This may further mess up canadian preconceptions about their copying rights.
I get pretty frustrated at typical canadian misconceptions about copying music; they generally assume we're burdened by the US model.
Thing is, we are allowed to borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy. If I'm letting others copy a CD (etc.) that I own, I can loan that CD out ad infinitum, so long as each friend makes only one copy (and doesn't redistribute).
Likewise with downloading. I can download a song once (well, have one copy of a downloaded song). I cannot share it, however.
Pretty realistic rules (except for the levy part).
This is basically a postmodern viewpoint, that reality is socially constructed.
Oh really? where did you hear that? I thought that was a New Age(TM) concept.
As I understand it, a typically serious postmodernist theorist would claim that our understanding of reality is socially constructed, not the fundamental laws of motion. Nothing too controversial there, really. And all Sokal really points out is that a majority of the practitioners of postmodernist theory are bozos who've done without due validity-checking, which does cast doubt on the academic arts industry as a whole; however it doesn't directly address the mess that is postmodernist theory. [I used to have a fun po-mo jargon generator, I wonder where I put it...?]
The point would be, then, that just because you haven't discovered an equivalently powerful or elegant method of describing what we think is 'the universe' as math, that doesn't mean it isn't possible, likely, or even more accurate.
Here's the whole rhyme, by Gil-Scott Heron. I have it here on a cassette, somewhere, it's great, as anything by Mr.Heron is. It's from the early 70's, the album and famous early rap called "The Revolution will not be Televised."
Whitey on the Moon
A rat done bit my sister Nell. (with Whitey on the moon) Her face and arms began to swell. (and Whitey's on the moon) I can't pay no doctor bill. (but Whitey's on the moon) Ten years from now I'll be payin' still. (while Whitey's on the moon) The man jus' upped my rent las' night. ('cause Whitey's on the moon) No hot water, no toilets, no lights. (but Whitey's on the moon) I wonder why he's uppi' me? ('cause Whitey's on the moon?) I wuz already payin' 'im fifty a week. (with Whitey on the moon) Taxes takin' my whole damn check, Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck, The price of food is goin' up, An' as if all that shit wuzn't enough: A rat done bit my sister Nell. (with Whitey on the moon) Her face an' arm began to swell. (but Whitey's on the moon) Was all that money I made las' year (for Whitey on the moon?) How come there ain't no money here? (Hmm! Whitey's on the moon) Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill (of Whitey on the moon) I think I'll sen' these doctor bills, Airmail special (to Whitey on the moon)
He makes movies for a living on a mac (like me). When it's tiny, works flawlessly with the professional tools he relies on, and is truly useful most of the day (mp3/aiff/aac playback, great while working or playing), what's left to be desired? Do you really want to watch a video on a 4" screen, when it's what you do all day? No, rest the eyes, listen to music. PVP's aren't for videographers. Might as well use a vhs tape.
Well, maybe I'd like one for professional field use with some modifications: firewire, 720x480 rez support (or 640x480 at least), s-video-to-mpeg2 encoding + composite in/out, and some pro-level mac OS X integration. Then you're talking about a great way to backup tapes in the field and grab analog footage, and for that I'd be willing to pay well over a grand. Actually, I'd waffle unless it had modularity like a balanced mic input add-on capability. Otherwise, give me an external firewire drive/iPod + iTunes/Quicktime.
spake the void*: "what's so mission-critical about making a movie?"
OK, that's stretching it a bit, I'll admit...
But there's so much money involved in a project this scale, the deadlines can pucker your nether orifice. It's mission-critical if you love your job. With millions at stake, your technology had better work right.
The fuss is about this: a trendy consumer appliance is being used as a mission-critical device. It's a nerdy change in consumer behaviour that heralds something significant about the way technology is crossing professional/consumer boundaries.
I have a co-worker who is directing/producing film and video and uses his iPod for just this purpose, both sneakernet and as a presentation external hard drive. Of course, he also loads it up with his music collection, and does the standard iPod-snob-ish "here, listen to this" sort of thing.
