Thanks for your reply. I'll definitely look into the ASR info and Bombich's multicast article. FWIW, in my past attempts to follow Mike Bombich's articles, there seemed to be large gaps in the steps (assuming knowledge of techniques that are not documented anywhere easy to find), but I'll give it another honest shot.
Any ideas in terms of network installing Windows on Intel Macs? One of the main selling points of the Intel Macs for our organization is their ability to run both Windows and OS X natively. Our last attempt at updating an already installed Windows partition ended up giving us nothing but BSODs (and we most certainly used sysprep). The Firewire hard drive solution is just not a sustainable model.
I don't want to come off as being argumentative, and perhaps I'm just ignorant of the proper procedures, but is there a way to multicast deploy Mac OS X images? We use Bombich NetRestore on our network and there seems not to be an option for multicast deployment. On the Windows and Linux side, we use PXE in conjunction with Ghost to mass deploy workstations with fairly conservative bandwidth utilization. Cloning 8 Macs took our office nearly 6.5 hours because each connected machine linearly reduced the available bandwidth for all the others. Meanwhile, we can clone 2 dozen PCs simultaneously and be done in 45 minutes -- and the 2 dozen is a physical space limitation in our work room.
While I realize that Bootcamp is Beta and not recommended for enterprise deployment, Mac users in our organization rely on it -- I'm there to serve their needs, so I do what I'm told. As far as we could tell, there was no way to network-deploy the Windows image to the Macs, so we are left with the time-consuming task of installing the Windows partitions manually with a Firewire hard drive -- and at that, we cannot use our preexisting Ghost images of Windows on the Macs without doing irritating, time-consuming, convoluted workarounds.
Believe me, if there is a better way to do this, I would love to hear it. However, if there is not, I'm going to have to agree that Macs are not yet ready for the enterprise. Mass-deployment utilities are one of those critical tools that make my IT team's job manageable.
While PHP certainly makes it easy to write crappy, insecure code, I'm not sure that any language really defends against bad programmers. Like any programming language, PHP is a powerful tool in the hands of a talented developer, but a security breach waiting to happen for those lacking such talent.
While I certainly don't discount the validity of the religion claim, I can't help but wonder if the patent system isn't actually contributing, too. Look at the way software development has shifted from really quick innovation to a rapid dash to build patent portfolios and a rolodex full of lawyers. I think the notion that an individual or company can 'own' an idea is preposterous.
Number one, I don't support copyright infringement in any way shape or form. I am a musician, a digital photographer, a writer, and a programmer. Copyright ensures that I can make a living.
My point is that on some level, I can understand that people are fed up with the RIAA's seemingly unethical behavior. I can understand that it's a lot harder to feel bad about downloading music if you feel like the only one getting truly harmed is in many respects a mafia boss in a different disguise.
I admire the fact that you pay for your music, as people like you are what keep musicians like me willing to share our work. That said, whether you want to believe it or not, artists make nearly nothing off of album sales. In researching, I realized my figure was a little off, it's 1-3 cents per song (vs album). So while you are right in that it's not 1-3 cents per album, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the RIAA pulls in.
I do believe it's wrong to infringe on copyrights (and I don't appreciate you accusing me of feeling otherwise), but I think that there's a message being sent by the consumers that music is WAY overpriced. Consumers are speaking with their actions saying the RIAA does not need to be making more than the artists themselves -- certainly not orders of magnitude more.
I think it's important to keep sight of the fact that what is legal is not necessarily ethical (and vice versa). While it is perfectly legal for the RIAA to sue a single mom or her children, it seems rather sketchy in the ethics department.
I don't think that it is ethical to infringe on copyrights, and I doubt most people would disagree. At the same time, I think it's also unethical that an organization like the RIAA can pretend to be acting on behalf of artists that they routinely abuse. I think people are really starting to understand that buying albums doesn't really support the artists ($.01 - $.03 dollars to the artist vs. $12-$25 to the RIAA and retailers). Because so much money goes to this seemingly ethically devoid entity, people have no conscience dilemmas when downloading.
Every artist signing a record deal is gambling: chances are they're going to lose, but every once in a while someone makes it big. I'm much happier as a consumer and music fan when I purchase music directly from an artist. F*ck the RIAA.
