Africa's real problem is that they ate the milk producing cows and goats. That's after they slaughtered the rest of the herd that was going to breed the next generation. This is because they got desperate and ate next year's seed instead of planting it. Everytime the rest of the world trys to kickstart their food production with breeding stock or seeds, they just eat it.
I thought I'd seen it all on slashdot, but your summation of hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and invasions, arbitrarily defined states (often encompassing many ethnic groups) which war with each other over resources, corrupt government, civil war and finally skewed trade laws which make it impossible to climb out of poverty as
'they ate their milk producing animals'
really does take my breath away.
If the UN know what they're doing, they'll surely be rushing lots of well informed teenage geniuses like yourself over to sort it out right now.
Those complaining in this thread about the Internet being American would also do well to remember that the Internet has grown up into things like the world wide web (in fact most lay-people think that *is* the internet). The world wide web was of course invented in Switzerland at CERN by a European. I haven't heard anyone screaming to remove all the pages served over http because they're somehow unamerican.
Not that it matters anyway - as the parent says, a country struggling for complete hegemony over any thing or any person will not keep it very long.
So I guess it depends on how squeeky clean do you want to be???
Or maybe whether you believe ripping off artists by copying their music is a good thing to do? There are plenty of alternatives (magnatune for one) which are DRM free, and you can still buy CDs. Most people however don't care, so long as the chance of being caught is vanishingly small. Same thing happens in nations without an effective police force; anarchy and those who can take, take, and fuck the rest of the world.
Unfortunately people are most of the time amoral, and until music providers can appeal to their self-interest it's not likely they'll choose to stop copying music.
Quite aside from the fact that this is foolish - as others have pointed out L-points are potentially huge areas of space, and as you point out no-one (save the US military it seems) has countenanced the idea of occupying them, it is just myopic nationalism at its worst.
In fact the logical extension of this argument to all policy is 'we cannot trust our enemies to be in charge of any part of Earth, as they could use it as a base to attack us, therefore we must eliminate all of them'. Nothing short of full supremacy seems to be acceptable. What a curious world-view.
Sadly this seems to be really quite a credible argument to some in the present Bush administration. If they had any hope of getting a craft up there, let alone a station this story might be scary rather than just absurd. As it is absurd I suppose it's just a hack-handed attempt to secure more funding for military efforts in space.
It is the destiny of the US to lead the exploration of space. Whether you like it or not, Congress will see to it that this is always true. If China, Japan, ESA, etc. ever appear to be surpassing us in space technology, there will be a boost to NASA's budget so that we don't loose national prestige. Accept it. Robotic spacecraft will supplement human spaceflight, but never replace it.
Heh heh, perhaps the supporter of the mighty empire should learn to spell 'lose' : ) Perhaps the US will lead space exploration in the next few centuries, but all the evidence points to China, India and an expanded EU being the economic growth areas in the next century, and thus the technological leaders. To be blunt though, who cares? Why all the jingoism? Personally I hope we get over personal rivalries and all contribute a little more together to complementary efforts (not using the ISS as an example : ).
Re Robotic versus human space-flight, while you are correct to point out that humans *prefer* to see other humans exploring, it may be that robots are our first emissaries to the stars for more practical reasons.
They are after all eminently suited to the long periods of boredom and repetitive tasks such trips would entail. The only problem they currently have is reproduction/repairs, but we probably will create robots who can create copies of themselves given the right workshops to do it, at which point they're just as useful as humans, and more reliable, though not as flexible in unforseen situations.
The shuttle is really just a drain on NASA's resources now and is clearly not the future of space-flight, however it's impossible to cancel because of national pride. It's just helping to contribute to the huge US deficit.
Your post was uninformed and misleading (Safari has nothing to do with Mozilla). Insulting the moderators (who are of course out to get you) won't change the fact you were entirely wrong.
Not a flame here. I want to know. Show us solid examples of this happening on an every day basis and not of foreign nationals without clearance to be here, people who violated the terms of their visas, etc. Show where a natural born American citizen who has not been engaged in terrorism or linked to it has been sent to Guantanamo.
Pure FUD. If it weren't, you would not have been allowed to make your post and have been arrested and sent off to some mythical gulag by now.
I don't live in your country : )
I haven't mentioned gulags or anything of the sort, work camps don't really have a lot to do with prisons. Abuse of rights does not have to happen every day to be serious, and you don't have to be thrown in prison when protesting for rights to be eroded.