Another interesting thing in this story is how these things are damn reliable, damn fast, damn flexible, and very well integrated into mac users' lives. They're being trusted with more important tasks than consumer devices typically get, and at the end of the day it's just something to put on your head and bop around with.
No, I don't own one, but if I had to play large video files off an external portable drive, I wouldn't use a Dell, dude! Especially on a deadline. iPod + mac pc = time (and face) saved.
Humanity's inventions are always one step beyond our understanding of them.
Systems are complex. Simple inputs like a new invention can screw things up royally, well before we're aware of their implications. Judging from history, we should make it an axiom.
Or, at least, start running technology through the precautionary principle.
To be fair to them, they didn't have much to present. Wow, Excel is finally going to be reasonable at printing, and you can record audio and stick it in a text file. The muted response from the crowd was hilarious, though... most people were probably sitting there thinking "why isn't Apple sending an in-house development team to OO.org?"
At least installing MSOffice on the Mac is dead-simple, they got that right.
An excellent response. I am, indeed, referring to something highly organised, anarchy has a long intellectual tradition. I see most reasonable definitions as more along the lines of libertarian municipalism than statism or sheer cultish collectivism. Many espousing anarchy are confused about just what they mean, a confusion aided and abetted by the media.
The anarchists of the SCW were a very different breed from the `right' or capitalist anarchists.
There were factions of anarchists in the SCW, very complex in their alignments, though the anarcho-syndicalists managed to gain a fair bit of power. Bakunin figured very largely in anarchist discourse in those days.
The problem on the other extreme, though, is of course paralysis.
Paralysis is a huge issue in consensus-style democracy (unanimity needs to be a relative thing, there). Again, scale seems to be the crux; and as you point out, external pressures generally drive a group towards the conglomeration of power. Leadership is necessary and usually more efficient than committee, but 'power' really does corrupt (oh how I've seen that, at many scales!)
Let's see... 8MHz Motorola 68000, no FPU, a low-density floppy drive or two, half a Meg of RAM, serial I/O ports, external hard drive (if any)... is that the one?
Almost, it's a 512K"E" (for Extended)--800K floppy drive (w/ an external). Main problem seems to be that running LocalTalk on it in a stripped-down Sys4.x uses up a full 800k disk, though there seemed to be some RAM headroom still when filesharing, last time I tried (connected it to a G3 running Sys8.6 about 4 years ago).
Getting an SE/30 up as a webserver wouldn't be much challenge, have used many of them as file servers and FileMaker hosts over the years, (formerly) powerful little boxes and able to make serviceable use of a 10bT connection. I've even used a couple of Classics as web clients (not just for fun!), so the 8MHz 68000 can be stretched.
Well, time to look for that System 4 disk, see what can be done. Glad I still have a 5400 in service on the network, it has a floppy drive and can run LocalTalk Bridge. Maybe I can run the http server on the 5400 (180MHz 603e) but keep the files on the toasterMac. Hm, I get to be a nerdy old codger next weekend.
Thanks! Um, you DO know I'm talking about an old (very old) Mac, right? Those are all Intel-friendly, and I could easily dig up an old 286 if so inclined...
You're right, though, the tcp/ip support seems to be the primary barrier.
Alas, not much chance of running MacHTTP on a 512ke, System 4 is a stretch already. I would need eight times the RAM. *Sigh* there must be something, running that machine as a server would be so... anti-leet.
If your into Design Patterns.... go for a minor in English
ROTFL! That sounds like wistful advice, maybe some 20/20 hindsight?
The contraction of 'you' and 'are' is 'you're'--please tell me you didn't get a degree in reading and writing! I'm already an incorrigible cynic about the educational system.
The basic problem with any sort of anarchy in practice is that there is no protection against non-state coercion. In particular, there is no curb on the armed elite's exploitation of a de facto monopoly on violence (see Somalia for a good case study, or the Congo more recently).
Once again, confusion between anarchy and chaos.
