I certainly hope that this mess will make the PHB realize that patenting these things is bad
The PHBs will realize it all right, if they don't already. But unfortunately, the result will not be what you want (an end to stupid software patents). It will be even more stupid software patents. The PHBs will see this, and think to themselves, "Oh god, if Microsoft could get screwed by one of these, we could too. We better patent everything we can think of!"
Or you could just use Terminal.app's preferences. Choose whichever shell you prefer.
Yeah, but that doesn't help you much when you ssh into your Mac, or otherwise log into it remotely. In that case, it goes back to using whichever shell is specified for your account - which, if you only change it in Terminal.app, will still be bash.:) That's why I suggested niutil.
Darn, and I was just getting used to the C Shell too.=) Oh well then...
What's the big deal about bash being the default? As it is now, tcsh is the default, but you can easily switch to bash (which is included). I'm sure it'll be the same with Panther. A real quick way to switch your shell (chsh doesn't work on OS X):
Apple isn't making it impossible for you to use the C shell, they just decided it's not the right thing to use as the default shell. Whether or not that's a good move depends, of course, on your personal preferences. But most likely tcsh will just be one little command away after you install Panther.
Sony should have had a warning label that the game was addictive.
News flash: anything that a person might find pleasurable can be addictive. There is nothing necessarily specific to EQ that makes it addictive. I have a friend who plays NetHack for days on end - and I have other friends who just don't see the appeal. Should NetHack carry a warning label because some people find it addictive? Is it the NH (or EQ) developers' fault if someone can't handle the game properly?
If so, then I guess we'd better put warning labels on music CDs, candybars, sci-fi novels, bicycles, and pretty much anything else that might be the slightest bit enjoyable to someone.
This is slashdot, people are supposed to mod when people say anything about charging for software. Everything should be free, we'll all suppose make our living doing support for the software.
One problem with changing the user-agent string is that I am afraid that people will change that permanently and never look back.
This is not an issue with Safari. If you change the user-agent in the Debug menu, it is not remembered between sessions. The next time you start Safari, it reverts back to the default.
If we could get wine ported to mac os x, it may grow faster, being supported by the OS X crowd. In addition, it would have the benefit of greater Windows support for Linux.
That'd be pretty hard to do, I imagine, since Wine relies heavily on the x86 architecture. I suppose someone could come up with an x86 translation or emulation layer, or something. That could sit between Wine and the PowerPC it's running on. I'm not sure how feasible this idea is, though... Just a thought off the top of my head. Any Wine coders out there that can enlighten us on such possibilities?
also considering that all my scripts will now break under the defaults its not so good for me.
I don't think that'll be an issue. Just because bash is the default doesn't mean your tcsh scripts will no longer be usable. Why? Because in all likelihood, tcsh will still be there. Right now, tcsh is the default, but Apple also includes bash, ksh, zsh, etc. Most likely tcsh will still be available on the system. All this means is out-of-the-box Panther installs will have bash as the default shell.
As long as you've got #!/bin/tcsh or #!/usr/bin/env tcsh or something similar at the top of your scripts, you'll be fine.
Maybe MS is just trying to stick with familiar conventions (if they even noticed them). I, for one, like word by word. By Command-Shift-Arrow'ing, I like that I can take out several words at once with a couple key taps.
Or maybe it's just laziness on the part of developers porting products from the PC world.:) It's not that you can't go word-by-word (that's what the Option key is for), it's that when I press Cmd-LeftArrow in pretty much every program on my system, I know that the cursor will go to the start of the line.
My gripe is that all the native widgets use Cmd-Arrow to move around lines, and Option-Arrow to move around words. Text boxes and TextView components do it, and pretty much all my apps do it... but Microsoft apps don't. Just because other commercial apps are also inconsistent doesn't excuse it. They could compromise by letting you choose between Command and Option, but as far as I can tell there's no such preference you can change.
It's inconsistent, and when it comes to the core programs used by "average" users, the Mac is supposed to be all about consistency. One of the reasons I switched away from Linux on my desktop is because I got tired of having different key combos and bindings for common operations in every damn app I used.
Apple has announced that X11 will be installed as part of Panther. So what's wrong with the X11 version?
Well, let's see...
The UI is ugly by Mac standards, and the fonts are even uglier. Both are big no-no's.
The damn thing takes a good 45 seconds to 1 minute to start up on my Mac (dual 1ghz G4s). For comparison, I installed the trial version of MS Office. Word, Excel, et al start up in less than 10 seconds on the first launch, and much quicker after that. Separating the components of the suite is a definite plus here.
