But I don't particularly support music companies because they regularly screw over artists. This is not justification for stealing music, just an interesting fact that no one is suing the recording industry for the theft they've done...
As far as justifying the music I steal:), that is easy, downloading music has nothign to do with what music I buy. If anything, it allows me to hear a wider variety of music and probably influences me to buy more CDs (cuz I don't buy it unless I know it's good, except for zappa).
Well I won't flame, but I will disagree. You can't make a movie out of LotR and try to make it 'great' by adding your own flair. The fans wouldn't stand for it.
No, your only hope is to be as faithful to the book as possible, which I would say is a greater challenge then creating a new movie. So if this is done as well as every reviewer I've read seems to think then it is indeed a truly _great_ movie.
In a word, NO. There's absolutely no reason why there can't be Linux distributions for all levels of users--this is a rationalization by hackers who don't want to deal with "lusers."
That's a good point which I think I convinced myself of by the time I was done writing my first post.
So maybe I should ammend myself to say that providing the plethora of options that linux does makes creating a simplified linux much harder than creating the equivalent Windows system.
Sure, if all linux had an infallible installation API that could be guaranteed to work without ever needing to be tweaked, then creating a 'Simple Linux' would be a piece of cake. After all, that's what Windows does.
Of course, the reason things are this way is because open-source projects encourage excellence in code whereas closed-source software encourages excellence in interface (since that's all the user will see). I would guess while hackers were busy making Linux
rock-solid in the 90s, Microsoft was hacking together half-assed Windows code to support their Marketing and Interface Design departments master plans.
Anyone who's ever coded under a budget knows that there's the 'right' way to do things, and the 'cheap' way. Linux doesn't accept compromises, so it shouldn't unexpected that it will take longer to achieve the same high-level cohesiveness of financially-motivated software projects.
In short, I expect Linux GUIs to catch up in a few years.
Which begs the question. What is intelligence, and would we recognize an intellect based on completely different life experience from our own?
Hell, if consciousness is just a byproduct of a complex system, we would never know it because there would be no way to relate to such a system. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is some kind of life sharing the same planet with us that we never noticed because it functions on a completely different level.
Well, they've known about microbes in varying climates for a while. What I'm more curious about is non-H20 based life. Has anyone made any postulations about such life?
It strikes me as rather narcissistic to believe that the definition of life is somehow rooted to the way things worked out on this planet...
Can anyone think of any other substances that behave as dynamically as water in different temperature ranges?
I see this is a two-pronged issue. On one side we have the familiar/. argument that M$' dominance is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy based on its existing monopoly. Of course people are more familiar with it because it's ubiquitous.
The other issue is whether hackers WANT to make Linux as easy and straightforward as Windows. I think the reality has to be faced that _choice_ means a certain level of complexity, and complexity is a burden to ease-of-use. I would argue that the very advantage Windows has for the common user is diametrically opposed to the goal of Linux hackers everywhere which is to make the system as robust as possible.
That said, I don't think it's impossible for Linux to break into the desktop market. All that is needed is for GUI developers to start emphasizing Windows-like functionality that makes it easy for newbies to pick up the OS. I think that the current problem is that these goals have only come to be emphasized recently.
I think the reason M$ is so scared of Linux recently has to do with the fact that Linux isn't dependent on winning this battle anytime soon. It doesn't have earnings report deadlines or any other interest in profitability. It can simply keep chugging along until one day it is suddenly winning...
Anyway, no you are completely missing the point. As I tried to explain, I hate M$ as much as the next geek, but this isn't a Microsoft issue. The trivial amount of marketshare this report might cost them is not worth the fear that such reports will cause in the public.
If by your comment about communism you mean that not reporting on this would be an act of a 'repressive regime' you are blowing it way out of proportion. Why not just set the terrorist free in Times Square with a megaphone? Free publicity for a terrorist's comments is exactly what they want, and they use it to spread lies in order to generate more fear. A lot cheaper then hijacking a plane.
Also, what do you mean by "communist"? The government calls whatever regime it wants repressive based on whatever it wants to do. Do you really think our government is morally superior to any other government? Well, maybe a handful, but basically we do whatever the hell we want, and the government uses propaganda to make us feel better about screwing other people over. Our moral crusading in the name of 'freedom' is mostly just oil interests and political maneuvering. It's not that we're worse than any other government, but some would say the richest country in the world has some moral obligations that extend beyond those of the poorest country.