I recently had the good fortune to interview a guy who was in the Spanish Civil War, and has an astonishing collection of anarchist literature from the period. After awhile, I asked how he became an anarchist. He arched his eyebrow, and replied (I paraphrase):
I was born to it. Our village had no State. We operated by principle of mutual aid, one person earning money shared it with anyone else who needed it, just put it on the table for whoever [smacks hand down]. We shared the land, there was no landlord. The church was tolerated but held no real sway over our daily lives. If there were problems with someone, we all dealt with it. Sure, we had to deal with the wealthy and the attempted incursions of the nation into our lives, but my parents and their neighbours chose to live like that.
Maybe it's a matter of scale, but this behaviour doesn't seem too far-fetched to me (I've lived in a couple of communities with strong overtones of this--both rural). Actually, I think the crux of the whole matter really is scale... this kind of social self-discipline needs small manageable pools of power to swim in.
Regarding the "tyranny of the majority" -- I've always claimed that attempts at representative democracy are two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch. Any anarchy-like communities I've seen in practice attempts to avoid this problem using some fling at moderated consensus. It's time consuming and vulnerable to intransigents and filibustering unless properly moderated. Any social arrangement always has the problem of dealing with the rare but inevitable assh*le though.
Your point about disparity is well made, but the cultural homogeneity hypothesis is an open question as far as I'm concerned. Homogeneity and uniform are synonyms for good reasons--I don't think we've really started to hack the cultural diversity that comes out of globalization, so it's too early to tell what is possible. Like every system, a 'meta' level of communication (e.g. an intercultural agreement to celebrate cultural differences & fluidity) offers some design stability.
I have a 512ke right here. Have thought about modding it several times over the years, especially when the kids convinced me to buy a fish;-)
I can't bring myself to do it. It boots in 17 seconds (System 1) and runs MS Word v.3 (hanging indents, columns, drop caps, woo!) offa one floppy - documents go on the other. The other system disk I have has Daleks and Kidpix on it. It doesn't crash, feels faster than it should. Dammit, it's still getting used, 19 years later! The desktop gui really hasn't changed all that much. My concern is the longevity of the few remaining 800k floppies I've scrounged.
I can get it networked via LocalTalk with some hijinks and a System 4 disk I have buried somewhere. Rest assured that if I do find webserving software that'll run on it, I won't tell/. the URL. Any webserver suggestions for system 4, oldtimers?
Macs are no better for digital art than PCs, in my experience (except for perhaps a few bits of software not available on PC, such as Final Cut Pro).
What have you been doing, fiddling in pagemaker and photoshop?
Let's trot out a few [historical] reasons that macs are preferred in the graphics industry:
ColorSync
interface consistency
resolution & bit depth switching on the fly
ease of multiple monitor spanning
peripheral management
on-board scsi (OK that's really historical)
font management (not great but better)
display consistency (rare video card freakiness, etc.)
can handle DOS disks (more compatible)
the whole package results in a better workflow
and beyond 2D, there's the on-board 16-bit audio, decent DSP, ease of use in MIDI setups, etc.
and oh yeah, they're generally (well, used to be) very well made and designed, which means fewer hardware failures (nothing kills your cpu scores averaged over a year like frequent visits to the workbench)
So if you know anything about making money in graphics, you'll know that the faster workflow has historically been the killer app, and that an installed base has momentum, so that I was in a service bureau three years ago and they were using a IIfx as a RIP previewer and man it was still adequately fast at that task, and ancient. When I asked about it they said they never thought about it, just used it for years on end. That's ROI.
Likewise, I've seen the same story over the past 20 years repeated, e.g. I worked in a film school under environmental duress, with top notch component hand assembled PC's going down all over the place (brownouts, dust, moisture, noobs, premiere/firewire/udma hell, bsod), and the old macs just chugging along being productive, for a whole host of reasons.
Not to say you couldn't address all the above points with a windows setup, just that it would usually be costly in time, and time is money. Things are different now, except for one thing: they're still--on average--faster to work on than MS software, once you factor in all the other stuff that isn't rendering or just pushing pixels.
