I'm not a MacHead... nor do I even own a Mac (though on occasion I've worked on some)... however, I don't even see how it can claimed that XP has the best colour scheme. Every time I see OS-X I start drooling and wish that I could afford a Mac to play with...
Come get it! Cheap Karma! Just say you want a mac!
Well, seriously you know this is satire right? It's making a point through humour. Yeah, the titlebars and start bar in the default XP theme are pretty garish, that's the point. On the other hand, I quite like the widget theme, pretty laid back in comparison.
Anyway, personally I think once you get over the big titlebars Windows XP is better than MacOS in terms of themes, the MacOS gui is cool for the first week, then the novelty wears off and it just gets distracting. In particular the stripes that invade it everywhere are just visual noise and ended up irritating me, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to turn it off, or make it a gradient or something.
Some stuff is just confusing too. Look at this for instance. Look at the bottom, I guess that thing at the bottom left is a progress indicator? It doesn't stand out terribly well, nor is it obvious what it does. On the left hand list view there is what seems to be an empty scrollbar, but it could be anything for all I know. It's just a seemingly pointless gradient.
The main problem with XP of course is that not all the apps use the new theming APIs, meaning you end up with a mix of cruddy old icons and grey UIs. Anyway, you know why Windows and GTK traditionally use shades of grey and brown? It's easier on the eyes.
In fact, if you remember back in the days when the web was a shiny new toy, by default web pages were grey. Modern day browsers use white as the default, but in the beginning it was a similar shade of grey to the one Windows used, because it makes reading for extended periods easier. For the same reason, the old green on black terminals weren't so great.
So, the Mac colour scheme is good for marketing purposes, but I don't really see how it could be objectively classed as "better", it certainly is less usable than the old MacOS 9 style ui. But I guess they had to give it some distinguishing feature.
There's a difference between Mac OS X running nix stuff and Windows running it. OS X is a version of Unix in its own right.
There's no difference. An operating system being UNIX is determined by how POSIX compliant it is. When OS X was first release, even Windows NT was more POSIX compliant than it. I don't know if that's still the case. Anyway, academic arguments about what is or isn't unix gets us nowhere, it's technically irrelevant.
Apple is encouraging the open source community, writing software for them (Safari rendering engine, Darwin)
Huh? KHTML was written by the open source community, that's not Apple writing software for us, exactly the opposite. In the same way, Darwin was mostly FreeBSD, which was already open source. They've released practically no code they've written that wasn't simply modifications to something that was already open source.
Write a program in Cocoa and it can be moved a lot quicker to another platform than most programs.
Not true at all. Java maybe. Cocoa is not a cross platform set of APIs, nowhere near. Where is the reference implementation? Where is the implementation for Windows, or for Linux? GNUstep only implements the OpenStep APIs, not any of Apples own extensions.
As for bugfixes requiring hardware, that doesn't really happen.
Apple are constantly pushing up the system requirements for new OS releases. Once there is a significantly faster machine out from them, expect to see even more cycle-eating eye candy in MacOS. MacOS X is hardly usable on old iMacs, I've tried it. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in a few years the G4s were considered too old to run the latest versions of MacOS.
This is insightful? Oh yes, of course, this is apple.slashdot.org
I never said they weren't free to use it. I never claimed they were violating the license. I'm not bitching that they took it.
I pointed out that embracing open source would mean actually taking the ideals of the movement to heart, not simply using code from it to further their own ends.
Anyway, I really can't be bothered arguing with you on this point, I've been around it a hundred times before on dot.kde.org, look in the Safari story. It should be pretty obvious which posts are mine. Apples long term goals are to lock the industry in to their proprietary hardware and software, which are in conflict with what I think is best for the industry. Therefore people should realise that simply using free software, even if you meet your legal obligations in doing so, is not the same as embracing it.
Re:Don't do it until you read this
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Adopt a KDE Geek
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· Score: 1
Wow, these projects compete in every way. KParts is to Bonobo as GNOME Armageddon is to KDE Myths:)
Re:this world has plenty of really helpless out th
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Adopt a KDE Geek
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Did it ever occur to you that maybe these people give to 3rd world charities as well?
Sponsoring a hacker and giving money to oxfam, concern or whatever are not mutually exclusive.
At the same time, you can't really say people should only give money to charities that give food to starving children in Africa. People give to what seems important to them. I can understand those who'd give contributions to KDE that might directly benefit them in terms of a better desktop, as opposed to a charity that works in the 3rd world which doesn't.
Also remember that although these charities do good work and should be supported, they are effectively running at full speed to keep things where they are. There's a reason Africa is still such a hellhole, when South America and Asia are dragging themselves out of grinding poverty. Every time a part of Africa looks like it might be about to make serious progress, various tribal tensions are played off against each other and it degenerates into civil war. Of course that's a gross over-exagguration, South Africa for instance is doing quite well, but considering that Zimbabwe has basically gone downhill since they were given independance, largely because Mugabe leveraged tribal mistrust and favoratism, I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to give to a cause that they know stands a good chance of moving things forward immediately.
Don't get me wrong, since about a month ago I started giving some money by direct debit to Concern, who do a lot of such work in 3rd world countries. But I'm not kidding myself. My money will do some good, but it's unlikely to actually improve things, it'll only stem the misery.