When you say 'the public has a right to know a number of things that many ppl seem to be forgetting about', what are you referring to? I don't see it as a matter of rights. It's easy to say we have a right to know x, y and z, but what about information we have a right NOT to know? If printing something is going to make people needlessly scared, and perhaps damage the economy as a result, then I would say we have a right NOT to hear that information, much as I should have the right NOT to have explicit pornography mailed to my inbox.
Your idealistic concept of rights sounds awfully righteous for the reality of the situation. What's the benefit of knowing this to you?
Aside from the improbabilities of such a claim, it strikes me that this is pretty irresponsible reporting.
When journalists hear about these stories, they should ask themselves: a) Is there any reason why the public needs to know this? b) Will any harm be done by publishing this?
I can not think of a better way to play into the terrorists hands then print these trivialities. Yes, Microsoft should have been informed of this, but what does the public at large care?
As much as I would like to see fewer Windows users, I don't see this is a legitimate means to that end, and I can't see any other outcomes from printing this story.
Aside from the obvious compromises that must be made to achieve decent framerates, I think playability requires design decisions that are more complex than just realistic vs oversimplified physics.
The challenge in game design is figuring out how you want it to feel, then determining what kind of physics model best achieves that.
Take a game like Gran Turismo 3... the greatness comes from an extremely realistic physics model. But that same principle shouldn't be applied to all games. Grand Theft Auto 3 is an equally great game that uses oversimplified physics to make the game flow better.
I think one of the greatest games is Halo, which for those of you who haven't played is a FPS with vehicles. The physics aren't overly realistic. Inverse kinematics are used to give a sense of realism, but gravity, traction and flight are decidedly unrealistic in the interests of playability.
Halo also has fantastic controls which illustrates another good point, which is that physics are just the tip of the iceberg on playability. More important are the ergonomics of the controls. One other thing that's also more important than physics in my mind is environment robustness. There needs to be a critical mass of weapons/enemies/missions/goals/secrets to keep things interesting.
I checked out the website, but it seems mostly incomplete. I am particularly interested in comparisons with Sorenson on Mac OS.
Sadly in today's world success in a venture like this depends largely on marketing, but I think the/. community (if not IT purchasers at large) is primarly concerned with the quality of the codec. Can existing codecs be beaten across the board when they seem to be optimized for different platforms?
Geeks code for the love of code, if they can convince VCs to give em money to do what they love then good for them.
It sounded to me like they started this company during the tech bubble, but I think they were just trying to cash in on the side. The real goal seems to have been the codec itself. I don't see where they made a mistake.
Here's my vision for the future. This won't really be possible in 20 years unless we somehow come to terms with the evil that is perpetrated by letting corporations be 'citizens'. But I think it's a nice idea anyway.
As manufacturing technology increases and physical needs become easier and easier to meet, the most advanced country will be the one with the most advanced information. Allowing greedy business men to step in and buy rights to content so that they can milk it for easy money is not only somewhat disgusting to writers/artists/musicians, but also counterproductive when we are trying to advance the state of information. To think that selling something for more money adds to the GDP is an indicator of the sad state our capitalist system is in.
Information has more VALUE (remember value != money when things are easily duplicable) when it's widely disseminated for everyone to have access to it. Therefore, if we want to protect content creators rights and still maximize productivity, we need a system that involves no corporations skimming off the top. I would favor a system where there is a free distribution mechanism, and a reliable 'dividend' system whereby end-users could donate directly to the content creator. The system would work even better I think, if there was a general fund coming from tax dollars where each citizen had a set amount of money that they could earmark for different content creators. This would truly let the people decide what is worth paying for. The implementation is far beyond any current technology though... we couldn't even begin to think in this sort of mindset until we get real campaign finance reform and GET CORPORATIONS THE FUCK OUT OF GOVERNMENT. Thank u
This is a great thread. My view on the subject is that OS X does have the potential to take some market share from open source OSes.
If Apple somehow gained Microsoft-like market share I would be truly concerned. I think almost any company would do unsavory things with that kind of market power.
