _allowed_ to study and choose their careers, and be judged fairly by their employers, but it just happens that they usually prefer being a psychologist or a nurse or a teacher than being a combat soldier.
I rather suspect most men, given a chance, would prefer those jobs to being a combat soldier as well, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were more men than women who preferred "combat soldier" to those other jobs.
No OS or software is ever 100% secure. But the notion that Linux isn't targeted for lack or market share ignores the enterprise server market and the internet (where Linux does have significant market share). Linux proves to be far more secure in perhaps the most important markets.
I'm not sure what "the internet" is as a market. Are you referring to Internet-facing servers (other than enterprise servers)? Pwning a server is a different process from pwning a desktop/laptop machine.
And frequently, the attack vectors on OS X and Linux are largely the same as Windows (browser plugins, PDFs, etc).
...hence my comment
"Linux" really means "a desktop Linux distribution", and includes not only the kernel but a ton of libraries and applications. Do you trust the desktop environments that mass-market desktop Linux machines are likely to be running?
I.e., "butbutbut it's UN*X" doesn't help as much here as one might want. The "core OS" parts of Windows NT are "multi-user" in the same way that the "core OS" parts of UN*Xes are, but a lot of the insecurity is at the layer of stuff running atop those parts, and, as they're running as you, they're trusted by the "core OS" parts to have access to your data (modulo, for example, sandboxing of the sort being done in OS X, and perhaps SELinux-style stuff).
(Another popular attack vector for Windows is Internet-facing server processes; not making quite so heavy use of DCE RPC, UN*Xes such as OS X and Linux distributions don't have quite so many of them, but I suspect Microsoft may have done a fair bit of work trying to close those holes.)
I know this is meant as a joke, but the reality is that Linux truly is ready for the desktop right this second.
...
6. Linux is secure. You don't have to worry about viruses, spyware, etc. You spend your time using your computer as opposed to fixing your computer.
Better hope Linux isn't too desktop-ready then, so that it doesn't get a big enough market share to get the same big "pwn me" target on its back that OS X is getting....
(And if you're going to argue that it's inherently secure, and will never get viruses, spyware, etc., better make sure you didn't miss something. Remember, in this context, "Linux" really means "a desktop Linux distribution", and includes not only the kernel but a ton of libraries and applications. Do you trust the desktop environments that mass-market desktop Linux machines are likely to be running?)
You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple? Yes, you can download apps from sources that aren't the App Store - but they still have to be signed, otherwise, it either will refuse to run or lie to you and say that the app is "damaged" and you should "drag it to the trash."
What the fuck? I have never EVER seen that with non app store programs on any Mac I own, and I've been running Mountain lion dev copies, then retail, for almost all of this year.
Are those apps that were installed before you started running Mountain Lion builds with Gatekeeper? If so, they either didn't ever have the "quarantine" flag set or it got cleared the first time you launched them under an OS that didn't have Gatekeeper, so Gatekeeper, not seeing the "quarantine" flag, figured they were OK.
Or are they apps that were installed by some mechanism other than downloading over the Intertubes? If so, the quarantine flag didn't get set, so Gatekeeper, not seeing the "quarantine" flag,....
The error message is when trying to open an unidentified app is
Depends on the app. The app I know doesn't work under Mountain Lion with the "this app is damaged and should be moved to the trash" is Minecraft.
However, that's a lie. If you run it from the command line (via Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub), it runs just fine. The problem is with Gatekeeper.
The problem with Gatekeeper might be that, for example, it has no clue about Java apps and its signature-checking code gets confused and thinks that they're damaged. That would be an example of what would be called "a bug" in Gatekeeper.
Just out of curiosity, what does an ls -R on Minecraft.app show?
You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple? Yes, you can download apps from sources that aren't the App Store - but they still have to be signed, otherwise, it either will refuse to run or lie to you and say that the app is "damaged" and you should "drag it to the trash."
This is complete bullshit. At no point does this ever, ever happen.
Actually, if the app isn't from the App Store or signed by a registered developer, and you try to launch it by double-clicking the app, with the default Gatekeeper setting it will refuse to launch it. You'd have to override that.
Whether it says it's "damaged" is another matter. That claim has been made in the pages pointed to by the Google search posted by the person to whom I assume you're responding (your entire post was inside quote tags; I assume that was an unintended extra level of quoting), but none of the stuff I looked at showed any evidence that the apps that got that error weren't damaged.