As to your fixation with whether this happens to US Citizens or not, measures of repression always start with an easily stigmatised and easily identified group (just now muslims and Arabs), and fan out from there. Links to terrorism now seem to include having the same name, or being religious (the wrong religion of course). You should not be asking 'Will I ever be affected by this?' but asking 'Is this right?'.
I'm not saying this is happening all the time, not at all, but it is now *legal* for your government to lock up anyone without trial on suspicion. I don't think that's a very good idea, and it certainly isn't a 'free country' anymore, not compared to many others.
People whose rights are violated in the USA, unlike many other countries, have recourse to a free press and the courts; which is more than can be said for the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Vietnam.
Actually I'm sorry to say that people just don't have those rights any more in the US. They can be imprisoned without knowing why, their lawer isn't allowed to talk about the charges, they can be deported to third countries for torture or just thrown out of the country (see recent case of an Iranian teenager) or they can be shipped off to someplace like Guantanamo Bay where you have exactly zero rights and are very deliberately dehumanized. Now you can argue about the justification for this if you like, but the US would rank well below Canada and many European countries (just for example) in a scale of civil rights or freedom right now.
Your point about it being quite possible for US citizens to criticise other nations is spot on though, whatever their govt. is doing.
I haven't looked at the code, and having read your link to the forum, I can see why you'd discount this possibility. It is a shame as it'd be nice to see OpenOffice on OS X running as a native app. I had no idea they had assembly code in there. Is there a plan to remove that? If it's byzantine compared to Mozilla I wish you luck : )
Wish Apple would step up and at least offer an x86 development machine to you lot and a free ADC account.
I see the OO.o and iWorks suites as aimed at very different markets, as you say. I'd imagine Apple wouldn't mind at all having a business friendly suite of apps (iWorks just isn't going to convince for that use) which was x-platform. It would be in their interests going forward to promote OO.o. All depends whether they're going for World domination (TM) and selling through OEMs or just after the consumer market.
Re:I can't see this happening anytime soon
on
Dell We'd Sell Mac OS X
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
OpenOffice will never be an Office killer on OS X until it is a native app.
Couldn't Apple do this building from the 2.0 code base? They've done it with a lot of other software (KHTML, Darwin, gcc, OS X Server etc) and it would suddenly be a huge pull for their platform. It would be a nice boost for OpenOffice as they're lacking the polish and attention to detail that Apple seems to bring to this kind of thing.
If they could say to large government customers -
"We support the OASIS standard and your legacy word documents out of the box, with no extra cost."
It would suddenly make their platform convincing for more than just home users.
I wonder if that project is in the building next to the Marklar one : ) That's probably wishful thinking however as Apple have already embarked on their own office replacement, which is half complete and really appears to have more of a SOHO user feel to it than Office. I think OpenOffice would be more convincing for a lot of big companies though as it's no longer tied to Apple, and they've learned (well, you'd hope they're learning) that tying their docs into one supplier leaves them open to being exploited for continual forced updates, and worrying about reading those binary formats in 20 years time.
However there are really several problems for Apple here:
Transition to x86
Transition from hardware to a software company (in terms of revenue) - bring on board OEMs one by one
Dealing with MS dropping Office X
Presumably they won't want to try doing all of that at once.
yeah, unfortunately your theory doesn't apply well to Balmer and Gates, and many many other successful people who are not beautiful. Your theory is full of holes.
Lose that chip on your shoulder.
oh, and PS, Jobs does not having a 'winning personality' he is often obnoxious, and often indelicate, but he is driven to succeed, to prove himself (like most other successful people).
Then what's the point? I'd only try OSX if I could get it to run on generic, non-proprietary hardware. I don't currently buy *anything* from Apple and never have due to their draconian hardware lock-in that allows them to rape the consumer.
Instead, you buy from Microsoft, who would never dare do such a thing.
I think that was sarcasm, so responding with 'Exactly' is not really appropriate ; )
Exactly. I can install Windows on just about any old computer I can scrounge up from thrift shops....
You can't buy a PC with anything but Windows installed on it, and competing OSs have a habit of dying inglorious deaths (Be, OS/2, Next). I wonder why?
You think Microsoft has your best interests at heart?
If it weren't for Microsoft's ruthless and illegal suppression of any competition, we might have a vibrant OS scene with several alternatives on x86. It might not have taken us till a few years ago to have decent web browsers. Consumers might actually have a choice of hardware and software. You haven't even noticed because you're so focused on the cheap hardware side of the equation. If you can't see how you're locked in there to MS products, you must be blind.