Ultimately, however, I am convinced that OS X will do much more to harm M$ than linux. Why? Because massive market share is something that's greatest benefits are to companies like M$ that are just trying to profit. In the open-source community, market share may help a project gain testing and credibility, but the goal is to make great software, not get rich. The way I see it, open source hackers are open source hackers, if they get drawn off of a certain project, it is most likely because there is something more interesting/better to work on. The value in open-source software is the hours these people have put into it, and thanks to the open source nature, that value will always be present for free, no matter what product happens to have the current lead in marketshare.
The only way I could see linux users losing out is if somehow all the open source hackers got hired to write proprietary software full-time (meaning 80 hours a week, cuz I think most of them already work 40:), which I think depends on factors that have nothing to do with OS X.
Its funny that such a huge issue has been made out of how slow OS X is. Yeah, it's slow.
The funny thing is people comparing it to Win 2000 or even Mac OS 9. How can you make an objective statement like "it's way slower"? After using OS X for a few weeks without booting into 9.1, I was shocked at how slow 9.1 can be. Sure it accomplishes tasks in a shorter amount of time, but you also have to sit and wait for those tasks to be completed.
The fact that something takes longer on OSX is a moot point since I can work in another app without losing responsiveness. The performance trade-off for pre-emptive multi-tasking is well worth it to me.
I'm glad there is so much feedback to Apple about how to make OS X better, and it sounds like they're listening. Certainly OS X has a long way to go before it can be considered a refined OS. For myself, however, OS X is everything I had hoped for and more (Photoshop+BBEdit+BSD=150% web design productivity). It's so perfect for me, that I no longer worry about Apple staying afloat. Ironically the OS is so good that I don't care if it attracts new customers. I am considering buying some Apple stock, however, as I can only see OS X gaining market share.
Well Apple's optical mouse they ship with the G4s works pretty good for me, but that's beside the point.
The decision to stick with a one button mouse is a UI design decision. More buttons doesn't necessarily mean better. Sure for power users you really want more buttons, but I just don't see it as that big of an issue. I always have a finger close enough to the control key to get contextual menus anyway...
Why don't people complain that the PC has one less modifier key than Macs? The Windows key is completely useless, and so Photoshop work is significantly more time-consuming on Win.
In retrospect I don't know why I felt the need to chime in on this silly debate.
Okay, I'm sorry to whoever I offended. This tragedy is so great that I'm sure I won't be able to wrap my mind around it for years.
I'm not suggesting that we should not retaliate or anything ridiculous like that. YES, WE SHOULD BOMB THE FUCK OUT OF THE PERPETRATORS. YES, WE SHOULD STEP UP INTELLIGENCE SPENDING.
I am an American citizen who has had the opportunity to live in a 3rd world country for years, and also listens to the BBC regularly to get the world view on things (at least European anyway).
My central point, without trying to antagonize, is that our foreign policy is somewhat hypocritical in that we PREACH liberty and freedom, but choose our battles in a self-serving manner. There is also a disturbing trend of renegging on any and all treaties whenever we want to. It's a diffusion of responsibility, because each successive president claims that his policies aren't in line with previous presidents. It's a cop-out, and it does a lot to hurt American credibility.
I am not trying to be self-righteous, or say that American's don't work as hard as other people, or that our morals are inferior. I don't think any of those things. I'm not saying it's our responsibility to take care of the rest of the world.
What I am saying, is that if we keep leveraging our global power to increase the wealth gap between us and the poor resource-producing countries, it WILL bite us in the ass down the line.
Let us not make the same mistake the Israeli's made in assuming that Palestine was would be easily dominated through technological superiority. With power comes responsibility, and that responsibility is to be a model world citizen. Sure we can choose not to, and no one can do anything about it now, but make no mistake, that once world opinion turns against us, that will be the end of our glorious prosperity.
All my discussion falls under the realm of PREVENTING terrorism by throwing people a bone once in a while. Otherwise, the amount of money we have to spend on security increases exponentiaally as the wealth gap increases. In the end, it would be a lot cheaper and less risky to improve our foreign policy.
As I said above, for the current incident, nothing less than painful death to the perpetrators of yesterday's tragedy will suffice, and I think most of the world is with us on that one.