Yes yes, I'm quite aware of that. Using open source is not the same as embracing it however. Redhat embrace open source. Apple use it. Microsoft use it too, believe it or not. Have they embraced open source?
But Apple do provide X11 for you to run and you can compile a lot of Unix stuff for the Mac, so in that sense it is cross-platform.
No, open source UNIX apps are cross platform, MacOS apps are not. You can run linux apps on windows too. Is Windows nice and cross-platform? I don't think so.
Just because Apple builds a better computer a few months later doesn't mean the one you bought won't still do the job you bought it for.
What if you want a bugfix in the next version of MacOS, but they tie it to some hardware. Businesses need support, and Apples goal is to sell more hardware. As apps move on, OS 9 is being abandoned yes? So those people have to upgrade if they want to keep up with their one particular app, regardless of whether OS 9 was all they needed or not. This is well known, you can't just buy some technology then never upgrade it (well you can, but it's not wise).
If Safari is any indication of what we have in store for OS X and the iApps, Apple is going to really start embracing Open Source projects.
I think you mean embrace and extend. Safari is not open source for instance.
Everyone, including Apple, is starting to realize that it's going to end up being a Linux/Unix vs. Windows "war".
Actually it's a Linux vs MacOS vs Windows war. Linux is probably Apples biggest competitor. That's very true on the server for instance, I have yet to see good value propositions for Apple servers. Right now Linux is still playing catchup on the desktop, but once it "gets there" in terms of ease of use, all those geeks who so easily went to Apple could easily go back. Will they? Who knows. But it's certainly possible.
The kind of customers Apple have now are the slippery kind, they quite probably use MacOS, Linux and Windows day in, day out. That means they can move between platforms very easily. That also means Apple are going to have to work very hard to keep them.
Apple has realized that it will win over more Linux users by showing them that OS X is everything Linux strives to be, but with a larger user base, a unified vision, commercial applications and a WOW factor.
I think you missed the point about Linux, which is software freedom and openness RMS style. It's not striving to have lots of users or commercial applications, although that is the implication of having lots of people work on it and use it.
The question to Apple should be, will Linux users use an OS that has a proprietary GUI and hardware?
I wish people would stop saying that. It's not simply a case of a nice but unnecessary added extra you know. Mac apps will not work without all the proprietary Apple code, which isn't just the gui note, but also CoreAudio, IOKit, Cocoa, Carbon and so on.
If it was really "just a proprietary gui" then I could run MacOS apps in KDE yes? I'd be using a different desktop but I could still use the apps. But that doesn't work.
It is good that Apple is encouraging cross-platform interoperability
Mmmm.... how so? MacOS apps will only work on MacOS. It's not like you can just install Aqua and a Quartz server on Linux and display these apps, like you can with X11/GTK is it?
I think part of their strategy now is to get their products into the hands of people who will be making corporate purchasing decisions down the road.
Possibly, but it'd have to be a pretty dumb sysadmin to blow their IT budget year on year replacing PCs with Macs, only to find that model has been obsoleted by Apple a few years down the line. Plus of course repurchasing all their software as well. And IT budgets aren't getting bigger quicker like they used to.
Personal systems for UNIX geeks is one thing, because most likely all their software was open source already so can simply be recompiled and run under X. Most businesses and home users however run Windows, and aren't really interested enough in technology to want to cough up for shiny things. At least, that's what I've observed.
Firstly, if a significant share of the "wintel" market goes to Linux, MS will no longer be a monopoly--and can go back to doing whatever cuthroat things it wants to for another twenty years, without the government having cause to intervene and tell it to stop being evil.
Microsoft only has the chance to do evil things because it is a monopoly, and anyway it's not like they are unduly worried about what the US govt says or thinks. They've been told to stop being evil many times, and so far haven't shown many signs of slowing down.
Secondly, the presence of a free Linux gives it an escape vector to channel software pirates to. If MS _really_ wanted to wipe Linux from the world, they could simply cut the prices on their OS distributions for home users to $25 a pop, which would effectively kill of piracy of windows.
Other than the fact that $25 is still $25 higher than Windows (and many, many people get windows "for free"), I think that'd do jack all to stop Linux. Very few people I know use Linux because it's cheap. In fact I know quite a few who have spent more on distros than they would have ever done on Windows. Maybe for corporates that'd make a difference, but if they slashed the price of Windows what funds all their other loss-making ventures?
The really nice bit is that Linux / OpenOffice / KOffice provide MS with all of the beneifts of serious competition without any of the real competition. (When was the last time that you saw a Linux flyer in the mail?)
Huh? How does that work? If anything that description would apply to Apple which is firmly under Microsofts thumb, and couldn't get high market share anyway due to not using commodity hardware. People are indeed switching all the way from Windows to Linux, and the assault on the corporate desktop is probably going to begin in about a year, at which point there will be no doubt that it's real competition.
Note that how many flyers you receive isn't a good way to measure competition. The home user desktop is still a few years away yet.
In short: MS benefits from Linux as much as Intel benefits from AMD, and wiping it out is far, far more trouble than it's worth.
A monopoly is about the most valuable thing you can have. Anyway, if they weren't interested in wiping it out why all the anti-GPL rhetoric earlier? Why have they been going around telling people Linux might open them up to patent lawsuits?
