"Zebbers is a whore" is name calling, "Zebbers sleeps with men for money" is a statement that "Someone does X". Thus the latter is libel, and the former is not?
Name-calling quite often implies the statement of "Someone did something"
Libel is "a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression". Certainly, if you flesh out the statement of "Zebbers is a whore" to "Zebbers sleeps with men for money", then Zebbers will have a much better case in court, but if you tell the right people that Zebbers is a whore and intend to convey the exact same meaning as "Zebbers sleeps with.. blah blah", then you're still guilty of libel. (Unless it's true, in which case you're just exposing Zebbers as the man-lover he is. In which case, have proof and Zebbers would be silly to drag you to court over it.)
In short, don't be so sure that name-calling cannot amount to libel. If a name that you call someone is explicit enough, and if it's suitably damaging to the reputation of the person, then it's still libel.
-Sara
(Disclaimer: All statements about Zebbers, while they might be true, are used for the sole purpose of point-making.)
1- It's a common retort, when someone complains about a Mac. "You've never used one!" "You're just using it wrong!" "You're just a Windows lUser". So I figured I'd state preemptively that I had used one (or two, or ten) and for quite a long time at that.
2- If you don't have a Blue and White G3 (First rev) and/or haven't tried putting a second HDD into that G3, then it's not a problem you'd be familiar with. Apple didn't exactly shout it from the rooftops, and didn't accept returns of the flawwed systems, so there wasn't as much of a buzz about it as you might think. In fact, when it happened to me, I thought I had a bad HDD. Then another bad HDD. Then I found out it was a common problem, and the solution? Buy Hard Disk Speedtools and tune the speed of the second disk down. Do a bit of research. Or feel free to buy a Rev-A B/W G3 and try it yourself. I don't know if it's still an issue under OS X. I stuck a 120GB HDD in the machine a while ago, and consider the issue permanently resolved (albeit more expensively than I would like.)
3- As for the co-worker who borrowed my PC for a few days, it's not an issue of "can't get done on a Mac", it's an issue of "Can't get done quickly on a Mac." 3D rendering and screen previews take an impossibly long time on that machine, compared to the same tasks on my machine. The scene setup and rendering on the G4 would require approximately 3-4 weeks, the same scene can be set up and rendered on my Athlon 2700 in the same number of days. A deadline made the Mac die-hard request use of my workstation, otherwise I'm sure he would have suffered it out and come up with creative solutions. Like turning other peoples workstations into a render-farm.
No. I read from the upper-right, as that is the way the English language progresses. Other languages either flow the same way, or in alternate styles, since English is my primary language, I follow that convention.
Reading and "using" are very similar. It's easier to move down than it is to move up. It's much easier to pull a mouse than it is to push it, as pushing elicits more strain on the muscles of the hand and wrist, and pulling is more of a "falling" motion, allowing the weight of your arm to pull the hand backwards.
Since it's easier to move down than it is to move up, and it's easier to read from the top to the bottom, logic would follow that reading should be done from top to bottom, and navigation done from bottom to top, which is how I prefer to work. In this manner, both the OS X and Windows GUIs are flawed, which is why I'm most at home in KDE or Gnome, which allow a large degree of customization.
I'm not saying that the Mac GUI is "WRONG", I'm just saying that for someone who makes use of the mouse as a primary navigation tool, I find it uncomfortable and backwards.
I agree that "it's easiest to put the mouse at the top of the screen", when a user has zero experience with a mouse. Since the falling-back motion is more natural, the user is more likely to perform it carelessly and overshoot the area where he/she intended the mouse to land. The up-motion requires more concentration, and puts to use more muscles, which makes it easier to aim.
It doesn't matter, seeing as 12:00AM is midnight, by common knowledge (although people are morons and tend to forget this.) A court trial would say that this is Midnight. (Assuming they were intelligent enough to remember the difference) and issue a refund for the tickets.