OO is very crashy on the Mac. I've had freak crashes while doing simple stuff such as selecting cells in a spreadsheet. This, combined with the long startup times, is hard to swallow.
PC keybindings out the wazu. Having to use Ctrl for all the key combos is decidedly un-Macintosh, and would be really frustrating for the average user.
Don't get me wrong - OpenOffice is a great product... Just not on the Mac. I've used OO a lot on Linux, and it works great there. But on the Mac, it's not good enough that something "mostly" works. If it doesn't walk like a Mac app (key bindings) or talk like a Mac app (open/save dialogs, print dialogs, etc.), it ain't a Mac app. Until there's a native version that integrates nicely with the rest of the OS and its apps, even power users such as myself will have a hard time justifying the use of it - free or not.
As a slightly off-topic aside, I will say that there are things I don't like about MS Office on the Mac as well. Take the key combos, for example. In every other Macintosh program holding the Command key and hitting the left or right arrow will take you to the start or end of the line. But in Word, this just takes you back or forward one word. Very annoying.
Re:Hm, wildly successful brand name...LET'S CHANGE
on
Palm Reveals New Name
·
· Score: 1
I don't understand why companies INSIST on doing this? Is this some sort of corporate fear that their brand name is watered-down by ubiquity?
Really! My favorite example...
Borland - A couple of years, ago, they changed their name to "Inprise" to sound more business-y elite, or something. This resulted in a lot of flak, so they decided to compromise by keeping the Borland name on certain products. So you had "Inprise Borland C++Builder 4 Standard". Yeah, that rolls off the tongue nicely. It was definitely worth throwing away years of respectable brand name recognition. Of course, you notice they are now Borland again.
Non-free programs are not officially considered "part of Debian", but Debian does distribute them. The Debian web site describes non-free programs, and their ftp server distributes them. That's why we don't have links to their site on www.gnu.org
I admire RMS sticking to his guns, but come on! This is ludicrous. Every time I consider becoming an associate member of the FSF (i.e. donating them money), I remember the occasions when he says stuff like this and I reconsider.
Where's the freedom in trying to keep someone from using clearly indicated non-free software? I guess that's the problem with RMS - he wants freedom, as long as it's HIS freedom. It's not about freedom of choice, clearly.
If you want a general and very accessible introduction to relativity, time, etc. in terms of physics, you might want to check out Stephen Hawking's excellent books A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. He explains the basic history and principles in various areas of physics, and goes into theoretical stuff like why time is pear-shaped, etc. Some of it is pretty out there, but the style of writing is very enjoyable and you can get a lot out of both books. They're a lot of fun to read, and really get your mind going on the possibilities.
I haven't used blender and have only dabbled with other 3d programs, so maybe this is obvious, but why does a 3d program need audio sequencing capabilities?
If you're doing 3D work that will be later integrated into a video, presentation, etc. it helps to be able to synchronize the animation in the 3D app to the sound. For example, if you were doing an educational video about how a car engine works, and you were going to model it in Blender, it might be helpful to synchronize your animated engine to the pre-recorded narration (i.e. "when the ignition switch is turned on...").
If this thing has no hard-drive, wouldn't that make email a little difficult? Unless they mean web-based email or an IMAP client then people are gonna lose a lot of there email.
On the WebStation page (linked to in the posting here on Slashdot), it says the following: Web-email, Send & reply to messages! You made a good point about this machine, but your question was easily resolved by RTFA.:) At least Lindows doesn't overtly pretend that this thing will be a full-blown POP/IMAP/whatever e-mail solution.
Or is this "interview" really not all that interesting? For someone, such as myself, who has not followed Galeon closely for the last year or so, it would help to provide some concrete background on the problems they've had. Instead, this so-called interview is basically comprised of two topics, rehashed over and over: libbonobo sucks, and Crispin 0wnz.
This interview sheds very little light on Galeon's past, present, or future. It seems mostly like a page full of bitching by the main developers, with little substance. Tell us about the recent history of Galeon, good and bad, the direction the project will hopefully take in the coming months, etc. "We need to get back to 1.2" is not very helpful, especially for people who don't follow Galeon closely.
Now they've got too many faetures and extras, except for the zire, which feels very cheap and breakable to me (not to mention the TINY screen).