The 'warnings' and 'lies' you describe have yet to be seen by me..
Here, let me Google that for you. Amusingly Google autocompleted that for me from "app is d," so it's not exactly an uncommon error. Generally speaking, the app is not damaged when you get that error - it just isn't Apple-blessed.
So are the developers of that "App Store" app planning on becoming registered developers and signing the app?:-)
That message doesn't necessarily mean "not Apple-blessed"; sometimes it means "damaged or incomplete". Perhaps most of the time it means that, so that, "generally speaking", it is damaged.
Note that the "Mountain Lion: Damaged and Cannot be Opened FIX" video shows that, once you turn off Gatekeeper, it does let you run PwnageTool (unlikely to be blessed by Apple as it's a jailbreaking tool for iOS:-)), for which the message says nothing about damage, but doesn't show you whether Minecraft works after you turn off Gatekeeper - perhaps it doesn't, because perhaps the problem with the Minecraft app he has is that the executable image file really truly is damaged.
If you try and run it through the command line, it'll run just fine.
...which suggests that Gatekeeper is part of Launch Services rather than XNU.
Which kind of disproves the idea that Gatekeeper is about security, if all it takes to bypass it is fork() and exec().
So what program is going to do a {v}fork/exec or posix_spawn to launch it? And would Gatekeeper, in its default setting, keep that program from running? Perhaps the goal was to keep, for example, drive-by downloads from getting launched automatically, but not to keep nerds from running arbitrary executable images?
How about this: a "mobile device" is one that you actually use while in motion. I use a phone or tablet while moving around, but almost never use a laptop while moving around.
Define "moving around". I've used my laptop while on an airplane; does that count as "moving around"? I could imagine using it on a train as well, and possibly on a bus. I've used my smarphone while walking and while traveling in an automobile; if I had a tablet, I might use it in an automobile (or on a plane or bus or train), but I'm not sure I'd use it while walking; I've occasionally used a laptop in a car, but probably wouldn't do so on a regular basis.
So what's different about "in motion"?
The mere fact that you're not in a fixed location, so location-based services might be more interesting and might give different results between two instants separated by a relatively short period of time? If so, in what ways would that affect a user interface, and would any of those ways favor The User Interface Formerly Known As Metro, or the iOS or Android user interface, or...?
The fact that, for some forms of motion, you're not sitting down in a space with plenty of elbow room, so that the machine's screen may be limited in size, and you might not have enough room for a full-sized keyboard, much less a mouse or trackpad? (Think walking and perhaps riding in a car, bus, or some types of train or airplane such as a commuter train or plane.) That would affect the UI.
The fact that, for some forms of motion, you're not sitting down at all, and that you probably have to watch where you're going? (Think walking.) That might affect the UI in ways that the former might not.
So maybe the UIs for three different types of machine you might use while moving relative to the surface of the planet you're on - smartphone, tablet, and laptop computer - might be different? As ceoyoyo said:
Small screen devices like smart phones pretty much need to have things full screen, even if it's just a confirmation dialog. On a notebook or desktop computer that would obviously (obvious except to MS I guess) be highly irritating. On tablets it's irritating too - notice that Android on tablets doesn't (always) use that UI paradigm and iPads don't either. Apple specifically told all their developers not to use the navigation bar screen to screen interface design on the iPad but rather to use things like split views and popup dialogs/menus. The floating split view window in the portrait orientation on an iPad is very similar in form to the start menu.
so it's not even 100% obvious that a smartphone and a tablet should have the same UI paradigm (and, in fact, as ceoyoyo indicates, on neither Android nor iOS do they, in fact, use the exact same UI paradigm), much less obvious that either of them should have the same UI paradigm as a laptop.
So which one of "smartphone UI", "tablet UI", and "laptop UI" defines this "mobile paradigm"? And what are the essential elements of it, and what parts of the particular flavor of "in motion" used to define a "mobile device" constrain the device and UI paradigm in such a way that those become the essential elements (whatever they might be - touch screen? Small screen? The active app, if any, is the only app on the screen? etc.)?
A mobile paradigm is the user interface paradigm for a mobile device. What's a mobile device? See above.