Microsoft are printing cash in the current situation, and almost certainly don't want to see the status quo end after so long.
Plus, MS knows that Linux is better in some situations, and supports it. Heck, my webpage runs on Frontpage under Linux!
No, I'm sure any MS rep would tell you Windows 2000 would make a far better server platform. The reason you can do that is because Linux is a force in the server world that's stronger than FrontPage is in the client world. So it'd be a case of "You can't use FrontPage for this, our servers run Linux", "Oh well". They support Passport on Linux/Apache as well, doesn't mean they like it, only that they can see it makes business sense.
So really there are three possible futures. In the first one, Microsoft fights Linux to the last and is destroyed. In the second, Microsoft isn't destroyed but merely recedes into the sunset, like IBM in the PC market. In the third, they succesfully make the transition to writing software for Linux and stick around (though not as a monopoly).
I don't know any hard dates, but I know it was scheduled for the end of January, so maybe in a few weeks?
I'm looking forward to the animated cursors myself, Jimmac has made some really nice ones
Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn
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Why VHS Was Better
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· Score: 1
The value of a product is not defined by its creators. It is defined by its market. Meaning its users and customers.
Yeah. Linux vs Windows is a classic VHS vs Betamax.
The thing that really killed Betamax was that it was mostly proprietary. The tapes were Sony only, the machines were Sony only. Windows is the betamax, and Linux is the VHS.
In Linux there is competition, in Windows there is not. So, maybe when people will look back in the future they will say things like "Well, FreeBSD had a better kernel but Linux won, or MacOS had a better display system but Linux won, or Windows had a better component system, but Linux won". Just like they do with Betamax. At the end of the day though it's just market economics.
As it is today, woe to any newbie who wants to jump on the linux bandwagon; all they get is name calling and static when they have real problems. The overall experience can be very unpleasant.
*shrug*. I guess peoples experiences are mixed. I know many people who were introduced to Linux by good people, and were happy as clams. One guy started on Redhat 7.3 about a month ago and has already ditched KDE and moved to Blackbox, and is even learning emacs! Then there are people like me, who somehow avoided the flames on IRC and got a lot of quality support out of it. Now there are forums like linuxquestions.org as well.
So I think it's like any new things. If you got "name calling and static" then really that's an issue with either who you asked or the way you asked it. I mean sometimes there are questions on the forums or on IRC where somebody comes in and says "I've spent hours trying to make this work, Linux is seriously not impressing me. It works on Windows, if I can't get this working I'm just going to give up, this is stupid" or whatever, and obviously that is the wrong way to ask.
So yeah, the experience can be unpleasant, but it doesn't have to be. Like that guy earlier in the thread who said he asked questions on Slashdot, and was annoyed because he never got a response. Well, surely that would have told him something, like maybe Slashdot is the wrong place for tech support? If people have real problems then they are basically expected to put in a bit of effort to at least find the correct forum to ask questions.
Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn
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Why VHS Was Better
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You haven't been in one of those lately I can tell.
They vary a lot. FreeNode is normally pretty civilised.
and why did you chose THAT distro, everybody knows THIS distro is sooo much better. No it isn't, another one says. Yes it is. No it isn't.
In my experience that's usually caused by somebody deciding they'll use what their hacker friend uses, or their friend recommends Debian or Gentoo to a newbie. Then, they come onto IRC wondering how to make X work, so people say "you're a newbie, try Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake", because they know that'll probably give them a much smoother experience.
But of course, all it takes is 1 person out of the 150 in the channel to say "actually i started with debian and I made it, you should to" to start a mini debate.
Then go back to Windows you n00b/M$ lover.
I've never seen it put in those terms, but occasionally yeah people get pissed off and tell people to go back to Windows. Normally it's their own fault, comments like "God why is this sooo hard, on Windows it's easy, Linux really sucks" obviously isn't going to get a good response, yet I have seen people say that.
Obviously most people can't be bothered dealing with visitors who have attitude problems, helping people who want to learn is one thing, helping people who just don't give a damn and expect it to be delivered to them on a plate is something else.
OK. As you have chosen to not help out, we'd appreciate it if you avoided posting useless rants on Slashdot. You may think the current situation with media players is a bad one, feel free to ignore it until it gets better.
In the same fashion, I will avoid pointing out that if buying a Mac didn't mean paying for massively overpriced and inflexible hardware, combined with an OS with an UI I can't stand (or change to something I can stand), being taken up the ass by a company that regularly screws over its customers AND losing the software freedom that is about the only chance we have of restoring some semblance of normality to the industry, if it didn't mean all of that I might buy one.
Because until then, I'll use a Linux PC.
See how pointless these posts are? They add nothing to the debate. There are plenty of people who are trying to improve multimedia in general, rants such as the above add nothing and don't help that effort.
He can, but basically he's too lazy and ignorant. If he wanted to, he could install Totem direct from garnome, which involves extracting a tarball and typing "make install". Nothing to it. If you use an old distro, or want to be on the cutting edge, this is a good way to do it.