I don't know about the original Zire, since I've never used one. But I own a Zire 71 ($300), which is a beautiful little machine. It has a solid feel to the case, a gorgeous display (better than a lot of $400-600 handhelds I compared it to in-store), a built-in digital camera for simple picture taking, MP3 playback, and video playback. It also has the trademark "K.I.S.S. Palm" feel. My only gripe about it is the limited built-in memory (16MB), which requires you to buy an SD card to truly take advantage of its multimedia features.
Palm has made some really crappy handhelds over the last couple of years, but I think they finally smartened up and know where they are going now. The Tungsten line represents the exact opposite of K.I.S.S., whereas the Zire series represents the "pick up and use" philosophy that you so desire. In fact, the Zire 71 seems to me a lot like the approach Apple tends to take - beautiful hardware with a clean, stable OS and a nice feature set.
As iTunes will come to windows, the masses will not all have an iPod
AAC doesn't really play on anything else.
Perhaps, but how is OGG any better in that regard? I can count the number of portable music players that support OGG on one hand. Which do you think will be more successful in penetrating the market currently dominated by MP3s: AAC, which is pushed by Apple and given the blessing of the media companies; or OGG, which is pushed by Slashbots and a small portion of the open source community?
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
Not to be rude, but... Why the hell would Apple do that? As far as the Music Store is concerned, it will not happen - Apple's AAC format works just fine, and it has the lite DRM that makes the RIAA happy while not pissing off customers. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And they won't.
Then there is the fact that Apple primarily targets the 'average' computer user, which is not you and me. Joe iPod Owner does not know or care about OGG, and he has no reason to. His 2GB collection of MP3s and his fledgling assortment of iTunes AAC files serve his needs. Since he does not care, there's little reason for Apple to.
Lunch is on us, however, you may not publish in any form anything that could ever possibly be constued to be a review, without our express written consent, or you'll get no desert!
That's no big loss. I live in New Mexico, and seeing as it's 93F as I write this at night, I'll tell you that getting "no desert" is not such a bad thing.:)
Instead of having a monetary settlement where every person get a few dollars/money from Microsoft (where only the class action lawyers get the money) it would be better if a revisited settlement included a payment, from Microsoft's 46 Billion dollars in cash (that billy G etc has on hand right now) a payment to be made to a trust fund controlled by Open Source Leaders (Linus, for example)
I'm not trolling, this is a legitimate question that will crop up if such an approach were to be seriously considered. Namely, why does open source deserve that "payment" any more than anyone else that competes with Microsoft? For example, Netscape's downfall can be at least partially attributed to Microsoft's various anti-competitive practices, so aren't they just as deserving of compensation? Just food for thought.
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I certainly hope that this mess will make the PHB realize that patenting these things is bad
The PHBs will realize it all right, if they don't already. But unfortunately, the result will not be what you want (an end to stupid software patents). It will be even more stupid software patents. The PHBs will see this, and think to themselves, "Oh god, if Microsoft could get screwed by one of these, we could too. We better patent everything we can think of!"
Or you could just use Terminal.app's preferences. Choose whichever shell you prefer.
Yeah, but that doesn't help you much when you ssh into your Mac, or otherwise log into it remotely. In that case, it goes back to using whichever shell is specified for your account - which, if you only change it in Terminal.app, will still be bash. :) That's why I suggested niutil.
Darn, and I was just getting used to the C Shell too.=) Oh well then...
What's the big deal about bash being the default? As it is now, tcsh is the default, but you can easily switch to bash (which is included). I'm sure it'll be the same with Panther. A real quick way to switch your shell (chsh doesn't work on OS X):
Apple isn't making it impossible for you to use the C shell, they just decided it's not the right thing to use as the default shell. Whether or not that's a good move depends, of course, on your personal preferences. But most likely tcsh will just be one little command away after you install Panther.
I use KK-12c on my Palm, and it's fantastic. It's basically an emulated HP-12c.
Sony should have had a warning label that the game was addictive.
News flash: anything that a person might find pleasurable can be addictive. There is nothing necessarily specific to EQ that makes it addictive. I have a friend who plays NetHack for days on end - and I have other friends who just don't see the appeal. Should NetHack carry a warning label because some people find it addictive? Is it the NH (or EQ) developers' fault if someone can't handle the game properly?
If so, then I guess we'd better put warning labels on music CDs, candybars, sci-fi novels, bicycles, and pretty much anything else that might be the slightest bit enjoyable to someone.
This is slashdot, people are supposed to mod when people say anything about charging for software. Everything should be free, we'll all suppose make our living doing support for the software.
Case in point :)
One problem with changing the user-agent string is that I am afraid that people will change that permanently and never look back.
