[1:43 PM] We're getting a demonstaration of Mathematica at work. It's quite impressive, of course, and it's working on an Intel Mac. - posted by Dave
[1:42 PM] According to Mr. Gray, it took two hours to do this port. "We're talking about 20 lines of code out of millions from a dead cold start where he didn't even know why he was going." - posted by Dave
[1:41 PM] Mr. Gray is joking about getting "the most crazy calls from Apple," where Steve asked him on Wednesday night to come out to Apple and port Mathematica, one of the most complex apps on the planet to Intel by Monday. - posted by Dave
[1:39 PM] Asked a long time developer (Theo Grey of Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica) to come out to Apple and work on Intel. - posted by Dave
[1:38 PM] Developers applauded Steve when he said that both processors would be supported for a long time to come, and the core to this will be universal binaries. - posted by Dave
[1:37 PM] In a chart, Coca apps had half the "tweak" time as Xcode, but Steve emphasized that it will be easy. - posted by Dave
[1:37 PM] "Cocoa apps: A few minor tweaks and a recompile, and it just works. Widgets, scripts, and JAva just work." Xcode will take a few more tweaks. - posted by Dave
[1:35 PM] Looking at the developer's apps now. Everyone is on the edge of their seat. - posted by Dave
[1:34 PM] Steve confirmed all this, BTW, by saying the rumors have been true about how Apple had an Intel project. - posted by Dave
[1:33 PM] Today's demonstration has been done entirely on an Intel Mac. Steve is showing us how everything works. - posted by Dave
[1:33 PM] Every project done at Apple has been mandated to work on PowerPC and Intel. - posted by Dave
When your country imprisons enemies indefinitely without trial, exports suspects for torture by third parties, and supports many puppet regimes, I think crowing about Freedom is a little premature isn't it? Or perhaps you meant your freedom at the expense of that of a lot of other people?
As to your 'they'll get us first' argument (substitute bogey-man of the moment, apparently China, for they), the extension of this to its logical conclusion is of course that to ensure US hegomony you must take over every other nation on Earth. Perhaps you think that would be a good idea if you had the resources; fortunately for the rest of us, you don't and never will.
Why can't you see through this kind of cheap nationalism? It's only meant to distract you from real economic and political problems at home.
Re:Europe is really going downhill
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
at the same time these nations were stealing their jobs. With unemployment so high in France, this is not an appealing situation.
France has suffered structurally high unemployment which has hovered around 10% since the early 1980s, and you are trying to claim that it is somehow caused by Eastern Europe 'stealing jobs' since the union? That is nonsense at best and sophistry at worst.
We had the same arguments when Portugal and Spain joined, but perhaps you would have been against that too. Inevitably, money goes to those who need it most, I see that as only fair.
And the Netherlands is next, along with the UK, in voting NO for similar reasons.
Err, no, for entirely different reasons, in fact in France the No vote was evenly divided between the far right (Le Pen), the communists and half the socialists - hardly a united front - I wonder what sort of treaty we'd have if they all had a hand in writing it; probably they'd still be arguing over which capitalists/foreigners to blame for their woes in the preface.
You missed out the bit where they force hardware vendors to sign secret exclusive agreements (illegal and still going on I believe), change their APIs to kill others (DRDOS, Samba), undermine competing OSs (OS2, Be, then Linux) and generally try to kill off any competition by any means necessary (illegal or not) before it gets too strong to compete.
They've already stopped much development on the mac side (IE, MSN messenger) - watch them kill office for OS X in a few years, when they feel they can get away with it.
Yep, this article is, like many posted on slashdot, an aimless, largely unsubstantiated rant and based on some flimsy evidence, as Thurrott points out.
However, when your biggest cheerleader, who runs a site called winsupersite, starts saying things like (to quote his post)
In many ways--more than you may realize--I wish I could "switch" to the Mac. But I can't. Too many applications I want are PC-specific. Too many of my readers use PCs. Too much of my technology investment is PC-based and non-reproduceable on the Mac.
and the new version of Windows is a train wreck, you know there is a serious problem in Windows land. He's making excuses now about why he can't switch to what he obviously feels is a better operating system - as those excuses evaporate in the light of day, more and more people will switch.
It comes with online help, so you could always read that, or go read the apple website about it if you want a high level overview. You're more likely to need a book about the API you choose to target (cocoa for example) than the IDE, as once you get used to it the IDE will become quite transparent.