I'm afraid many of you anonymous cowards (log in please) need to step outside of your privileged American lives and learn about the reality of life in impoverished countries.
Sure nothing can justify this type of terrorism, but your GI-Joe-inspired concepts of American military superiority winning any battle and surpressing any enemy are so childish I can't help but chuckle.
Time and time again throughout history oppressive empires have been toppled by the downtrodden masses. You spoiled brats think that the threat of unrelenting military armageddon would be enough to scare anyone into submission. You also think that our role as the major world power is unsurmountable because we have such enormous resources at are disposal.
You have to step outside of your capitalism-brainwashed, MTV-soaked minds and realize that the people who are propagating this kind of terrorism FEAR NOTHING because they do not value the world order. The only way to stomp out these terrorists would be mass genocide. If you are advocating mass genocide then you REALLY need to check your righteous self, because America is anything but a model of ethical international relations.
I repeat myself now, because this is the absolute truth. If America continues it's greedy self-serving ways, this is only the beginning of the tragedy that will strike us. It's time to embrace our success as a way to benefit the world.
Hopefully this will put things in perspective for Americans. The demand for more security spending and protection you can hear already is astounding, but sooner or later we will have to realize that we can't keep building our castle walls higher and higher. The only way we can be safe, is by treating the rest of the world with respect instead of pushing people around so we can get richer.
I think it was about 4 years ago that I read existing neural net technology would require a space almost as large as the earth to pack in the number of neurons as the human brain.
However, if Moore's law held for that technology, it would be down to the size of a large room by about 2030.
I'm really not enough of a programmer to know what Apple has done in the Darwin arena, or any other software developments for that matter. From a geek standpoint, I'm sure Apple pales in comparison to what bleeding edge developers are doing.
As a web builder (front and back-end), I feel like Apple gives me the most attractive package to get my work done. Sure you can do the same things on Windows, and my first serious work WAS done on Windows, but the bottom line is my productivity is greater on the Mac.
While OS X does not offer significant technology innovations, it is the PACKAGE that's innovative. Never before has it been possible to design, develop and deploy websites and applications on one OS. This gives me a 10-20% boost in productivity easy which means more to me than many esoteric technical innovations.
Lastly, Apple has been innovative in the marketing of a proprietary system. People like to bitch and moan about how Apple price gouges, shoudl allows clones, should port OS X to x86, etc. But personally, I willingly pay more for Apple's propriety hardware because of the increased level of stability and better support/troubleshooting that comes from having limited base hardware options. Technically I suppose the fact that Mac OS runs on fewer hardware configurations makes it less robust than other OSes, but no one is paying me to care about the tech details of my computers. They pay me to get my work done, and Apple helps me do that better, 'nuf said.
Apple is a business, their motives are to make money, so I'm not a blind zealot like so many misguided Mac users. However I think that Apple has made a huge contribution to all consumer-oriented computing by having just enough of a user-base to force Microsoft to keep Windows relatively modern. There is, of course, no quantitative measurement of this, but I think the evidence is there.
The introduction of third party hardware showed that Apple was gouging their customers. Those cloners were putting such a hurting on Apple that the company was bleeding money to the point that they finally killed off all the cloners.
Maybe so, but allowing clones destroyed the reason that Macs are worth more. Quality and support. By building all their machines, they didn't have to have all kinds of OS upgrades to contend with the crappy components that cloners would put in their machines.
Sure I pay more for a Mac, but I pay it to get the reliability and stability that comes from having a unified manufacturer. If you compare the hours I spent troubleshooting my PC vs Macintosh, and bill it at my standard wage of $25/hr, the difference in price is made up in a matter of months.
Apple stopped playing the R&D lab for the industry years ago. Microsoft has finally stepped up to the plate and started pouring money into research (although Microsoft research hasn't produced much yet).
Uh yeah, OS X is such a minor upgrade compared to 7->7.5->8->8.5->9. Heck, they just used the tried and true methods of putting a slick consumer oriented GUI on FreeBSD the way the REAL industry leaders have been doing for decades.
The only accurate statement is that MS could pull the rug out from under Apple anytime.
In case you didn't notice, tons of PCs come without floppy drives too.
Not to mention the fact that the cheap ass drives they put in bargain PCs write disks that no other disk drive can read.