Nonetheless, he is bitching because oh golly gosh he'd have to install some new files. Note that Windows installers do this too. He appears to have missed the fact that you don't actually need to use gnome as your desktop to run gnome2 apps. He can use whatever bizarro desktop setup gives him kicks, and it'd still work.
Wierd. I'm the exact opposite. I prefer the XMMS/WinAmp UI to iTunes any day.
I find iTunes to take up way too much space for what it does, it looks dumb (brushed metal? that's the kind of skin my little brother would make in photoshop) and it's boring as hell.
As it happens, I organize my own music, so having a simple playlist is what's best. I like being able to skin my player, because I can make it fit with whatever visual style looks good to me. Note, that doesn't make it harder to use. Skins like in XMMS don't actually change the UI at all, the buttons are in the same place, the windows are the same - in fact, everything is the same. Loads of my non-geek friends use WinAmp, often with different skins, and they never have problems using their mates computers.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, but really no platform is completely consistant, because the human eye craves variety. Why do we decorate our walls, why are our houses all layed out differently? It's about being personal, which is why skins are so popular. If they suddenly made an app far harder to use, would anybody use skinned apps? Yet WinAmp is very popular.
Anyway, the idea that Windows or the Mac are consistant is rubbish. Both Microsoft and Apple have introduced new visual styles that they inconsistantly apply themselves, the.NET style on Windows and brushed-metal on MacOS. Yet somehow they survive.
he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server
What the fuck? And struggle with two fucking competing packaging systems, AND two fucking different fucking display systems? Yeah, THAT'S A COCK-SHAPED GOOD IDEA. You seem to expect me to install MacOS as well. Uh, no.
Fucking hell. I think Windows is looking more and more attractive. At least on Windows everything looks equally crap.
note: that was meant to be sarcasm. i don't actually talk like that:)
Re:RADAR was invented by the brits!
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Tuxedo Park
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Without Loomis, radar probably would have taken at least another 5 years to develop into a working state.
I seem to recall that there was a demo of a radar system that could lock on to floating barrage balloons and control a mortar. I saw an old film of it, it was pretty impressive even now, the gun moved the direction it was pointing in fired, moved onto the next, fired, and one by one each baloon exploded.
I don't recall when that was, but it was definately in England during the war.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "working state". Radar was most useful at first simply for detecting planes flying the Blitz, rather than the sort of stuff we use it for today. BTW I work at the organization formaly known as DERA, where a lot of the radar research took place and they still do a lot of radar and tracking work to this day.
Indeed it is. But I bet if you gave him OS X, he'd be fine with it. Linux as an OS, well that's a different story now isn't it?
Unlikely. OS X is more different to Windows than the default Redhat 8 setup is. Where's the start menu? Where's the Control panel? Where's WinAmp?
The idea that people magically pick up OS X with no effort at all is a stupid one. A Mac takes ages to get used to, not only is it an entirely different OS but it has different hardware too. Mac-specific keyboards? One button mice? Even my mac-fanatic friend has bought a two-button with a scrollwheel mouse now (an MS one as well!). What's the button to get a right click menu again? What's that? I don't see any button labelled command! Oh, the one with the wierd squiggle.
5 minutes later. It's not working! Oh, not the Apple key then. What do you mean I didn't close the app? I don't see its windows. Oh yeah, I forgot you have to quit them manually. So what's the difference between closing and minimizing a window? Oh. Which should I do then?. Um, right. Where's the start button again?
Believe me, I've seen it with my own eyes. In contrast, the default Redhat 8 setup is pretty similar to Windows. Easy to change of course (first thing I did), but certainly easy for newbies.
Believe me, Linux is going to wipe the floor usability-wise with MacOS in a year or two. It has the advantage of not having any real history, virtual desktops and the X clipboard are about the only baggage and being semi-hidden features they are entirely optional for newbies. That means it can be as similar or as different to Windows as you want, depending on how sophisticated you want it to be. The Mac on the other hand has the same interface it had a decade ago basically, which was good when it was battling it out with Windows, but now the Windows UI is entrenched and 99% of people are used to it. Nowadays it's just quirky.
But Jobs won't change it! The, ah, unique GUI is basically what defines his product. Never mind that the rampant eyecandification of the MacOS UI has actually reduced its usability, not enhanced it, never mind the fact that changing parts of the Mac UI wouldn't actually make them less efficient to use. No, never mind all of that - it's set in stone and cannot be changed.
The salesguy would be happiest with something close to what he's used to, especially when they're dropped in it with no training. Clearly their managers don't really think of Linux on the desktop yet, to them it's just another product, just another day. But they will. Next time there'll be more such desktops as managers realise it's not so hard after all.
Hmm, well, compared to what? Being able to buy PowerPC chips doesn't make the platform open.
Maybe PowerPC is open, but the Mac certainly is not. If it is, where are all the clones? It's not simply a case of trademarks, it's a case of Apple will come down like a ton of bricks on anybody who even thinks about cloning their platform.
Apple is extremely strict with their trademark rights, but they rarely overstep the intent, let alone the letter, of the law.
They use the law as their weapon all the time. Remember that guy who made an Aqua mozilla theme? The courts themselves had decided that you cannot protect a look and feel, but they threatened him all the same. Apple are known well for legal thuggery.
Apple seems to have benefitted from the free software community by utilizing KHTML for it's new browser. Could it return the favor by donating some of it's TTF's for use in Linux/Xfree?
