That proves nothing, really. Even if the job ad is genuine, the position may not be what it seems. And even if Apple are currently planning a Windows version of iTunes, it may not work out, or they may change their minds for other reasons.
Of course, it looks quite likely at present, but I didn't want to get shot down for wild speculation. Not even here:)
Remember that Apple are rumoured to be working on a version of iTunes for Windows. Yes, it's only a rumour, but Apple is always concerned about the whole user experience, more than most other companies - so even if that particular rumour doesn't pan out, I'm sure they'll be doing something for Windows users before too long.
It assumes that the programmer is stupid and takes features away.
Language features are a double-edged sword. When you're writing fresh code, the more the merrier; but when you're maintaining other people's code, they simply provide more ways to be confused and tricked. This is what makes Perl ('There's More Than One Way To Do It') into a write-only language; unless authors have stuck to a subset of the language, I would NOT want to have to understand a large system written in Perl, let alone maintain it. And since an estimated 80% of all coding is maintenance, it makes sense to take that into account.
Of course, a great coder can write neat, elegant, maintainable code in any language, but unfortunately, not all coders are that great. Not by a long way... (You might say that a good coder is one who can use every language feature and trick; a great coder is one who knows when to avoid them and keep things simple.)
Java strikes a fairly good balance, IMO; it's powerful enough to let you do most things you'd want to, and yet it's clear and elegant enough that I can pick up someone else's Java and have a good chance of understanding exactly what it's doing, with no nasty surprises tucked away.
Music students may be able to more "permanently" obtain these notes in their minds by frequent exposure / practice in relative pitch excercises.
I'm surprised you link perfect (absolute) pitch and relative pitch, which are usually treated as separate skills. As a musician, I know many people - myself included - who have very good relative pitch, but no absolute pitch ability at all. Play any two notes, and I can tell you their exact relationship, without really thinking about it - but unless you name one, I can't name the other. (Well, I can get a reasonable idea from singing out loug, as I know my voice cuts out fairly sharply at bottom G, but I have no internal cues.)
Mind you, I don't feel I'm missing out in not having perfect pitch. The lack comes in very useful at times, especially when we have to transpose a piece of vocal music, and the perfect pitched have huge difficulty, whereas if you give me the wrong starting note I might not even know I'm doing it!
I think you're reading too much into these things.
For example, the quiet release of X11 is perfectly logical without any of this. It's clearly a Good Thing(tm) for to be able to run just about any bit of Unix software on Mac OS X. But X11 just isn't part of Apple's way of doing things. For years they've succeeded in making their system predictable and easy to understand and use by keeping everything consistent: the same menu entries in the same places doing the same things, the same keyboard shortcuts, the same icons and GUI elements that work in the same way, the same mindset and way of working, &c &c.
Unix programmers, OTOH, often seem to hate this sort of restriction, and rejoice in the freedom to make their apps look and work competely differently from everyone else's. Unix users may have no problem with this and are used to it, but non-technical Mac users might well find it confusing and awkward, especially when sharing a screen with Aqua apps. (I probably would, and I'm far from non-technical!)
So it already makes perfect sense for Apple not to promote the release in their usual way. Unix enthusiasts will get to hear about it anyway, and will realise its significance. But it will make clear the separation between Unix GUI apps and the core platform they've worked so hard on.
For a nation that's the most powerful, the wealthiest, and the most arrogant on earth, the sheer insecurity of many of its people is, quite frankly, laughable. They seem to live in fear, literally, of the most ludicrously unlikely things, see enemies on every side, and view practically everything as a possible threat.
Perhaps some of them should look at how life is lived elsewhere on the planet to see just how lucky they really are. Other countries have lived with terrorism for decades, and survived without declaring farcical Wars, or subverting all their nation's values.
I wonder if in the developed nations, people today feel too safe - in evolutionary terms, we're so used to having so many things to be concerned about, that we don't feel right without any and so invent them...
Intelligent gapless playback -- if the mp3 ends with no silence (think live albums), I want it to crossfade to the next track with a very short gap; otherwise, I want no crossfade.
This really annoyed me, too, until someone told me that iTunes can do it already. Turn crossfading on, set the time to 0, and hey presto! It occasionally seems to get confused and crossfade over a second or two, but most of the time it's seamless. (Best to turn off the automatic level setting, Sound Check, as that works on a track-by-track basis can give awkward jumps in volume.)
The only way to maintain unique passwords for each of these accounts and change them regularly would be to record all of this information in a single location (like an encrypted text file) - something I don't like to do.
Why not? That's what I do. I use one password for unimportant stuff, but everything important has its own. I keep them all in a file on my Psion (so it's always with me) that's encrypted with a separate master password that I never use for anything else.