Slashdot Mirror
True dat...
:), that is easy, downloading music has nothign to do with what music I buy. If anything, it allows me to hear a wider variety of music and probably influences me to buy more CDs (cuz I don't buy it unless I know it's good, except for zappa).
But I don't particularly support music companies because they regularly screw over artists. This is not justification for stealing music, just an interesting fact that no one is suing the recording industry for the theft they've done...
As far as justifying the music I steal
Well I won't flame, but I will disagree. You can't make a movie out of LotR and try to make it 'great' by adding your own flair. The fans wouldn't stand for it.
No, your only hope is to be as faithful to the book as possible, which I would say is a greater challenge then creating a new movie. So if this is done as well as every reviewer I've read seems to think then it is indeed a truly _great_ movie.
In a word, NO. There's absolutely no reason why there can't be Linux distributions for all levels of users--this is a rationalization by hackers who don't want to deal with "lusers." That's a good point which I think I convinced myself of by the time I was done writing my first post. So maybe I should ammend myself to say that providing the plethora of options that linux does makes creating a simplified linux much harder than creating the equivalent Windows system. Sure, if all linux had an infallible installation API that could be guaranteed to work without ever needing to be tweaked, then creating a 'Simple Linux' would be a piece of cake. After all, that's what Windows does. Of course, the reason things are this way is because open-source projects encourage excellence in code whereas closed-source software encourages excellence in interface (since that's all the user will see). I would guess while hackers were busy making Linux rock-solid in the 90s, Microsoft was hacking together half-assed Windows code to support their Marketing and Interface Design departments master plans. Anyone who's ever coded under a budget knows that there's the 'right' way to do things, and the 'cheap' way. Linux doesn't accept compromises, so it shouldn't unexpected that it will take longer to achieve the same high-level cohesiveness of financially-motivated software projects. In short, I expect Linux GUIs to catch up in a few years.
Which begs the question. What is intelligence, and would we recognize an intellect based on completely different life experience from our own?
Hell, if consciousness is just a byproduct of a complex system, we would never know it because there would be no way to relate to such a system. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is some kind of life sharing the same planet with us that we never noticed because it functions on a completely different level.
Well, they've known about microbes in varying climates for a while. What I'm more curious about is non-H20 based life. Has anyone made any postulations about such life?
It strikes me as rather narcissistic to believe that the definition of life is somehow rooted to the way things worked out on this planet...
Can anyone think of any other substances that behave as dynamically as water in different temperature ranges?
I see this is a two-pronged issue. On one side we have the familiar /. argument that M$' dominance is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy based on its existing monopoly. Of course people are more familiar with it because it's ubiquitous.
The other issue is whether hackers WANT to make Linux as easy and straightforward as Windows. I think the reality has to be faced that _choice_ means a certain level of complexity, and complexity is a burden to ease-of-use. I would argue that the very advantage Windows has for the common user is diametrically opposed to the goal of Linux hackers everywhere which is to make the system as robust as possible.
That said, I don't think it's impossible for Linux to break into the desktop market. All that is needed is for GUI developers to start emphasizing Windows-like functionality that makes it easy for newbies to pick up the OS. I think that the current problem is that these goals have only come to be emphasized recently.
I think the reason M$ is so scared of Linux recently has to do with the fact that Linux isn't dependent on winning this battle anytime soon. It doesn't have earnings report deadlines or any other interest in profitability. It can simply keep chugging along until one day it is suddenly winning...
Couldn't you have logged in?
Anyway, no you are completely missing the point. As I tried to explain, I hate M$ as much as the next geek, but this isn't a Microsoft issue. The trivial amount of marketshare this report might cost them is not worth the fear that such reports will cause in the public.
If by your comment about communism you mean that not reporting on this would be an act of a 'repressive regime' you are blowing it way out of proportion. Why not just set the terrorist free in Times Square with a megaphone? Free publicity for a terrorist's comments is exactly what they want, and they use it to spread lies in order to generate more fear. A lot cheaper then hijacking a plane.