It's free, and much better than it used to be, but there are still some rough patches. In particular:
The preferences are split between Targets and 'Build Styles' some of which override the others choices - this is a bit annoying if you're used to a simple Build Target x model and is not as elegant as it could be.
Sometimes it doesn't rebuild everything as it should when switching build styles and you have to say 'Clean Target'.
The build in editor is not great, and the menus are a confused mess (IMHO) but you can use external editors with it easily enough.
He tried to load 15,000 photos into iPhoto and it crashed (probably because one of the photos was corrupt and it couldn't handle it, though he doesn't seem to have gotten that far in his analysis). The sensible thing would be to divide his collection and import some at a time to narrow down the problem.
Personally I don't like iphoto, I use a professional photo management program (that you have to pay for), and frankly I think he should too if he's trying to manage that number of photos.
Although I'd be the first to admit the iApps are far from perfect, judging the OS on one flaw in one iApp is probably not a very good idea - perhaps he should give it a bit of time and try to come up with a balanced analysis of the strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis something like Picasa on windows.
In a world where everything can be cheaply copied, you no longer need the money-based economy
And in a world without money (and without property as you seem to imply), I can't imagine the social structure or who is in charge. A benevolent dictator? A pure democracy that somehow avoids corruption and nepotism? Who gets the best cars, or are all cars the same? Etc etc ad nauseam. I think your proposed solution raises more questions than it answers, though it's nice that you're willing to accept the consequences of this line of thought.
I love reading about this in sci-fi (The Culture of Iain Banks sounds close to what you're describing), but how do we get from here to there? Power-mad people have an annoying habit of taking over Utopian revolutions and using them for their own ends, and the majority of people are driven by the basest of emotions; among them greed, avarice and pride.
Frankly I think most people copying music right now are more motivated by greed and the one in a million chances of being caught, than dreams of a utopia without the need for money, sad as that may seem.
Thanks for the link, I just read 1984 the other day, and this essay is equally thought provoking.
It really describes a problem with almost all leaders of men though, no? Politics attracts the meanest, least imaginitive amongst us, and the majority of us prefer it that way, saves having to think.
Having read the essay, I will say it again, I found the opening preamble to be a lot more that I had hoped for, in that it aspires to a time when Europe will be a true democracy (as in the leading quote). Perhaps I don't dare hope enough any more : )
I wish to live in a peaceful, integrated Europe, which is capable of managing the change from living off the developing world (as we do just now) to supporting it and accepting it as an equal.
I think we believe different things because we come from different cultures in Europe. As has been said many times, a French No is very different to a British No, or even a French Yes to a British Yes. I'm not from France.
most people do not even understand the first page for christ sake.
Given that the first page is the passage quoted (unless you count the title/preface), I find that hard to believe. I read the first 50 pages in half an hour or so, without too many problems. For the curious, it's available on the web enfr.
of a lot of very important parts of this "constitution", but yet, you understand all of it very clearly ?
Some of it uses deliberately vague language to allow wiggle room for the various partner states. There are many 'get out clauses' (which they refer to amusingly as passerelles in the English text (ça sent le français original parfois, il faut le dire)) for the various nation states that didn't want to sign up to all of it at once. I can see how that could lead to ambiguity. I didn't say I understood every nuance, I said it was remarkably clear for a text which deals with so many issues.
Have you read it?
If you expect something to be legally watertight it is very difficult to make it at the same time clear. I am in no way saying this document is perfect, but it is not the source of all evil as you seem to hint. Many of the national laws in France and the UK are just as obscure, if not far far worse.
Perhaps the worst part, is that this "constituion" defines the economic regime. This is the worst thing you could find in a constitution (we can see the effects with the software patents episode), but it does not seem to be a big deal to you.
Economics is integral to politics, and this document supercedes many treaties, and thus incorporates their rules. These treaties were agreed upon by all the nation states. Those rules will be in no way changed by a yes or a no to the constitution. Are you really suggesting that we repeal the common market, is that what you want? Would that solve economic problems in France?? ?
To say, as the constitution does, based on balanced economic growth, a social market economy, highly competitive and aiming at full employment and social progress.
is a balance between the free market economics which now dominate the agenda in Europe and the feeling that we should strive to uphold our standards, not lower them to the lowest common denominator (le nivellement par le bas). Europe is not France and the UK is not America - there are many shades of social democracy, and the argument is over which particular shade we want to aspire to. Now I can't say I agree with many of the policies in the UK right now but just as an example often not cited in the current French debate the public services of each nation are explicitly defended in this document, the cultural exception is there.