Having had hurricanes Katrina and Rita pummel the south sending our national debt soaring into the multiple hundreds of billions of dollars, do we really have the financial justification for pursuing consenting perverts? I think our puritan overlords are conveniently ignoring the elephant in the living room. WE HAVE MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS in our country right now than freaks that like pissing on eachother. Let the weirdos do what they want if they're consenting adults. How about investing some of those precious monetary resources on education and technology infrastructure, or god forbid, rebuilding New Orleans and the other impact zones.
While I'll agree that OO is not a feature-by-feature drop-in replacement for MS Office, for most MS Office users, it's just fine. Since I've been using OO, I'm not having to deal with as many security issues, stability issues, or licensing issues. What have I had to sacrifice? VB Macro compatibility? I never used it anyway. I know a lot of people who are in the same situation.
There's no such thing as a universally perfect tool, but while there will certainly be scenarios where MS Office is the right tool for the job, most 'productivity' tasks can be handled just fine with OO.
Also, if you think that Firefox on Linux is easy to install/use, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say the OO is so difficult. The installation procedure for both programs has been identical for years now, and in most cases is included in a default Linux workstation install. All of the OO components are in my KDE menu, and I certainly did no extra steps to get them there.
Also, I certainly agree that the software is very large. Additional distribution channels are necessary for users on dial-up. I make CDs for friends, family, and co-workers. Those of us with the resources can help those without. There will still be people without access, but if we help eachother, we can shrink that number.
That's exactly my point. As much as I am a staunch supporter of Linux and the GPL, I do feel like we're frequently playing a catch-up game because of phenomena like this: the F/OSS community creates an incredibly stable and reliable infrastructure (like FreeBSD for example), and a corporation (like Apple) comes along and gets to pick and choose the code it wants without any obligation to give back. They benefit. We don't.
With Linux, or more generally any GPL software, innovation stays open and the playing field is levelled. As a developer, you don't have to sit back and watch helplessly as corporations (whose duty is to make money -- not cool software) reap the benefit of your work.
BSD licensing is great for corporations that want cool shit for free. GPL is great for developers that are tired of being ripped off. They're both better than proprietary licenses because the primary winner in both cases is the end user.
My feeling on why Linux "took off" more than FreeBSD is that the GPL is more enticing to developers, and the developers are the lifeblood of any piece of software. I'm sure that this is an over-simplification, but it is likely at least a factor.
The GPL crowd has been beating this worn-out drum day after day, but has never actually backed up this claim.
Apple and Mac OS X. They took a BSD OS (among other things) and although a lot of the work they have done with it is available as Free/Open Source, there are certainly a good deal of parts of the OS that are not open or free.
What do we get as a community? A commercial OS that is tied to a specific vendor's hardware. Is BSD any worse off because of this. Perhaps not. However, all of the innovations getting poured into OS X are NOT getting poured back into the community.
A network install of Fedora only takes me 10-15 minutes. Optical media is terribly slow compared to hard drives and 100/1000-Base* networking.
I don't think it's that unrealistic to think an OS could be installed within minutes. Even though I'm using gigabit Ethernet, the rest of my hardware is beginning to show its age. My fastest machine is a dual 1.2 GHz Athlon, so I imagine a more modern setup (and a better file server) would yield even faster installations.
That said, I've never experienced anything quite as painfully slow as a Mac OS X installation. Anyone know if there is a way to do a network install of OS X using a Linux server?
I tend to get the most work done in Linux, and specifically using KDE. If it weren't for the couple of commercial Linux-only apps that I use, I suppose I could use any *nix that can run X and KDE.
The features I miss when I use a Mac or Win Box: virtual desktops; auto copying and middle-click pasting; the control key working as expected; built-in graphical CVS front end; ability to CTRL-ALT-BKSP my way out of a stuck GUI; HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, NFS, and SMB all from the same file management windows; simple key commands like CTRL-D that give me a duplicate file manager window (I really love that one).
While I realize everyone develops their own workflow on their platform of choice, I really do feel alienated and weighed-down when I'm not on a Linux box.
I normally hate it when people say this, but just search google.com for "riaa stats". I did a research project on this topic about a year ago, so I don't remember any links off the top of my head -- none of the sources I used were that hard to find. In any case, I don't think these numbers are too hotly contested by anyone -- even the RIAA.
Regardless of the numbers, the labels aren't bleeding cash like they say they are. The fact of the matter is that artists aren't just given piles of cash to make records, they are given loans to make records. The only people that lose money are the artists that don't sell enough records to pay off the loans.
Artists don't start making a profit until the recording costs are paid off, but the labels start profitting from the very first sale.