Other than the fact that Apple have released very little stuff they developed themselves, they'd have been better off giving FreeType an unlimited license to TrueType hinting, instead of forcing them to develop an auto-hinter. It wouldn't have even cost anything, I don't know how much they make out of these royalties but I doubt it's much. Yet they do not.
I believe the issue is that Windows interprets point sizes slightly differently to FreeType. I have no idea which is correct, but I don't think it's to do with the actual fonts. But yes, it is irritating.
The microsoft world does very well with ARIAL, COURIER, and TIMES NEW ROMAN.
Indeed, and according to Fontilus Bitstream were the people who made these fonts.
I think people don't realise how hard it is to make good fonts. Arial is a huge project in and of itself, simply getting the fonts looking good at all sizes is hard, and then you need glyphs for other languages and alphabets.
It's hard. 10 fonts is an amazing gift, if they are of high quality. I think they will be, Bitstream are good.
Slashdot Mirror
Come get it! Cheap Karma! Just say you want a mac!
Well, seriously you know this is satire right? It's making a point through humour. Yeah, the titlebars and start bar in the default XP theme are pretty garish, that's the point. On the other hand, I quite like the widget theme, pretty laid back in comparison.
Anyway, personally I think once you get over the big titlebars Windows XP is better than MacOS in terms of themes, the MacOS gui is cool for the first week, then the novelty wears off and it just gets distracting. In particular the stripes that invade it everywhere are just visual noise and ended up irritating me, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to turn it off, or make it a gradient or something.
Some stuff is just confusing too. Look at this for instance. Look at the bottom, I guess that thing at the bottom left is a progress indicator? It doesn't stand out terribly well, nor is it obvious what it does. On the left hand list view there is what seems to be an empty scrollbar, but it could be anything for all I know. It's just a seemingly pointless gradient.
The main problem with XP of course is that not all the apps use the new theming APIs, meaning you end up with a mix of cruddy old icons and grey UIs. Anyway, you know why Windows and GTK traditionally use shades of grey and brown? It's easier on the eyes.
In fact, if you remember back in the days when the web was a shiny new toy, by default web pages were grey. Modern day browsers use white as the default, but in the beginning it was a similar shade of grey to the one Windows used, because it makes reading for extended periods easier. For the same reason, the old green on black terminals weren't so great.
So, the Mac colour scheme is good for marketing purposes, but I don't really see how it could be objectively classed as "better", it certainly is less usable than the old MacOS 9 style ui. But I guess they had to give it some distinguishing feature.
There's no difference. An operating system being UNIX is determined by how POSIX compliant it is. When OS X was first release, even Windows NT was more POSIX compliant than it. I don't know if that's still the case. Anyway, academic arguments about what is or isn't unix gets us nowhere, it's technically irrelevant.
Apple is encouraging the open source community, writing software for them (Safari rendering engine, Darwin)
Huh? KHTML was written by the open source community, that's not Apple writing software for us, exactly the opposite. In the same way, Darwin was mostly FreeBSD, which was already open source. They've released practically no code they've written that wasn't simply modifications to something that was already open source.
Write a program in Cocoa and it can be moved a lot quicker to another platform than most programs.
Not true at all. Java maybe. Cocoa is not a cross platform set of APIs, nowhere near. Where is the reference implementation? Where is the implementation for Windows, or for Linux? GNUstep only implements the OpenStep APIs, not any of Apples own extensions.
As for bugfixes requiring hardware, that doesn't really happen.
Apple are constantly pushing up the system requirements for new OS releases. Once there is a significantly faster machine out from them, expect to see even more cycle-eating eye candy in MacOS. MacOS X is hardly usable on old iMacs, I've tried it. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in a few years the G4s were considered too old to run the latest versions of MacOS.
I never said they weren't free to use it. I never claimed they were violating the license. I'm not bitching that they took it.
I pointed out that embracing open source would mean actually taking the ideals of the movement to heart, not simply using code from it to further their own ends.
Anyway, I really can't be bothered arguing with you on this point, I've been around it a hundred times before on dot.kde.org, look in the Safari story. It should be pretty obvious which posts are mine. Apples long term goals are to lock the industry in to their proprietary hardware and software, which are in conflict with what I think is best for the industry. Therefore people should realise that simply using free software, even if you meet your legal obligations in doing so, is not the same as embracing it.
Wow, these projects compete in every way. KParts is to Bonobo as GNOME Armageddon is to KDE Myths :)
Sponsoring a hacker and giving money to oxfam, concern or whatever are not mutually exclusive.
At the same time, you can't really say people should only give money to charities that give food to starving children in Africa. People give to what seems important to them. I can understand those who'd give contributions to KDE that might directly benefit them in terms of a better desktop, as opposed to a charity that works in the 3rd world which doesn't.
Also remember that although these charities do good work and should be supported, they are effectively running at full speed to keep things where they are. There's a reason Africa is still such a hellhole, when South America and Asia are dragging themselves out of grinding poverty. Every time a part of Africa looks like it might be about to make serious progress, various tribal tensions are played off against each other and it degenerates into civil war. Of course that's a gross over-exagguration, South Africa for instance is doing quite well, but considering that Zimbabwe has basically gone downhill since they were given independance, largely because Mugabe leveraged tribal mistrust and favoratism, I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to give to a cause that they know stands a good chance of moving things forward immediately.