Frankly, living in France, I find the debate here on the constitution dissapointing, desolant, in its insistance on the corrupt right wing government in power, the economy, and the difficult situation for most French workers. Will voting no change any of that? If you aspire to a better constitution, by all means fight for one - this one could in many ways be improved. If you wish to live in a France unbuffetted by the changes the world is undergoing, which will forever live as in the halcyon days of les trentes glorieuses, you are living in the past.
The most disturbing thing about the debate right now in France is that if the constitution is rejected this time by France, the next proposa
Not because it's bad but because it's barely comprehensible.
Would you care to elaborate? I found it inspiring, not as stirring as the American Declaration of Independence, but good nonetheless, and clear when it dealt with the inevitably complex relations between still sovereign states. From the preamble...
Our Constitution... is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the greatest number. -- Thucydides II, 37 Conscious that Europe is a continent that has brought forth civilisation; that its inhabitants, arriving in successive waves from earliest times, have gradually developed the values underlying humanism: equality of persons, freedom, respect for reason,
Drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, the values of which, still present in its heritage, have embedded within the life of society the central role of the human person and his or her inviolable and inalienable rights, and respect for law,
Believing that reunited Europe intends to continue along the path of civilisation, progress and prosperity, for the good of all its inhabitants, including the weakest and most deprived; that it wishes to remain a continent open to culture, learning and social progress; and that it wishes to deepen the democratic and transparent nature of its public life, and to strive for peace, justice and solidarity throughout the world,
Convinced that, while remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their ancient divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny,
Convinced that, thus "united in its diversity", Europe offers them the best chance of pursuing, with due regard for the rights of each individual and in awareness of their responsibilities towards future generations and the Earth, the great venture which makes of it a special area of human hope,
It is not the blueprint for a Utopia, but then I don't see any but failed Utopias looking around, do you? I'm paying attention, and I'm going to say yes. Personally I think you're playing to the gallery. Just what would a your constitution for a continent with 25 different countries to be united (some of which don't like the idea of a federal parliament at all) look like?
Now you can quote some section of legalese from within the 200 pages which you feel is opaque, but in general I felt it was perfectly readable by ordinary citizens of the union when taken together - that to me is a great achievement, particularly considering it's been written in several languages at once and attempts to integrate treaties going back 40 years. Writing a constitution for a group of countries merging is not the same as writing one for a newly formed country and that is reflected in the length and complexity.
I don't think Europe is yet ready for this kind of ambitious integration, but it will happen at some point in the future.
Yeah, except if this magic wand is freely available, Ferraris are now worthless, and the designers will be paid nothing. Think through your analogies a little better.
Why should they bother to continue to produce stuff for freeloaders like you? Just what economic model would you propose for content producers?
That all sounds rather nice, but is really rather hollow, reactionary thinking. Space-borne weapons might offer a way to fight conflicts with precision and minimal loss of life to both sides.
Or they might not - hasn't this been the excuse for ever more destructive weapons since time immemorial 'they'll save more lives than they destroy'? It has never turned out to be true. The aim of war is never minimal loss of lives to both sides.
The agressive militarisation of a domain which all space-capable countries have explicitly agreed not to militarise is an insane, hubristic waste of money which will backfire when China, Europe, India et al decide they can't tolerate a US with space weapons and start to arm their satellites. Why not press for ratification of a treaty which explicitly bans all weapons in space? You could then pour funding into the civilian related technologies directly.
The science involved will invariable trickle down. Do you have objections to the fact that airplanes benefitted from military research? Hell, we got the jet engine from the Nazis for the most part.
Sometimes the hippy dippy shit that sounds so good is just a gloss coat on reality that makes you feel smug. But it comes at the cost of the complexity of the real world.
Sometimes that jingoistic talk is just a varnish on a primitive desire to dominate driven by fear. An attempt at cooperation with other nation states would go a lot further than unfounded paranoia about possible future threats.
The complex reality is that war always kills thousands, maims hundreds of thousands, and sends the countries invaded back to the stone age. It is not something to be sought out or justified, even if it is, very rarely, a necessary evil. I'd be interested in an example of a war that has been fought with 'precision' - in Iraq they're not even counting the civilian casualties.
The US has no need of a bigger, better, weapon - they already spend more on weapons than any other nation, almost 10 times more.
In my world though, moving our servers to the 64bit version of Windows took our server requirments to less than 1/5 the equivalent systems when running the 32bit version of Windows 2003 Server. So maybe that fuzzy math stuff does work in the real world.