"Accuracy" doesn't mean anything in the court of the law, it's more likely that, had the situations been reversed and the showing was listed as "12 PM", and confused with Midnight, that a court would rule that "12:00 PM" was misleading, since it doesn't make much sense to count from 1 AM up to 11, then suddenly switch to PM, and consumers would conceivably be confused. However, the burden for an accurate understanding falls on the side of the Movie theater, and they are required to either have a special showing, or issue a refund.
Good for you! Personally, I go for WinXP and Linux for the same reasons you mention. I can't condone Apple's practice of selling G3s that corrupt data when a second HDD is put on an IDE chain. Nor can I stand OS X's overly white interface. I mod Luna down, and KDE looks exactly like I want it to look like--I can even make it look like OS X if I'm suffering from a moment of brain damage.
Oh, and for the record, I'm posting this FROM A MAC. RUNNING OS X, so please don't claim I've never used it. I have. And I do. I'd just *really* prefer to be on my PC right now. Unfortunately one of the people in the office who usually uses a Mac needs to get some work done, so they've requisitioned my PC. Guess there are down-sides to being comfy on all platforms. I'm the first to get the booted over to an alternate computer when someone has "needs".
Heh. Im stuck on my Mac this week becuase my computer is in use by someone else in the office who needs a PC. for some work-stuff.
Nothing sucks worse than being stuck on a G3 350 running OS X when you've got an Athlon 2700, Soyo Dragon SY-KT400 with 1.5GB DDR(400) sitting in the other room. With that machine, I'd even hate being on a 1.25G4. =]
I have to say, though, that OS X isn't as bad as I was thinking it was. Now that I've been on it for two days, most of my major complaints aren't as major anymore. I think the biggest complaint I have is that the OS works from the upper-left corner-diagonally. I MUCH prefer the lower-right-corner-diagonally workflow of OS 9 and Windows.
I don't see why people worship OS X so much. It's not horrible, but it's a step in the wrong direction.
-Sara
Re:The prices are not so good
on
Build Your Own Mac
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Hah! But it wouldn't be a MAC.;) We must remember that Macs are the bestest things in the world, and worth the additional $1k for a slower machine. =]
You can skin it to "Plain text" if you don't like the offset tables. (I hate them. And GREEN?! What's with the bloody green?!) Just click on the "Skin Hotbot" link. Of course, then you'll have to have a cookie, I assume. Or re-set it all the time.
-Sara
Yeah--this is exactly what I've been wondering ever since I saw the first tablet and/or pen-driven PC. Why the hell? I can type MUCH faster than I can write, and it's MUCH more easy to understand what has been written. Why would I want to revert?
The only ones I can see the pen-driven system benefitting is those that never learned how to type.
Blame the game manufacturers, they're the ones that chose to be on Windows, and not on Linux. You can argue that they really didn't have a choice, and you'd be right. They'd be foolish to disregard the majority. But the fact that there is a majority means that you don't need to purchase one computer to run your games, one to work on, one to compose documents... and so on. The "Evil Majority" puts computers within the reach of the most people, because there's one platform that can cater to their needs and perform the tasks they wish to perform. If you really want to do your work and play on one computer, dual boot. If you're running Linux on a Mac, then you'll have some problems...;) But you can't really blame THAT on MS, can you?
(God, I sound like a Pro-MS Zealot. Really, I'm not. I just don't think they're all that evil. Evil, yes. As evil as a lot of Apple/Linux zealots--and I'm one of the latter--might portray them to be.)
What I think is Evil (with a capital E) is Apple. They purchase technologies like Shake, and completely blow off the users from other platforms. Apple isn't a monopoly, but it would be one very happily. The technologies that MS has purchased in the past haven't ended up nearly as locked to Windows as the technologies Apple has purchased are locked to the Mac.... AND MS gives you the freedom of choice of hardware. (Wider range, that is. I'm not claiming you can put Windows on a PowerPC.)