I doubt Apple will ever fully support any old PC that you find in a junk shop, however at some point they might start making deals with PC OEMs to sell OS X - that would seem the most likely long term reason for jumping to x86, along with the removal of the roadblocks on the PPC roadmap. It fits with the previous Next strategy, and Next has slowly taken over Apple from the inside. This time, if they manage the transition well, they have the big software providers with them, already producing the major apps for their platform. That's a lot of momentum all previous contenders didn't have.
PS, Apple don't 'rape' their customers, they are more expensive than cheaper, often cut-down PC alternatives like Dells. You might compare their laptops to things like IBM Thinkpads, in the same price range, and with the same range of features. I have no idea why you feel this is comparable to rape.
Would sitting in a Apple store and using one for 15 minutes tell me if it was any good?
Well, it would have allowed you to see all the things which you seem to feel are glaring flaws (one menu bar, dock etc etc). All of the things you mentioned are evident after a few minutes use.
Personally I like many of those things you denigrated, including the dock and a single menu bar at the top of the screen, not because I haven't used windows, but because I have. I imagine it's cmd-delete because it's a destructive action, and you wouldn't want to do it by mistake - many of the things that are different are done for a reason, though some are historical and inconsequential like the placement of window close buttons.
And now I know. It's for people who don't like computers. They just want their box to do a few tasks/programs then go home.
Sweeping generalisations are not often useful. If you're happier on Windows, that's great, why the need to judge others and pretend to know their motives?
Most of your comments boil down to 'Argh, it's different from Windows, how dare they'; they're neither constructive nor attempting to be objective, that's why I said you're not trying.
As for remedies, you'd have to actually *want* to accept something different from the conventions you're used to. If you're complaining about the position of buttons on the windows being on the left or right, I doubt you'll ever be happy but on Windows/Windows clones.
And that's just from the first WEEK of me trying this. For a UI, it's really bad.
You're not even trying. I suggest you move back to windows or run a Linux windows-a-like on your mini if the Mac UI upsets you so much and you really feel you can't adjust. How you managed to buy a computer with a new operating system without doing any research on it mystifies me though - you'd think you'd have tried one out before getting that far. Surely you would have seen screenshots and been warned of the heinous placement of window buttons before buying?
Personally I'm glad there are different styles of operating system, and no, all buttons being on the right of the window, menus in the window etc etc is not intrinsically better. Surely you can find something else to whine about - how slow the finder is with lots of files or network access for example. Some things Windows gets right which the mac doesn't - surely you didn't expect everything to be perfect?
Frankly a lot of your complaints are easily fixed if you took the time to look into how to do them the mac way.
Want to see the date? Click the menu bar clock.
Want to delete a file? Cmd-delete.
Don't like the dock? Hide it and use a dock replacement.
Those that aren't are complaints about fundamental differences in the UI. If you expected it to be the same, why switch from Windows?
I don't use Apple, I study Microsoft and all things Microsoft. So I just can't believe that Apple is a contender.
You should try OS X out sometime - you might be pleasantly surprised. There are some glitches on the OS X side of the fence, but compared to windows I'd say it's a lot more consistent and doesn't get in your way as much (doesn't have that incredibly annoying 'task based' interface for a start).
If I were presented with the choice at the same price, there would be no contest.
Why warn your major competitor before you can announce any deals or get any momentum? First they have to manage the switch to Intel, then they can start doing deals with other vendors.
OS X on x86 will not use Open Firmware according to Apple's docs. Presumably they'll use other methods to try to stop it working on any old x86 without some hacking around (some small compatibility problems are probably enough to stop the majority of people running OS X on cheaper PCs).
However I'm sure IBM have released this to try to bolster the credibility of PowerPC as a platform now that the major desktop vendor is leaving.
The question is, is there any future in PowerPC on the desktop if Apple is no longer promoting it and IBM are not willing to put a lot of work into developing the chips for desktops/laptops? Their strategy does seem a little schizophrenic, as they promote linux on Power but have antagonized the largest vendor of PPC solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
Africa's real problem is that they ate the milk producing cows and goats. That's after they slaughtered the rest of the herd that was going to breed the next generation. This is because they got desperate and ate next year's seed instead of planting it. Everytime the rest of the world trys to kickstart their food production with breeding stock or seeds, they just eat it.
I thought I'd seen it all on slashdot, but your summation of hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and invasions, arbitrarily defined states (often encompassing many ethnic groups) which war with each other over resources, corrupt government, civil war and finally skewed trade laws which make it impossible to climb out of poverty as
'they ate their milk producing animals'
really does take my breath away.