Don't get me wrong, since about a month ago I started giving some money by direct debit to Concern, who do a lot of such work in 3rd world countries. But I'm not kidding myself. My money will do some good, but it's unlikely to actually improve things, it'll only stem the misery.
Yes yes, I'm quite aware of that. Using open source is not the same as embracing it however. Redhat embrace open source. Apple use it. Microsoft use it too, believe it or not. Have they embraced open source?
No, open source UNIX apps are cross platform, MacOS apps are not. You can run linux apps on windows too. Is Windows nice and cross-platform? I don't think so.
Just because Apple builds a better computer a few months later doesn't mean the one you bought won't still do the job you bought it for.
What if you want a bugfix in the next version of MacOS, but they tie it to some hardware. Businesses need support, and Apples goal is to sell more hardware. As apps move on, OS 9 is being abandoned yes? So those people have to upgrade if they want to keep up with their one particular app, regardless of whether OS 9 was all they needed or not. This is well known, you can't just buy some technology then never upgrade it (well you can, but it's not wise).
I think you mean embrace and extend. Safari is not open source for instance.
Everyone, including Apple, is starting to realize that it's going to end up being a Linux/Unix vs. Windows "war".
Actually it's a Linux vs MacOS vs Windows war. Linux is probably Apples biggest competitor. That's very true on the server for instance, I have yet to see good value propositions for Apple servers. Right now Linux is still playing catchup on the desktop, but once it "gets there" in terms of ease of use, all those geeks who so easily went to Apple could easily go back. Will they? Who knows. But it's certainly possible.
The kind of customers Apple have now are the slippery kind, they quite probably use MacOS, Linux and Windows day in, day out. That means they can move between platforms very easily. That also means Apple are going to have to work very hard to keep them.
Apple has realized that it will win over more Linux users by showing them that OS X is everything Linux strives to be, but with a larger user base, a unified vision, commercial applications and a WOW factor.
I think you missed the point about Linux, which is software freedom and openness RMS style. It's not striving to have lots of users or commercial applications, although that is the implication of having lots of people work on it and use it.
The question to Apple should be, will Linux users use an OS that has a proprietary GUI and hardware?
I wish people would stop saying that. It's not simply a case of a nice but unnecessary added extra you know. Mac apps will not work without all the proprietary Apple code, which isn't just the gui note, but also CoreAudio, IOKit, Cocoa, Carbon and so on.
If it was really "just a proprietary gui" then I could run MacOS apps in KDE yes? I'd be using a different desktop but I could still use the apps. But that doesn't work.
Mmmm.... how so? MacOS apps will only work on MacOS. It's not like you can just install Aqua and a Quartz server on Linux and display these apps, like you can with X11/GTK is it?
I think part of their strategy now is to get their products into the hands of people who will be making corporate purchasing decisions down the road.
Possibly, but it'd have to be a pretty dumb sysadmin to blow their IT budget year on year replacing PCs with Macs, only to find that model has been obsoleted by Apple a few years down the line. Plus of course repurchasing all their software as well. And IT budgets aren't getting bigger quicker like they used to.
Personal systems for UNIX geeks is one thing, because most likely all their software was open source already so can simply be recompiled and run under X. Most businesses and home users however run Windows, and aren't really interested enough in technology to want to cough up for shiny things. At least, that's what I've observed.
Microsoft only has the chance to do evil things because it is a monopoly, and anyway it's not like they are unduly worried about what the US govt says or thinks. They've been told to stop being evil many times, and so far haven't shown many signs of slowing down.
Secondly, the presence of a free Linux gives it an escape vector to channel software pirates to. If MS _really_ wanted to wipe Linux from the world, they could simply cut the prices on their OS distributions for home users to $25 a pop, which would effectively kill of piracy of windows.
Other than the fact that $25 is still $25 higher than Windows (and many, many people get windows "for free"), I think that'd do jack all to stop Linux. Very few people I know use Linux because it's cheap. In fact I know quite a few who have spent more on distros than they would have ever done on Windows. Maybe for corporates that'd make a difference, but if they slashed the price of Windows what funds all their other loss-making ventures?
The really nice bit is that Linux / OpenOffice / KOffice provide MS with all of the beneifts of serious competition without any of the real competition. (When was the last time that you saw a Linux flyer in the mail?)
Huh? How does that work? If anything that description would apply to Apple which is firmly under Microsofts thumb, and couldn't get high market share anyway due to not using commodity hardware. People are indeed switching all the way from Windows to Linux, and the assault on the corporate desktop is probably going to begin in about a year, at which point there will be no doubt that it's real competition.
Note that how many flyers you receive isn't a good way to measure competition. The home user desktop is still a few years away yet.
In short: MS benefits from Linux as much as Intel benefits from AMD, and wiping it out is far, far more trouble than it's worth.
A monopoly is about the most valuable thing you can have. Anyway, if they weren't interested in wiping it out why all the anti-GPL rhetoric earlier? Why have they been going around telling people Linux might open them up to patent lawsuits?