Sorry, grammatical ambiguity. [shift] Click with mouse, use arrow keys and shift key with no mouse. Should've been a different paragraph. Try it and see for yourself, you're on a Mac if you're bothering to read this, right?
That doesn't solve it... putting an alias on the desktop limits you to the user's home trash, not all the volumes simultaneously. I think there's a haxie somewhere though.
Left thumb on the command key, right hand on the mouse. Command Z, X, C, and V are the same in any app that offers text editing.
If you must cut/paste using the mouse, the right button will give you a contextual menu for that.
If you have to move text on the screen (or within reasonably scrollable reach) just highlight, click-hold to grab, then drag/drop.
Usually (but not always): double click to select word, triple-click to select sentence, quad-click to select paragraph.
No mouse? Select using the arrow and shift keys. Large text block to select? Click to an insertion point, then shift-click at the other end of the selection.
But keep your left thumb near that command key. Even when I used a 6-button trackball, the left hand did the cutting and pasting--much faster for me.
OK, enough whinging, so how do we make this Dock thing work better for us?
I'll start: I immediately drag my Home, Applications folder and Utilities folder to the right side. There, just about anything I need to browse to in a hurry. One click = the window in question, click-hold-for-a-second and you can navigate a popup menu.
Then there's the fun stuff like guages and my RSS-eater, or a weather monitor.
I pin mine to the bottom right side to make up for my crusty old system 1.0 user muscle memory fixation on the trash. But then, as so many people note, command delete (and Cmd-Z!!) is what I use anyway.
And you're griping about the loss of the two most useless UI controls ever invented...oh my god, i just responded to a TROLL, didn't I?
Chill out, grandparent wasn't trolling, just expressing a strong opinion, like you.
Thing is, you're BOTH right. In 8.x on, I found ways to approximate what I use the dock for now, including BeHierarchic for awesome apple menu access to anything, customized for speed. I used the application switcher tearoff for awhile on larger screened machines, though eventually, I went heavily into using the control strip (extension strip, actually) for process management, disk access, hardware control (oh how I MISS that functionality), and a slew of other features.
The control strip combined with the apple menu was immensely productive, clean, and powerful (jaw dropping to winTel users, sometimes). Now I use the dock similarly... though does anyone know how to put control strip like features into the dock? (You know, networking, sleep/screen, laptop keyboard add-ons, etc.)
[panther] Try dragging docs or apps off the dock using the command key as a modifier. That moves the original item to the target window (including the desktop). You retain your dock icon that way, then you can drag it off to see the cool 'poof' effect (which justifies the whole thing if you ask me):-) Pretty consistent, actually (the command key is a forceful modifier).
The trash stays where it is, need a haxie for getting it on the desktop.
Re:Mr. Thurrot: Practice what you preach
on
No WMA for HP iPod
·
· Score: 1
Hey that's not all... he brags about using Apple laptops, then slags them... that's some weird Astroturding.
Slashdot Mirror
This may further mess up canadian preconceptions about their copying rights.
I get pretty frustrated at typical canadian misconceptions about copying music; they generally assume we're burdened by the US model.
Thing is, we are allowed to borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy. If I'm letting others copy a CD (etc.) that I own, I can loan that CD out ad infinitum, so long as each friend makes only one copy (and doesn't redistribute).
Likewise with downloading. I can download a song once (well, have one copy of a downloaded song). I cannot share it, however.
Pretty realistic rules (except for the levy part).
Oh really? where did you hear that? I thought that was a New Age(TM) concept.
As I understand it, a typically serious postmodernist theorist would claim that our understanding of reality is socially constructed, not the fundamental laws of motion. Nothing too controversial there, really. And all Sokal really points out is that a majority of the practitioners of postmodernist theory are bozos who've done without due validity-checking, which does cast doubt on the academic arts industry as a whole; however it doesn't directly address the mess that is postmodernist theory. [I used to have a fun po-mo jargon generator, I wonder where I put it...?]
The point would be, then, that just because you haven't discovered an equivalently powerful or elegant method of describing what we think is 'the universe' as math, that doesn't mean it isn't possible, likely, or even more accurate.
