Quite right. Information should be transferred as properly formatted XML, with CSS used to indicate emotion.
I fear that Raskin has made himself irrelevant
on
Jef Raskin On The Mac
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I admire his work on the original Macintosh and recognize that he was instrumental in creating the modern GUI as we know it.
However, by failing to recognize the changes in HCI introducted by the pervasive, multi-modal, non-linear interface known as the world wide web, along with the slow but steady increase in users' basic knowledge, his comments have become more and more out of touch with reality.
It is worth noting as a postscript that his theory for a Humane Interface was strikingly similar to vi: interact with the computer by memorizing an array of keystroke commands.
I've never noticed any lag on my old G4 PowerBook's built-in display, on my 17" Apple Studio Display at work, or on my girlfriend's 2 Sony laptops for that matter. All have been used with USB mice (Apple and Microsoft) and/or their built-in trackpads. My guess would be that something other than the display itself is at fault.
The use some variant of NetBoot imaging to re-image the machines from a central Apple server (at Apple HQ, IIRC). I think this happens every night. That way they can ensure that every machine in every store works identically.
I use it to manage my lab of 28 G5s. I have a Mac OS X Server set up to deliver a NetBoot image with NetRestore on it to the lab machines.
When I want to re-image a machine from scratch (as a side note, I haven't had to do this once in 2 years, Radmind and OS X do such a good job of keeping everything the way it should be), I just boot it while holding down the N key, NetRestore loads, I select the appropriate image, and there it goes.
A single machine takes about 10 minutes, and since the OS X Server also acts as a Workgroup Manager server, our departmental file server, and a WebDAV server for our students, I stick to 5 or 6 at a time to keep the load down. But a dedicated XServe G5 over gigabit should be able to push out an entire lab in one fell swoop.
There are also scripts that can take care of the ByHost preferences and even giving each machine a unique hostname, and you can set up NetRestore to restore & reboot automatically, so if you use ARD to boot the lab using NetBoot, it can be a completely hands-off system: get it started before you leave on Monday, have a lab ready to go when you come in Tuesday morning.
Making a singe 4x5" CCD may be difficult, but I'd be surprised if no one has experimented with making a camera using several smaller CCDs tiled to create a single large CCD, like a videowall. Still expensive, but possible with today's manufacturing techniques.
California's passenger car diesel fuel is low(er) sulfer, but not as low as Euro diesel or the new standard.
In Europe, VW sells a diesel Passat that uses a baffled particulate filter to trap the soot-causing particles that are the part of diesel exhaust that is dirtier than gasoline emissions. When the filter gets full or particulate matter, an electrical heating element heats the filter to several thousand degrees C to burn off the particulate matter.
A modern direct-injection diesel engine with a particulate filter is a much better solution than a hybrid, IHMO. Simpler, more powerful, more fuel-efficient, and just as clean.
That's what Valenti said when the interviewer asked him why he can't (legally) play back a DVD on a computer running Linux. I think that captures the issue very well.
Valenti and those sharing his views on copyright believe that we (the consumers) should only be able to view works on devices that they approve, at a time and place allowed by them, and how ever many times they want us to.
However, fair use standards CLEARLY state that consumers are allowed to view copyrighted work however they please, as long as they have paid for it. There is no law or statute that allows copyright holders to force consumers to view their work only on certain devices. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provision has this effect, but it would be a blatant anti-trust violation to allow copyright holders to tell consumers they could only view their works on certain devices.
Another notable quote from Valenti is that he is a "great persuader". We need people advocating for consumer's rights who are just as smooth and soothing to technophobe politicians and Valenti is. We need a Good Old Boy to evangelize to the Good Old Boys. Even if Valenti found qrpff "un-fucking-believable", he still left the interview with the opinion that such tools should not be legal. A dialog is most successful when each side can identify with the other on a personal level.
Find the funds. Put it on credit. The increased productivity will pay for itself.
"Apple hardware is too expensive" is an excuse that fails to look at the entire picture. Increases in productivity enabled by intuitive design and reliable equipment far outstrip the initial premium.
I (and, I suspect, most thinking people) will GLADLY pay an extra 10, 20, even 50% over competitors' offerings for a product that does what it claims, easily, reliably, and elegantly.