*Microsoft*?! Hah. It doesn't follow the Mantra of the RIAA and MPA. Their mantra is "In every customer is a possible criminal." and "If they can use it, they can steal it, therefore they should pay without having the privilidge of using it, so that we can continue to create more stuff along the lines of Brittney Spears"
Microsoft might *encourage* the mentality, but Microsoft encourages a lot of stupid mentalities. The MPA/RIAA are the problem, not Microsoft. It's the MPA/RIAA that are pushing for insane copyright measures. I know it's fun to hate Microsoft, but let's not let it detract from the people we should *REALLY* be hating.
I definitely dislike MS's business practices in regards to their competitors. However, in a lot of cases... They had the superior product at the "point of conquest". MS Word, while it was never "great" was still much better than Wordperfect, and appleworks. It offered genuine functionality that the other applications did not, and Windows offered functionality that other OSes did not, even if the additional functionality was minimal, and it lacked in functionality in other areas. The only competitors that attracted me "as much" in the early days were Atari and Apple. Both companies that kept a proprietary lockhold on their products. Atari drove itself to oblivion, and the survival of Apple is nothing short of the stuff that legands are made of. Most of MS's competitors drove themselves out of business as much as MS did. Netscape is an exception. They truly had a superior product at the 'time of conquest', and MS really did screw them over. Mozilla's coming back with vegenance, though. I'm glad, and surprised that something that AOL is doing is actually successful. Of course... It's not AOL that's pushing the success.
I'm not an MS drone. I dual-boot and spend most of my time in Linux these days. Depending on what I'm doing for work, I've used XP primarily as well. I've got a Mac sitting on the desk next to me that I use on a semi regular basis, as well. I am not tied to the OS in any way, yet I find myself going back to it. Why? It's not because I don't have a choice. It's because it's got a little polish here and there. A workflow that I like, and that I miss when I'm on the other platforms. The same reason I find myself on the other platforms occasionally instead of XP. If XP had a Unix back-end, though... And let me run all my favorite Unix apps and shell scripts from within KDE, Gnome, and XFce, I'd be hard pressed to go anywhere else. (and no, Cygwin doesn't count.)
I'm a geek, though. (Quasi geek, if you must.) My choice comes out of my willingness to explore, and my ability to adapt and grow. For the majority of the world, MS would still be a monopoly even if its business practices were 100% kosher. Maybe it wouldn't be as BIG a monopoly, but nothing else out there offers the feature sets, the functionality, and the "I'm a monkey"-ease of use. Maybe those things aren't important to you and I, but they go a LONG way when it comes to the computer illiterate. For people like Mr. Doe up the road, my mom, and my fiance's dad.. A monopoly is a very good thing in the computer world. Without it, they'd still be struggling to explain to Tech support what their flavor of OS is. It's the monkeys that reinforce MS's monopoly. It's the monkeys that will continue to reinforce a monopoly, even if MS dies-0a new monopoly would quickly spring into being. Maybe it would be Apple. And wouldn't that be scads worse? I mean... Hardware and software and Operating system, all tied into one. No choice on the hardware. You'd have to put up with every little bit of plastic ornament forced upon you.
Given my choices of monopolies, MS is the lesser evil. It still allows for choice, and still makes life easy for the monkeys so they won't have to bother me as much.
So, basically... If they charge more on a product (Say $300 instead of $130 for Mac OS X) they're evil. And if they charge less, they're evil. And if they charged exactly the same amount, they'd be copying, and thus... Evil.
*laughs* Nah. Fireworks MX has enough similarities to Photoshop to be misleading. It's Step-1 is the same, Step-2 is the same... assume Step-3 is the same, but get bitten when it's in fact the most different thing in the universe.
I've never been a big fan of Macromedia's ideas of interface design.
The designer *was* a doofus, though. Who gives a damn if he gets to spend 10 minutes more doing something? It's the web programmers who have to work with the graphics afterwards who have to spend more time dealing with Photoshop problems and mistakes.