So you're comparing two completely different architectures, one of which was register starved until the move to 64bit, and the other which had no such problems, and claiming that moving to a fully 64bit architecture made a difference for one, so it must for the other?
Do some reading about the difference before you start spouting off.
No, I think he'd rather see people who write for public consumption in any language spend the time to check their spelling. If they're feeling particularly conscientious perhaps they could reread the piece to check the grammar.
Only allow widgets to access certain websites named in their plist? When the widget starts for the first time warn the user which urls it will attempt to acccess and ask for permission (this would be a useful thing in my opinion anyway system-wide, it should be possible to see which apps are talking to which servers a la Little Snitch and have fine-grained control).
Really though, there are a few things they could do that would make this situation a lot better : -
Safari should not download files from the Internet without warning via javascript/page refresh (why does this work anyway, it was already the cause of another security hole a while ago??).
It should not auto-install widgets. Ever.
The user should be able to remove widgets from Dashboard (not by fiddling in the library folder).
Apple should *never* have given people the impression widgets were anything other than full Applications - this should be clearly stated on their widgets page. They can run arbitrary shell commands and scripts for god's sake, after one innocuous warning dialog.
They should treat all widgets exactly the same as scripts and applications (if you try to have safe and non-safe ones you can bet someone will figure out a way round it). So show the warning about trusting apps on first run. The present dialog just says
'xxx widget is being run for the first time, are you sure you want to run this widget' (User thinks, well yes, that's why I double clicked it). That's all.
Consider a vetting program for widgets (and even applications) so that they have a 'certified clean' listing on the Apple site. A whitelist since you don't like blacklists.
Personally I have changed the permissions on my widgets folder so I'd have to authenticate before installing, however I can't expect my non tech-savvy friends to do this - perhaps I could send them a widget to do it : )
I expect a fix from Apple, but worryingly a few of the 'security' features in Tiger are doing things the wrong way, bombarding the user with different pop-up windows asking for permission for almost every zip file, saying this 'may' be dangerous and we all know what happens when users learn to click OK on several dialogs before they can do anything - they stop reading the dialogs and clickety-click their way to doom.
They need a small number (ideally 1) of consistent dialogs which have the same message - things you download from the internet are not safe, be very careful that you trust the source before running, to be triggered on first run of an app/script/widget.
I notice the photographs on your website are 'Copyright Benjamin Kaufman 2004'. You will be just as meekly accepting if I rip those off and put them on my website as by myself then?
Perhaps they need to do more automatic regression testing (daily) on each build then?
I think the car analogy is (for once : ) a good one. We have come to expect failure from Software, and that shouldn't be the case - it should be very rare, not inevitable with each new release. They did rush the release of Tiger, and certain things suffered for it. Yes they will probably fix it quickly, but it'd be nice if they had a more extensive testing program, with sufficient time alllotted to do the QA work, for catching regressions like this.
So do you get paid to post here or have some obsessive need to defend Apple for hours at a time in every story that refers to them? That is an unhealthy obsession : )
If you didn't keep saying 'we' all the time, people might not give you such a hard time over who you are. Several people from Apple have posted asking you to keep quiet because of your attitude (can't be bothered to find the links).
Search Kit can index multiple things within a single file.
Can Spotlight?
If not, why not?
Frankly I think your hostility to the Mac BU (and by extension anyone who questions this 'feature') is misplaced. Why should every mail application (or other application) have to change their storage format to a single file per object?
If this is the case, this is a gap in the Spotlight API, and a step backwards from Search Kit - it would not be backwards compatible. If it is backwards compatible you can indeed index several things in one file (I know because I'm doing it presently with search kit).
You can add arbitrary URLS (ie an url scheme of your devising) with:
SKDocumentCreateWithURL
Then add text to be indexed with:
SKIndexAddDocumentWithText
I haven't looked at the Spotlight API so I couldn't tell you if this is the case with Spotlight, but everyone seems to be saying that you need to feed it a file URL for each object searched. Perhaps because of the tie in with the operating system to see when files have changed.
BTW, your posts are very interesting, and I'm glad you post here, but you do sometimes give the impression of talking as 'the voice of Apple' on all subjects. Is this intentional? You can't possibly know about everything Apple does.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, it's true - from MacObserver.