Microsoft are printing cash in the current situation, and almost certainly don't want to see the status quo end after so long.
Plus, MS knows that Linux is better in some situations, and supports it. Heck, my webpage runs on Frontpage under Linux!
No, I'm sure any MS rep would tell you Windows 2000 would make a far better server platform. The reason you can do that is because Linux is a force in the server world that's stronger than FrontPage is in the client world. So it'd be a case of "You can't use FrontPage for this, our servers run Linux", "Oh well". They support Passport on Linux/Apache as well, doesn't mean they like it, only that they can see it makes business sense.
So really there are three possible futures. In the first one, Microsoft fights Linux to the last and is destroyed. In the second, Microsoft isn't destroyed but merely recedes into the sunset, like IBM in the PC market. In the third, they succesfully make the transition to writing software for Linux and stick around (though not as a monopoly).
I'm looking forward to the animated cursors myself, Jimmac has made some really nice ones
Yeah. Linux vs Windows is a classic VHS vs Betamax.
The thing that really killed Betamax was that it was mostly proprietary. The tapes were Sony only, the machines were Sony only. Windows is the betamax, and Linux is the VHS.
In Linux there is competition, in Windows there is not. So, maybe when people will look back in the future they will say things like "Well, FreeBSD had a better kernel but Linux won, or MacOS had a better display system but Linux won, or Windows had a better component system, but Linux won". Just like they do with Betamax. At the end of the day though it's just market economics.
As it is today, woe to any newbie who wants to jump on the linux bandwagon; all they get is name calling and static when they have real problems. The overall experience can be very unpleasant.
*shrug*. I guess peoples experiences are mixed. I know many people who were introduced to Linux by good people, and were happy as clams. One guy started on Redhat 7.3 about a month ago and has already ditched KDE and moved to Blackbox, and is even learning emacs! Then there are people like me, who somehow avoided the flames on IRC and got a lot of quality support out of it. Now there are forums like linuxquestions.org as well.
So I think it's like any new things. If you got "name calling and static" then really that's an issue with either who you asked or the way you asked it. I mean sometimes there are questions on the forums or on IRC where somebody comes in and says "I've spent hours trying to make this work, Linux is seriously not impressing me. It works on Windows, if I can't get this working I'm just going to give up, this is stupid" or whatever, and obviously that is the wrong way to ask.
So yeah, the experience can be unpleasant, but it doesn't have to be. Like that guy earlier in the thread who said he asked questions on Slashdot, and was annoyed because he never got a response. Well, surely that would have told him something, like maybe Slashdot is the wrong place for tech support? If people have real problems then they are basically expected to put in a bit of effort to at least find the correct forum to ask questions.
They vary a lot. FreeNode is normally pretty civilised.
and why did you chose THAT distro, everybody knows THIS distro is sooo much better. No it isn't, another one says. Yes it is. No it isn't.
In my experience that's usually caused by somebody deciding they'll use what their hacker friend uses, or their friend recommends Debian or Gentoo to a newbie. Then, they come onto IRC wondering how to make X work, so people say "you're a newbie, try Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake", because they know that'll probably give them a much smoother experience.
But of course, all it takes is 1 person out of the 150 in the channel to say "actually i started with debian and I made it, you should to" to start a mini debate.
Then go back to Windows you n00b/M$ lover.
I've never seen it put in those terms, but occasionally yeah people get pissed off and tell people to go back to Windows. Normally it's their own fault, comments like "God why is this sooo hard, on Windows it's easy, Linux really sucks" obviously isn't going to get a good response, yet I have seen people say that.
Obviously most people can't be bothered dealing with visitors who have attitude problems, helping people who want to learn is one thing, helping people who just don't give a damn and expect it to be delivered to them on a plate is something else.
I know. I was taking the piss out of jwz.... oh, never mind
OK. As you have chosen to not help out, we'd appreciate it if you avoided posting useless rants on Slashdot. You may think the current situation with media players is a bad one, feel free to ignore it until it gets better.
In the same fashion, I will avoid pointing out that if buying a Mac didn't mean paying for massively overpriced and inflexible hardware, combined with an OS with an UI I can't stand (or change to something I can stand), being taken up the ass by a company that regularly screws over its customers AND losing the software freedom that is about the only chance we have of restoring some semblance of normality to the industry, if it didn't mean all of that I might buy one.
Because until then, I'll use a Linux PC.
See how pointless these posts are? They add nothing to the debate. There are plenty of people who are trying to improve multimedia in general, rants such as the above add nothing and don't help that effort.
He can, but basically he's too lazy and ignorant. If he wanted to, he could install Totem direct from garnome, which involves extracting a tarball and typing "make install". Nothing to it. If you use an old distro, or want to be on the cutting edge, this is a good way to do it.
Nonetheless, he is bitching because oh golly gosh he'd have to install some new files. Note that Windows installers do this too. He appears to have missed the fact that you don't actually need to use gnome as your desktop to run gnome2 apps. He can use whatever bizarro desktop setup gives him kicks, and it'd still work.
I find iTunes to take up way too much space for what it does, it looks dumb (brushed metal? that's the kind of skin my little brother would make in photoshop) and it's boring as hell.