Also, what do you mean by "communist"? The government calls whatever regime it wants repressive based on whatever it wants to do. Do you really think our government is morally superior to any other government? Well, maybe a handful, but basically we do whatever the hell we want, and the government uses propaganda to make us feel better about screwing other people over. Our moral crusading in the name of 'freedom' is mostly just oil interests and political maneuvering. It's not that we're worse than any other government, but some would say the richest country in the world has some moral obligations that extend beyond those of the poorest country.
When you say 'the public has a right to know a number of things that many ppl seem to be forgetting about', what are you referring to? I don't see it as a matter of rights. It's easy to say we have a right to know x, y and z, but what about information we have a right NOT to know? If printing something is going to make people needlessly scared, and perhaps damage the economy as a result, then I would say we have a right NOT to hear that information, much as I should have the right NOT to have explicit pornography mailed to my inbox.
Your idealistic concept of rights sounds awfully righteous for the reality of the situation. What's the benefit of knowing this to you?
Aside from the improbabilities of such a claim, it strikes me that this is pretty irresponsible reporting.
When journalists hear about these stories, they should ask themselves: a) Is there any reason why the public needs to know this? b) Will any harm be done by publishing this?
I can not think of a better way to play into the terrorists hands then print these trivialities. Yes, Microsoft should have been informed of this, but what does the public at large care?
As much as I would like to see fewer Windows users, I don't see this is a legitimate means to that end, and I can't see any other outcomes from printing this story.
Aside from the obvious compromises that must be made to achieve decent framerates, I think playability requires design decisions that are more complex than just realistic vs oversimplified physics.
The challenge in game design is figuring out how you want it to feel, then determining what kind of physics model best achieves that.
Take a game like Gran Turismo 3... the greatness comes from an extremely realistic physics model. But that same principle shouldn't be applied to all games. Grand Theft Auto 3 is an equally great game that uses oversimplified physics to make the game flow better.
I think one of the greatest games is Halo, which for those of you who haven't played is a FPS with vehicles. The physics aren't overly realistic. Inverse kinematics are used to give a sense of realism, but gravity, traction and flight are decidedly unrealistic in the interests of playability.
Halo also has fantastic controls which illustrates another good point, which is that physics are just the tip of the iceberg on playability. More important are the ergonomics of the controls. One other thing that's also more important than physics in my mind is environment robustness. There needs to be a critical mass of weapons/enemies/missions/goals/secrets to keep things interesting.
I checked out the website, but it seems mostly incomplete. I am particularly interested in comparisons with Sorenson on Mac OS.
/. community (if not IT purchasers at large) is primarly concerned with the quality of the codec. Can existing codecs be beaten across the board when they seem to be optimized for different platforms?
Sadly in today's world success in a venture like this depends largely on marketing, but I think the
Geeks code for the love of code, if they can convince VCs to give em money to do what they love then good for them.
It sounded to me like they started this company during the tech bubble, but I think they were just trying to cash in on the side. The real goal seems to have been the codec itself. I don't see where they made a mistake.
Here's my vision for the future. This won't really be possible in 20 years unless we somehow come to terms with the evil that is perpetrated by letting corporations be 'citizens'. But I think it's a nice idea anyway.
As manufacturing technology increases and physical needs become easier and easier to meet, the most advanced country will be the one with the most advanced information. Allowing greedy business men to step in and buy rights to content so that they can milk it for easy money is not only somewhat disgusting to writers/artists/musicians, but also counterproductive when we are trying to advance the state of information. To think that selling something for more money adds to the GDP is an indicator of the sad state our capitalist system is in.
Information has more VALUE (remember value != money when things are easily duplicable) when it's widely disseminated for everyone to have access to it. Therefore, if we want to protect content creators rights and still maximize productivity, we need a system that involves no corporations skimming off the top. I would favor a system where there is a free distribution mechanism, and a reliable 'dividend' system whereby end-users could donate directly to the content creator. The system would work even better I think, if there was a general fund coming from tax dollars where each citizen had a set amount of money that they could earmark for different content creators. This would truly let the people decide what is worth paying for. The implementation is far beyond any current technology though... we couldn't even begin to think in this sort of mindset until we get real campaign finance reform and GET CORPORATIONS THE FUCK OUT OF GOVERNMENT. Thank u
This is a great thread. My view on the subject is that OS X does have the potential to take some market share from open source OSes.