[1:43 PM] We're getting a demonstaration of Mathematica at work. It's quite impressive, of course, and it's working on an Intel Mac. - posted by Dave
[1:42 PM] According to Mr. Gray, it took two hours to do this port. "We're talking about 20 lines of code out of millions from a dead cold start where he didn't even know why he was going." - posted by Dave
[1:41 PM] Mr. Gray is joking about getting "the most crazy calls from Apple," where Steve asked him on Wednesday night to come out to Apple and port Mathematica, one of the most complex apps on the planet to Intel by Monday. - posted by Dave
[1:39 PM] Asked a long time developer (Theo Grey of Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica) to come out to Apple and work on Intel. - posted by Dave
[1:38 PM] Developers applauded Steve when he said that both processors would be supported for a long time to come, and the core to this will be universal binaries. - posted by Dave
[1:37 PM] In a chart, Coca apps had half the "tweak" time as Xcode, but Steve emphasized that it will be easy. - posted by Dave
[1:37 PM] "Cocoa apps: A few minor tweaks and a recompile, and it just works. Widgets, scripts, and JAva just work." Xcode will take a few more tweaks. - posted by Dave
[1:35 PM] Looking at the developer's apps now. Everyone is on the edge of their seat. - posted by Dave
[1:34 PM] Steve confirmed all this, BTW, by saying the rumors have been true about how Apple had an Intel project. - posted by Dave
[1:33 PM] Today's demonstration has been done entirely on an Intel Mac. Steve is showing us how everything works. - posted by Dave
[1:33 PM] Every project done at Apple has been mandated to work on PowerPC and Intel. - posted by Dave
When your country imprisons enemies indefinitely without trial, exports suspects for torture by third parties, and supports many puppet regimes, I think crowing about Freedom is a little premature isn't it? Or perhaps you meant your freedom at the expense of that of a lot of other people?
As to your 'they'll get us first' argument (substitute bogey-man of the moment, apparently China, for they), the extension of this to its logical conclusion is of course that to ensure US hegomony you must take over every other nation on Earth. Perhaps you think that would be a good idea if you had the resources; fortunately for the rest of us, you don't and never will.
Why can't you see through this kind of cheap nationalism? It's only meant to distract you from real economic and political problems at home.
at the same time these nations were stealing their jobs. With unemployment so high in France, this is not an appealing situation.
France has suffered structurally high unemployment which has hovered around 10% since the early 1980s, and you are trying to claim that it is somehow caused by Eastern Europe 'stealing jobs' since the union? That is nonsense at best and sophistry at worst.
We had the same arguments when Portugal and Spain joined, but perhaps you would have been against that too. Inevitably, money goes to those who need it most, I see that as only fair.
And the Netherlands is next, along with the UK, in voting NO for similar reasons.
Err, no, for entirely different reasons, in fact in France the No vote was evenly divided between the far right (Le Pen), the communists and half the socialists - hardly a united front - I wonder what sort of treaty we'd have if they all had a hand in writing it; probably they'd still be arguing over which capitalists/foreigners to blame for their woes in the preface.
yeah, and they invented the internet too, didn't they?
it works, and it's good enough for most people.
You missed out the bit where they force hardware vendors to sign secret exclusive agreements (illegal and still going on I believe), change their APIs to kill others (DRDOS, Samba), undermine competing OSs (OS2, Be, then Linux) and generally try to kill off any competition by any means necessary (illegal or not) before it gets too strong to compete.
They've already stopped much development on the mac side (IE, MSN messenger) - watch them kill office for OS X in a few years, when they feel they can get away with it.
Yep, this article is, like many posted on slashdot, an aimless, largely unsubstantiated rant and based on some flimsy evidence, as Thurrott points out.
However, when your biggest cheerleader, who runs a site called winsupersite, starts saying things like (to quote his post)
In many ways--more than you may realize--I wish I could "switch" to the Mac. But I can't. Too many applications I want are PC-specific. Too many of my readers use PCs. Too much of my technology investment is PC-based and non-reproduceable on the Mac.
and the new version of Windows is a train wreck, you know there is a serious problem in Windows land. He's making excuses now about why he can't switch to what he obviously feels is a better operating system - as those excuses evaporate in the light of day, more and more people will switch.
It comes with online help, so you could always read that, or go read the apple website about it if you want a high level overview. You're more likely to need a book about the API you choose to target (cocoa for example) than the IDE, as once you get used to it the IDE will become quite transparent.
:
It's free, and much better than it used to be, but there are still some rough patches. In particular
The preferences are split between Targets and 'Build Styles' some of which override the others choices - this is a bit annoying if you're used to a simple Build Target x model and is not as elegant as it could be.
