You're right. The most apt analogy is changing the arrangement of mirrors in the car--I seek to maximize my personal readability with both changes. Mirrors and GUI do not change the operation of the car or computer--merely the user's perception of how it is operating.
No, I don't plan on renting any cars with prohibited mirror changing, and I don't plan to get suckered twice into buying a computer that won't let me change unreadable fonts.
I told Apple about about it already. Maybe they will change.
They care only in so far as it change their sales. So I'm trying to change their sales. I'm trying to give a bad feeling, because I get a bad feeling from the product--that it subverts my usability for their corporate image. But mostly I'm just sick of people trashing this article as either incorrect or only of importance to advanced GUI tweakers--making the system readable should not be an advanced GUI tweak. If you don't think complaining on slashdot matters, why are you complaining about my complaints?
Apple needs to know that word of mouth advertising works both ways, you know...
It warns potential Mac buyers of a serious problem with Macs. I like my iBook, but I definitely know things now about it, like the inability to change basic GUI properties like font or font size, that had I know probably would have moved me towards wintel instead. Telling potential buyers about this puts pressure on Apple to change it.
The most apt analogy is not the accelerator and the break pedal, but simply adjusting the position of the seat. Apple is not only hammering down on complete UI reworks, but also on even basic things, like changing the fonts, or setting the theme to a color other than blue or graphite (which contrary to the Wired article's statement about designers asking for a monochrome theme, was always there.) Things that make a computer more comfortable to use and are easy to change back are now prohibited.
Actually and even more apt analogy would not be a rental car, but a car I bought and paid for, since I bought and paid for my uncustomizeable Mac.
Apple has made OS X very tweakable- but in standardized consistent ways. This is necessary so you don't get the system instability that people got with OS 9 customizations.
What tweaks are you referring to? It seems to me nearly all remaining tweaks are still undocumented (especially the images apps use for buttons--that's likely to move around every release just to frustrate anyone making themes.) I'm not seeing any improvement here.
Fuck you! I HAVE bought a Mac! Now I'd like to be able to change the fonts so that I can see it! Apple doesn't want me to! So I'm going to make sure every potential Mac buyer understands that Apple thinks their corporate image is more important than users comfort and utility. If Mac fans like yourself are so emotionally attachted to that little Fascist, Mr. Jobs, then fuck them too.
I agree this journalist is underpaid. He needs a raise for finally waking people up to this.
Wintel users have been able to resize fonts and change colors since windows 95, possibly earlier. Mac users could do so as well. I wouldn't even call this customization "tweaking", any more than I would call adjusting the seats of your car "tweaking".
I don't believe it's possible to chane the size of fonts in Mac OS X. I simply can't wrap my head around this--you shouldn't need a 3rd party app (none of which work most of the time) to improve the readability of the system. So, no, as a frustrated OS X user, I must say that this Wired article is right on target.
Re:They just don't want Resedit to rise from the d
on
No More Mac Tweaking?
·
· Score: 2
Then the solution is to require an admin password to make those changes, not to make them impossible. This solution wasn't possible before OS X in Macs, but it should be now.
You didn't say anything about ps2, but I did. I made a statement comparing game cube to all consoles past and present, and I was offering a data point for comparison. Zelda's not out yet either (unless you count Star Fox Adventures as Zelda...) so you need not count that. You've most certainly got to count Super Smash Brothers Melee, though. You might even count Pikmin, but I won't insist. Animal Crossing is becoming extemely popular, though I haven't played it. As far as released games go, that's a pretty good number of AAA titles released in less than a year since release of a system. And in a matter of months they'll have Metroid, with Zelda early next year. Whereas the box doesn't have more than one or two titles comparable until after this Christmas. The xbox could still win, maybe even number one, though--the games themselves may be nothing special, but combined with Xbox live they could be really something. Being able to talk to people while you shoot them could be really significant.
I'll hold off on xbox purchasing until that happens though.
I sort of agree, which I guess means I sort of agree with the judges, except that I suspect that there's an infinite series of loopholes in any possible set of written laws, so there's always got to be SOME stretching.
However, you're wrong here:
Also, ever wonder why litigation has gotten to be so bad in society today? One of the reasons is that even the most ridiculous cases may have merit in a court where the judge is not bound by written law.