Of course, if you're keeping all your passwords together, you need to know that they're very safe, but in my case not only is that file itself encrypted securely, it never gets near anyone else, and I make sure no-one's about to watch me open it.
I also have particular ways of choosing passwords: as well as being aware of dictionary-based attacks (so I use digits, and don't base them on words or names), I also make them easy and fast to type in (which both saves you time and effort, and also makes it much harder to keyboard-surf).
Note that Jobs hasn't denied considering a bid for Universal, preparing a bid, or even making one in the very near future. Just that he's made one already, which we all knew he hadn't.
Of course, it's worth taking rumours like this with a large pack of salt, but so far none of the `denials' have amounted to much either.
If you get one spam email a week, it's unnoticeable. If you get one a day, it's not a problem. If you get one an hour, it's an inconvenience. If you get one a minute, it's a big problem. If you get one a second, it makes normal email extremely hard (unless you have some amazingly accurate filters, and broadband or an ISP with a huge mailbox)...
I'm relatively lucky; I get something like 10 a day (after BrightMail has filtered out a few more than that), which is an inconvenience at worst. But I understand that other people's experience of spam differs widely, and it wouldn't take more than an order of magnitude or two increase before I'd be demanding the death penalty for spammers...
So far, the problem has only got worse, and more and more rapidly. Should we leave it until everyone has stopped using email before we take action?
(Of course, since most spam is international, I'm sceptical of the effects of any national law, but that's another story!)
The horror stories he told me about the insane wasting of money on actor crap would make you explode... Yeah, Hollywood is fucked.
But why do they pay so much money on big-name actors? It's because people go to see big-name actors. Do you think film-makers would shell out ludicrous sums for stars if they could make as much money from cheaper but just as talented (if not more) actors? Of course not. These days, more than ever, it's about the bottom line. And while people go and see big name stars, the film-makers will want 'em, and they can charge what they like.
If Hollywood is screwed up, it's because the movie-going public is too. [fx: shrug]
If Apple execs gain the upper hand in the merger/takeover:
Buy... Rip... Mix... Burn...
This wouldn't be a change in policy, though; Apple has always included warnings not to steal music. The `Buy' has always been implied. And I don't see anything wrong with that, either.
My handheld is a Psion 5mx running EPOC (now called Symbian OS), and like the 3a before it, it's virtually crashproof. I can't recall even a single OS crash - though apps do crash occasionally, especially ones I'm developing:).
(Yeah, yeah, I know it's a few years old now, but I still haven't found anything else that comes remotely close to letting me do what I do on it...)
I'm afraid you're wrong. I use a port of the FreeType renderer on my Psion 5mx - it doesn't use anti-aliasing (plain black on white), but there was a major improvement in readability when the author got hinting to work properly. AIUI, hinting tells the renderer how best to align the glyphs on the pixel grid for each point size; this is probably more important when the font isn't anti-aliased.
Re:We already have them...
on
AI in Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 1
...they're called first-posters.
You're saying that takes intelligence???
A few days ago I dropped my threshold on a story by mistake and saw all the Score: -1 and Score: 0 posts. Not something guaranteed to raise your opinion of human nature. I simply can't understand the mentality (if you can call it that) of some of those posters...
Closet Land is a very small-scale film (only two actors and one set) and very unpretentious, but powerful viewing. Madeleine Stowe is a children's author who's being interrogated by secret police; Alan Rickman is her interrogator. A simple premise, but compelling.
It was on TV a while back; I hadn't read about it but happened to turn on in the first few minutes, and couldn't turn it off. It has the feel of a stage play, which is usually bad news for a film, but in this case you get the immediacy, the liveness and danger of something happening right there in front of you. It's chilling, but not in an overt, graphic way - instead, it makes you think (and the most frightening things are those in your head). It's about dignity, repression, integrity, injustice, memory, mind control, and the power of the human will. There's a lot of depth and subtlety to both characters. And it has the most terrifying torture scene I've ever seen, where you see nothing but her face.
I don't understand why the film has been so ignored; it's not available on DVD, and on video only in the US (here in the UK I had to find a TV and VCR that would handle NTSC). Well worth looking out for.
If 10.3 is as big a step forward as 10.1 and 10.2 were, I will be glad to pay for it.
But you didn't have to pay for 10.1 - it was a free upgrade from 10.0. Rumour has it that future odd-numbered upgrades, like 10.3, will be similarly free.
I suspect the implied answer was "for us consumers", but I seriously doubt that would be the case. Initially, users would have benefitted from the Mac's much greater user-friendliness and technical strengths; but after that...