Sometimes it doesn't rebuild everything as it should when switching build styles and you have to say 'Clean Target'.
The build in editor is not great, and the menus are a confused mess (IMHO) but you can use external editors with it easily enough.
He tried to load 15,000 photos into iPhoto and it crashed (probably because one of the photos was corrupt and it couldn't handle it, though he doesn't seem to have gotten that far in his analysis). The sensible thing would be to divide his collection and import some at a time to narrow down the problem.
Personally I don't like iphoto, I use a professional photo management program (that you have to pay for), and frankly I think he should too if he's trying to manage that number of photos.
Although I'd be the first to admit the iApps are far from perfect, judging the OS on one flaw in one iApp is probably not a very good idea - perhaps he should give it a bit of time and try to come up with a balanced analysis of the strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis something like Picasa on windows.
In a world where everything can be cheaply copied, you no longer need the money-based economy
And in a world without money (and without property as you seem to imply), I can't imagine the social structure or who is in charge. A benevolent dictator? A pure democracy that somehow avoids corruption and nepotism? Who gets the best cars, or are all cars the same? Etc etc ad nauseam. I think your proposed solution raises more questions than it answers, though it's nice that you're willing to accept the consequences of this line of thought.
I love reading about this in sci-fi (The Culture of Iain Banks sounds close to what you're describing), but how do we get from here to there? Power-mad people have an annoying habit of taking over Utopian revolutions and using them for their own ends, and the majority of people are driven by the basest of emotions; among them greed, avarice and pride.
Frankly I think most people copying music right now are more motivated by greed and the one in a million chances of being caught, than dreams of a utopia without the need for money, sad as that may seem.
Thanks for the link, I just read 1984 the other day, and this essay is equally thought provoking.
It really describes a problem with almost all leaders of men though, no? Politics attracts the meanest, least imaginitive amongst us, and the majority of us prefer it that way, saves having to think.
Having read the essay, I will say it again, I found the opening preamble to be a lot more that I had hoped for, in that it aspires to a time when Europe will be a true democracy (as in the leading quote). Perhaps I don't dare hope enough any more : )
What is my agenda?
I wish to live in a peaceful, integrated Europe, which is capable of managing the change from living off the developing world (as we do just now) to supporting it and accepting it as an equal.
I think we believe different things because we come from different cultures in Europe. As has been said many times, a French No is very different to a British No, or even a French Yes to a British Yes. I'm not from France.
most people do not even understand the first page for christ sake.
Given that the first page is the passage quoted (unless you count the title/preface), I find that hard to believe. I read the first 50 pages in half an hour or so, without too many problems. For the curious, it's available on the web en fr.
of a lot of very important parts of this "constitution", but yet, you understand all of it very clearly ?
Some of it uses deliberately vague language to allow wiggle room for the various partner states. There are many 'get out clauses' (which they refer to amusingly as passerelles in the English text (ça sent le français original parfois, il faut le dire)) for the various nation states that didn't want to sign up to all of it at once. I can see how that could lead to ambiguity. I didn't say I understood every nuance, I said it was remarkably clear for a text which deals with so many issues.
Have you read it?
If you expect something to be legally watertight it is very difficult to make it at the same time clear. I am in no way saying this document is perfect, but it is not the source of all evil as you seem to hint. Many of the national laws in France and the UK are just as obscure, if not far far worse.
Perhaps the worst part, is that this "constituion" defines the economic regime. This is the worst thing you could find in a constitution (we can see the effects with the software patents episode), but it does not seem to be a big deal to you.
Economics is integral to politics, and this document supercedes many treaties, and thus incorporates their rules. These treaties were agreed upon by all the nation states. Those rules will be in no way changed by a yes or a no to the constitution. Are you really suggesting that we repeal the common market, is that what you want? Would that solve economic problems in France?? ?
To say, as the constitution does,
based on balanced economic growth, a social market economy, highly competitive and aiming at full employment and social progress.
is a balance between the free market economics which now dominate the agenda in Europe and the feeling that we should strive to uphold our standards, not lower them to the lowest common denominator (le nivellement par le bas). Europe is not France and the UK is not America - there are many shades of social democracy, and the argument is over which particular shade we want to aspire to. Now I can't say I agree with many of the policies in the UK right now but just as an example often not cited in the current French debate the public services of each nation are explicitly defended in this document, the cultural exception is there.