OK, I get it. If I look above, I see an article that says:
Lines between "mobile" and "PC" are pretty arbitrary. Does an Android tablet suddenly become non-mobile because it's got a 10-inch screen, bigger than many laptops? No, because it's Android, which follows a mobile paradigm. As does Windows 8.
so a "mobile device" is a device whose user interface follows a "mobile paradigm", so both "mobile device" and "mobile UI paradigm" are defined in terms of each other, and the circular definition means both terms are meaningless BS, i.e. marketing crap rather than something worthy of use in a technical discussion.
Re: "someone related to the development of one of the first graphical interfaces for computers".... gimme a break! It's not like Alan Kay made the comment. Other than simply working at PARC, how is this person related to the early days of GUIs? LinkedIn says she started college in 1990, therefore probably born around 1972-1973.
Windows 8 is the only shared core...? What about OSX and iOS? I understand there is a lot of commonality between those.
There is, but the commonality doesn't include UI stuff - AppKit and UIKit are different APIs, even if Foundation and Core Foundation and assorted other frameworks and libraries down to libc^WlibSystem are largely common. I think his point is that even the Metro UI stuff is shared between tablet and desktop/laptop Windows 8 (and maybe Windows Phone 8 as well).
Lines between "mobile" and "PC" are pretty arbitrary. Does an Android tablet suddenly become non-mobile because it's got a 10-inch screen, bigger than many laptops? No, because it's Android, which follows a mobile paradigm. As does Windows 8.
What is "a mobile paradigm"? If it has nothing to do with whether you can carry a device with you, or whether you're likely to carry a device with you, there's nothing "mobile" about the paradigm, it's just somebody's idea about how UIs should work.
I'm astounded - surely the issue here isn't a question of what you as the heavily manipulated consumer are getting for your money. What about the (at the least) *millions* of tonnes of electronic junk this kind of throwaway product is producing?
Well, if it's specifically referring to the Retina MacBook Pro, the question is "how much extra electronic junk will it produce over its lifetime?", as probably relatively few of them have been thrown away at this point. If it includes all laptops that don't have replaceable versions of components that are frequently replaced, the question is the same, but, as they've been around longer, we might have a better handle on that number.
The answer depends on:
how often people would need to upgrade the machine (I kept my old MacBook Pro, maxed out at 4GB of memory, for about 4 1/2 years before replacing it with a new Retina MBP, maxed out at 16GB of memory, but maybe I'm not the typical case and people swap out their laptops more often);
how often the old machine is passed on to a new user who doesn't impose as much of a load on the machine, rather than being discarded.
I don't know what the answer to those questions is.
Is the problem being ignored because it is always exported to some country you'll never have to visit?
Ifthis statement from Apple is true, "country" should perhaps have the "r" removed, as it claims that "All e-waste collected by Apple-controlled voluntary and regulatory programs worldwide is processed in the region in which it was collected.", so, whilst it might be exported to another county in the US, it sounds as if it won't be sent outside the US were I to hand the old machine to Apple if it were recycled rather than refurbished and resold. Whether that statement is true or is greenwashing is another matter, however.
I have the impression that the major issue with recycling of the components of a Retina MBP is with the battery, and that the issue with the battery is whether it can be removed and recycled; it appears that opinions differ on that.
hmm common sense would dictate pretty seriously that being able to replace the battery would be manditory for a laptop since they are anticipated to only have a 2 - 4 year life at best. plopping 3 grand down for the latest shiney to be shot in the knee because the battery died and it ends up costing as much as just replacing the laptop to fix it
...which is, fortunately, off by about a factor of 10 for the Retina MacBook Pro (in the US, it costs about USD 200 to replace the battery, for a factor of 15 if your Retina MBP cost USD 3000).
In particular, here's what's offered for replacement of batteries in MacBooks Pro with built-in batteries (a category that includes the Retina MBP). "A replacement battery can be purchased directly from Apple. The price of the replacement battery includes installation of your new battery and environmentally responsible disposal of your depleted battery.", and the battery for the Retina MBP costs USD 199, CAD 209, EUR 199 (including VAT - does that mean that it costs EUR 199 plus whatever your country charges as value-added tax?), CHF 219 (including VAT), GBP 159 (including VAT), JPY 17800 (including taxes), AUD 229 (including GST), and RMB 1498 (including VAT). As for how long it takes:
Length of time to complete the battery replacement will depend upon the repair location and availability of service stock. In general, the following replacement times apply:
Apple Retail Store
Depending on inventory availability this may be replaced the same day. Make a reservation to meet us at the Genius Bar.
Apple Mail-in (United States and Japan only)
3 - 4 business days after shipment of unit to depot.