Apple has always been a very different company from Microsoft, and I doubt that they would have taken quite the same money-driven, just-good-enough approach. But without anyone to compete with, would Apple have continued to innovate at the same rate? Would it have been persuaded to work with open standards, interfaces, open source? Would it still be a small, nimble company that could move fast? I doubt it.
In competition, both Apple and Microsoft are producing far better software than either would on their own (whether it's through innovating, or copying the other...) In short, even if Apple as a company benefitted from licensing, I don't think we consumers would have done in the long term.
Well made and tuned equipment can eliminate any chance of interference...
Yes, but how much equipment is well made and tuned? All of it? Hardly. Which is why we have the problem.
Example: there's a pirate radio station somewhere nearby which broadcasts on almost the same frequency as BBC Radio 4. (I'm in the UK.) In the mornings, I can get R4 fine, but in the evening it's almost impossible, whether on a little clock radio or a serious hi-fi tuner and aerial. Extremely annoying.
Interference may only be an implementation detail, but implementation is everything.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, it looks quite likely at present, but I didn't want to get shot down for wild speculation. Not even here :)
Even if the are the enemy... :)
Of course, a great coder can write neat, elegant, maintainable code in any language, but unfortunately, not all coders are that great. Not by a long way... (You might say that a good coder is one who can use every language feature and trick; a great coder is one who knows when to avoid them and keep things simple.)
Java strikes a fairly good balance, IMO; it's powerful enough to let you do most things you'd want to, and yet it's clear and elegant enough that I can pick up someone else's Java and have a good chance of understanding exactly what it's doing, with no nasty surprises tucked away.
I'm surprised you link perfect (absolute) pitch and relative pitch, which are usually treated as separate skills. As a musician, I know many people - myself included - who have very good relative pitch, but no absolute pitch ability at all. Play any two notes, and I can tell you their exact relationship, without really thinking about it - but unless you name one, I can't name the other. (Well, I can get a reasonable idea from singing out loug, as I know my voice cuts out fairly sharply at bottom G, but I have no internal cues.)
Mind you, I don't feel I'm missing out in not having perfect pitch. The lack comes in very useful at times, especially when we have to transpose a piece of vocal music, and the perfect pitched have huge difficulty, whereas if you give me the wrong starting note I might not even know I'm doing it!
For example, the quiet release of X11 is perfectly logical without any of this. It's clearly a Good Thing(tm) for to be able to run just about any bit of Unix software on Mac OS X. But X11 just isn't part of Apple's way of doing things. For years they've succeeded in making their system predictable and easy to understand and use by keeping everything consistent: the same menu entries in the same places doing the same things, the same keyboard shortcuts, the same icons and GUI elements that work in the same way, the same mindset and way of working, &c &c.
Unix programmers, OTOH, often seem to hate this sort of restriction, and rejoice in the freedom to make their apps look and work competely differently from everyone else's. Unix users may have no problem with this and are used to it, but non-technical Mac users might well find it confusing and awkward, especially when sharing a screen with Aqua apps. (I probably would, and I'm far from non-technical!)
So it already makes perfect sense for Apple not to promote the release in their usual way. Unix enthusiasts will get to hear about it anyway, and will realise its significance. But it will make clear the separation between Unix GUI apps and the core platform they've worked so hard on.
Perhaps some of them should look at how life is lived elsewhere on the planet to see just how lucky they really are. Other countries have lived with terrorism for decades, and survived without declaring farcical Wars, or subverting all their nation's values.
I wonder if in the developed nations, people today feel too safe - in evolutionary terms, we're so used to having so many things to be concerned about, that we don't feel right without any and so invent them...
This really annoyed me, too, until someone told me that iTunes can do it already. Turn crossfading on, set the time to 0, and hey presto! It occasionally seems to get confused and crossfade over a second or two, but most of the time it's seamless. (Best to turn off the automatic level setting, Sound Check, as that works on a track-by-track basis can give awkward jumps in volume.)
Why not? That's what I do. I use one password for unimportant stuff, but everything important has its own. I keep them all in a file on my Psion (so it's always with me) that's encrypted with a separate master password that I never use for anything else.
Of course, if you're keeping all your passwords together, you need to know that they're very safe, but in my case not only is that file itself encrypted securely, it never gets near anyone else, and I make sure no-one's about to watch me open it.
I also have particular ways of choosing passwords: as well as being aware of dictionary-based attacks (so I use digits, and don't base them on words or names), I also make them easy and fast to type in (which both saves you time and effort, and also makes it much harder to keyboard-surf).
Of course, it's worth taking rumours like this with a large pack of salt, but so far none of the `denials' have amounted to much either.