This is not an issue with Safari. If you change the user-agent in the Debug menu, it is not remembered between sessions. The next time you start Safari, it reverts back to the default.
If we could get wine ported to mac os x, it may grow faster, being supported by the OS X crowd. In addition, it would have the benefit of greater Windows support for Linux.
That'd be pretty hard to do, I imagine, since Wine relies heavily on the x86 architecture. I suppose someone could come up with an x86 translation or emulation layer, or something. That could sit between Wine and the PowerPC it's running on. I'm not sure how feasible this idea is, though... Just a thought off the top of my head. Any Wine coders out there that can enlighten us on such possibilities?
also considering that all my scripts will now break under the defaults its not so good for me.
I don't think that'll be an issue. Just because bash is the default doesn't mean your tcsh scripts will no longer be usable. Why? Because in all likelihood, tcsh will still be there. Right now, tcsh is the default, but Apple also includes bash, ksh, zsh, etc. Most likely tcsh will still be available on the system. All this means is out-of-the-box Panther installs will have bash as the default shell.
As long as you've got #!/bin/tcsh or #!/usr/bin/env tcsh or something similar at the top of your scripts, you'll be fine.
Maybe MS is just trying to stick with familiar conventions (if they even noticed them). I, for one, like word by word. By Command-Shift-Arrow'ing, I like that I can take out several words at once with a couple key taps.
Or maybe it's just laziness on the part of developers porting products from the PC world. :) It's not that you can't go word-by-word (that's what the Option key is for), it's that when I press Cmd-LeftArrow in pretty much every program on my system, I know that the cursor will go to the start of the line.
My gripe is that all the native widgets use Cmd-Arrow to move around lines, and Option-Arrow to move around words. Text boxes and TextView components do it, and pretty much all my apps do it... but Microsoft apps don't. Just because other commercial apps are also inconsistent doesn't excuse it. They could compromise by letting you choose between Command and Option, but as far as I can tell there's no such preference you can change.
It's inconsistent, and when it comes to the core programs used by "average" users, the Mac is supposed to be all about consistency. One of the reasons I switched away from Linux on my desktop is because I got tired of having different key combos and bindings for common operations in every damn app I used.
Apple has announced that X11 will be installed as part of Panther. So what's wrong with the X11 version?
Well, let's see...
Don't get me wrong - OpenOffice is a great product... Just not on the Mac. I've used OO a lot on Linux, and it works great there. But on the Mac, it's not good enough that something "mostly" works. If it doesn't walk like a Mac app (key bindings) or talk like a Mac app (open/save dialogs, print dialogs, etc.), it ain't a Mac app. Until there's a native version that integrates nicely with the rest of the OS and its apps, even power users such as myself will have a hard time justifying the use of it - free or not.
As a slightly off-topic aside, I will say that there are things I don't like about MS Office on the Mac as well. Take the key combos, for example. In every other Macintosh program holding the Command key and hitting the left or right arrow will take you to the start or end of the line. But in Word, this just takes you back or forward one word. Very annoying.
I don't understand why companies INSIST on doing this? Is this some sort of corporate fear that their brand name is watered-down by ubiquity?
Really! My favorite example...
Borland - A couple of years, ago, they changed their name to "Inprise" to sound more business-y elite, or something. This resulted in a lot of flak, so they decided to compromise by keeping the Borland name on certain products. So you had "Inprise Borland C++Builder 4 Standard". Yeah, that rolls off the tongue nicely. It was definitely worth throwing away years of respectable brand name recognition. Of course, you notice they are now Borland again.
Non-free programs are not officially considered "part of Debian", but Debian does distribute them. The Debian web site describes non-free programs, and their ftp server distributes them. That's why we don't have links to their site on www.gnu.org
I admire RMS sticking to his guns, but come on! This is ludicrous. Every time I consider becoming an associate member of the FSF (i.e. donating them money), I remember the occasions when he says stuff like this and I reconsider.
Where's the freedom in trying to keep someone from using clearly indicated non-free software? I guess that's the problem with RMS - he wants freedom, as long as it's HIS freedom. It's not about freedom of choice, clearly.
If you want a general and very accessible introduction to relativity, time, etc. in terms of physics, you might want to check out Stephen Hawking's excellent books A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. He explains the basic history and principles in various areas of physics, and goes into theoretical stuff like why time is pear-shaped, etc. Some of it is pretty out there, but the style of writing is very enjoyable and you can get a lot out of both books. They're a lot of fun to read, and really get your mind going on the possibilities.
