Why should they? They've already given a lot back to the people who developed Perl by helping immensely in the spread of the language. This allows the coders to spend less time worrying about documentation and more time coding.
I haven't exactly seen Larry Wall or anyone else complaining about it - it would appear they are at worst neutral on the issue, and quite likely very appreciative. Wall in particular seems to be above jealousy over someone else *gasp* making money by writing about Perl.
That's like saying Mitsubishi would be monopolistic if they only ship Eclipses with their own stock stereo.
Apple considers their product a combination of OS and hardware. Big deal. You can delete the contents of your Mac's hard-drive and install Linux if you'd prefer. Heaven forbid they decide what is in their own product.
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. All the guy had was a quote from a book. I hardly find that to be offensive.
If you have a problem with the religion itself, join the club. But if we censor fairly benign quotes, are we any better than the Catholic Church or any other historical oppressors?
Either way, a lot of crap goes into Slashdot that doesn't pertain to technology. Sigs in particular aren't really even meant to be 'on-topic' (otherwise, they wouldn't be universal to all topics).
---
just because its a public forum doesen't mean I can say whatever i want
---
Sure you can, as long as it's not illegal or against the rules of the place you're posting it. If you can point us to a guideline for the content of signatures on Slashdot, I'll be more than willing to concede this argument.
If simply making your beliefs known in a public forum is not tolerated, that can go both ways. If we don't allow those with Christian beliefs to have their opinions, we could very well be the next to be censored.
Yes, Christianity has a long history of suppressing those with dissenting views. That's precisely the reason why I don't care for people trying to suppress others like this. If you wish to undermine someone's beliefs, the best way is to provide a clear difference.
And no, Slashdot doesn't specifically say 'religious drivel here'. But it also doesn't say 'GPL proponent here' or 'pro-Mac sentiment here' - but that's all accepted. If you're going to censor someone for having religious views, you're opening up all sorts of other opinions.
In the end, only CmdrTaco and others can make that decision. Until they come up and state what can and can not be put in a sig, you should just ignore it.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I have no illusions that Apple was jumping toward Be offering any and all help they could give. I imagine Apple didn't really give a damn, or at best were mildly interested. Apple is a bit of a niche player, but Be was (and is) a niche player. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Cool things tend to come from niches.
But I just don't see Apple going out of their way to hurt Be. For the before mentioned reasons (they would profit at least a little bit), and because they had bigger fish to fry at the time.
That's probably what happened. Pre-Jobs Apple was spilling money all over the place. Random R&D with little market application potential, dead end projects, far too many product lines with little focus, shitty tech support, dampened product quality, and a whole lot of bad morale and press. It's quite likely that Be got a little extra help and special treatment early on, but in the end they had to be ignored due to budget constraints. Apple was losing far too much money to waste engineer times on only limited returns.
What would this have meant to Be? Apple wouldn't go out of their way to do anything, but they weren't going to bother documenting things as much or answering phone calls from frustrated Be employees. Be would have had to reverse-engineer the specs themselves. Apple wouldn't actively try to derail them, but they'd still be on their own.
Would that have killed Be? I don't think so. Others have been doing the reverse engineering thing and Apple has more or less ignored them. Be would have also benefitted from the more open nature of recent Apple hardware (believe it or not - a lot of proprietary crap has been thrown out from the B&W G3s onward).
It's also possible that they would have had a hell of a time reverse engineering Apple's hardware designs, and gotten their ass kicked by riding that platform. That may have been reason enough to switch to X86, but they shouldn't be saying Apple held out on them.
In the end, I think it's pretty apparent that X86 didn't do what they wanted it to do. Maybe switching over just delayed the inevitable, but whenever a company has so many 'focus shifts' it is usually a bad sign (Apple is a perfect example of this). With luck they may get lucky, but right now it just looks like they're getting desperate.
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Maybe I missed something, but isn't that what they _are_ doing right now?
(Tracker keeps getting better and better. 3D support is in. Security is next.)
---
Having used the BeOS since DR8 and every major release since, I can say that while BeOS may be getting cooler, it's not getting cooler at any rate like it used to.
And much of its coolness is being pushed into the whole IA thing. I'm not sure how 'cool' that is though - most of the BeOS' main benefits are wasted on an internet appliance.
And really, if we haven't learned from Larry Ellison, this whole internet appliance thing isn't quite what it's cracked up to be...
No we (if by 'macweenies' you mean Mac users) wouldn't. If a person signs an NDA and violates it, they deserve whatever comes down on them. They didn't have to sign it, did they?