Apple Authorized Service Provider ("AASP")
Please contact an AASP in your region for specific turnaround times.
It's true, the CPU is "sealed" (one can upgrade the memory, drive if really necessary).
Drive, yes. Memory, well, it's soldered to the system board - can one safely un-solder the memory chips and solder in replacements? Apparently the iFixit people don't think so.
god, i could imagine a trademark violation, but a patent?
The "t" in "uspto.gov" stands for "trademark"; the "p" does stand for "patent", but not everything issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is a patent - some of them are, not surprisingly, trademarks. The item I cited is a trademark.
Also, are they sealed how? With glue or something?
No, the Retina MacBooks Pro aren't sealed. They're screwed together with screws with special pentalobe "slots" that require special screwdrivers. The battery, however, is glued in.
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Hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management are vocational courses of study. There are only so many places at universities, so someone has to be excluded.
So why should the "someones" have to be the ones without testicles, as opposed to, say, the ones with the lower entrance exam test scores?
1) Want to make me mad? Announce 77 of fucking something then not detail what those 77 things are! Argh!
TFA doesn't have a full list, but they give as examples "English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management".
But I think most of us are being too "ethnocentric" here. If this is their culture then that is all there is to it. As a sovereign nation they are deciding (for whatever reasons) that women should not be in those fields.
Who are "they"? As TFA states, "The new policy has also been criticised by Iranian parliamentarians, who summoned the deputy science and higher education minister to explain.", so "they" doesn't include at least some members of "their" parliament. It also doesn't include rather a lot of citizens of that nation, given that a lot of Iranian women have gone into those fields in the past.
Note that previously they were allowed, the change is due to the reality of the workplace - they aren't being hired. So in one regard you can see it as "helpful" to steer women away from certain failure within their culture as it would literally be a waste of their time and talent and end up not benefiting anyone.
"They aren't being hired", according to TFA, in two or so of the 77 fields in question:
Nothing was said in TFA about women not being hired in the other 75 or so fields.
Sure most of us in the west would prefer that the women be given the choice to pursue whatever they desire academically, but that's just us. And it isn't up to us.
It's not "up to us" in the sense that we don't have a veto on the actions of the Iranian government, but there's no good reason whatsoever for "us" not to object to it. (I'm assuming here that you didn't just construct the article to mock extreme cultural relativism; if you did, just let my criticisms pass through directly to any extreme cultural relativists who would agree with what was stated in your post.)
"i.e. there's wiring but it's not all wiring."
Um, yes. Did you even read my post? I mean, all the way to the end?
Yes, to both questions - and no, that's not inconsistent with my pointing out that it's not all wiring.
Here's the second half:
Note, "inclination".
My point was to note that even the inclination isn't completely hard-wired (as stated by the authors) - what part of it comes from wiring is further reinforced by socialization. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the socialization were reduced or removed.
Wait, Title IX is Islamic? I knew that Obama was a Muslim.
Well, if an Islamic (or Christian or Jewish or...) institution were to argue that the requirements of 20 USC 1681, which is the the first part of changes to the U. S. Code introduced by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, "would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization", then those requirements wouldn't apply to that institution, so I guess it's at least accommodating to Muslims (and Christians and Jews and...).
It's not "Islamic" in the sense of the sex discrimination DarkOx says is holding back the Islamic world, though, given that 20 USC 1681 starts out saying "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance", which is banning sex discrimination.
I do trust that serious/critical bugs will get fixed almost immediately (sometimes even the same day a discovery is made) versus other vendors that can take months or years to fix (if they ever fix it at all, Microsoft is an example here, dunno about Apple.)
So what's the typical difference between time-of-developer-being-informed and time-of-fix for, say, Firefox or $PICK_YOUR_DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENTS_PDF_VIEWER or $PICK_YOUR_OTHER_FREE_SOFTWARE_BROWSER? This particular PDF vulnerability was reported to the vendor (the Xpdf developers, presumably) on 2007-10-17, and a KDE fix was announced on 2007-11-07, so that delta was about 3 weeks.
Here's a good one to start with though: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2643016/.
You really should be careful about constructing sexual stereotypes from things like differences in general natural preferences, aptitudes and behaviours though. It's dangerous and probably at least partially responsible for some of society's most unjust problems.
And, as the paper in question (from two girl, not boy, scientists :-)) notes:
(emphasis mine), i.e. there's wiring but it's not all wiring.