Fireworks is excellent for dealing with web graphics, and outputting stuff for the web... But put it in front of someone who's used to Photoshop, and for the first while they'll be screaming and ripping their hair out. I had one designer flat out tell me that he REFUSED to use Fireworks, that it was a shitty program, and he didn't give a damn how much easier it made life for me, or how much better the output was.:p
Naturally, his email account "broke" for a few days and I didn't have time to fix it because I was busy trying to fix the stuff that Photoshop/Imageready messed up.:p
"it's not yours until you collect it" -- Does that mean your landlord at your apartment building owns your mail, since he owns the address it is being delivered to? They own the email address, and the domain, but not the mail that is sent to it. The mail has a SPECIFIC intended reciepient.
I know email is far from a guarantee-I have mail bounced back to me on a regular basis, eaten by various servers, etc. If you don't get a confirmation it was receieved, it's safe to assume it wasn't. However, this does NOT justify an ISP taking a few megs of mail and tossing it. When the account is suspended, they should immediately start bouncing emails back to the sender. When the account is terminated, the former owner of the account should be given the option of downloading their mail one last time, or purchasing it on media (CD-R) for cost of the media, and S/H fees. Because the email is *NOT* the property of the ISP. The service is the property of the ISP, and not the communication that goes on over it.
Why not? They are accepting your email, not providing the senders with any way to know whether it got to you or not, and holding it hostage--even after your account has been *cancelled*. If your primary means of communication was postal mail, and you moved, this would be VERY similar to your landlord holding your mail hostage. Your bills, your business communications, etc.
(fortunately the PO handles changes of address...)
Because, then Mac fanatics would freak out, start running around in circles, and chanting "Mhz is just a myth, just a myth.." then, upon realizing that they're both running on the same hardware with the same chip, and all that's different is the OS, they'd spontaneously combust, because Apple can do no evil.
Or not.
Yellowdog would have made much more sense. Hey- they're Apple resellers. Somehow I think you're more likely to encounter Yellowdog Linux on a XServe than SuSE. I don't know anyone who uses SuSE on a PPC. Yellowdog seems to be the champ, followed by Mandrake, etc.
Actually. A CLI is MUCH easier to explain. "Hey, mom. type this and hit 'enter'. Make sure you don't make a typo." vs "Hey, mom. Go down to your taskbar and press the MS Word Icon. Go to file>open and select the location of your document by pressing this little funny icon at the top to drop down a menu that makes no sense at all"......
I'd MUCH rather support a dumb user on a CLI than on a GUI. CLI's, while more powerful and "less intimidating" allow for far less stupid "What's a desktop" "what's an icon?" questions.
Just shut the hell up and type, and if you can't type, then God be with you.
GUI concepts are harder to explain to people who don't understand them than command line concepts are. "Just type this, and this happens".
Wrong. It IS a discrimination. If the blind person did not have a computer, then it would be a "convenience", however, the blind person is being denied access to something that they, for all intents and purposes, should be able to access, and have all the tools to access, and are then forced to call and to pay more. This is VERY much like the parallel to a tollbooth at a ramp, only let's put it this way. The people who are climbing the stairs are getting a DISCOUNT, and if the person in the wheelchair uses the ramp, it's more difficulty. The building had to put up the ramp, pay the laborers, maintain the ramp, shovel the ramp more carefully than the stairs, etc. etc.
You're also failing to take into account that your lateness is not a disability, it's a fault with your personality. You have a choice over the matter, and if you so choose, you can be early and make it to the movies on time. Blind people, deaf people, and people in wheelchairs LACK this choice unless things are made accessable to them.
Slashdot Mirror
And, since that demonstrates fantastic intelligence, you'd be one of the people permitted to stay. ;)
-Sara
No, he's saying that all the residents of NJ would need to move somewhere else. =]
-Sara
"Zebbers is a whore" is name calling, "Zebbers sleeps with men for money" is a statement that "Someone does X". Thus the latter is libel, and the former is not?