For an artist to make ANY profit at all off of an RIAA-backed album, the artist has to sell 500,000 copies of the album. The artist is ultimately responsible for covering all recording and various other production and distribution costs.
The RIAA, on the other hand, makes a profit off of each and every album that gets sold, whether it's one copy or a billion. Regardless of whether an artist makes a profit or not, they are still obligated to repay the money loaned by the label at contract signing time.
Less than 1% of RIAA artists will ever sell over 500,000 copies of an album, so while that 1% does bring in an enormous amount of money, it's not like the other 99% are bleeding the industry as bad as the RIAA tries to make us all believe. That 99% however has managed to make themselves a major part of the RIAA's income.
Even if an artist doesn't sell a single copy of an album, the labels still get that loan money back, and you can be sure that there's interest added into the mix there too.
To answer your question: the artists are always on the losing end of the deal in this situation, and by most of the facts and figures I've read recently, that's an overwhelming percentage of signed artists.
I suppose I wasn't very specific in my first post, but what would the implications be for educational institutions that are currently switching to software like Firefox, OpenOffice, and other such cross-platform open source tools?
I'm thinking long-term cause and effect here.
Being forced into using MS-everything does nothing but add huge costs to an already woefully-underfunded education budget. Many of the public schools here in Hawaii are beginning to rely on Linux labs for computer access. Without these labs (and the reduced administration costs that accompany them), there are huge numbers of children in Hawaii that would never get time behind the keyboard or on the Internet.
You might think this is an exaggeration, but the percentage of underpriviledged children in Hawaii's public school system is staggeringly high (between 50-70%). Take away tools that we can use for free, and you further the disadvantage.
So no, maybe it's not devastating to the economy on a wide scale, but it would further hinder an already struggling educational system, and it will help hobble Hawaii's increasingly banana-republic-like economy.
Wouldn't it be fairly easy to demonstrate that this would cause devastating harm to the economy? Sure, Microsoft and any other proprietary software house with a fat patent portfolio would be fine with this, but we as consumers would end up with one operating system, one office suite, one game manufacturer, etc. I anticipate this being thrown out, but I suppose I should never underestimate the power of greed.
What ever happened to innovation and competition based on superior products?
...most mucisians aren't always playing or thinking about music.
Actually, I do spend a GREAT deal of my time thinking about music. Being a grad student has all but eliminated my music practice time, but I still find my mind perpetually flooded by some sort of beat or melody, and I'm always tapping my hands and fingers to whatever internal beat I've got in my head. Maybe I'm just neurotic.
As an aside, I too earn my bread by programming, and yet I find myself inexplicably drawn to sitting at the god-forsaken boxes for nearly every waking hour of my life (lately because of research papers and the like). In this case, I think my passion towards computers is a passionate hatred. Grad school sucks.
At this point, software patents are so frivolous that writing just about anything beyond "hello world" is violating someone's patent. Just the act of coding a usable program is most likely violating some silly software patent, and is why the rules need to change.
My previous point was that as a programmer, you're probably better off NOT knowing what's been patented because odds are already against you -- it's not worth the risk of a triple damages penalty.
Remember though, you'll get fined TRIPLE the damages if you knowingly violate a patent, versus 1 x damages if you unknowingly violate. Ignorance isn't protection, but it would appear to be a helluva lot less expensive.
In my opinion, those damned one-button mice are virtually unusable. Go out and buy a cheap Logitech optical, and you'll get rid of one minor irritation immediately. OS X is very functional with a three button wheel mouse.
I used to be a Windows user too, but for the last 6 years, I have been using Linux and OS X (for the last 2-3). I like OS X quite a bit, but I have 4 issues that continue to frustrate me...
1. The + widget doesn't really maximize a window; rather it will toggle between full height, and maybe full width, depending on the window's content. Personally, I hate inconsistency so this one just flares up my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.:)
2. Finder and application windows are only resizable from the bottom right corner -- no edge-based resizing, no resizing from the top. This isn't that major, but it does interfere with my productivity in a subtle frustrating way.
3. You can't sort file windows so that folders appear first followed by alphabetical file listing (at least I haven't been able to figure it out). This makes file management a bit more clumsy and cumbersome.
4. OS X leaves hidden files littered throughout every folder of any network shares you connect with. The files aren't that big, but it's like going to the beach only to find the sand covered in cigarette butts.
Slashdot Mirror
- security - bandwidth - interference/reliability ... etc.
