contracts of adhesion, then shrink-wrap licenses are the SuperGlue of contracts.
As a former practitioner of the dark arts, I always got a chuckle out of comparing the lofty, legal definition of a "contract" with its language-tortured-within-an-inch-of-its-life doppelganger, the shrink-wrap license.
The only way left to screw consumers any further is to put the license inside the shrink-wrap. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't tried it.
But, hey, I guess it's just another example of the Golden Rule: they who have the gold, make the rules
When the post-modern Internet appeared fifteen years later (you know, when Mosaic was the only graphical web browser available), I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. PLATO had it all: e-mail, term-talk, and real-time multi-player games like Oubliette and Empire. In fact, it took the Internet another five years to develop the latter.
It's a masterful tome written by, um, the masters.
Concise, direct, and challenging, this is one of the greatest examples of technical writing I've seen in any field. It contains everything you can, want, or possibly need, to know about C (in a scant 190 pages). It is one of the few essential computer books I've ever encountered.
It's funny how symbols change over time. Like the pirate flag that was raised over the Macintosh design lab in 1983. Back then, it was a sign that Apple was going to take no prisoners in the battle for the personal computer marketplace. Well, Apple is still taking no prisoners, but, unfortunately, its only captives are its inexplicably loyal customers, who, after paying a premium for all things Apple, are being asked again to throw good money after bad while Apple morphs into a mini-Microsoft.
And I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now, a 40GB drive runs me $75. Two hundred times the capacity at six percent of the cost. Whew!
Please read your own post. Ease of use wasn't even mentioned in it. The question you asked was why people would run Linux on PPC. One's perception of how a company relates to its customers is certainly a valid (and perhaps the most important) criterion for determining whether one is going to purchase - and how one is going to use - a company's products.
"A partially valid criticism..on the other hand, Linux hardware support isn't nearly as good as windows (in terms of the x86 platform), so why not go to windows if what you want is the ultimate in compatibility?"
Huh?
How does a concern over the proprietary aspects of key Mac OS X components translate into a desire for hardware compatibility and a need to use Microsoft products?
"I'm somehow translating seemingly noble philosophical ideals into computer software."
Check your translator. It seems to be generating a series of erroneous responses.
If you find that the "seemingly noble" idea of having a choice to be unsettling, threatening, or confusing, I really don't know how to respond. The subtext of your response seems to be that what's best for you is what's best for everyone.
"Such as QuarkXPress, Itunes, Photoshop, Digital camera integration, best user interface, CONSISTENT user interface, higher game availability, etc."
QuarkXPress - don't use it, don't need it.
Itunes - cdparanoia and XMMS
Photoshop - ImageMagick
Digital camera - don't use it, don't need it
best user interface - it's the one I'm using right now, and, hey, if I don't like it, I can build and install another one.
CONSISTENT user interface - oh, you mean the UI that remains the same, even when you don't want it to.
higher game availability - since 90% of PC games will never reach the OS X desktop, that's an odd thing to say.
"That seems somewhat churlish of you...I don't really see how it's not ready for primetime either."
Churlish, indeed. Dealing with Apple for eighteen years would try the patience of Job.
Why is this inane question posed every time an article about Linux on the PPC is posted?
Likely answers to the original question are:
1. Macintosh users are getting just as tired of Apple's corporate crap as Intel users are of Microsoft's. Despite Apple's warm and fuzzy PR persona, the only difference between it and Microsoft is annual revenue. Steve Jobs would trade places with Bill Gates in a heartbeat.
2. Large and important chunks of OS X are, and forever will be, proprietary, which means that end-users are, and forever will be, dependent on Apple for key OS functionality (or the lack thereof).
3. OS X is still a dog, albeit with fewer fleas.
4. More than one of something is a good thing.
5. Freedom from choice isn't really freedom.
6. Assuming that there are indeed things that OS X can do that Linux can't, those things aren't of sufficent value to end-users to justify the incremental cost and loss of control.
7. On a personal note, I got tired of waiting a decade for a new OS from Apple, only to be milked for two hundred bones for a retread that wasn't, and still isn't, ready for prime-time.
Since making innovative, competitive products is no longer on Microsoft's list of priorities - if indeed it ever was - does this sort of lowball crap really surprise anyone?