I haven't used blender and have only dabbled with other 3d programs, so maybe this is obvious, but why does a 3d program need audio sequencing capabilities?
If you're doing 3D work that will be later integrated into a video, presentation, etc. it helps to be able to synchronize the animation in the 3D app to the sound. For example, if you were doing an educational video about how a car engine works, and you were going to model it in Blender, it might be helpful to synchronize your animated engine to the pre-recorded narration (i.e. "when the ignition switch is turned on...").
If this thing has no hard-drive, wouldn't that make email a little difficult? Unless they mean web-based email or an IMAP client then people are gonna lose a lot of there email.
On the WebStation page (linked to in the posting here on Slashdot), it says the following: Web-email, Send & reply to messages! You made a good point about this machine, but your question was easily resolved by RTFA. :) At least Lindows doesn't overtly pretend that this thing will be a full-blown POP/IMAP/whatever e-mail solution.
Or is this "interview" really not all that interesting? For someone, such as myself, who has not followed Galeon closely for the last year or so, it would help to provide some concrete background on the problems they've had. Instead, this so-called interview is basically comprised of two topics, rehashed over and over: libbonobo sucks, and Crispin 0wnz.
This interview sheds very little light on Galeon's past, present, or future. It seems mostly like a page full of bitching by the main developers, with little substance. Tell us about the recent history of Galeon, good and bad, the direction the project will hopefully take in the coming months, etc. "We need to get back to 1.2" is not very helpful, especially for people who don't follow Galeon closely.
Now they've got too many faetures and extras, except for the zire, which feels very cheap and breakable to me (not to mention the TINY screen).
I don't know about the original Zire, since I've never used one. But I own a Zire 71 ($300), which is a beautiful little machine. It has a solid feel to the case, a gorgeous display (better than a lot of $400-600 handhelds I compared it to in-store), a built-in digital camera for simple picture taking, MP3 playback, and video playback. It also has the trademark "K.I.S.S. Palm" feel. My only gripe about it is the limited built-in memory (16MB), which requires you to buy an SD card to truly take advantage of its multimedia features.
Palm has made some really crappy handhelds over the last couple of years, but I think they finally smartened up and know where they are going now. The Tungsten line represents the exact opposite of K.I.S.S., whereas the Zire series represents the "pick up and use" philosophy that you so desire. In fact, the Zire 71 seems to me a lot like the approach Apple tends to take - beautiful hardware with a clean, stable OS and a nice feature set.
If running Windows on Linux lets them do whatever they need to do, then who are we to criticize them?
We are Slashdot. You must be new here. :)
Woohoo! The two sweetest words in the English language: de fault! De fault! De fault!
As iTunes will come to windows, the masses will not all have an iPod
AAC doesn't really play on anything else.
Perhaps, but how is OGG any better in that regard? I can count the number of portable music players that support OGG on one hand. Which do you think will be more successful in penetrating the market currently dominated by MP3s: AAC, which is pushed by Apple and given the blessing of the media companies; or OGG, which is pushed by Slashbots and a small portion of the open source community?
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
Not to be rude, but... Why the hell would Apple do that? As far as the Music Store is concerned, it will not happen - Apple's AAC format works just fine, and it has the lite DRM that makes the RIAA happy while not pissing off customers. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And they won't.
Then there is the fact that Apple primarily targets the 'average' computer user, which is not you and me. Joe iPod Owner does not know or care about OGG, and he has no reason to. His 2GB collection of MP3s and his fledgling assortment of iTunes AAC files serve his needs. Since he does not care, there's little reason for Apple to.
Lunch is on us, however, you may not publish in any form anything that could ever possibly be constued to be a review, without our express written consent, or you'll get no desert!
That's no big loss. I live in New Mexico, and seeing as it's 93F as I write this at night, I'll tell you that getting "no desert" is not such a bad thing. :)
Instead of having a monetary settlement where every person get a few dollars/money from Microsoft (where only the class action lawyers get the money) it would be better if a revisited settlement included a payment, from Microsoft's 46 Billion dollars in cash (that billy G etc has on hand right now) a payment to be made to a trust fund controlled by Open Source Leaders (Linus, for example)
I'm not trolling, this is a legitimate question that will crop up if such an approach were to be seriously considered. Namely, why does open source deserve that "payment" any more than anyone else that competes with Microsoft? For example, Netscape's downfall can be at least partially attributed to Microsoft's various anti-competitive practices, so aren't they just as deserving of compensation? Just food for thought.
$ modprobe central
There ya go :)