Here's the whole rhyme, by Gil-Scott Heron. I have it here on a cassette, somewhere, it's great, as anything by Mr.Heron is. It's from the early 70's, the album and famous early rap called "The Revolution will not be Televised."
Whitey on the Moon
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey's on the moon)
I can't pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still.
(while Whitey's on the moon)
The man jus' upped my rent las' night.
('cause Whitey's on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
I wonder why he's uppi' me?
('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I wuz already payin' 'im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
An' as if all that shit wuzn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an' arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made las' year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll sen' these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)
He makes movies for a living on a mac (like me). When it's tiny, works flawlessly with the professional tools he relies on, and is truly useful most of the day (mp3/aiff/aac playback, great while working or playing), what's left to be desired? Do you really want to watch a video on a 4" screen, when it's what you do all day? No, rest the eyes, listen to music. PVP's aren't for videographers. Might as well use a vhs tape.
Well, maybe I'd like one for professional field use with some modifications: firewire, 720x480 rez support (or 640x480 at least), s-video-to-mpeg2 encoding + composite in/out, and some pro-level mac OS X integration. Then you're talking about a great way to backup tapes in the field and grab analog footage, and for that I'd be willing to pay well over a grand. Actually, I'd waffle unless it had modularity like a balanced mic input add-on capability. Otherwise, give me an external firewire drive/iPod + iTunes/Quicktime.
Thanks for trying, though.
spake the void*: "what's so mission-critical about making a movie?"
OK, that's stretching it a bit, I'll admit...
But there's so much money involved in a project this scale, the deadlines can pucker your nether orifice. It's mission-critical if you love your job. With millions at stake, your technology had better work right.
The fuss is about this: a trendy consumer appliance is being used as a mission-critical device. It's a nerdy change in consumer behaviour that heralds something significant about the way technology is crossing professional/consumer boundaries.
I have a co-worker who is directing/producing film and video and uses his iPod for just this purpose, both sneakernet and as a presentation external hard drive. Of course, he also loads it up with his music collection, and does the standard iPod-snob-ish "here, listen to this" sort of thing.
Another interesting thing in this story is how these things are damn reliable, damn fast, damn flexible, and very well integrated into mac users' lives. They're being trusted with more important tasks than consumer devices typically get, and at the end of the day it's just something to put on your head and bop around with.
No, I don't own one, but if I had to play large video files off an external portable drive, I wouldn't use a Dell, dude! Especially on a deadline. iPod + mac pc = time (and face) saved.
To paraphrase Vico:
Humanity's inventions are always one step beyond our understanding of them.
Systems are complex. Simple inputs like a new invention can screw things up royally, well before we're aware of their implications. Judging from history, we should make it an axiom.
Or, at least, start running technology through the precautionary principle.
Wow, intrepid!
"I managed to figure out that it'll run 6.0.8, but not 7 - and every web server I've managed to find requires at least system 7."
Even doing this in emulation, getting system 6 running in 512k of RAM and 800K of storage is pretty good.
Maybe the webpages could be hosted on the fatmac, and served by another newer machine, would that be cheating?
To be fair to them, they didn't have much to present. Wow, Excel is finally going to be reasonable at printing, and you can record audio and stick it in a text file. The muted response from the crowd was hilarious, though... most people were probably sitting there thinking "why isn't Apple sending an in-house development team to OO.org?"
At least installing MSOffice on the Mac is dead-simple, they got that right.
Well, since they want to be the Business Party, I guess it's relevant:
Remember the merger that resulted in the
Canadian
Reform
Alliance
Party?
I think that name (& acronym) lasted exactly one day.
The anarchists of the SCW were a very different breed from the `right' or capitalist anarchists.
There were factions of anarchists in the SCW, very complex in their alignments, though the anarcho-syndicalists managed to gain a fair bit of power. Bakunin figured very largely in anarchist discourse in those days.
The problem on the other extreme, though, is of course paralysis.