... and PXE booting for network installs, imaging, and deployment
This must be related somehow to Windows being the most secure operating system... :p
Thanks for your reply. I'll definitely look into the ASR info and Bombich's multicast article. FWIW, in my past attempts to follow Mike Bombich's articles, there seemed to be large gaps in the steps (assuming knowledge of techniques that are not documented anywhere easy to find), but I'll give it another honest shot.
Any ideas in terms of network installing Windows on Intel Macs? One of the main selling points of the Intel Macs for our organization is their ability to run both Windows and OS X natively. Our last attempt at updating an already installed Windows partition ended up giving us nothing but BSODs (and we most certainly used sysprep). The Firewire hard drive solution is just not a sustainable model.
Ever try mounting a larger than 2TB volume in Tiger using Samba?
I don't want to come off as being argumentative, and perhaps I'm just ignorant of the proper procedures, but is there a way to multicast deploy Mac OS X images? We use Bombich NetRestore on our network and there seems not to be an option for multicast deployment. On the Windows and Linux side, we use PXE in conjunction with Ghost to mass deploy workstations with fairly conservative bandwidth utilization. Cloning 8 Macs took our office nearly 6.5 hours because each connected machine linearly reduced the available bandwidth for all the others. Meanwhile, we can clone 2 dozen PCs simultaneously and be done in 45 minutes -- and the 2 dozen is a physical space limitation in our work room.
While I realize that Bootcamp is Beta and not recommended for enterprise deployment, Mac users in our organization rely on it -- I'm there to serve their needs, so I do what I'm told. As far as we could tell, there was no way to network-deploy the Windows image to the Macs, so we are left with the time-consuming task of installing the Windows partitions manually with a Firewire hard drive -- and at that, we cannot use our preexisting Ghost images of Windows on the Macs without doing irritating, time-consuming, convoluted workarounds.
Believe me, if there is a better way to do this, I would love to hear it. However, if there is not, I'm going to have to agree that Macs are not yet ready for the enterprise. Mass-deployment utilities are one of those critical tools that make my IT team's job manageable.
While PHP certainly makes it easy to write crappy, insecure code, I'm not sure that any language really defends against bad programmers. Like any programming language, PHP is a powerful tool in the hands of a talented developer, but a security breach waiting to happen for those lacking such talent.
While I certainly don't discount the validity of the religion claim, I can't help but wonder if the patent system isn't actually contributing, too. Look at the way software development has shifted from really quick innovation to a rapid dash to build patent portfolios and a rolodex full of lawyers. I think the notion that an individual or company can 'own' an idea is preposterous.
I think you missed the point of my post.
Number one, I don't support copyright infringement in any way shape or form. I am a musician, a digital photographer, a writer, and a programmer. Copyright ensures that I can make a living.
My point is that on some level, I can understand that people are fed up with the RIAA's seemingly unethical behavior. I can understand that it's a lot harder to feel bad about downloading music if you feel like the only one getting truly harmed is in many respects a mafia boss in a different disguise.
I admire the fact that you pay for your music, as people like you are what keep musicians like me willing to share our work. That said, whether you want to believe it or not, artists make nearly nothing off of album sales. In researching, I realized my figure was a little off, it's 1-3 cents per song (vs album). So while you are right in that it's not 1-3 cents per album, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the RIAA pulls in.
I do believe it's wrong to infringe on copyrights (and I don't appreciate you accusing me of feeling otherwise), but I think that there's a message being sent by the consumers that music is WAY overpriced. Consumers are speaking with their actions saying the RIAA does not need to be making more than the artists themselves -- certainly not orders of magnitude more.
I think it's important to keep sight of the fact that what is legal is not necessarily ethical (and vice versa). While it is perfectly legal for the RIAA to sue a single mom or her children, it seems rather sketchy in the ethics department.
I don't think that it is ethical to infringe on copyrights, and I doubt most people would disagree. At the same time, I think it's also unethical that an organization like the RIAA can pretend to be acting on behalf of artists that they routinely abuse. I think people are really starting to understand that buying albums doesn't really support the artists ($.01 - $.03 dollars to the artist vs. $12-$25 to the RIAA and retailers). Because so much money goes to this seemingly ethically devoid entity, people have no conscience dilemmas when downloading.
Every artist signing a record deal is gambling: chances are they're going to lose, but every once in a while someone makes it big. I'm much happier as a consumer and music fan when I purchase music directly from an artist. F*ck the RIAA.