Name-calling quite often implies the statement of "Someone did something"
Libel is "a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression". Certainly, if you flesh out the statement of "Zebbers is a whore" to "Zebbers sleeps with men for money", then Zebbers will have a much better case in court, but if you tell the right people that Zebbers is a whore and intend to convey the exact same meaning as "Zebbers sleeps with.. blah blah", then you're still guilty of libel. (Unless it's true, in which case you're just exposing Zebbers as the man-lover he is. In which case, have proof and Zebbers would be silly to drag you to court over it.)
In short, don't be so sure that name-calling cannot amount to libel. If a name that you call someone is explicit enough, and if it's suitably damaging to the reputation of the person, then it's still libel.
-Sara
(Disclaimer: All statements about Zebbers, while they might be true, are used for the sole purpose of point-making.)
1- It's a common retort, when someone complains about a Mac. "You've never used one!" "You're just using it wrong!" "You're just a Windows lUser". So I figured I'd state preemptively that I had used one (or two, or ten) and for quite a long time at that.
2- If you don't have a Blue and White G3 (First rev) and/or haven't tried putting a second HDD into that G3, then it's not a problem you'd be familiar with. Apple didn't exactly shout it from the rooftops, and didn't accept returns of the flawwed systems, so there wasn't as much of a buzz about it as you might think. In fact, when it happened to me, I thought I had a bad HDD. Then another bad HDD. Then I found out it was a common problem, and the solution? Buy Hard Disk Speedtools and tune the speed of the second disk down. Do a bit of research. Or feel free to buy a Rev-A B/W G3 and try it yourself. I don't know if it's still an issue under OS X. I stuck a 120GB HDD in the machine a while ago, and consider the issue permanently resolved (albeit more expensively than I would like.)
3- As for the co-worker who borrowed my PC for a few days, it's not an issue of "can't get done on a Mac", it's an issue of "Can't get done quickly on a Mac." 3D rendering and screen previews take an impossibly long time on that machine, compared to the same tasks on my machine. The scene setup and rendering on the G4 would require approximately 3-4 weeks, the same scene can be set up and rendered on my Athlon 2700 in the same number of days. A deadline made the Mac die-hard request use of my workstation, otherwise I'm sure he would have suffered it out and come up with creative solutions. Like turning other peoples workstations into a render-farm.
-Sara
No. I read from the upper-right, as that is the way the English language progresses. Other languages either flow the same way, or in alternate styles, since English is my primary language, I follow that convention.
Reading and "using" are very similar. It's easier to move down than it is to move up. It's much easier to pull a mouse than it is to push it, as pushing elicits more strain on the muscles of the hand and wrist, and pulling is more of a "falling" motion, allowing the weight of your arm to pull the hand backwards.
Since it's easier to move down than it is to move up, and it's easier to read from the top to the bottom, logic would follow that reading should be done from top to bottom, and navigation done from bottom to top, which is how I prefer to work. In this manner, both the OS X and Windows GUIs are flawed, which is why I'm most at home in KDE or Gnome, which allow a large degree of customization.
I'm not saying that the Mac GUI is "WRONG", I'm just saying that for someone who makes use of the mouse as a primary navigation tool, I find it uncomfortable and backwards.
I agree that "it's easiest to put the mouse at the top of the screen", when a user has zero experience with a mouse. Since the falling-back motion is more natural, the user is more likely to perform it carelessly and overshoot the area where he/she intended the mouse to land. The up-motion requires more concentration, and puts to use more muscles, which makes it easier to aim.
-Sara
It doesn't matter, seeing as 12:00AM is midnight, by common knowledge (although people are morons and tend to forget this.) A court trial would say that this is Midnight. (Assuming they were intelligent enough to remember the difference) and issue a refund for the tickets.
"Accuracy" doesn't mean anything in the court of the law, it's more likely that, had the situations been reversed and the showing was listed as "12 PM", and confused with Midnight, that a court would rule that "12:00 PM" was misleading, since it doesn't make much sense to count from 1 AM up to 11, then suddenly switch to PM, and consumers would conceivably be confused. However, the burden for an accurate understanding falls on the side of the Movie theater, and they are required to either have a special showing, or issue a refund.