The tail end of the article mentions that subscribers can't be any more than six-tenths of a mile from the "box", which I take to mean a remote terminal of some sort. In that sense, what Clear Lake is doing is not that different from the remote terminal initiatives of the telcos. And, really, if you are only working with 3K feet of clean (i.e., no BTs or load coils) copper, a DSL connection could get pretty close to its theoretical max of 8Mbps, which is probably just enough to carry voice, data, and compressed video. I won't vouch for the quality of the video, though.:)
Compared to Perl and Python, the syntax is cleaner and easier to understand. Scripts can be roughed out in functional terms, and then moved over to objects in no time at all. And, since every component of the core language is an object, OOP is as simple as it gets.
The thing that's killing Ruby for me is the lack of documentation. The material that's available requires a lot of (read too much) effort to assimilate. It desperately needs a Camel book...
Windows is the place where Bill Gates displays all of the ideas he's stolen, and all of the companies he's crushed. It's a museum dedicated to the multifarious ways in which greed and power corrupt. I wouldn't use his OS even if it was worth a shit. As for being "a paradign of total customer satisfaction", I'm surprised most Windows users can get any work done at all. I mean holding a mouse with your right hand and your nose with the other doesn't leave a hand free to do anything else...
I don't remember that the dungeon I played had a specific name, just a tavern, a store, and ten levels. Maxed-out characters could travel 1-9 alone, but 10 was never a solo job, as I proved one slightly inebriated night. Took three days to find a crew willing to drag my corpse off 10. Luckily, I wasn't permed...
I can't remember whether it was Trebor or Werdna (or both) who wrote it, but there was a game on the PLATO network (circa '79 or '80) called "Oubliette" that nearly caused me to flunk out of law school. For homeboys of that time and place, I owned a Level 63 boxer (Samurai) name "Sarge" and a Level 63 Valk named "Pandora".
It all came down over a 300bps link to one of those funky orange plasma PLATO terminals and, man, did it kick some serious ass. With parties of individual players from all over the country, that exprience turned me on to the power of networking.
A typical night lasted from midnight to 4 or 5, when the system went down for maintenance. A couple of hours of serious dungeon-diving, followed by a couple of hours of "Empire".
Man, those were the days...
Out!
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As a former practitioner of the dark arts, I always got a chuckle out of comparing the lofty, legal definition of a "contract" with its language-tortured-within-an-inch-of-its-life doppelganger, the shrink-wrap license.
The only way left to screw consumers any further is to put the license inside the shrink-wrap. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't tried it.
But, hey, I guess it's just another example of the Golden Rule: they who have the gold, make the rules
How can industry-fronted CD clubs give away fifteen CDs in exchange for the promise to buy two CDs at regular price over the next two years?
Inquiring minds want to know...
I'm using it. I'd be interested in hearing from some people who are beating on it in some serious production environments.
Thanks!
When the post-modern Internet appeared fifteen years later (you know, when Mosaic was the only graphical web browser available), I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. PLATO had it all: e-mail, term-talk, and real-time multi-player games like Oubliette and Empire. In fact, it took the Internet another five years to develop the latter.
It's a masterful tome written by, um, the masters.
Concise, direct, and challenging, this is one of the greatest examples of technical writing I've seen in any field. It contains everything you can, want, or possibly need, to know about C (in a scant 190 pages). It is one of the few essential computer books I've ever encountered.
another f*cking gated community! Elitism is not dead, it just smells funny.
That must be a corollary to the "if you can't make money from it, it's not worth doing" principle.
It's nice to know the manure spreaders at One Infinite Loop are working overtime.
Please read your own post. Ease of use wasn't even mentioned in it. The question you asked was why people would run Linux on PPC. One's perception of how a company relates to its customers is certainly a valid (and perhaps the most important) criterion for determining whether one is going to purchase - and how one is going to use - a company's products.
"A partially valid criticism..on the other hand, Linux hardware support isn't nearly as good as windows (in terms of the x86 platform), so why not go to windows if what you want is the ultimate in compatibility?"
Huh?
How does a concern over the proprietary aspects of key Mac OS X components translate into a desire for hardware compatibility and a need to use Microsoft products?
"I'm somehow translating seemingly noble philosophical ideals into computer software."
Check your translator. It seems to be generating a series of erroneous responses.