Paralysis is a huge issue in consensus-style democracy (unanimity needs to be a relative thing, there). Again, scale seems to be the crux; and as you point out, external pressures generally drive a group towards the conglomeration of power. Leadership is necessary and usually more efficient than committee, but 'power' really does corrupt (oh how I've seen that, at many scales!)
Almost, it's a 512K"E" (for Extended)--800K floppy drive (w/ an external). Main problem seems to be that running LocalTalk on it in a stripped-down Sys4.x uses up a full 800k disk, though there seemed to be some RAM headroom still when filesharing, last time I tried (connected it to a G3 running Sys8.6 about 4 years ago).
Getting an SE/30 up as a webserver wouldn't be much challenge, have used many of them as file servers and FileMaker hosts over the years, (formerly) powerful little boxes and able to make serviceable use of a 10bT connection. I've even used a couple of Classics as web clients (not just for fun!), so the 8MHz 68000 can be stretched.
Well, time to look for that System 4 disk, see what can be done. Glad I still have a 5400 in service on the network, it has a floppy drive and can run LocalTalk Bridge. Maybe I can run the http server on the 5400 (180MHz 603e) but keep the files on the toasterMac. Hm, I get to be a nerdy old codger next weekend.
Thanks! Um, you DO know I'm talking about an old (very old) Mac, right? Those are all Intel-friendly, and I could easily dig up an old 286 if so inclined...
You're right, though, the tcp/ip support seems to be the primary barrier.
Alas, not much chance of running MacHTTP on a 512ke, System 4 is a stretch already. I would need eight times the RAM. *Sigh* there must be something, running that machine as a server would be so... anti-leet.
ROTFL! That sounds like wistful advice, maybe some 20/20 hindsight?
The contraction of 'you' and 'are' is 'you're'--please tell me you didn't get a degree in reading and writing! I'm already an incorrigible cynic about the educational system.
Once again, confusion between anarchy and chaos.
I recently had the good fortune to interview a guy who was in the Spanish Civil War, and has an astonishing collection of anarchist literature from the period. After awhile, I asked how he became an anarchist. He arched his eyebrow, and replied (I paraphrase):
Maybe it's a matter of scale, but this behaviour doesn't seem too far-fetched to me (I've lived in a couple of communities with strong overtones of this--both rural). Actually, I think the crux of the whole matter really is scale... this kind of social self-discipline needs small manageable pools of power to swim in.
Regarding the "tyranny of the majority" -- I've always claimed that attempts at representative democracy are two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch. Any anarchy-like communities I've seen in practice attempts to avoid this problem using some fling at moderated consensus. It's time consuming and vulnerable to intransigents and filibustering unless properly moderated. Any social arrangement always has the problem of dealing with the rare but inevitable assh*le though.
Your point about disparity is well made, but the cultural homogeneity hypothesis is an open question as far as I'm concerned. Homogeneity and uniform are synonyms for good reasons--I don't think we've really started to hack the cultural diversity that comes out of globalization, so it's too early to tell what is possible. Like every system, a 'meta' level of communication (e.g. an intercultural agreement to celebrate cultural differences & fluidity) offers some design stability.
I have a 512ke right here. Have thought about modding it several times over the years, especially when the kids convinced me to buy a fish ;-)
/. the URL. Any webserver suggestions for system 4, oldtimers?
I can't bring myself to do it. It boots in 17 seconds (System 1) and runs MS Word v.3 (hanging indents, columns, drop caps, woo!) offa one floppy - documents go on the other. The other system disk I have has Daleks and Kidpix on it. It doesn't crash, feels faster than it should. Dammit, it's still getting used, 19 years later! The desktop gui really hasn't changed all that much. My concern is the longevity of the few remaining 800k floppies I've scrounged.
I can get it networked via LocalTalk with some hijinks and a System 4 disk I have buried somewhere. Rest assured that if I do find webserving software that'll run on it, I won't tell
What have you been doing, fiddling in pagemaker and photoshop?