-Sara
;) Sarcasm? Moi? Never! I love OS X with all my widdle heart. The dock makes my heart go pitter-patter, and Aqua makes me faint with exctasy.
-Sara
Good for you! Personally, I go for WinXP and Linux for the same reasons you mention. I can't condone Apple's practice of selling G3s that corrupt data when a second HDD is put on an IDE chain. Nor can I stand OS X's overly white interface. I mod Luna down, and KDE looks exactly like I want it to look like--I can even make it look like OS X if I'm suffering from a moment of brain damage.
Oh, and for the record, I'm posting this FROM A MAC. RUNNING OS X, so please don't claim I've never used it. I have. And I do. I'd just *really* prefer to be on my PC right now. Unfortunately one of the people in the office who usually uses a Mac needs to get some work done, so they've requisitioned my PC. Guess there are down-sides to being comfy on all platforms. I'm the first to get the booted over to an alternate computer when someone has "needs".
-Sara
Heh. Im stuck on my Mac this week becuase my computer is in use by someone else in the office who needs a PC. for some work-stuff.
Nothing sucks worse than being stuck on a G3 350 running OS X when you've got an Athlon 2700, Soyo Dragon SY-KT400 with 1.5GB DDR(400) sitting in the other room. With that machine, I'd even hate being on a 1.25G4. =]
I have to say, though, that OS X isn't as bad as I was thinking it was. Now that I've been on it for two days, most of my major complaints aren't as major anymore. I think the biggest complaint I have is that the OS works from the upper-left corner-diagonally. I MUCH prefer the lower-right-corner-diagonally workflow of OS 9 and Windows.
I don't see why people worship OS X so much. It's not horrible, but it's a step in the wrong direction.
-Sara
Hah! But it wouldn't be a MAC. ;) We must remember that Macs are the bestest things in the world, and worth the additional $1k for a slower machine. =]
;)
It's the EXPERIENCE, man. The experience!
-Sara
You can skin it to "Plain text" if you don't like the offset tables. (I hate them. And GREEN?! What's with the bloody green?!) Just click on the "Skin Hotbot" link. Of course, then you'll have to have a cookie, I assume. Or re-set it all the time. -Sara
And what version of the OS are you running? ;)
Yeah--this is exactly what I've been wondering ever since I saw the first tablet and/or pen-driven PC. Why the hell? I can type MUCH faster than I can write, and it's MUCH more easy to understand what has been written. Why would I want to revert?
The only ones I can see the pen-driven system benefitting is those that never learned how to type.
-Sara
Err. Aren't Powerbook G4's $2299, and heavier, and running an OS that is non-mainstream, and that still does not run quite a few apps.
Why would anyone in their right mind buy either machine when they could get a VAIO or a Dell laptop?
-Sara
Blame the game manufacturers, they're the ones that chose to be on Windows, and not on Linux. You can argue that they really didn't have a choice, and you'd be right. They'd be foolish to disregard the majority. But the fact that there is a majority means that you don't need to purchase one computer to run your games, one to work on, one to compose documents... and so on. The "Evil Majority" puts computers within the reach of the most people, because there's one platform that can cater to their needs and perform the tasks they wish to perform. If you really want to do your work and play on one computer, dual boot. If you're running Linux on a Mac, then you'll have some problems... ;) But you can't really blame THAT on MS, can you?
(God, I sound like a Pro-MS Zealot. Really, I'm not. I just don't think they're all that evil. Evil, yes. As evil as a lot of Apple/Linux zealots--and I'm one of the latter--might portray them to be.)
What I think is Evil (with a capital E) is Apple. They purchase technologies like Shake, and completely blow off the users from other platforms. Apple isn't a monopoly, but it would be one very happily. The technologies that MS has purchased in the past haven't ended up nearly as locked to Windows as the technologies Apple has purchased are locked to the Mac.... AND MS gives you the freedom of choice of hardware. (Wider range, that is. I'm not claiming you can put Windows on a PowerPC.)