Frankly, living in France, I find the debate here on the constitution dissapointing, desolant, in its insistance on the corrupt right wing government in power, the economy, and the difficult situation for most French workers. Will voting no change any of that? If you aspire to a better constitution, by all means fight for one - this one could in many ways be improved. If you wish to live in a France unbuffetted by the changes the world is undergoing, which will forever live as in the halcyon days of les trentes glorieuses, you are living in the past.
The most disturbing thing about the debate right now in France is that if the constitution is rejected this time by France, the next proposa
Not because it's bad but because it's barely comprehensible.
... is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the greatest number.
Would you care to elaborate? I found it inspiring, not as stirring as the American Declaration of Independence, but good nonetheless, and clear when it dealt with the inevitably complex relations between still sovereign states. From the preamble...
Our Constitution
-- Thucydides II, 37
Conscious that Europe is a continent that has brought forth civilisation; that its inhabitants, arriving in successive waves from earliest times, have gradually developed the values underlying humanism: equality of persons, freedom, respect for reason,
Drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, the values of which, still present in its heritage, have embedded within the life of society the central role of the human person and his or her inviolable and inalienable rights, and respect for law,
Believing that reunited Europe intends to continue along the path of civilisation, progress and prosperity, for the good of all its inhabitants, including the weakest and most deprived; that it wishes to remain a continent open to culture, learning and social progress; and that it wishes to deepen the democratic and transparent nature of its public life, and to strive for peace, justice and solidarity throughout the world,
Convinced that, while remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their ancient divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny,
Convinced that, thus "united in its diversity", Europe offers them the best chance of pursuing, with due regard for the rights of each individual and in awareness of their responsibilities towards future generations and the Earth, the great venture which makes of it a special area of human hope,
It is not the blueprint for a Utopia, but then I don't see any but failed Utopias looking around, do you? I'm paying attention, and I'm going to say yes. Personally I think you're playing to the gallery. Just what would a your constitution for a continent with 25 different countries to be united (some of which don't like the idea of a federal parliament at all) look like?
Now you can quote some section of legalese from within the 200 pages which you feel is opaque, but in general I felt it was perfectly readable by ordinary citizens of the union when taken together - that to me is a great achievement, particularly considering it's been written in several languages at once and attempts to integrate treaties going back 40 years. Writing a constitution for a group of countries merging is not the same as writing one for a newly formed country and that is reflected in the length and complexity.
I don't think Europe is yet ready for this kind of ambitious integration, but it will happen at some point in the future.
You didn't steal anything.
Yeah, except if this magic wand is freely available, Ferraris are now worthless, and the designers will be paid nothing. Think through your analogies a little better.
Why should they bother to continue to produce stuff for freeloaders like you? Just what economic model would you propose for content producers?
That all sounds rather nice, but is really rather hollow, reactionary thinking. Space-borne weapons might offer a way to fight conflicts with precision and minimal loss of life to both sides.
Or they might not - hasn't this been the excuse for ever more destructive weapons since time immemorial 'they'll save more lives than they destroy'? It has never turned out to be true. The aim of war is never minimal loss of lives to both sides.
The agressive militarisation of a domain which all space-capable countries have explicitly agreed not to militarise is an insane, hubristic waste of money which will backfire when China, Europe, India et al decide they can't tolerate a US with space weapons and start to arm their satellites. Why not press for ratification of a treaty which explicitly bans all weapons in space? You could then pour funding into the civilian related technologies directly.
The science involved will invariable trickle down. Do you have objections to the fact that airplanes benefitted from military research? Hell, we got the jet engine from the Nazis for the most part.
Why don't they spend the money on the science instead then? As an aside the Nazis were not the only ones developing a jet engine.
Sometimes the hippy dippy shit that sounds so good is just a gloss coat on reality that makes you feel smug. But it comes at the cost of the complexity of the real world.
Sometimes that jingoistic talk is just a varnish on a primitive desire to dominate driven by fear. An attempt at cooperation with other nation states would go a lot further than unfounded paranoia about possible future threats.
The complex reality is that war always kills thousands, maims hundreds of thousands, and sends the countries invaded back to the stone age. It is not something to be sought out or justified, even if it is, very rarely, a necessary evil. I'd be interested in an example of a war that has been fought with 'precision' - in Iraq they're not even counting the civilian casualties.
The US has no need of a bigger, better, weapon - they already spend more on weapons than any other nation, almost 10 times more.
I prefer 1984 for inspiration myself - a sobering read given the wars, actual and planned, that we're living through.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
In my world though, moving our servers to the 64bit version of Windows took our server requirments to less than 1/5 the equivalent systems when running the 32bit version of Windows 2003 Server.