Having had hurricanes Katrina and Rita pummel the south sending our national debt soaring into the multiple hundreds of billions of dollars, do we really have the financial justification for pursuing consenting perverts? I think our puritan overlords are conveniently ignoring the elephant in the living room. WE HAVE MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS in our country right now than freaks that like pissing on eachother. Let the weirdos do what they want if they're consenting adults. How about investing some of those precious monetary resources on education and technology infrastructure, or god forbid, rebuilding New Orleans and the other impact zones.
Ewww!!!! Oh I misread... Whoops...
While I'll agree that OO is not a feature-by-feature drop-in replacement for MS Office, for most MS Office users, it's just fine. Since I've been using OO, I'm not having to deal with as many security issues, stability issues, or licensing issues. What have I had to sacrifice? VB Macro compatibility? I never used it anyway. I know a lot of people who are in the same situation.
There's no such thing as a universally perfect tool, but while there will certainly be scenarios where MS Office is the right tool for the job, most 'productivity' tasks can be handled just fine with OO.
Also, if you think that Firefox on Linux is easy to install/use, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say the OO is so difficult. The installation procedure for both programs has been identical for years now, and in most cases is included in a default Linux workstation install. All of the OO components are in my KDE menu, and I certainly did no extra steps to get them there.
Also, I certainly agree that the software is very large. Additional distribution channels are necessary for users on dial-up. I make CDs for friends, family, and co-workers. Those of us with the resources can help those without. There will still be people without access, but if we help eachother, we can shrink that number.
Aloha,
Chris
That's exactly my point. As much as I am a staunch supporter of Linux and the GPL, I do feel like we're frequently playing a catch-up game because of phenomena like this: the F/OSS community creates an incredibly stable and reliable infrastructure (like FreeBSD for example), and a corporation (like Apple) comes along and gets to pick and choose the code it wants without any obligation to give back. They benefit. We don't.
With Linux, or more generally any GPL software, innovation stays open and the playing field is levelled. As a developer, you don't have to sit back and watch helplessly as corporations (whose duty is to make money -- not cool software) reap the benefit of your work.
BSD licensing is great for corporations that want cool shit for free. GPL is great for developers that are tired of being ripped off. They're both better than proprietary licenses because the primary winner in both cases is the end user.
My feeling on why Linux "took off" more than FreeBSD is that the GPL is more enticing to developers, and the developers are the lifeblood of any piece of software. I'm sure that this is an over-simplification, but it is likely at least a factor.
Apple and Mac OS X. They took a BSD OS (among other things) and although a lot of the work they have done with it is available as Free/Open Source, there are certainly a good deal of parts of the OS that are not open or free.
What do we get as a community? A commercial OS that is tied to a specific vendor's hardware. Is BSD any worse off because of this. Perhaps not. However, all of the innovations getting poured into OS X are NOT getting poured back into the community.
A network install of Fedora only takes me 10-15 minutes. Optical media is terribly slow compared to hard drives and 100/1000-Base* networking.
I don't think it's that unrealistic to think an OS could be installed within minutes. Even though I'm using gigabit Ethernet, the rest of my hardware is beginning to show its age. My fastest machine is a dual 1.2 GHz Athlon, so I imagine a more modern setup (and a better file server) would yield even faster installations.
That said, I've never experienced anything quite as painfully slow as a Mac OS X installation. Anyone know if there is a way to do a network install of OS X using a Linux server?
I tend to get the most work done in Linux, and specifically using KDE. If it weren't for the couple of commercial Linux-only apps that I use, I suppose I could use any *nix that can run X and KDE.
The features I miss when I use a Mac or Win Box: virtual desktops; auto copying and middle-click pasting; the control key working as expected; built-in graphical CVS front end; ability to CTRL-ALT-BKSP my way out of a stuck GUI; HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, NFS, and SMB all from the same file management windows; simple key commands like CTRL-D that give me a duplicate file manager window (I really love that one).
While I realize everyone develops their own workflow on their platform of choice, I really do feel alienated and weighed-down when I'm not on a Linux box.
I normally hate it when people say this, but just search google.com for "riaa stats". I did a research project on this topic about a year ago, so I don't remember any links off the top of my head -- none of the sources I used were that hard to find. In any case, I don't think these numbers are too hotly contested by anyone -- even the RIAA.
Regardless of the numbers, the labels aren't bleeding cash like they say they are. The fact of the matter is that artists aren't just given piles of cash to make records, they are given loans to make records. The only people that lose money are the artists that don't sell enough records to pay off the loans.