Judges are only bound completely to written law in criminal cases. Civil cases (the litigation you're probably most agitated about) tend to be mostly about case law (previous court decisions) rather than statutory law. I believe that's been the case for longer than the U.S. has been a country.
You know, as much as I hate the Xbox, I sure as hell wish that I could use the Xbox controller. Or really, any damn controller other than the dual shock. It's too small--any game that requires a lot of L or R button pushing gives my hands RSI in half an hour. And with the Xbox little kids like yourself can just buy the smaller Microsoft controller. On PS2, normal sized hand folk like myself are obliged to buy poorly made 3rd quality controlers. What I wouldn't give for a quality larger (or at least better designed--the gamecube controller doesn't give me problems) PS2 controller. How I miss luxuriously perfect (except for the dumb video memory unit) dreamcast controller.
Yes but a handful is better than one awesome game on the Xbox. You probably even know what I'm referring to.
And a handful of awesome games less than a year after release is actually pretty good for any console--what was there a year after PS2's release, Gran Turismo 3?
I haven't seen either the law or decision in question, but I do rather suspect they could have stretched the law, as judges are apt to do, declared "under a skirt or kilt" to be a private place (albeit a mobile one) and not caused such a fuss. I further suspect they decided to stay in the letter rather than spirit of the law, in order to highlight this issue and get a stricter law passed about recording in public as well as private places.
Re:I know you're kidding, but....
on
Undelete In Linux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
By listing four things here, you've gone right ahead and said that the software install system is _not_ standard. There is a very different user experience for each distribution's install, enough to make the average user think he is installing a different OS for each one. I know my mom thinks Red Hat is an OS.
For the purpose of this complaint, your mom is basically right. Microsoft doesn't make a package management system that works on multiple corporations distributions of the OS, so why should Red Hat. Just pretend Red Hat is an OS and your complaint goes away. Just because both kernels are signed "Torvalds" doesn't mean their the same OS. Heck, Red Hat even changes the kernel anyway.
I can't say Samba is easy to use Windows filesharing. Easy to use Windows filesharing is clicking on a button that says share files and seeing that folder show up in Network Neighborhood. It's not SWAT.
Maybe your describing Mac OS X Windows file sharing, because it's not that easy on any Microsoft OS. Sure, that's all that you're supposed to have to do. But have the time it doesn't work. "Okay, enter this name and password to get my files." "uh--it's just asking me for a password, no name." That's if you can somehow magically get the computers to see each other.
You can come back and say "you must have done it wrong, TRACK-YOUR-POSITION", but if there was anything for me to screw up, that just proves it's not as easy as you claim it is.
No, it's not moral to steal from the RIAA. But the creation always belongs partly to the artist and partly to the people, no matter what our broken laws say. So no theft takes place.
I'm not defending the article or arguing against your humorous post or anything, but when he says the Open New Document icon doesn't work, I guessed he was referring to that pointless "New Office Document" link that MS Office 2k puts in the system Start menu--presumably if he meant you couldn't make new documents that would be a much bigger deal.
And with the e-mail server, my suspicion is that the reviewer just didn't know how to configure things inside msnbc's intranet...
IE isn't really a big deal either--I'm sure Mozilla works just fine.;)
When the original MSNBC article was up, lots of people were pointing out this: AOL 7.0 Lindows client preview. If there is no AOL/Lindows partnership, does this suggest that this AOL client will work on all Linux distros, not just Lindows? Or is this article going too far in completely denying the existance of any significant teaming up?
Compared to go, chess has more complicated rules but simpler permutations. That's my point--that you don't have to be complicated or inaccessible to make people think.
While I too object to hyping gameplay over graphics, I object very much to this equating simplifying and making games more accessible with "dumbing down". Fun and depth of play does not require complicated rules--complare the number of rules in Go to the number of rules of Chess. Too many games (RPGs are the worst at this--though some of the Sim series probably suffers this as well) simply think "the more rules/complexity, the more fun!" For someone not willing to spend more than 2 months learning a new game, a few simpler rules can result in more depth of play then many complicated rules.
Let's see what happens with Sim City 4. Some of the changes (like automatic layout of roads) sound like worthwhile attempts to minimize micromanagement.