-Sara
*Microsoft*?! Hah. It doesn't follow the Mantra of the RIAA and MPA. Their mantra is "In every customer is a possible criminal." and "If they can use it, they can steal it, therefore they should pay without having the privilidge of using it, so that we can continue to create more stuff along the lines of Brittney Spears"
Microsoft might *encourage* the mentality, but Microsoft encourages a lot of stupid mentalities. The MPA/RIAA are the problem, not Microsoft. It's the MPA/RIAA that are pushing for insane copyright measures. I know it's fun to hate Microsoft, but let's not let it detract from the people we should *REALLY* be hating.
-Sara
I definitely dislike MS's business practices in regards to their competitors. However, in a lot of cases... They had the superior product at the "point of conquest". MS Word, while it was never "great" was still much better than Wordperfect, and appleworks. It offered genuine functionality that the other applications did not, and Windows offered functionality that other OSes did not, even if the additional functionality was minimal, and it lacked in functionality in other areas. The only competitors that attracted me "as much" in the early days were Atari and Apple. Both companies that kept a proprietary lockhold on their products. Atari drove itself to oblivion, and the survival of Apple is nothing short of the stuff that legands are made of. Most of MS's competitors drove themselves out of business as much as MS did. Netscape is an exception. They truly had a superior product at the 'time of conquest', and MS really did screw them over. Mozilla's coming back with vegenance, though. I'm glad, and surprised that something that AOL is doing is actually successful. Of course... It's not AOL that's pushing the success.
I'm not an MS drone. I dual-boot and spend most of my time in Linux these days. Depending on what I'm doing for work, I've used XP primarily as well. I've got a Mac sitting on the desk next to me that I use on a semi regular basis, as well. I am not tied to the OS in any way, yet I find myself going back to it. Why? It's not because I don't have a choice. It's because it's got a little polish here and there. A workflow that I like, and that I miss when I'm on the other platforms. The same reason I find myself on the other platforms occasionally instead of XP. If XP had a Unix back-end, though... And let me run all my favorite Unix apps and shell scripts from within KDE, Gnome, and XFce, I'd be hard pressed to go anywhere else. (and no, Cygwin doesn't count.)
I'm a geek, though. (Quasi geek, if you must.) My choice comes out of my willingness to explore, and my ability to adapt and grow. For the majority of the world, MS would still be a monopoly even if its business practices were 100% kosher. Maybe it wouldn't be as BIG a monopoly, but nothing else out there offers the feature sets, the functionality, and the "I'm a monkey"-ease of use. Maybe those things aren't important to you and I, but they go a LONG way when it comes to the computer illiterate. For people like Mr. Doe up the road, my mom, and my fiance's dad.. A monopoly is a very good thing in the computer world. Without it, they'd still be struggling to explain to Tech support what their flavor of OS is. It's the monkeys that reinforce MS's monopoly. It's the monkeys that will continue to reinforce a monopoly, even if MS dies-0a new monopoly would quickly spring into being. Maybe it would be Apple. And wouldn't that be scads worse? I mean... Hardware and software and Operating system, all tied into one. No choice on the hardware. You'd have to put up with every little bit of plastic ornament forced upon you.
Given my choices of monopolies, MS is the lesser evil. It still allows for choice, and still makes life easy for the monkeys so they won't have to bother me as much.
-Sara
So, basically... If they charge more on a product (Say $300 instead of $130 for Mac OS X) they're evil. And if they charge less, they're evil. And if they charged exactly the same amount, they'd be copying, and thus... Evil.
How dare they.
-Sara
*laughs* Nah. Fireworks MX has enough similarities to Photoshop to be misleading. It's Step-1 is the same, Step-2 is the same... assume Step-3 is the same, but get bitten when it's in fact the most different thing in the universe.