(BTW, if anybody's curious why vervet monkey boys have more of a preference for car toys than vervet monkey girls, see the speculation at the end of section 4.1 of their earlier paper; tl;dr version is "males hunt for food or mates so they're into motion and stuff that can be moved", rather than "males are wired to go for wheeled vehicles invented millions of years after they evolved".)
Of course, women should be _allowed_ to study and choose their careers, and be judged fairly by their employers, but it just happens that they usually prefer being a psychologist or a nurse or a teacher than being a combat soldier.
I rather suspect most men, given a chance, would prefer those jobs to being a combat soldier as well, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were more men than women who preferred "combat soldier" to those other jobs.
No OS or software is ever 100% secure. But the notion that Linux isn't targeted for lack or market share ignores the enterprise server market and the internet (where Linux does have significant market share). Linux proves to be far more secure in perhaps the most important markets.
I'm not sure what "the internet" is as a market. Are you referring to Internet-facing servers (other than enterprise servers)? Pwning a server is a different process from pwning a desktop/laptop machine.
And frequently, the attack vectors on OS X and Linux are largely the same as Windows (browser plugins, PDFs, etc).
...hence my comment
I.e., "butbutbut it's UN*X" doesn't help as much here as one might want. The "core OS" parts of Windows NT are "multi-user" in the same way that the "core OS" parts of UN*Xes are, but a lot of the insecurity is at the layer of stuff running atop those parts, and, as they're running as you, they're trusted by the "core OS" parts to have access to your data (modulo, for example, sandboxing of the sort being done in OS X, and perhaps SELinux-style stuff).
(Another popular attack vector for Windows is Internet-facing server processes; not making quite so heavy use of DCE RPC, UN*Xes such as OS X and Linux distributions don't have quite so many of them, but I suspect Microsoft may have done a fair bit of work trying to close those holes.)
I know this is meant as a joke, but the reality is that Linux truly is ready for the desktop right this second.
...
6. Linux is secure. You don't have to worry about viruses, spyware, etc. You spend your time using your computer as opposed to fixing your computer.
Better hope Linux isn't too desktop-ready then, so that it doesn't get a big enough market share to get the same big "pwn me" target on its back that OS X is getting....
(And if you're going to argue that it's inherently secure, and will never get viruses, spyware, etc., better make sure you didn't miss something. Remember, in this context, "Linux" really means "a desktop Linux distribution", and includes not only the kernel but a ton of libraries and applications. Do you trust the desktop environments that mass-market desktop Linux machines are likely to be running?)
You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple? Yes, you can download apps from sources that aren't the App Store - but they still have to be signed, otherwise, it either will refuse to run or lie to you and say that the app is "damaged" and you should "drag it to the trash."
What the fuck? I have never EVER seen that with non app store programs on any Mac I own, and I've been running Mountain lion dev copies, then retail, for almost all of this year.
Are those apps that were installed before you started running Mountain Lion builds with Gatekeeper? If so, they either didn't ever have the "quarantine" flag set or it got cleared the first time you launched them under an OS that didn't have Gatekeeper, so Gatekeeper, not seeing the "quarantine" flag, figured they were OK.
Or are they apps that were installed by some mechanism other than downloading over the Intertubes? If so, the quarantine flag didn't get set, so Gatekeeper, not seeing the "quarantine" flag, ....
The error message is when trying to open an unidentified app is
Depends on the app. The app I know doesn't work under Mountain Lion with the "this app is damaged and should be moved to the trash" is Minecraft.
However, that's a lie. If you run it from the command line (via Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub), it runs just fine. The problem is with Gatekeeper.
The problem with Gatekeeper might be that, for example, it has no clue about Java apps and its signature-checking code gets confused and thinks that they're damaged. That would be an example of what would be called "a bug" in Gatekeeper.
Just out of curiosity, what does an ls -R on Minecraft.app show?
You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple? Yes, you can download apps from sources that aren't the App Store - but they still have to be signed, otherwise, it either will refuse to run or lie to you and say that the app is "damaged" and you should "drag it to the trash."
This is complete bullshit. At no point does this ever, ever happen.
Actually, if the app isn't from the App Store or signed by a registered developer, and you try to launch it by double-clicking the app, with the default Gatekeeper setting it will refuse to launch it. You'd have to override that.