I'm probably missing something obvious, but how do you use Proxy Auto Config with Safari? It doesn't seem to support a proxy auto-config file...
If you get one spam email a week, it's unnoticeable. If you get one a day, it's not a problem. If you get one an hour, it's an inconvenience. If you get one a minute, it's a big problem. If you get one a second, it makes normal email extremely hard (unless you have some amazingly accurate filters, and broadband or an ISP with a huge mailbox)...
I'm relatively lucky; I get something like 10 a day (after BrightMail has filtered out a few more than that), which is an inconvenience at worst. But I understand that other people's experience of spam differs widely, and it wouldn't take more than an order of magnitude or two increase before I'd be demanding the death penalty for spammers...
So far, the problem has only got worse, and more and more rapidly. Should we leave it until everyone has stopped using email before we take action?
(Of course, since most spam is international, I'm sceptical of the effects of any national law, but that's another story!)
But why do they pay so much money on big-name actors? It's because people go to see big-name actors. Do you think film-makers would shell out ludicrous sums for stars if they could make as much money from cheaper but just as talented (if not more) actors? Of course not. These days, more than ever, it's about the bottom line. And while people go and see big name stars, the film-makers will want 'em, and they can charge what they like.
If Hollywood is screwed up, it's because the movie-going public is too. [fx: shrug]
Buy... Rip... Mix... Burn...
This wouldn't be a change in policy, though; Apple has always included warnings not to steal music. The `Buy' has always been implied. And I don't see anything wrong with that, either.
(Yeah, yeah, I know it's a few years old now, but I still haven't found anything else that comes remotely close to letting me do what I do on it...)
Indeed. IME (both as an OSS author and user), the best way to get help on a serious issue is to
- show that it's a serious problem for you, but
- not imply that it's therefore a serious problem for the author(s).
If you can understand the difference, you're much more likely to get treated well.I'm afraid you're wrong. I use a port of the FreeType renderer on my Psion 5mx - it doesn't use anti-aliasing (plain black on white), but there was a major improvement in readability when the author got hinting to work properly. AIUI, hinting tells the renderer how best to align the glyphs on the pixel grid for each point size; this is probably more important when the font isn't anti-aliased.
You're saying that takes intelligence???
A few days ago I dropped my threshold on a story by mistake and saw all the Score: -1 and Score: 0 posts. Not something guaranteed to raise your opinion of human nature. I simply can't understand the mentality (if you can call it that) of some of those posters...
It was on TV a while back; I hadn't read about it but happened to turn on in the first few minutes, and couldn't turn it off. It has the feel of a stage play, which is usually bad news for a film, but in this case you get the immediacy, the liveness and danger of something happening right there in front of you. It's chilling, but not in an overt, graphic way - instead, it makes you think (and the most frightening things are those in your head). It's about dignity, repression, integrity, injustice, memory, mind control, and the power of the human will. There's a lot of depth and subtlety to both characters. And it has the most terrifying torture scene I've ever seen, where you see nothing but her face.
I don't understand why the film has been so ignored; it's not available on DVD, and on video only in the US (here in the UK I had to find a TV and VCR that would handle NTSC). Well worth looking out for.
But you didn't have to pay for 10.1 - it was a free upgrade from 10.0. Rumour has it that future odd-numbered upgrades, like 10.3, will be similarly free.
The Register doesn't call it `Itanic' for nothing...
I suspect the implied answer was "for us consumers", but I seriously doubt that would be the case. Initially, users would have benefitted from the Mac's much greater user-friendliness and technical strengths; but after that...
Apple has always been a very different company from Microsoft, and I doubt that they would have taken quite the same money-driven, just-good-enough approach. But without anyone to compete with, would Apple have continued to innovate at the same rate? Would it have been persuaded to work with open standards, interfaces, open source? Would it still be a small, nimble company that could move fast? I doubt it.
In competition, both Apple and Microsoft are producing far better software than either would on their own (whether it's through innovating, or copying the other...) In short, even if Apple as a company benefitted from licensing, I don't think we consumers would have done in the long term.
But that's okay, coz 83.7% of people don't believe them anyway...
Yes, but how much equipment is well made and tuned? All of it? Hardly. Which is why we have the problem.
Example: there's a pirate radio station somewhere nearby which broadcasts on almost the same frequency as BBC Radio 4. (I'm in the UK.) In the mornings, I can get R4 fine, but in the evening it's almost impossible, whether on a little clock radio or a serious hi-fi tuner and aerial. Extremely annoying.
Interference may only be an implementation detail, but implementation is everything.
I think that two `really's would be considered grammatical if there was an intervening comma.
V21 is only £20/month. Not the best for customer service, but it works and it's cheap!