As for Microsoft, given that most of their ideas comes from other companies, an NDA there would seem a bit redundant. I guess they could protect implementations, but you usually get a strong whiff of their vapor long before any actual product ships.
How exactly do you handle tracking down someone with a subpeona 'internally'? If you can't track the person down, how exactly are you going to reprimand them?
Apple had to go to the courts just to find out who the guy was.
And you expect Apple just to sit back and let rogue employees blab on?
The guy didn't have to post that stuff to rumor sites. He did, and knew full well what would happen if he didn't. He should take responsibility for his actions.
Not all sigs have to be related to technology. The whole point of a sig is to put something interesting as it relates to you - a quote or something. Maybe even a link to your web site. I don't recall seeing any guidelines on what you can and can't put in your sig on Slashdot. Perhaps you'd like to point them out for us?
Until then, he can keep his sig.
For the record, I think religion is pure BS. But that doesn't mean I should tell him what he can have on his sig.
Why would Apple mind if Be made their OS for Mac hardware?
Think about it:
1. A MacOS user buys a Macintosh so they can run their OS of choice. Apple gets $XXX.XX for the computer and a copy of the MacOS.
2. A BeOS user buys a Macintosh so they can run their OS of choice. Apple gets $XXX.XX for the computer and a copy of the MacOS. User buys BeOS as well.
See those X's up there? They'd be equal. Apple loses no money in the deal, and it's quite likely BeOS users would gravitate to the more powerful (read: more profitable for Apple) hardware anyhow.
The only thing Apple might lose is a little 3rd party support. Big deal. It's not likely they'd have lost, and probably would have gained more in additional profits if it came to that to deal with it.
Face it - Be did what it did because they wanted to do it anyhow. They were lured by the siren cry of Wintel's market penetration, but have basically lost themselves in a sea of mediocracy in trying to keep up with drivers. Bad mistake, but don't blame it on Apple. Instead of coding millions of drivers Be could have been making the BeOS even cooler.
(and yes, the BeOS was/is really really cool, but that's not what this is about...)
---
Sure, Jake Lloyd did a pretty poor acting job in the original, but Mark Hamill sucked pretty bad in Star Wars as well (and only became tolerable in the last two films).
---
It just comes with the movie, I think. Episode 1 was basically just a setup for the entire series. Not a lot was supposed to happen, I don't think. Not until Anakin turns over a new leaf (so to speak).
Also, a lot of it probably does have to do with expectation. Many of us saw the original trilogy when we were little kids, and willing to overlook the original problems. Sure, Jake Lloyd did a pretty poor acting job in the original, but Mark Hamill sucked pretty bad in Star Wars as well (and only became tolerable in the last two films).
Yeah, the CGI wasn't perfect, but neither were the effects in the first Star Wars. They got better with time, as I expect them to in the later films of this trilogy.
I don't know. I actually have higher expectations for the next two movies, and I enjoyed the first despite its several semi-major flaws. It was fun.
Not to mention it included Natalie Portman, but I'd hate to feel the trolls...:>
You can pick any UI apart if you focus on one of its more obvious flaws.
But the trick totally backfires when you have your facts all wrong.
1. Open/Save dialog boxes: Look for information on 'Navigation Services'. In my opinion it is superior than most others (no sideways scrolling, Finder style hierarchy arrows, etc).
2. Contextual menus: The only thing haphazard about it is that Mac mice only have one mouse button. The contextual menu API is quite clear, and any 3rd party mouse I know of can use it.
3. Context switching: Command-tab works like your alt-tab, and the toolbar argument is clearly a subjective argument. In my opinion, there's nothing user friendly about seeing the first 3 characters of each open window. It's a poor use of screen real estate.
For the record, you CAN turn the Application pallette into a taskbar-like bar at the bottom of the screen, but it's not terribly useful IMHO. And while it's not fair to bring up 3rd party apps, GoMac pretty much replicates the taskbar if it's such a big deal.
...
If you want to get in a full-on debate over true user interface issues, let me know. The examples you cite are poor (and largely untrue), but I hate to think of how many thousands of hours of combined human productivity have been lost due to how Windows handles menus. It's enough to give a guy Fitts.
The Mac doesn't have a perfect UI. Far from it. But you've got to be kidding if you think Windows is better.
Re:It doesn't matter if you believe
on
TigerCloning
·
· Score: 2
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no physical evidence? go look in the mirror, if that isn't enough evidence for you that God exists, i don't know what is.