As it happens, I organize my own music, so having a simple playlist is what's best. I like being able to skin my player, because I can make it fit with whatever visual style looks good to me. Note, that doesn't make it harder to use. Skins like in XMMS don't actually change the UI at all, the buttons are in the same place, the windows are the same - in fact, everything is the same. Loads of my non-geek friends use WinAmp, often with different skins, and they never have problems using their mates computers.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, but really no platform is completely consistant, because the human eye craves variety. Why do we decorate our walls, why are our houses all layed out differently? It's about being personal, which is why skins are so popular. If they suddenly made an app far harder to use, would anybody use skinned apps? Yet WinAmp is very popular.
Anyway, the idea that Windows or the Mac are consistant is rubbish. Both Microsoft and Apple have introduced new visual styles that they inconsistantly apply themselves, the .NET style on Windows and brushed-metal on MacOS. Yet somehow they survive.
What the fuck? And struggle with two fucking competing packaging systems, AND two fucking different fucking display systems? Yeah, THAT'S A COCK-SHAPED GOOD IDEA. You seem to expect me to install MacOS as well. Uh, no.
Fucking hell. I think Windows is looking more and more attractive. At least on Windows everything looks equally crap.
note: that was meant to be sarcasm. i don't actually talk like that :)
I seem to recall that there was a demo of a radar system that could lock on to floating barrage balloons and control a mortar. I saw an old film of it, it was pretty impressive even now, the gun moved the direction it was pointing in fired, moved onto the next, fired, and one by one each baloon exploded.
I don't recall when that was, but it was definately in England during the war.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "working state". Radar was most useful at first simply for detecting planes flying the Blitz, rather than the sort of stuff we use it for today. BTW I work at the organization formaly known as DERA, where a lot of the radar research took place and they still do a lot of radar and tracking work to this day.
Unlikely. OS X is more different to Windows than the default Redhat 8 setup is. Where's the start menu? Where's the Control panel? Where's WinAmp?
The idea that people magically pick up OS X with no effort at all is a stupid one. A Mac takes ages to get used to, not only is it an entirely different OS but it has different hardware too. Mac-specific keyboards? One button mice? Even my mac-fanatic friend has bought a two-button with a scrollwheel mouse now (an MS one as well!). What's the button to get a right click menu again? What's that? I don't see any button labelled command! Oh, the one with the wierd squiggle.
5 minutes later. It's not working! Oh, not the Apple key then. What do you mean I didn't close the app? I don't see its windows. Oh yeah, I forgot you have to quit them manually. So what's the difference between closing and minimizing a window? Oh. Which should I do then?. Um, right. Where's the start button again?
Believe me, I've seen it with my own eyes. In contrast, the default Redhat 8 setup is pretty similar to Windows. Easy to change of course (first thing I did), but certainly easy for newbies.
Believe me, Linux is going to wipe the floor usability-wise with MacOS in a year or two. It has the advantage of not having any real history, virtual desktops and the X clipboard are about the only baggage and being semi-hidden features they are entirely optional for newbies. That means it can be as similar or as different to Windows as you want, depending on how sophisticated you want it to be. The Mac on the other hand has the same interface it had a decade ago basically, which was good when it was battling it out with Windows, but now the Windows UI is entrenched and 99% of people are used to it. Nowadays it's just quirky.
But Jobs won't change it! The, ah, unique GUI is basically what defines his product. Never mind that the rampant eyecandification of the MacOS UI has actually reduced its usability, not enhanced it, never mind the fact that changing parts of the Mac UI wouldn't actually make them less efficient to use. No, never mind all of that - it's set in stone and cannot be changed.
The salesguy would be happiest with something close to what he's used to, especially when they're dropped in it with no training. Clearly their managers don't really think of Linux on the desktop yet, to them it's just another product, just another day. But they will. Next time there'll be more such desktops as managers realise it's not so hard after all.
Hmm, well, compared to what? Being able to buy PowerPC chips doesn't make the platform open.
Maybe PowerPC is open, but the Mac certainly is not. If it is, where are all the clones? It's not simply a case of trademarks, it's a case of Apple will come down like a ton of bricks on anybody who even thinks about cloning their platform.
Apple is extremely strict with their trademark rights, but they rarely overstep the intent, let alone the letter, of the law.
They use the law as their weapon all the time. Remember that guy who made an Aqua mozilla theme? The courts themselves had decided that you cannot protect a look and feel, but they threatened him all the same. Apple are known well for legal thuggery.
Other than the fact that Apple have released very little stuff they developed themselves, they'd have been better off giving FreeType an unlimited license to TrueType hinting, instead of forcing them to develop an auto-hinter. It wouldn't have even cost anything, I don't know how much they make out of these royalties but I doubt it's much. Yet they do not.
I believe the issue is that Windows interprets point sizes slightly differently to FreeType. I have no idea which is correct, but I don't think it's to do with the actual fonts. But yes, it is irritating.
I'm a doofus. Monotype Corporation made Arial.
Indeed, and according to Fontilus Bitstream were the people who made these fonts.
I think people don't realise how hard it is to make good fonts. Arial is a huge project in and of itself, simply getting the fonts looking good at all sizes is hard, and then you need glyphs for other languages and alphabets.
It's hard. 10 fonts is an amazing gift, if they are of high quality. I think they will be, Bitstream are good.