If the UN know what they're doing, they'll surely be rushing lots of well informed teenage geniuses like yourself over to sort it out right now.
Those complaining in this thread about the Internet being American would also do well to remember that the Internet has grown up into things like the world wide web (in fact most lay-people think that *is* the internet). The world wide web was of course invented in Switzerland at CERN by a European. I haven't heard anyone screaming to remove all the pages served over http because they're somehow unamerican.
Not that it matters anyway - as the parent says, a country struggling for complete hegemony over any thing or any person will not keep it very long.
--
Message from Airstrip 1
So I guess it depends on how squeeky clean do you want to be???
Or maybe whether you believe ripping off artists by copying their music is a good thing to do? There are plenty of alternatives (magnatune for one) which are DRM free, and you can still buy CDs. Most people however don't care, so long as the chance of being caught is vanishingly small. Same thing happens in nations without an effective police force; anarchy and those who can take, take, and fuck the rest of the world.
Unfortunately people are most of the time amoral, and until music providers can appeal to their self-interest it's not likely they'll choose to stop copying music.
Quite aside from the fact that this is foolish - as others have pointed out L-points are potentially huge areas of space, and as you point out no-one (save the US military it seems) has countenanced the idea of occupying them, it is just myopic nationalism at its worst.
In fact the logical extension of this argument to all policy is 'we cannot trust our enemies to be in charge of any part of Earth, as they could use it as a base to attack us, therefore we must eliminate all of them'. Nothing short of full supremacy seems to be acceptable. What a curious world-view.
Sadly this seems to be really quite a credible argument to some in the present Bush administration. If they had any hope of getting a craft up there, let alone a station this story might be scary rather than just absurd. As it is absurd I suppose it's just a hack-handed attempt to secure more funding for military efforts in space.
It is the destiny of the US to lead the exploration of space. Whether you like it or not, Congress will see to it that this is always true. If China, Japan, ESA, etc. ever appear to be surpassing us in space technology, there will be a boost to NASA's budget so that we don't loose national prestige. Accept it. Robotic spacecraft will supplement human spaceflight, but never replace it.
Heh heh, perhaps the supporter of the mighty empire should learn to spell 'lose' : ) Perhaps the US will lead space exploration in the next few centuries, but all the evidence points to China, India and an expanded EU being the economic growth areas in the next century, and thus the technological leaders. To be blunt though, who cares? Why all the jingoism? Personally I hope we get over personal rivalries and all contribute a little more together to complementary efforts (not using the ISS as an example : ).
Re Robotic versus human space-flight, while you are correct to point out that humans *prefer* to see other humans exploring, it may be that robots are our first emissaries to the stars for more practical reasons.
They are after all eminently suited to the long periods of boredom and repetitive tasks such trips would entail. The only problem they currently have is reproduction/repairs, but we probably will create robots who can create copies of themselves given the right workshops to do it, at which point they're just as useful as humans, and more reliable, though not as flexible in unforseen situations.
The shuttle is really just a drain on NASA's resources now and is clearly not the future of space-flight, however it's impossible to cancel because of national pride. It's just helping to contribute to the huge US deficit.
Looks like the idiotic moderators
Your post was uninformed and misleading (Safari has nothing to do with Mozilla). Insulting the moderators (who are of course out to get you) won't change the fact you were entirely wrong.
Sorry, I thought the 'Why do you hate freedom' and '2 most liberal senators' bits of newspeak would give it away.
It was a joke (including gratuitous the link), *please* don't take it seriously.
I vote Liberal Democrat myself, if they were a US party I reckon they'd be considered wacko extremists.
Why do you hate freedom?
Research shows that the BBC is to the left of even the two most liberal senators in the US Senate. This makes it unsafe to watch. Also, it's funded by obligatory public subscription, which is un-American and almost socialistical.
Watch Fox news instead, where honest men and women tell it like they were told it is.
Not a flame here. I want to know. Show us solid examples of this happening on an every day basis and not of foreign nationals without clearance to be here, people who violated the terms of their visas, etc. Show where a natural born American citizen who has not been engaged in terrorism or linked to it has been sent to Guantanamo.
Pure FUD. If it weren't, you would not have been allowed to make your post and have been arrested and sent off to some mythical gulag by now.
I don't live in your country : )
I haven't mentioned gulags or anything of the sort, work camps don't really have a lot to do with prisons. Abuse of rights does not have to happen every day to be serious, and you don't have to be thrown in prison when protesting for rights to be eroded.
