you're confusing usability in this case with convience. there's a distinct, yet important difference. usability means something is easy to do and use -- for example it's easy to install an app in mac os x. you just drag a.app file to the applications folder. this is far more usable than a windows wizard installer (less complex, less steps, less reading, less chance for error, etc). however, lets say i set my account up to be a "Standard" user in mac os x. now when i perform this operation, i get an authentication dialog that asks me for an administrator username and password. this is an inconvience. the usabilty has not suffered, but an added dialog to keep security intact has been added. they do not conflict directly.
increased security only has the effect of reducing convience. i could make myself an administrator and never get a password dialog. this wouldn't have any effect on the original usability of the system. likewise, i could encrypt all my ram and swap space. this would increase security, but have no real effect on usability. security is implemented with policies, and as long as those polices are reasonable (i.e. require a methodology that isn't directly in conflict with a program trying to do it's job) then the only thing it will do is require the user to enter additional passwords when designed properly. a poorly designed system (windows) doesn't implement this policy well. doing operations like copying files to admin-writable-only folders in windows is an example of a poorly implemented policy. in mac os x, i'd get an authentication dialog. in windows, i simply would get an error, with no added dialog to request a username and password.
i think few will debate that accessability when comparing the gui and the console, it's obvious the gui wins there. the utility from the console comes only after it's mastered. a proficient console user can do many gui things in less time, or often in more direct ways and can chain other useful commands in the console via piping to even greater enhance the utility. i know i've never found a simple way to do something like find all the files in a directory with the file extension.java and tell me the total line count of all those files in a gui. in the console it's dead simple.
right now isn't a bad time really. the next gen nvidia cards just came out. amd 64 is going to be in full swing. hardware manufacturers are moving to pci-e. i'd wait until good amd 64 mobos with pci-e are available, and grab a nice geforce 6600 for $150, amd 64 chip for about $150, and the pci mobo to go with it for maybe ~$150
for those who don't know, bluetooth is currently only 10mbps bandwidth. this is about as much as usb 1.0. in other words, not a whole hell of a lot. tripling the bandwidth isn't really a good solution either if you ask me. while 30mbps is faster, it's not nearly enough to over take the up and coming wireless usb or wireless firewire. both of which i believe are going to be UWB based (i.e. 400mbps).
one of the interesting design decisions with bluetooth is that it operates at the exact same hz as a cell phone signal. hence the convergence with cell phones and bluetooth, as it was obviously designed with this purpose in mind. maybe we'll get lucky and cell phones will have 1gb+ memory with built in mp3 player support one day, so i won't have to carry so many different damn devices:P
beagle does sound cool. now all we need is for it to take advantage of reiser4, have an sql api for desktop app developers, and ship with every gnome installation out of the box.
this is what i have been clamoring for for years. why don't we just cache JIT compilation information somewhere, and upon launching an application, check a hash of the system resources (memory, cpu, other information that aids to JIT compilation performance) and if the hash hasn't changed, just use the pre-JIT compiled binary information? and even if it DID change and the platform is still the same, why not keep the pre-JIT compiled information and redo the JIT compilation in the background?
something must be incredibly wrong with this idea, because it's such a stupid, simple, solution to the problems with JIT performance that clearly there's a reason Sun hasn't done it yet. but what do i know.. i'm just a 4th year CS undergrad.
um. how is kde's taskbar ANY different than the windows one? it has a "start button", it has "quick launch" buttons, it has a "task bar" and it has an "applet/system tray". the kde and gnome implementations are similar enough and pretty much copy microsoft's to the dot. yes, they are more powerful, but if you've used the apple dock it's not nearly as nice in comparison.
ut 2004 and doom3 look rather amazing on my 23" cinema display. i don't think LCDs have had issues ever since they hit 16ms (~60 fps) they work just fine for games.
pricing a top of the line dual 250 opteron with a mobo that has similar features to a powermac (gigabit, pci-x, 8 ram slots, firewire 400 and 800.. which no opterons offer, etc) gives you a system at rough price around $2,473.00. that doesn't include a case, powersupply, hard disk, cdrom, keyboard, or mouse like the powermac does.
what planet are you pricing yoru "similar" x86 hardware on? look, i know mac doesn't have a low end $200 pc. but their high end offerings are not only competitive, but cheap.
and that's the kicker really. the devil is in the details. many user environments have made a desktop that resembles a mac, but no one has created an environment that has fixed all the minor details yet. whether by virtue of it's longer existance, or maybe just better designers and developers, apple's user environment is always one step ahead of most the others.
in mac world, your mac's value stays high much longer than in the pc world. thus when you want to upgrade your mac, you just sell it and buy a new one with a big fat discount.