Whether it says it's "damaged" is another matter. That claim has been made in the pages pointed to by the Google search posted by the person to whom I assume you're responding (your entire post was inside quote tags; I assume that was an unintended extra level of quoting), but none of the stuff I looked at showed any evidence that the apps that got that error weren't damaged.
The 'warnings' and 'lies' you describe have yet to be seen by me..
Here, let me Google that for you. Amusingly Google autocompleted that for me from "app is d," so it's not exactly an uncommon error. Generally speaking, the app is not damaged when you get that error - it just isn't Apple-blessed.
So are the developers of that "App Store" app planning on becoming registered developers and signing the app? :-)
That message doesn't necessarily mean "not Apple-blessed"; sometimes it means "damaged or incomplete". Perhaps most of the time it means that, so that, "generally speaking", it is damaged.
Note that the "Mountain Lion: Damaged and Cannot be Opened FIX" video shows that, once you turn off Gatekeeper, it does let you run PwnageTool (unlikely to be blessed by Apple as it's a jailbreaking tool for iOS :-)), for which the message says nothing about damage, but doesn't show you whether Minecraft works after you turn off Gatekeeper - perhaps it doesn't, because perhaps the problem with the Minecraft app he has is that the executable image file really truly is damaged.
If you try and run it through the command line, it'll run just fine.
...which suggests that Gatekeeper is part of Launch Services rather than XNU.
Which kind of disproves the idea that Gatekeeper is about security, if all it takes to bypass it is fork() and exec().
So what program is going to do a {v}fork/exec or posix_spawn to launch it? And would Gatekeeper, in its default setting, keep that program from running? Perhaps the goal was to keep, for example, drive-by downloads from getting launched automatically, but not to keep nerds from running arbitrary executable images?
How about this: a "mobile device" is one that you actually use while in motion. I use a phone or tablet while moving around, but almost never use a laptop while moving around.
Define "moving around". I've used my laptop while on an airplane; does that count as "moving around"? I could imagine using it on a train as well, and possibly on a bus. I've used my smarphone while walking and while traveling in an automobile; if I had a tablet, I might use it in an automobile (or on a plane or bus or train), but I'm not sure I'd use it while walking; I've occasionally used a laptop in a car, but probably wouldn't do so on a regular basis.
So what's different about "in motion"?
The mere fact that you're not in a fixed location, so location-based services might be more interesting and might give different results between two instants separated by a relatively short period of time? If so, in what ways would that affect a user interface, and would any of those ways favor The User Interface Formerly Known As Metro, or the iOS or Android user interface, or...?
The fact that, for some forms of motion, you're not sitting down in a space with plenty of elbow room, so that the machine's screen may be limited in size, and you might not have enough room for a full-sized keyboard, much less a mouse or trackpad? (Think walking and perhaps riding in a car, bus, or some types of train or airplane such as a commuter train or plane.) That would affect the UI.
The fact that, for some forms of motion, you're not sitting down at all, and that you probably have to watch where you're going? (Think walking.) That might affect the UI in ways that the former might not.
So maybe the UIs for three different types of machine you might use while moving relative to the surface of the planet you're on - smartphone, tablet, and laptop computer - might be different? As ceoyoyo said:
so it's not even 100% obvious that a smartphone and a tablet should have the same UI paradigm (and, in fact, as ceoyoyo indicates, on neither Android nor iOS do they, in fact, use the exact same UI paradigm), much less obvious that either of them should have the same UI paradigm as a laptop.
So which one of "smartphone UI", "tablet UI", and "laptop UI" defines this "mobile paradigm"? And what are the essential elements of it, and what parts of the particular flavor of "in motion" used to define a "mobile device" constrain the device and UI paradigm in such a way that those become the essential elements (whatever they might be - touch screen? Small screen? The active app, if any, is the only app on the screen? etc.)?
A mobile paradigm is the user interface paradigm for a mobile device. What's a mobile device? See above.
OK, I get it. If I look above, I see an article that says:
so a "mobile device" is a device whose user interface follows a "mobile paradigm", so both "mobile device" and "mobile UI paradigm" are defined in terms of each other, and the circular definition means both terms are meaningless BS, i.e. marketing crap rather than something worthy of use in a technical discussion.
Re: "someone related to the development of one of the first graphical interfaces for computers" .... gimme a break! It's not like Alan Kay made the comment. Other than simply working at PARC, how is this person related to the early days of GUIs? LinkedIn says she started college in 1990, therefore probably born around 1972-1973.