I've never been a big fan of Macromedia's ideas of interface design.
The designer *was* a doofus, though. Who gives a damn if he gets to spend 10 minutes more doing something? It's the web programmers who have to work with the graphics afterwards who have to spend more time dealing with Photoshop problems and mistakes.
-Sara
Fireworks is excellent for dealing with web graphics, and outputting stuff for the web... But put it in front of someone who's used to Photoshop, and for the first while they'll be screaming and ripping their hair out. I had one designer flat out tell me that he REFUSED to use Fireworks, that it was a shitty program, and he didn't give a damn how much easier it made life for me, or how much better the output was. :p
:p
Naturally, his email account "broke" for a few days and I didn't have time to fix it because I was busy trying to fix the stuff that Photoshop/Imageready messed up.
-Sara
"it's not yours until you collect it" -- Does that mean your landlord at your apartment building owns your mail, since he owns the address it is being delivered to? They own the email address, and the domain, but not the mail that is sent to it. The mail has a SPECIFIC intended reciepient.
I know email is far from a guarantee-I have mail bounced back to me on a regular basis, eaten by various servers, etc. If you don't get a confirmation it was receieved, it's safe to assume it wasn't. However, this does NOT justify an ISP taking a few megs of mail and tossing it. When the account is suspended, they should immediately start bouncing emails back to the sender. When the account is terminated, the former owner of the account should be given the option of downloading their mail one last time, or purchasing it on media (CD-R) for cost of the media, and S/H fees. Because the email is *NOT* the property of the ISP. The service is the property of the ISP, and not the communication that goes on over it.
-Sara
Why not? They are accepting your email, not providing the senders with any way to know whether it got to you or not, and holding it hostage--even after your account has been *cancelled*. If your primary means of communication was postal mail, and you moved, this would be VERY similar to your landlord holding your mail hostage. Your bills, your business communications, etc.
(fortunately the PO handles changes of address...)
-Sara
Because, then Mac fanatics would freak out, start running around in circles, and chanting "Mhz is just a myth, just a myth.." then, upon realizing that they're both running on the same hardware with the same chip, and all that's different is the OS, they'd spontaneously combust, because Apple can do no evil.
Or not.
Yellowdog would have made much more sense. Hey- they're Apple resellers. Somehow I think you're more likely to encounter Yellowdog Linux on a XServe than SuSE. I don't know anyone who uses SuSE on a PPC. Yellowdog seems to be the champ, followed by Mandrake, etc.
-Sara
Actually. A CLI is MUCH easier to explain. "Hey, mom. type this and hit 'enter'. Make sure you don't make a typo." vs "Hey, mom. Go down to your taskbar and press the MS Word Icon. Go to file>open and select the location of your document by pressing this little funny icon at the top to drop down a menu that makes no sense at all"......
I'd MUCH rather support a dumb user on a CLI than on a GUI. CLI's, while more powerful and "less intimidating" allow for far less stupid "What's a desktop" "what's an icon?" questions.
Just shut the hell up and type, and if you can't type, then God be with you.
GUI concepts are harder to explain to people who don't understand them than command line concepts are. "Just type this, and this happens".
-Sara
Wrong. It IS a discrimination. If the blind person did not have a computer, then it would be a "convenience", however, the blind person is being denied access to something that they, for all intents and purposes, should be able to access, and have all the tools to access, and are then forced to call and to pay more. This is VERY much like the parallel to a tollbooth at a ramp, only let's put it this way. The people who are climbing the stairs are getting a DISCOUNT, and if the person in the wheelchair uses the ramp, it's more difficulty. The building had to put up the ramp, pay the laborers, maintain the ramp, shovel the ramp more carefully than the stairs, etc. etc.
You're also failing to take into account that your lateness is not a disability, it's a fault with your personality. You have a choice over the matter, and if you so choose, you can be early and make it to the movies on time. Blind people, deaf people, and people in wheelchairs LACK this choice unless things are made accessable to them.
-Sara