a lot of people think that's stupid, but what happens when new architectures come out? oh.. i want to upgrade my cpu. ok. i'll need a new mobo to go with it. crap. this mobo also needs new DDR ram. well i gotta replace that too. the cpu's more powerful, so it's also going to need a better cpu heatsink and fan. you're already replacing, at that point, +70% of the system (at least in terms of cost). so you save the trouble of replacing your case, PS, cd rom and hard disks.
not everyone even cares to manually upgrade things. many computer users (and by many i'd suggest most) are quite content with selling their old one and buying a new one. it's simpler in general to do.
one of my favorite featuers of ruby is the ability to dynamically modify built in data types at runtime. say, for example, i want to add a pretty format method to hashes. i just type:
class Hash def format data = self.keys.collect do |key| key = "#{key} => #{self[key]}" end "{ #{data.join( ', ' )} }" end end
now i can make a hash and print it just by saying:
what some fail to consider is that many don't do it for the money, but rather the simple enjoyment of the environment. hard to imagine that there's something more pleasant to develop for than windows is it?
any program worth his shit should have no trouble picking up objective-c (a far simpler and more powerful language than c++). the language barrier really isn't an issue. it's more an issue of mindshare. there are a lot of things that are better in the computing world by design but get largely ignored due to lack of marketing.
i just picked up one of these (Well technically i got the mac version). They are very nice. it's basically like a laptop keyboard for a desktop. my only complaint is it isn't USB RF wireless. if it was, i would say it's perfect. but other than that it's a slim compact keyboard for around $30-35 on froogle.
while i agree that archos got there first, i believe the difference in size dimensions will be drastically different. the new ipod is only going to be 2mm thicker. overall the volume won't change much from the current 40gb, which is smaller than the first gens by a good margin.
it's similar with the powerbooks really. no one seems to make a 17" or 15" 1" thick widescreen laptop in the PC world. they're too concerned with cramming the fastest pentium 4 in it.
unix is a generic term now a days. it means a lot of things, but in the general consensus most people agree that mac os x can be considered a unix based OS, despite whatever the technical definition of "unix" is.
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you're confusing usability in this case with convience. there's a distinct, yet important difference. usability means something is easy to do and use -- for example it's easy to install an app in mac os x. you just drag a .app file to the applications folder. this is far more usable than a windows wizard installer (less complex, less steps, less reading, less chance for error, etc). however, lets say i set my account up to be a "Standard" user in mac os x. now when i perform this operation, i get an authentication dialog that asks me for an administrator username and password. this is an inconvience. the usabilty has not suffered, but an added dialog to keep security intact has been added. they do not conflict directly.
increased security only has the effect of reducing convience. i could make myself an administrator and never get a password dialog. this wouldn't have any effect on the original usability of the system. likewise, i could encrypt all my ram and swap space. this would increase security, but have no real effect on usability. security is implemented with policies, and as long as those polices are reasonable (i.e. require a methodology that isn't directly in conflict with a program trying to do it's job) then the only thing it will do is require the user to enter additional passwords when designed properly. a poorly designed system (windows) doesn't implement this policy well. doing operations like copying files to admin-writable-only folders in windows is an example of a poorly implemented policy. in mac os x, i'd get an authentication dialog. in windows, i simply would get an error, with no added dialog to request a username and password.
i think few will debate that accessability when comparing the gui and the console, it's obvious the gui wins there. the utility from the console comes only after it's mastered. a proficient console user can do many gui things in less time, or often in more direct ways and can chain other useful commands in the console via piping to even greater enhance the utility. i know i've never found a simple way to do something like find all the files in a directory with the file extension .java and tell me the total line count of all those files in a gui. in the console it's dead simple.
right now isn't a bad time really. the next gen nvidia cards just came out. amd 64 is going to be in full swing. hardware manufacturers are moving to pci-e. i'd wait until good amd 64 mobos with pci-e are available, and grab a nice geforce 6600 for $150, amd 64 chip for about $150, and the pci mobo to go with it for maybe ~$150
oops! i meant ONE mbps, sorry :)
for those who don't know, bluetooth is currently only 10mbps bandwidth. this is about as much as usb 1.0. in other words, not a whole hell of a lot. tripling the bandwidth isn't really a good solution either if you ask me. while 30mbps is faster, it's not nearly enough to over take the up and coming wireless usb or wireless firewire. both of which i believe are going to be UWB based (i.e. 400mbps).