As to your fixation with whether this happens to US Citizens or not, measures of repression always start with an easily stigmatised and easily identified group (just now muslims and Arabs), and fan out from there. Links to terrorism now seem to include having the same name, or being religious (the wrong religion of course). You should not be asking 'Will I ever be affected by this?' but asking 'Is this right?'.
I'm not saying this is happening all the time, not at all, but it is now *legal* for your government to lock up anyone without trial on suspicion. I don't think that's a very good idea, and it certainly isn't a 'free country' anymore, not compared to many others.
I live in the UK - things are not a whole lot better here right now.
People whose rights are violated in the USA, unlike many other countries, have recourse to a free press and the courts; which is more than can be said for the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Vietnam.
Actually I'm sorry to say that people just don't have those rights any more in the US. They can be imprisoned without knowing why, their lawer isn't allowed to talk about the charges, they can be deported to third countries for torture or just thrown out of the country (see recent case of an Iranian teenager) or they can be shipped off to someplace like Guantanamo Bay where you have exactly zero rights and are very deliberately dehumanized. Now you can argue about the justification for this if you like, but the US would rank well below Canada and many European countries (just for example) in a scale of civil rights or freedom right now.
Your point about it being quite possible for US citizens to criticise other nations is spot on though, whatever their govt. is doing.
Where do the denizens of Slashdot rank?
Well, that works till someone asks for the solution and posts it to Slashdot or other forums. Then no one has to ask them.
Wouldn't it be great to have a choice of Linux/Windows/OS X when you bought your hardware from any mainstream computer vendor?
Thanks for the informative reply.
I haven't looked at the code, and having read your link to the forum, I can see why you'd discount this possibility. It is a shame as it'd be nice to see OpenOffice on OS X running as a native app. I had no idea they had assembly code in there. Is there a plan to remove that? If it's byzantine compared to Mozilla I wish you luck : )
Wish Apple would step up and at least offer an x86 development machine to you lot and a free ADC account.
I see the OO.o and iWorks suites as aimed at very different markets, as you say. I'd imagine Apple wouldn't mind at all having a business friendly suite of apps (iWorks just isn't going to convince for that use) which was x-platform. It would be in their interests going forward to promote OO.o. All depends whether they're going for World domination (TM) and selling through OEMs or just after the consumer market.
Couldn't Apple do this building from the 2.0 code base? They've done it with a lot of other software (KHTML, Darwin, gcc, OS X Server etc) and it would suddenly be a huge pull for their platform. It would be a nice boost for OpenOffice as they're lacking the polish and attention to detail that Apple seems to bring to this kind of thing.
If they could say to large government customers -
"We support the OASIS standard and your legacy word documents out of the box, with no extra cost."
It would suddenly make their platform convincing for more than just home users.
I wonder if that project is in the building next to the Marklar one : ) That's probably wishful thinking however as Apple have already embarked on their own office replacement, which is half complete and really appears to have more of a SOHO user feel to it than Office. I think OpenOffice would be more convincing for a lot of big companies though as it's no longer tied to Apple, and they've learned (well, you'd hope they're learning) that tying their docs into one supplier leaves them open to being exploited for continual forced updates, and worrying about reading those binary formats in 20 years time.
However there are really several problems for Apple here
Presumably they won't want to try doing all of that at once.
This is what they've been planning since the late 90's.
I'll eat my hat if I'm wrong!
heh, it certainly WAS part of their strategy
http://www.lowendmac.com/musings/boxes.shtml
Whatever they decide to do, it looks like the next few years will be interesting ones for Mac and Windows users.
yeah, unfortunately your theory doesn't apply well to Balmer and Gates, and many many other successful people who are not beautiful. Your theory is full of holes.
Lose that chip on your shoulder.
oh, and PS, Jobs does not having a 'winning personality' he is often obnoxious, and often indelicate, but he is driven to succeed, to prove himself (like most other successful people).
Then what's the point? I'd only try OSX if I could get it to run on generic, non-proprietary hardware. I don't currently buy *anything* from Apple and never have due to their draconian hardware lock-in that allows them to rape the consumer.
Instead, you buy from Microsoft, who would never dare do such a thing.
I think that was sarcasm, so responding with 'Exactly' is not really appropriate ; )
Exactly. I can install Windows on just about any old computer I can scrounge up from thrift shops....
You can't buy a PC with anything but Windows installed on it, and competing OSs have a habit of dying inglorious deaths (Be, OS/2, Next). I wonder why?