If you find that the "seemingly noble" idea of having a choice to be unsettling, threatening, or confusing, I really don't know how to respond. The subtext of your response seems to be that what's best for you is what's best for everyone.
"Such as QuarkXPress, Itunes, Photoshop, Digital camera integration, best user interface, CONSISTENT user interface, higher game availability, etc."
QuarkXPress - don't use it, don't need it.
Itunes - cdparanoia and XMMS
Photoshop - ImageMagick
Digital camera - don't use it, don't need it
best user interface - it's the one I'm using right now, and, hey, if I don't like it, I can build and install another one.
CONSISTENT user interface - oh, you mean the UI that remains the same, even when you don't want it to.
higher game availability - since 90% of PC games will never reach the OS X desktop, that's an odd thing to say.
"That seems somewhat churlish of you...I don't really see how it's not ready for primetime either."
Churlish, indeed. Dealing with Apple for eighteen years would try the patience of Job.
Likely answers to the original question are:
1. Macintosh users are getting just as tired of Apple's corporate crap as Intel users are of Microsoft's. Despite Apple's warm and fuzzy PR persona, the only difference between it and Microsoft is annual revenue. Steve Jobs would trade places with Bill Gates in a heartbeat.
2. Large and important chunks of OS X are, and forever will be, proprietary, which means that end-users are, and forever will be, dependent on Apple for key OS functionality (or the lack thereof).
3. OS X is still a dog, albeit with fewer fleas.
4. More than one of something is a good thing.
5. Freedom from choice isn't really freedom.
6. Assuming that there are indeed things that OS X can do that Linux can't, those things aren't of sufficent value to end-users to justify the incremental cost and loss of control.
7. On a personal note, I got tired of waiting a decade for a new OS from Apple, only to be milked for two hundred bones for a retread that wasn't, and still isn't, ready for prime-time.
Since making innovative, competitive products is no longer on Microsoft's list of priorities - if indeed it ever was - does this sort of lowball crap really surprise anyone?
The tail end of the article mentions that subscribers can't be any more than six-tenths of a mile from the "box", which I take to mean a remote terminal of some sort. In that sense, what Clear Lake is doing is not that different from the remote terminal initiatives of the telcos. And, really, if you are only working with 3K feet of clean (i.e., no BTs or load coils) copper, a DSL connection could get pretty close to its theoretical max of 8Mbps, which is probably just enough to carry voice, data, and compressed video. I won't vouch for the quality of the video, though. :)
I'd call the above poster a moron, but that would be an insult to morons.
Compared to Perl and Python, the syntax is cleaner and easier to understand. Scripts can be roughed out in functional terms, and then moved over to objects in no time at all. And, since every component of the core language is an object, OOP is as simple as it gets. The thing that's killing Ruby for me is the lack of documentation. The material that's available requires a lot of (read too much) effort to assimilate. It desperately needs a Camel book...
about $15B in annual revenues. You can put Jobs and Gates in bag, and it wouldn't matter which one you pulled out first.
Windows is the place where Bill Gates displays all of the ideas he's stolen, and all of the companies he's crushed. It's a museum dedicated to the multifarious ways in which greed and power corrupt. I wouldn't use his OS even if it was worth a shit. As for being "a paradign of total customer satisfaction", I'm surprised most Windows users can get any work done at all. I mean holding a mouse with your right hand and your nose with the other doesn't leave a hand free to do anything else...
Each build is getting worse, instead of better.
I don't remember that the dungeon I played had a specific name, just a tavern, a store, and ten levels. Maxed-out characters could travel 1-9 alone, but 10 was never a solo job, as I proved one slightly inebriated night. Took three days to find a crew willing to drag my corpse off 10. Luckily, I wasn't permed...
I can't remember whether it was Trebor or Werdna (or both) who wrote it, but there was a game on the PLATO network (circa '79 or '80) called "Oubliette" that nearly caused me to flunk out of law school. For homeboys of that time and place, I owned a Level 63 boxer (Samurai) name "Sarge" and a Level 63 Valk named "Pandora". It all came down over a 300bps link to one of those funky orange plasma PLATO terminals and, man, did it kick some serious ass. With parties of individual players from all over the country, that exprience turned me on to the power of networking. A typical night lasted from midnight to 4 or 5, when the system went down for maintenance. A couple of hours of serious dungeon-diving, followed by a couple of hours of "Empire". Man, those were the days... Out!