:P
one of the interesting design decisions with bluetooth is that it operates at the exact same hz as a cell phone signal. hence the convergence with cell phones and bluetooth, as it was obviously designed with this purpose in mind. maybe we'll get lucky and cell phones will have 1gb+ memory with built in mp3 player support one day, so i won't have to carry so many different damn devices
beagle does sound cool. now all we need is for it to take advantage of reiser4, have an sql api for desktop app developers, and ship with every gnome installation out of the box.
captain obvious saves the day!
well, since someone posted a php alternative i figured i'd post the ruby alternative too :P
ruby on rails. very nice web framework
this is what i have been clamoring for for years. why don't we just cache JIT compilation information somewhere, and upon launching an application, check a hash of the system resources (memory, cpu, other information that aids to JIT compilation performance) and if the hash hasn't changed, just use the pre-JIT compiled binary information? and even if it DID change and the platform is still the same, why not keep the pre-JIT compiled information and redo the JIT compilation in the background?
something must be incredibly wrong with this idea, because it's such a stupid, simple, solution to the problems with JIT performance that clearly there's a reason Sun hasn't done it yet. but what do i know.. i'm just a 4th year CS undergrad.
um.. you are wrong. i've used both extensively. the mac dock is more efficient from a usability standpoint.
um. how is kde's taskbar ANY different than the windows one? it has a "start button", it has "quick launch" buttons, it has a "task bar" and it has an "applet/system tray". the kde and gnome implementations are similar enough and pretty much copy microsoft's to the dot. yes, they are more powerful, but if you've used the apple dock it's not nearly as nice in comparison.
maybe. i for one love reducing wiring clutter. it also allows for greater freedom of arrangement.
ut 2004 and doom3 look rather amazing on my 23" cinema display. i don't think LCDs have had issues ever since they hit 16ms (~60 fps) they work just fine for games.
pricing a top of the line dual 250 opteron with a mobo that has similar features to a powermac (gigabit, pci-x, 8 ram slots, firewire 400 and 800.. which no opterons offer, etc) gives you a system at rough price around $2,473.00. that doesn't include a case, powersupply, hard disk, cdrom, keyboard, or mouse like the powermac does.
what planet are you pricing yoru "similar" x86 hardware on? look, i know mac doesn't have a low end $200 pc. but their high end offerings are not only competitive, but cheap.
and that's the kicker really. the devil is in the details. many user environments have made a desktop that resembles a mac, but no one has created an environment that has fixed all the minor details yet. whether by virtue of it's longer existance, or maybe just better designers and developers, apple's user environment is always one step ahead of most the others.
in mac world, your mac's value stays high much longer than in the pc world. thus when you want to upgrade your mac, you just sell it and buy a new one with a big fat discount.
a lot of people think that's stupid, but what happens when new architectures come out? oh.. i want to upgrade my cpu. ok. i'll need a new mobo to go with it. crap. this mobo also needs new DDR ram. well i gotta replace that too. the cpu's more powerful, so it's also going to need a better cpu heatsink and fan. you're already replacing, at that point, +70% of the system (at least in terms of cost). so you save the trouble of replacing your case, PS, cd rom and hard disks.
not everyone even cares to manually upgrade things. many computer users (and by many i'd suggest most) are quite content with selling their old one and buying a new one. it's simpler in general to do.
i believe you mean h264. h263 was mpeg4 i think.
now i can make a hash and print it just by saying:
which outputs
i don't know of any OOP language that has an ability that powerful.
what some fail to consider is that many don't do it for the money, but rather the simple enjoyment of the environment. hard to imagine that there's something more pleasant to develop for than windows is it?
any program worth his shit should have no trouble picking up objective-c (a far simpler and more powerful language than c++). the language barrier really isn't an issue. it's more an issue of mindshare. there are a lot of things that are better in the computing world by design but get largely ignored due to lack of marketing.
or how about just viewing your raw email?
in mail.app i see the email address: eBay@reply3.ebay.com
but when i go and view the raw source i actually it was delivered by:
Received: from mail.wooms.net (unknown [212.124.39.178])
a simple whois wooms.net tells me:
Peter Brueggemann guardian@globe.de
Wooms e.V.
Hammer Strasse 37
Muenster, NRW 48153
DE
+49 2512034762
somehow i doubt that's ebay.
na. they both suck. use ruby instead :)
i just picked up one of these (Well technically i got the mac version). They are very nice. it's basically like a laptop keyboard for a desktop. my only complaint is it isn't USB RF wireless. if it was, i would say it's perfect. but other than that it's a slim compact keyboard for around $30-35 on froogle.
while i agree that archos got there first, i believe the difference in size dimensions will be drastically different. the new ipod is only going to be 2mm thicker. overall the volume won't change much from the current 40gb, which is smaller than the first gens by a good margin.
it's similar with the powerbooks really. no one seems to make a 17" or 15" 1" thick widescreen laptop in the PC world. they're too concerned with cramming the fastest pentium 4 in it.
unix is a generic term now a days. it means a lot of things, but in the general consensus most people agree that mac os x can be considered a unix based OS, despite whatever the technical definition of "unix" is.