You think Microsoft has your best interests at heart?
If it weren't for Microsoft's ruthless and illegal suppression of any competition, we might have a vibrant OS scene with several alternatives on x86. It might not have taken us till a few years ago to have decent web browsers. Consumers might actually have a choice of hardware and software. You haven't even noticed because you're so focused on the cheap hardware side of the equation. If you can't see how you're locked in there to MS products, you must be blind.
I doubt Apple will ever fully support any old PC that you find in a junk shop, however at some point they might start making deals with PC OEMs to sell OS X - that would seem the most likely long term reason for jumping to x86, along with the removal of the roadblocks on the PPC roadmap. It fits with the previous Next strategy, and Next has slowly taken over Apple from the inside. This time, if they manage the transition well, they have the big software providers with them, already producing the major apps for their platform. That's a lot of momentum all previous contenders didn't have.
PS, Apple don't 'rape' their customers, they are more expensive than cheaper, often cut-down PC alternatives like Dells. You might compare their laptops to things like IBM Thinkpads, in the same price range, and with the same range of features. I have no idea why you feel this is comparable to rape.
Would sitting in a Apple store and using one for 15 minutes tell me if it was any good?
Well, it would have allowed you to see all the things which you seem to feel are glaring flaws (one menu bar, dock etc etc). All of the things you mentioned are evident after a few minutes use.
Personally I like many of those things you denigrated, including the dock and a single menu bar at the top of the screen, not because I haven't used windows, but because I have. I imagine it's cmd-delete because it's a destructive action, and you wouldn't want to do it by mistake - many of the things that are different are done for a reason, though some are historical and inconsequential like the placement of window close buttons.
And now I know. It's for people who don't like computers. They just want their box to do a few tasks/programs then go home.
Sweeping generalisations are not often useful. If you're happier on Windows, that's great, why the need to judge others and pretend to know their motives?
Most of your comments boil down to 'Argh, it's different from Windows, how dare they'; they're neither constructive nor attempting to be objective, that's why I said you're not trying.
As for remedies, you'd have to actually *want* to accept something different from the conventions you're used to. If you're complaining about the position of buttons on the windows being on the left or right, I doubt you'll ever be happy but on Windows/Windows clones.
And that's just from the first WEEK of me trying this. For a UI, it's really bad.
You're not even trying. I suggest you move back to windows or run a Linux windows-a-like on your mini if the Mac UI upsets you so much and you really feel you can't adjust. How you managed to buy a computer with a new operating system without doing any research on it mystifies me though - you'd think you'd have tried one out before getting that far. Surely you would have seen screenshots and been warned of the heinous placement of window buttons before buying?
Personally I'm glad there are different styles of operating system, and no, all buttons being on the right of the window, menus in the window etc etc is not intrinsically better. Surely you can find something else to whine about - how slow the finder is with lots of files or network access for example. Some things Windows gets right which the mac doesn't - surely you didn't expect everything to be perfect?
Frankly a lot of your complaints are easily fixed if you took the time to look into how to do them the mac way.
Want to see the date? Click the menu bar clock.
Want to delete a file? Cmd-delete.
Don't like the dock? Hide it and use a dock replacement.
Those that aren't are complaints about fundamental differences in the UI. If you expected it to be the same, why switch from Windows?
I don't use Apple, I study Microsoft and all things Microsoft.
So I just can't believe that Apple is a contender.
You should try OS X out sometime - you might be pleasantly surprised. There are some glitches on the OS X side of the fence, but compared to windows I'd say it's a lot more consistent and doesn't get in your way as much (doesn't have that incredibly annoying 'task based' interface for a start).
If I were presented with the choice at the same price, there would be no contest.
They can't yet, it's a matter of timing.
Why warn your major competitor before you can announce any deals or get any momentum? First they have to manage the switch to Intel, then they can start doing deals with other vendors.
OS X on x86 will not use Open Firmware according to Apple's docs. Presumably they'll use other methods to try to stop it working on any old x86 without some hacking around (some small compatibility problems are probably enough to stop the majority of people running OS X on cheaper PCs).
However I'm sure IBM have released this to try to bolster the credibility of PowerPC as a platform now that the major desktop vendor is leaving.
The question is, is there any future in PowerPC on the desktop if Apple is no longer promoting it and IBM are not willing to put a lot of work into developing the chips for desktops/laptops? Their strategy does seem a little schizophrenic, as they promote linux on Power but have antagonized the largest vendor of PPC solutions.