---
That's like saying, "Look at that rock over there. If that's not evidence that a purple three legged midget put it there, I don't know what is".
Logic doesn't look like that. Along with your chosen form of mythology, there are a number of other people willing to provide their own explainations. In fact, there are hundreds of billions of 'potential' origins for the human race. A proponent of any one could say what you said above and make just about as much sense.
You're missing the point. This is like having a story saying that someone is suing some public official, but never mentioning for what reason.
"Foo version X.Y.Z has been released" isn't nearly as useful or informative as "Foo version X.Y.Z has been released, adding this feature and that bug fix".
If all we wanted to know was that a new version of X has been released, you can fit it into maybe 3-4 words.
Huh? I guess you've had the pleasure to never have seen 'America's Funniest Home Videos'.
You can't get through an episode without someone getting smashed in the crotch by something. Baseball bat, a baseball, etc. At least once per episode, usually more. The worst thing is that the show, or some derivitive thereof, has been running for YEARS.
Re:Does Jobs bugger everything all to hell?
on
Looking Back At NeXT
·
· Score: 2
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I guess this explains the 95% Windows's/PC marketshare then?
---
Probably. Remember, we're not talking about technical merit at all. We're talking about individuals - it's hard to say Jobs is a moron, given that iMacs are selling like crazy. Gates isn't a moron either, at least when it comes to business. Bankrupt morals and poor product quality? Sure, but we weren't talking about that were we?
Anyhow, just so you know, Windows is the majority OS outside of the US as well. Kind of blows your 'Americans suck' theory out of the water (not to say that we don't suck overall, but I think it's an issue with the human race in general).
Slashdot Mirror
Why should they? They've already given a lot back to the people who developed Perl by helping immensely in the spread of the language. This allows the coders to spend less time worrying about documentation and more time coding.
I haven't exactly seen Larry Wall or anyone else complaining about it - it would appear they are at worst neutral on the issue, and quite likely very appreciative. Wall in particular seems to be above jealousy over someone else *gasp* making money by writing about Perl.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
That's like saying Mitsubishi would be monopolistic if they only ship Eclipses with their own stock stereo.
Apple considers their product a combination of OS and hardware. Big deal. You can delete the contents of your Mac's hard-drive and install Linux if you'd prefer. Heaven forbid they decide what is in their own product.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Really? That's funny - I know a lot of people who 'got into Perl' by reading those books... Myself included.
Someone has to write good documentation and tutorials. Without it, not as many people would learn the language.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
If you'll look back into history, you'll quite likely find that it wasn't pagans burning Christians at the cross.
Moral absolutes, indeed.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. All the guy had was a quote from a book. I hardly find that to be offensive.
If you have a problem with the religion itself, join the club. But if we censor fairly benign quotes, are we any better than the Catholic Church or any other historical oppressors?
Either way, a lot of crap goes into Slashdot that doesn't pertain to technology. Sigs in particular aren't really even meant to be 'on-topic' (otherwise, they wouldn't be universal to all topics).
---
just because its a public forum doesen't mean I can say whatever i want
---
Sure you can, as long as it's not illegal or against the rules of the place you're posting it. If you can point us to a guideline for the content of signatures on Slashdot, I'll be more than willing to concede this argument.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Be careful what you ask for, is all I say.
If simply making your beliefs known in a public forum is not tolerated, that can go both ways. If we don't allow those with Christian beliefs to have their opinions, we could very well be the next to be censored.
Yes, Christianity has a long history of suppressing those with dissenting views. That's precisely the reason why I don't care for people trying to suppress others like this. If you wish to undermine someone's beliefs, the best way is to provide a clear difference.
And no, Slashdot doesn't specifically say 'religious drivel here'. But it also doesn't say 'GPL proponent here' or 'pro-Mac sentiment here' - but that's all accepted. If you're going to censor someone for having religious views, you're opening up all sorts of other opinions.
In the end, only CmdrTaco and others can make that decision. Until they come up and state what can and can not be put in a sig, you should just ignore it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Oh, don't get me wrong. I have no illusions that Apple was jumping toward Be offering any and all help they could give. I imagine Apple didn't really give a damn, or at best were mildly interested. Apple is a bit of a niche player, but Be was (and is) a niche player. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Cool things tend to come from niches.
But I just don't see Apple going out of their way to hurt Be. For the before mentioned reasons (they would profit at least a little bit), and because they had bigger fish to fry at the time.