:), which I think depends on factors that have nothing to do with OS X.
If Apple somehow gained Microsoft-like market share I would be truly concerned. I think almost any company would do unsavory things with that kind of market power.
Ultimately, however, I am convinced that OS X will do much more to harm M$ than linux. Why? Because massive market share is something that's greatest benefits are to companies like M$ that are just trying to profit. In the open-source community, market share may help a project gain testing and credibility, but the goal is to make great software, not get rich. The way I see it, open source hackers are open source hackers, if they get drawn off of a certain project, it is most likely because there is something more interesting/better to work on. The value in open-source software is the hours these people have put into it, and thanks to the open source nature, that value will always be present for free, no matter what product happens to have the current lead in marketshare.
The only way I could see linux users losing out is if somehow all the open source hackers got hired to write proprietary software full-time (meaning 80 hours a week, cuz I think most of them already work 40
Its funny that such a huge issue has been made out of how slow OS X is. Yeah, it's slow.
The funny thing is people comparing it to Win 2000 or even Mac OS 9. How can you make an objective statement like "it's way slower"? After using OS X for a few weeks without booting into 9.1, I was shocked at how slow 9.1 can be. Sure it accomplishes tasks in a shorter amount of time, but you also have to sit and wait for those tasks to be completed.
The fact that something takes longer on OSX is a moot point since I can work in another app without losing responsiveness. The performance trade-off for pre-emptive multi-tasking is well worth it to me.
I'm glad there is so much feedback to Apple about how to make OS X better, and it sounds like they're listening. Certainly OS X has a long way to go before it can be considered a refined OS. For myself, however, OS X is everything I had hoped for and more (Photoshop+BBEdit+BSD=150% web design productivity). It's so perfect for me, that I no longer worry about Apple staying afloat. Ironically the OS is so good that I don't care if it attracts new customers. I am considering buying some Apple stock, however, as I can only see OS X gaining market share.
Well Apple's optical mouse they ship with the G4s works pretty good for me, but that's beside the point.
The decision to stick with a one button mouse is a UI design decision. More buttons doesn't necessarily mean better. Sure for power users you really want more buttons, but I just don't see it as that big of an issue. I always have a finger close enough to the control key to get contextual menus anyway...
Why don't people complain that the PC has one less modifier key than Macs? The Windows key is completely useless, and so Photoshop work is significantly more time-consuming on Win.
In retrospect I don't know why I felt the need to chime in on this silly debate.
Okay, I'm sorry to whoever I offended. This tragedy is so great that I'm sure I won't be able to wrap my mind around it for years.
I'm not suggesting that we should not retaliate or anything ridiculous like that. YES, WE SHOULD BOMB THE FUCK OUT OF THE PERPETRATORS. YES, WE SHOULD STEP UP INTELLIGENCE SPENDING.
I am an American citizen who has had the opportunity to live in a 3rd world country for years, and also listens to the BBC regularly to get the world view on things (at least European anyway).
My central point, without trying to antagonize, is that our foreign policy is somewhat hypocritical in that we PREACH liberty and freedom, but choose our battles in a self-serving manner. There is also a disturbing trend of renegging on any and all treaties whenever we want to. It's a diffusion of responsibility, because each successive president claims that his policies aren't in line with previous presidents. It's a cop-out, and it does a lot to hurt American credibility.
I am not trying to be self-righteous, or say that American's don't work as hard as other people, or that our morals are inferior. I don't think any of those things. I'm not saying it's our responsibility to take care of the rest of the world.
What I am saying, is that if we keep leveraging our global power to increase the wealth gap between us and the poor resource-producing countries, it WILL bite us in the ass down the line.
Let us not make the same mistake the Israeli's made in assuming that Palestine was would be easily dominated through technological superiority. With power comes responsibility, and that responsibility is to be a model world citizen. Sure we can choose not to, and no one can do anything about it now, but make no mistake, that once world opinion turns against us, that will be the end of our glorious prosperity.
All my discussion falls under the realm of PREVENTING terrorism by throwing people a bone once in a while. Otherwise, the amount of money we have to spend on security increases exponentiaally as the wealth gap increases. In the end, it would be a lot cheaper and less risky to improve our foreign policy.