You're right, I was just dismissing this tired old "I could follow you around" example. It's a crappy example, and shouldn't be used even if you are arguing the right side.
If this were a case of criminals being tracked down in their own car, with a hidden tracking device, this would be very different.
Well, in that case, your civil disobedience, or rather restricting oneself to your civil disobedience, is rather stupid. Prohibition would never have ended with just a few drunks getting themselves thrown symbolically into jail.
Note that I'm not accepting your definition of civil disobedience--I see no reason why it must be so restrictive. When I say civil disobedience, I refer to speakeasies and sit-ins alike. I take civil disobedience to refer to disregarding the authorities in a nonviolent manner. Deal with it.
There's nothing wrong with you following me around all day, because it would take all of your time to do it, and there's no possible way for it to be worth your time. On the other hand, if you worked for a corporation or government that had tracking devices everywhere to track thousands/millions at reasonable cost, then the threat to privacy rears it's ugly head. Privacy is not an all or nothing thing--you don't have it or not have it, your privacy is equal to the cost required to extract information about you.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. The most apt analogy is changing the arrangement of mirrors in the car--I seek to maximize my personal readability with both changes. Mirrors and GUI do not change the operation of the car or computer--merely the user's perception of how it is operating. No, I don't plan on renting any cars with prohibited mirror changing, and I don't plan to get suckered twice into buying a computer that won't let me change unreadable fonts.
I told Apple about about it already. Maybe they will change. They care only in so far as it change their sales. So I'm trying to change their sales. I'm trying to give a bad feeling, because I get a bad feeling from the product--that it subverts my usability for their corporate image. But mostly I'm just sick of people trashing this article as either incorrect or only of importance to advanced GUI tweakers--making the system readable should not be an advanced GUI tweak. If you don't think complaining on slashdot matters, why are you complaining about my complaints? Apple needs to know that word of mouth advertising works both ways, you know...
It warns potential Mac buyers of a serious problem with Macs. I like my iBook, but I definitely know things now about it, like the inability to change basic GUI properties like font or font size, that had I know probably would have moved me towards wintel instead. Telling potential buyers about this puts pressure on Apple to change it.
Actually and even more apt analogy would not be a rental car, but a car I bought and paid for, since I bought and paid for my uncustomizeable Mac.
What tweaks are you referring to? It seems to me nearly all remaining tweaks are still undocumented (especially the images apps use for buttons--that's likely to move around every release just to frustrate anyone making themes.) I'm not seeing any improvement here.
Fuck you! I HAVE bought a Mac! Now I'd like to be able to change the fonts so that I can see it! Apple doesn't want me to! So I'm going to make sure every potential Mac buyer understands that Apple thinks their corporate image is more important than users comfort and utility. If Mac fans like yourself are so emotionally attachted to that little Fascist, Mr. Jobs, then fuck them too. I agree this journalist is underpaid. He needs a raise for finally waking people up to this.
Wintel users have been able to resize fonts and change colors since windows 95, possibly earlier. Mac users could do so as well. I wouldn't even call this customization "tweaking", any more than I would call adjusting the seats of your car "tweaking".
I don't believe it's possible to chane the size of fonts in Mac OS X. I simply can't wrap my head around this--you shouldn't need a 3rd party app (none of which work most of the time) to improve the readability of the system. So, no, as a frustrated OS X user, I must say that this Wired article is right on target.
Then the solution is to require an admin password to make those changes, not to make them impossible. This solution wasn't possible before OS X in Macs, but it should be now.
If you're right, their crime is greater than you say--the screenshots in the above link are certainly not AIM or Netscape 7 shots...
You didn't say anything about ps2, but I did. I made a statement comparing game cube to all consoles past and present, and I was offering a data point for comparison. Zelda's not out yet either (unless you count Star Fox Adventures as Zelda...) so you need not count that. You've most certainly got to count Super Smash Brothers Melee, though. You might even count Pikmin, but I won't insist. Animal Crossing is becoming extemely popular, though I haven't played it. As far as released games go, that's a pretty good number of AAA titles released in less than a year since release of a system. And in a matter of months they'll have Metroid, with Zelda early next year. Whereas the box doesn't have more than one or two titles comparable until after this Christmas. The xbox could still win, maybe even number one, though--the games themselves may be nothing special, but combined with Xbox live they could be really something. Being able to talk to people while you shoot them could be really significant. I'll hold off on xbox purchasing until that happens though.