That's probably what happened. Pre-Jobs Apple was spilling money all over the place. Random R&D with little market application potential, dead end projects, far too many product lines with little focus, shitty tech support, dampened product quality, and a whole lot of bad morale and press. It's quite likely that Be got a little extra help and special treatment early on, but in the end they had to be ignored due to budget constraints. Apple was losing far too much money to waste engineer times on only limited returns.
What would this have meant to Be? Apple wouldn't go out of their way to do anything, but they weren't going to bother documenting things as much or answering phone calls from frustrated Be employees. Be would have had to reverse-engineer the specs themselves. Apple wouldn't actively try to derail them, but they'd still be on their own.
Would that have killed Be? I don't think so. Others have been doing the reverse engineering thing and Apple has more or less ignored them. Be would have also benefitted from the more open nature of recent Apple hardware (believe it or not - a lot of proprietary crap has been thrown out from the B&W G3s onward).
It's also possible that they would have had a hell of a time reverse engineering Apple's hardware designs, and gotten their ass kicked by riding that platform. That may have been reason enough to switch to X86, but they shouldn't be saying Apple held out on them.
In the end, I think it's pretty apparent that X86 didn't do what they wanted it to do. Maybe switching over just delayed the inevitable, but whenever a company has so many 'focus shifts' it is usually a bad sign (Apple is a perfect example of this). With luck they may get lucky, but right now it just looks like they're getting desperate.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
---
Maybe I missed something, but isn't that what they _are_ doing right now?
(Tracker keeps getting better and better. 3D support is in. Security is next.)
---
Having used the BeOS since DR8 and every major release since, I can say that while BeOS may be getting cooler, it's not getting cooler at any rate like it used to.
And much of its coolness is being pushed into the whole IA thing. I'm not sure how 'cool' that is though - most of the BeOS' main benefits are wasted on an internet appliance.
And really, if we haven't learned from Larry Ellison, this whole internet appliance thing isn't quite what it's cracked up to be...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
150 million dollars of non-voting Apple stock it be no means "significant". It's a drop in the bucket.
And the real kicker is, Apple had Microsoft by the balls on that deal, not the other way around. Read up on it if you want to know the reason.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
No we (if by 'macweenies' you mean Mac users) wouldn't. If a person signs an NDA and violates it, they deserve whatever comes down on them. They didn't have to sign it, did they?
As for Microsoft, given that most of their ideas comes from other companies, an NDA there would seem a bit redundant. I guess they could protect implementations, but you usually get a strong whiff of their vapor long before any actual product ships.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
How exactly do you handle tracking down someone with a subpeona 'internally'? If you can't track the person down, how exactly are you going to reprimand them?
Apple had to go to the courts just to find out who the guy was.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
And you expect Apple just to sit back and let rogue employees blab on?
The guy didn't have to post that stuff to rumor sites. He did, and knew full well what would happen if he didn't. He should take responsibility for his actions.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Not all sigs have to be related to technology. The whole point of a sig is to put something interesting as it relates to you - a quote or something. Maybe even a link to your web site. I don't recall seeing any guidelines on what you can and can't put in your sig on Slashdot. Perhaps you'd like to point them out for us?
Until then, he can keep his sig.
For the record, I think religion is pure BS. But that doesn't mean I should tell him what he can have on his sig.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Oh, and another thing:
Why would Apple mind if Be made their OS for Mac hardware?
Think about it:
1. A MacOS user buys a Macintosh so they can run their OS of choice. Apple gets $XXX.XX for the computer and a copy of the MacOS.
2. A BeOS user buys a Macintosh so they can run their OS of choice. Apple gets $XXX.XX for the computer and a copy of the MacOS. User buys BeOS as well.
See those X's up there? They'd be equal. Apple loses no money in the deal, and it's quite likely BeOS users would gravitate to the more powerful (read: more profitable for Apple) hardware anyhow.
The only thing Apple might lose is a little 3rd party support. Big deal. It's not likely they'd have lost, and probably would have gained more in additional profits if it came to that to deal with it.
Face it - Be did what it did because they wanted to do it anyhow. They were lured by the siren cry of Wintel's market penetration, but have basically lost themselves in a sea of mediocracy in trying to keep up with drivers. Bad mistake, but don't blame it on Apple. Instead of coding millions of drivers Be could have been making the BeOS even cooler.
(and yes, the BeOS was/is really really cool, but that's not what this is about...)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
No. Basically Be just got pissed because Apple wasn't subsidizing them. It's no coincidence that Intel made their big investment around then.