I.e., born around the time Xerox PARC first started thinking about workstations with GUIs.
Windows 8 is the only shared core...? What about OSX and iOS? I understand there is a lot of commonality between those.
There is, but the commonality doesn't include UI stuff - AppKit and UIKit are different APIs, even if Foundation and Core Foundation and assorted other frameworks and libraries down to libc^WlibSystem are largely common. I think his point is that even the Metro UI stuff is shared between tablet and desktop/laptop Windows 8 (and maybe Windows Phone 8 as well).
Lines between "mobile" and "PC" are pretty arbitrary. Does an Android tablet suddenly become non-mobile because it's got a 10-inch screen, bigger than many laptops? No, because it's Android, which follows a mobile paradigm. As does Windows 8.
What is "a mobile paradigm"? If it has nothing to do with whether you can carry a device with you, or whether you're likely to carry a device with you, there's nothing "mobile" about the paradigm, it's just somebody's idea about how UIs should work.
I'm astounded - surely the issue here isn't a question of what you as the heavily manipulated consumer are getting for your money. What about the (at the least) *millions* of tonnes of electronic junk this kind of throwaway product is producing?
Well, if it's specifically referring to the Retina MacBook Pro, the question is "how much extra electronic junk will it produce over its lifetime?", as probably relatively few of them have been thrown away at this point. If it includes all laptops that don't have replaceable versions of components that are frequently replaced, the question is the same, but, as they've been around longer, we might have a better handle on that number.
The answer depends on:
I don't know what the answer to those questions is.
Is the problem being ignored because it is always exported to some country you'll never have to visit?
If this statement from Apple is true, "country" should perhaps have the "r" removed, as it claims that "All e-waste collected by Apple-controlled voluntary and regulatory programs worldwide is processed in the region in which it was collected.", so, whilst it might be exported to another county in the US, it sounds as if it won't be sent outside the US were I to hand the old machine to Apple if it were recycled rather than refurbished and resold. Whether that statement is true or is greenwashing is another matter, however.
I have the impression that the major issue with recycling of the components of a Retina MBP is with the battery, and that the issue with the battery is whether it can be removed and recycled; it appears that opinions differ on that.
hmm common sense would dictate pretty seriously that being able to replace the battery would be manditory for a laptop since they are anticipated to only have a 2 - 4 year life at best. plopping 3 grand down for the latest shiney to be shot in the knee because the battery died and it ends up costing as much as just replacing the laptop to fix it
...which is, fortunately, off by about a factor of 10 for the Retina MacBook Pro (in the US, it costs about USD 200 to replace the battery, for a factor of 15 if your Retina MBP cost USD 3000).
http://www.apple.com/batteries/replacements.html
In particular, here's what's offered for replacement of batteries in MacBooks Pro with built-in batteries (a category that includes the Retina MBP). "A replacement battery can be purchased directly from Apple. The price of the replacement battery includes installation of your new battery and environmentally responsible disposal of your depleted battery.", and the battery for the Retina MBP costs USD 199, CAD 209, EUR 199 (including VAT - does that mean that it costs EUR 199 plus whatever your country charges as value-added tax?), CHF 219 (including VAT), GBP 159 (including VAT), JPY 17800 (including taxes), AUD 229 (including GST), and RMB 1498 (including VAT). As for how long it takes:
It's true, the CPU is "sealed" (one can upgrade the memory, drive if really necessary).
Drive, yes. Memory, well, it's soldered to the system board - can one safely un-solder the memory chips and solder in replacements? Apparently the iFixit people don't think so.
god, i could imagine a trademark violation, but a patent?
The "t" in "uspto.gov" stands for "trademark"; the "p" does stand for "patent", but not everything issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is a patent - some of them are, not surprisingly, trademarks. The item I cited is a trademark.
Also, I'm curious, can't you solder new memory in the Retina macs?
I'm not sure how hard it would be to un-solder the memory and solder new memory in; the iFixit people say "As in the MacBook Air, the RAM is soldered to the logic board. Max out at 16GB now, or forever hold your peace—you can't upgrade.", which seems to suggest that unless you're cleverer than the iFixit folks, the answer to your question may be "no, you can't".
Also, are they sealed how? With glue or something?
No, the Retina MacBooks Pro aren't sealed. They're screwed together with screws with special pentalobe "slots" that require special screwdrivers. The battery, however, is glued in.