However, you're wrong here:
Also, ever wonder why litigation has gotten to be so bad in society today? One of the reasons is that even the most ridiculous cases may have merit in a court where the judge is not bound by written law.
Judges are only bound completely to written law in criminal cases. Civil cases (the litigation you're probably most agitated about) tend to be mostly about case law (previous court decisions) rather than statutory law. I believe that's been the case for longer than the U.S. has been a country.
You know, as much as I hate the Xbox, I sure as hell wish that I could use the Xbox controller. Or really, any damn controller other than the dual shock. It's too small--any game that requires a lot of L or R button pushing gives my hands RSI in half an hour. And with the Xbox little kids like yourself can just buy the smaller Microsoft controller. On PS2, normal sized hand folk like myself are obliged to buy poorly made 3rd quality controlers. What I wouldn't give for a quality larger (or at least better designed--the gamecube controller doesn't give me problems) PS2 controller. How I miss luxuriously perfect (except for the dumb video memory unit) dreamcast controller.
And a handful of awesome games less than a year after release is actually pretty good for any console--what was there a year after PS2's release, Gran Turismo 3?
I haven't seen either the law or decision in question, but I do rather suspect they could have stretched the law, as judges are apt to do, declared "under a skirt or kilt" to be a private place (albeit a mobile one) and not caused such a fuss. I further suspect they decided to stay in the letter rather than spirit of the law, in order to highlight this issue and get a stricter law passed about recording in public as well as private places.
For the purpose of this complaint, your mom is basically right. Microsoft doesn't make a package management system that works on multiple corporations distributions of the OS, so why should Red Hat. Just pretend Red Hat is an OS and your complaint goes away. Just because both kernels are signed "Torvalds" doesn't mean their the same OS. Heck, Red Hat even changes the kernel anyway.
I can't say Samba is easy to use Windows filesharing. Easy to use Windows filesharing is clicking on a button that says share files and seeing that folder show up in Network Neighborhood. It's not SWAT.
Maybe your describing Mac OS X Windows file sharing, because it's not that easy on any Microsoft OS. Sure, that's all that you're supposed to have to do. But have the time it doesn't work. "Okay, enter this name and password to get my files." "uh--it's just asking me for a password, no name." That's if you can somehow magically get the computers to see each other.
You can come back and say "you must have done it wrong, TRACK-YOUR-POSITION", but if there was anything for me to screw up, that just proves it's not as easy as you claim it is.
No, it's not moral to steal from the RIAA. But the creation always belongs partly to the artist and partly to the people, no matter what our broken laws say. So no theft takes place.
It's irrelevant to the law, but not to the morality, which are completely different things.
And with the e-mail server, my suspicion is that the reviewer just didn't know how to configure things inside msnbc's intranet...
IE isn't really a big deal either--I'm sure Mozilla works just fine. ;)
When the original MSNBC article was up, lots of people were pointing out this: AOL 7.0 Lindows client preview. If there is no AOL/Lindows partnership, does this suggest that this AOL client will work on all Linux distros, not just Lindows? Or is this article going too far in completely denying the existance of any significant teaming up?
Compared to go, chess has more complicated rules but simpler permutations. That's my point--that you don't have to be complicated or inaccessible to make people think.
Let's see what happens with Sim City 4. Some of the changes (like automatic layout of roads) sound like worthwhile attempts to minimize micromanagement.
If this were a case of criminals being tracked down in their own car, with a hidden tracking device, this would be very different.
Note that I'm not accepting your definition of civil disobedience--I see no reason why it must be so restrictive. When I say civil disobedience, I refer to speakeasies and sit-ins alike. I take civil disobedience to refer to disregarding the authorities in a nonviolent manner. Deal with it.
There's nothing wrong with you following me around all day, because it would take all of your time to do it, and there's no possible way for it to be worth your time. On the other hand, if you worked for a corporation or government that had tracking devices everywhere to track thousands/millions at reasonable cost, then the threat to privacy rears it's ugly head. Privacy is not an all or nothing thing--you don't have it or not have it, your privacy is equal to the cost required to extract information about you.