Once again - explain:
LinuxPPC
Yellow Dog Linux
Darwin
MkLinux
*BSD (a few variaties I believe)
Debian
SUSE
...all having, or announcing, PowerMac distributions.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
---
:>
Sure, Jake Lloyd did a pretty poor acting job in the original, but Mark Hamill sucked pretty bad in Star Wars as well (and only became tolerable in the last two films).
---
Erm, by original I mean 'Episode 1'.
Damn prequel/sequel confusion.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
It just comes with the movie, I think. Episode 1 was basically just a setup for the entire series. Not a lot was supposed to happen, I don't think. Not until Anakin turns over a new leaf (so to speak).
:>
Also, a lot of it probably does have to do with expectation. Many of us saw the original trilogy when we were little kids, and willing to overlook the original problems. Sure, Jake Lloyd did a pretty poor acting job in the original, but Mark Hamill sucked pretty bad in Star Wars as well (and only became tolerable in the last two films).
Yeah, the CGI wasn't perfect, but neither were the effects in the first Star Wars. They got better with time, as I expect them to in the later films of this trilogy.
I don't know. I actually have higher expectations for the next two movies, and I enjoyed the first despite its several semi-major flaws. It was fun.
Not to mention it included Natalie Portman, but I'd hate to feel the trolls...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
You can pick any UI apart if you focus on one of its more obvious flaws.
But the trick totally backfires when you have your facts all wrong.
1. Open/Save dialog boxes: Look for information on 'Navigation Services'. In my opinion it is superior than most others (no sideways scrolling, Finder style hierarchy arrows, etc).
2. Contextual menus: The only thing haphazard about it is that Mac mice only have one mouse button. The contextual menu API is quite clear, and any 3rd party mouse I know of can use it.
3. Context switching: Command-tab works like your alt-tab, and the toolbar argument is clearly a subjective argument. In my opinion, there's nothing user friendly about seeing the first 3 characters of each open window. It's a poor use of screen real estate.
For the record, you CAN turn the Application pallette into a taskbar-like bar at the bottom of the screen, but it's not terribly useful IMHO. And while it's not fair to bring up 3rd party apps, GoMac pretty much replicates the taskbar if it's such a big deal.
...
If you want to get in a full-on debate over true user interface issues, let me know. The examples you cite are poor (and largely untrue), but I hate to think of how many thousands of hours of combined human productivity have been lost due to how Windows handles menus. It's enough to give a guy Fitts.
The Mac doesn't have a perfect UI. Far from it. But you've got to be kidding if you think Windows is better.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
The problem is that you neglected to let anyone know this guy was a kook before you quoted his theory.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
---
no physical evidence? go look in the mirror, if that isn't enough evidence for you that God exists, i don't know what is.
---
That's like saying, "Look at that rock over there. If that's not evidence that a purple three legged midget put it there, I don't know what is".
Logic doesn't look like that. Along with your chosen form of mythology, there are a number of other people willing to provide their own explainations. In fact, there are hundreds of billions of 'potential' origins for the human race. A proponent of any one could say what you said above and make just about as much sense.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Then it's okay if I kick my cat, because I am (supposedly) a 'superior being'?
Didn't think so.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Maybe, but it's definately not for people with very short attention spans.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
You're missing the point. This is like having a story saying that someone is suing some public official, but never mentioning for what reason.
"Foo version X.Y.Z has been released" isn't nearly as useful or informative as "Foo version X.Y.Z has been released, adding this feature and that bug fix".
If all we wanted to know was that a new version of X has been released, you can fit it into maybe 3-4 words.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
Huh? I guess you've had the pleasure to never have seen 'America's Funniest Home Videos'.
You can't get through an episode without someone getting smashed in the crotch by something. Baseball bat, a baseball, etc. At least once per episode, usually more. The worst thing is that the show, or some derivitive thereof, has been running for YEARS.
And people wonder why I don't watch much TV.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
---
I guess this explains the 95% Windows's/PC marketshare then?
---
Probably. Remember, we're not talking about technical merit at all. We're talking about individuals - it's hard to say Jobs is a moron, given that iMacs are selling like crazy. Gates isn't a moron either, at least when it comes to business. Bankrupt morals and poor product quality? Sure, but we weren't talking about that were we?
Anyhow, just so you know, Windows is the majority OS outside of the US as well. Kind of blows your 'Americans suck' theory out of the water (not to say that we don't suck overall, but I think it's an issue with the human race in general).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)