As I said above, for the current incident, nothing less than painful death to the perpetrators of yesterday's tragedy will suffice, and I think most of the world is with us on that one.
I'm afraid many of you anonymous cowards (log in please) need to step outside of your privileged American lives and learn about the reality of life in impoverished countries.
Sure nothing can justify this type of terrorism, but your GI-Joe-inspired concepts of American military superiority winning any battle and surpressing any enemy are so childish I can't help but chuckle.
Time and time again throughout history oppressive empires have been toppled by the downtrodden masses. You spoiled brats think that the threat of unrelenting military armageddon would be enough to scare anyone into submission. You also think that our role as the major world power is unsurmountable because we have such enormous resources at are disposal.
You have to step outside of your capitalism-brainwashed, MTV-soaked minds and realize that the people who are propagating this kind of terrorism FEAR NOTHING because they do not value the world order. The only way to stomp out these terrorists would be mass genocide. If you are advocating mass genocide then you REALLY need to check your righteous self, because America is anything but a model of ethical international relations.
I repeat myself now, because this is the absolute truth. If America continues it's greedy self-serving ways, this is only the beginning of the tragedy that will strike us. It's time to embrace our success as a way to benefit the world.
Hopefully this will put things in perspective for Americans. The demand for more security spending and protection you can hear already is astounding, but sooner or later we will have to realize that we can't keep building our castle walls higher and higher. The only way we can be safe, is by treating the rest of the world with respect instead of pushing people around so we can get richer.
I think it was about 4 years ago that I read existing neural net technology would require a space almost as large as the earth to pack in the number of neurons as the human brain.
However, if Moore's law held for that technology, it would be down to the size of a large room by about 2030.
I'm really not enough of a programmer to know what Apple has done in the Darwin arena, or any other software developments for that matter. From a geek standpoint, I'm sure Apple pales in comparison to what bleeding edge developers are doing.
As a web builder (front and back-end), I feel like Apple gives me the most attractive package to get my work done. Sure you can do the same things on Windows, and my first serious work WAS done on Windows, but the bottom line is my productivity is greater on the Mac.
While OS X does not offer significant technology innovations, it is the PACKAGE that's innovative. Never before has it been possible to design, develop and deploy websites and applications on one OS. This gives me a 10-20% boost in productivity easy which means more to me than many esoteric technical innovations.
Lastly, Apple has been innovative in the marketing of a proprietary system. People like to bitch and moan about how Apple price gouges, shoudl allows clones, should port OS X to x86, etc. But personally, I willingly pay more for Apple's propriety hardware because of the increased level of stability and better support/troubleshooting that comes from having limited base hardware options. Technically I suppose the fact that Mac OS runs on fewer hardware configurations makes it less robust than other OSes, but no one is paying me to care about the tech details of my computers. They pay me to get my work done, and Apple helps me do that better, 'nuf said.
Apple is a business, their motives are to make money, so I'm not a blind zealot like so many misguided Mac users. However I think that Apple has made a huge contribution to all consumer-oriented computing by having just enough of a user-base to force Microsoft to keep Windows relatively modern. There is, of course, no quantitative measurement of this, but I think the evidence is there.
Heaven forbid IBM support linux because of the competitive advantages it offers them :)
True, but it sucked when you couldn't install an OS upgrade because Mac OS didn't recognize your system.
Maybe so, but allowing clones destroyed the reason that Macs are worth more. Quality and support. By building all their machines, they didn't have to have all kinds of OS upgrades to contend with the crappy components that cloners would put in their machines.
Sure I pay more for a Mac, but I pay it to get the reliability and stability that comes from having a unified manufacturer. If you compare the hours I spent troubleshooting my PC vs Macintosh, and bill it at my standard wage of $25/hr, the difference in price is made up in a matter of months.
You get what you pay for.
Uh yeah, OS X is such a minor upgrade compared to 7->7.5->8->8.5->9. Heck, they just used the tried and true methods of putting a slick consumer oriented GUI on FreeBSD the way the REAL industry leaders have been doing for decades.
The only accurate statement is that MS could pull the rug out from under Apple anytime.
In case you didn't notice, tons of PCs come without floppy drives too. Not to mention the fact that the cheap ass drives they put in bargain PCs write disks that no other disk drive can read.