Let's trot out a few [historical] reasons that macs are preferred in the graphics industry:
ColorSync
interface consistency
resolution & bit depth switching on the fly
ease of multiple monitor spanning
peripheral management
on-board scsi (OK that's really historical)
font management (not great but better)
display consistency (rare video card freakiness, etc.)
can handle DOS disks (more compatible)
the whole package results in a better workflow
and beyond 2D, there's the on-board 16-bit audio, decent DSP, ease of use in MIDI setups, etc.
and oh yeah, they're generally (well, used to be) very well made and designed, which means fewer hardware failures (nothing kills your cpu scores averaged over a year like frequent visits to the workbench)
So if you know anything about making money in graphics, you'll know that the faster workflow has historically been the killer app, and that an installed base has momentum, so that I was in a service bureau three years ago and they were using a IIfx as a RIP previewer and man it was still adequately fast at that task, and ancient. When I asked about it they said they never thought about it, just used it for years on end. That's ROI.
Likewise, I've seen the same story over the past 20 years repeated, e.g. I worked in a film school under environmental duress, with top notch component hand assembled PC's going down all over the place (brownouts, dust, moisture, noobs, premiere/firewire/udma hell, bsod), and the old macs just chugging along being productive, for a whole host of reasons.
Not to say you couldn't address all the above points with a windows setup, just that it would usually be costly in time, and time is money. Things are different now, except for one thing: they're still--on average--faster to work on than MS software, once you factor in all the other stuff that isn't rendering or just pushing pixels.
Sorry, grammatical ambiguity. [shift] Click with mouse, use arrow keys and shift key with no mouse. Should've been a different paragraph. Try it and see for yourself, you're on a Mac if you're bothering to read this, right?
That doesn't solve it... putting an alias on the desktop limits you to the user's home trash, not all the volumes simultaneously. I think there's a haxie somewhere though.
The Mac Way: (for right-handers)
Left thumb on the command key, right hand on the mouse. Command Z, X, C, and V are the same in any app that offers text editing.
If you must cut/paste using the mouse, the right button will give you a contextual menu for that.
If you have to move text on the screen (or within reasonably scrollable reach) just highlight, click-hold to grab, then drag/drop.
Usually (but not always): double click to select word, triple-click to select sentence, quad-click to select paragraph.
No mouse? Select using the arrow and shift keys. Large text block to select? Click to an insertion point, then shift-click at the other end of the selection.
But keep your left thumb near that command key. Even when I used a 6-button trackball, the left hand did the cutting and pasting--much faster for me.
OK, enough whinging, so how do we make this Dock thing work better for us?
I'll start: I immediately drag my Home, Applications folder and Utilities folder to the right side. There, just about anything I need to browse to in a hurry. One click = the window in question, click-hold-for-a-second and you can navigate a popup menu.
Then there's the fun stuff like guages and my RSS-eater, or a weather monitor.
I pin mine to the bottom right side to make up for my crusty old system 1.0 user muscle memory fixation on the trash. But then, as so many people note, command delete (and Cmd-Z!!) is what I use anyway.
Your turn.
Chill out, grandparent wasn't trolling, just expressing a strong opinion, like you.
Thing is, you're BOTH right. In 8.x on, I found ways to approximate what I use the dock for now, including BeHierarchic for awesome apple menu access to anything, customized for speed. I used the application switcher tearoff for awhile on larger screened machines, though eventually, I went heavily into using the control strip (extension strip, actually) for process management, disk access, hardware control (oh how I MISS that functionality), and a slew of other features.
The control strip combined with the apple menu was immensely productive, clean, and powerful (jaw dropping to winTel users, sometimes). Now I use the dock similarly... though does anyone know how to put control strip like features into the dock? (You know, networking, sleep/screen, laptop keyboard add-ons, etc.)
[panther] Try dragging docs or apps off the dock using the command key as a modifier. That moves the original item to the target window (including the desktop). You retain your dock icon that way, then you can drag it off to see the cool 'poof' effect (which justifies the whole thing if you ask me) :-) Pretty consistent, actually (the command key is a forceful modifier).
The trash stays where it is, need a haxie for getting it on the desktop.
Hey that's not all... he brags about using Apple laptops, then slags them... that's some weird Astroturding.