Artists don't start making a profit until the recording costs are paid off, but the labels start profitting from the very first sale.
For an artist to make ANY profit at all off of an RIAA-backed album, the artist has to sell 500,000 copies of the album. The artist is ultimately responsible for covering all recording and various other production and distribution costs.
The RIAA, on the other hand, makes a profit off of each and every album that gets sold, whether it's one copy or a billion. Regardless of whether an artist makes a profit or not, they are still obligated to repay the money loaned by the label at contract signing time.
Less than 1% of RIAA artists will ever sell over 500,000 copies of an album, so while that 1% does bring in an enormous amount of money, it's not like the other 99% are bleeding the industry as bad as the RIAA tries to make us all believe. That 99% however has managed to make themselves a major part of the RIAA's income.
Even if an artist doesn't sell a single copy of an album, the labels still get that loan money back, and you can be sure that there's interest added into the mix there too.
To answer your question: the artists are always on the losing end of the deal in this situation, and by most of the facts and figures I've read recently, that's an overwhelming percentage of signed artists.
I suppose I wasn't very specific in my first post, but what would the implications be for educational institutions that are currently switching to software like Firefox, OpenOffice, and other such cross-platform open source tools?
I'm thinking long-term cause and effect here.
Being forced into using MS-everything does nothing but add huge costs to an already woefully-underfunded education budget. Many of the public schools here in Hawaii are beginning to rely on Linux labs for computer access. Without these labs (and the reduced administration costs that accompany them), there are huge numbers of children in Hawaii that would never get time behind the keyboard or on the Internet.
You might think this is an exaggeration, but the percentage of underpriviledged children in Hawaii's public school system is staggeringly high (between 50-70%). Take away tools that we can use for free, and you further the disadvantage.
So no, maybe it's not devastating to the economy on a wide scale, but it would further hinder an already struggling educational system, and it will help hobble Hawaii's increasingly banana-republic-like economy.
Wouldn't it be fairly easy to demonstrate that this would cause devastating harm to the economy? Sure, Microsoft and any other proprietary software house with a fat patent portfolio would be fine with this, but we as consumers would end up with one operating system, one office suite, one game manufacturer, etc. I anticipate this being thrown out, but I suppose I should never underestimate the power of greed.
What ever happened to innovation and competition based on superior products?
Actually, I do spend a GREAT deal of my time thinking about music. Being a grad student has all but eliminated my music practice time, but I still find my mind perpetually flooded by some sort of beat or melody, and I'm always tapping my hands and fingers to whatever internal beat I've got in my head. Maybe I'm just neurotic.
As an aside, I too earn my bread by programming, and yet I find myself inexplicably drawn to sitting at the god-forsaken boxes for nearly every waking hour of my life (lately because of research papers and the like). In this case, I think my passion towards computers is a passionate hatred. Grad school sucks.
At this point, software patents are so frivolous that writing just about anything beyond "hello world" is violating someone's patent. Just the act of coding a usable program is most likely violating some silly software patent, and is why the rules need to change.
My previous point was that as a programmer, you're probably better off NOT knowing what's been patented because odds are already against you -- it's not worth the risk of a triple damages penalty.
Remember though, you'll get fined TRIPLE the damages if you knowingly violate a patent, versus 1 x damages if you unknowingly violate. Ignorance isn't protection, but it would appear to be a helluva lot less expensive.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.
Thank you! You've finally put into words one of the best descriptions of tube-amp tone I've ever read. :)
In my opinion, those damned one-button mice are virtually unusable. Go out and buy a cheap Logitech optical, and you'll get rid of one minor irritation immediately. OS X is very functional with a three button wheel mouse.
:)
I used to be a Windows user too, but for the last 6 years, I have been using Linux and OS X (for the last 2-3). I like OS X quite a bit, but I have 4 issues that continue to frustrate me...
1. The + widget doesn't really maximize a window; rather it will toggle between full height, and maybe full width, depending on the window's content. Personally, I hate inconsistency so this one just flares up my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
2. Finder and application windows are only resizable from the bottom right corner -- no edge-based resizing, no resizing from the top. This isn't that major, but it does interfere with my productivity in a subtle frustrating way.
3. You can't sort file windows so that folders appear first followed by alphabetical file listing (at least I haven't been able to figure it out). This makes file management a bit more clumsy and cumbersome.
4. OS X leaves hidden files littered throughout every folder of any network shares you connect with. The files aren't that big, but it's like going to the beach only to find the sand covered in cigarette butts.