So maybe that fuzzy math stuff does work in the real world.
So you're comparing two completely different architectures, one of which was register starved until the move to 64bit, and the other which had no such problems, and claiming that moving to a fully 64bit architecture made a difference for one, so it must for the other?
Do some reading about the difference before you start spouting off.
No, I think he'd rather see people who write for public consumption in any language spend the time to check their spelling. If they're feeling particularly conscientious perhaps they could reread the piece to check the grammar.
Soon every bill will be a military spending bill !
The people would never go for that.
Oh, but they already have.
Only allow widgets to access certain websites named in their plist? When the widget starts for the first time warn the user which urls it will attempt to acccess and ask for permission (this would be a useful thing in my opinion anyway system-wide, it should be possible to see which apps are talking to which servers a la Little Snitch and have fine-grained control).
Really though, there are a few things they could do that would make this situation a lot better : -
Safari should not download files from the Internet without warning via javascript/page refresh (why does this work anyway, it was already the cause of another security hole a while ago??).
It should not auto-install widgets. Ever.
The user should be able to remove widgets from Dashboard (not by fiddling in the library folder).
Apple should *never* have given people the impression widgets were anything other than full Applications - this should be clearly stated on their widgets page. They can run arbitrary shell commands and scripts for god's sake, after one innocuous warning dialog.
They should treat all widgets exactly the same as scripts and applications (if you try to have safe and non-safe ones you can bet someone will figure out a way round it). So show the warning about trusting apps on first run. The present dialog just says
'xxx widget is being run for the first time, are you sure you want to run this widget' (User thinks, well yes, that's why I double clicked it). That's all.
Consider a vetting program for widgets (and even applications) so that they have a 'certified clean' listing on the Apple site. A whitelist since you don't like blacklists.
Personally I have changed the permissions on my widgets folder so I'd have to authenticate before installing, however I can't expect my non tech-savvy friends to do this - perhaps I could send them a widget to do it : )
I expect a fix from Apple, but worryingly a few of the 'security' features in Tiger are doing things the wrong way, bombarding the user with different pop-up windows asking for permission for almost every zip file, saying this 'may' be dangerous and we all know what happens when users learn to click OK on several dialogs before they can do anything - they stop reading the dialogs and clickety-click their way to doom.
They need a small number (ideally 1) of consistent dialogs which have the same message - things you download from the internet are not safe, be very careful that you trust the source before running, to be triggered on first run of an app/script/widget.
All's fair in love and war.
I notice the photographs on your website are 'Copyright Benjamin Kaufman 2004'. You will be just as meekly accepting if I rip those off and put them on my website as by myself then?
Didn't think so.
Perhaps they need to do more automatic regression testing (daily) on each build then?
I think the car analogy is (for once : ) a good one. We have come to expect failure from Software, and that shouldn't be the case - it should be very rare, not inevitable with each new release. They did rush the release of Tiger, and certain things suffered for it. Yes they will probably fix it quickly, but it'd be nice if they had a more extensive testing program, with sufficient time alllotted to do the QA work, for catching regressions like this.
So do you get paid to post here or have some obsessive need to defend Apple for hours at a time in every story that refers to them? That is an unhealthy obsession : )
If you didn't keep saying 'we' all the time, people might not give you such a hard time over who you are. Several people from Apple have posted asking you to keep quiet because of your attitude (can't be bothered to find the links).
Talk is cheap.
Search Kit can index multiple things within a single file.
:
:
Can Spotlight?
If not, why not?
Frankly I think your hostility to the Mac BU (and by extension anyone who questions this 'feature') is misplaced. Why should every mail application (or other application) have to change their storage format to a single file per object?
If this is the case, this is a gap in the Spotlight API, and a step backwards from Search Kit - it would not be backwards compatible. If it is backwards compatible you can indeed index several things in one file (I know because I'm doing it presently with search kit).
You can add arbitrary URLS (ie an url scheme of your devising) with
SKDocumentCreateWithURL
Then add text to be indexed with
SKIndexAddDocumentWithText
I haven't looked at the Spotlight API so I couldn't tell you if this is the case with Spotlight, but everyone seems to be saying that you need to feed it a file URL for each object searched. Perhaps because of the tie in with the operating system to see when files have changed.
BTW, your posts are very interesting, and I'm glad you post here, but you do sometimes give the impression of talking as 'the voice of Apple' on all subjects. Is this intentional? You can't possibly know about everything Apple does.