That is what the "new" (i.e. Jobs II) Apple has been producing since 1997.
If enterprise customers do not see how using Apple's products will result in greater performance at a lower overall cost, then I have no sympanty for them. UNIX + Usability = The Holy Grail, even if it isn't "Free".
...but it won't be the end of life as we know it. That was the poster's intent. Civilization was still essentially civilization as we know it 1000 years ago. If the global temperature was higher then than it is now, then it stands to reason that our civilization will survive climatalogical changes in the near future.
This is not to say that there will be upheaval and strife, but we will adapt.
and Radmind handles disk maintenance and file distribution in the lab.
The built-in firewall is very good (as a supplement to our network's Cisco firewalls), and the AFP fileserver is fast & solid. I did have some stability problems with OS X Server 10.2.x, but 10.3 has been trouble-free, and the new admin tools are great to use. Two thumbs up!
Veritas makes a client for Backup Exec 9 for Mac OS X (you still need to be running Backup Exec on a Windows or NetWare box). There are also dozens of open source & freeware backup solutions that provide schedulable GUI frontends to command line staples like ditto, psync, and rsync, such as Carbon Copy Cloner and RsyncX.
Check out Gimp-Print, an open source project that provides PPD files for hundreds of printers and allows you to use them with networked printers. With it installed you select the appropriate Gimp-Print PPD when you set up the samba printer.
The reason why print drivers for USB printers don't work when you try to use them for a printer shared via a LPD queue is that the drivers were written under the assumption that the printer would always be directly connected to the computer. If you really want to share a USB printer via LPD, there's always ghostscript. I suspect if you're installing an OS X Server for your house, installing ghostscript won't seem like a big deal.
USB Printer Sharing has been around since OS 9, and I suspect it would have required a major effort to fold it into the BSD-based LPD server OS X Server used.
Again, if you really need to share a USB printer, just hook it up to an OS X client machine. OS X Server isn't designed for or marketed towards people who want to set up a home network with 2-3 clients and a shared USB printer. OS X Client can handle that easily. OS X Server is designed for larger networks. For home users it's more practical and cost-effective to stick with OS X client, use personal file sharing and USB printer sharing, and not spend money on a dedicated server and network printer.
In brief, you can share your USB printer via USB Printer Sharing for the Macs on your network, and via SMB printer sharing for the Windows computers. You should be able to use Canon's drivers on the Windows computer.
The Print Server in OS X Server is designed to manage network-capable printers. Client computers must have the correct drivers installed on their systems for the printer who's queue they are connecting to.
Although you can create a queue for a non-networked printer (like the USB printer Pudge was using), the client computers won't be able to use the printer's driver with the queue because the driver assumes a directly-connected USB printer.
OS X Client's USB printer sharing is a completely different mechanism that essentially tricks other computers into thinking that a shared USB printer is in fact connected directly to the local machine. This allows USB printer drivers to work correctly.
I don't know for a fact why USB printer sharing was disabled in OS X Server. It would be nice if it could be integrated into the Print Server in OS X Server, but Apple probably made the decision that the vast majority of customers would be using workgroup-sized, networked printers with OS X Server, and the time it would have taken to add USB Printer Sharing to the LPD-based Print Server wouldn't be worth it.
Workarounds include Pudge's solution of connecting the USB printer to an AirPort Extreme base station; connecting the USB printer to another computer on the network that runs OS X Client; or purchasing a simple print server for the USB printer. Many printer manufacturers sell add-on network adapters (both wired and wireless) for their USB printers.
It's true, other programs have been "king of the hill" before, only to be dethroned. But look at your examples and tell me who did the dethron-ing? Microsoft.
What we have today is different than what has happened before. Before, one company dominated word processing, another had a lock on spreadsheets, another was the king of databases. But look at the situation now. When it comes to "productivity applications" (i.e. the programs that 90% of users use 90% of the time), the leaders are products FROM A SINGLE COMPANY.
Word Processing: Word Spreadsheets: Excel Presentation: PowerPoint Planning: Visio Database: Access Web Browsing: IE Email: Outlook
It goes on and on. No one is going to dethrone MS because they control the whole field. No one can get money and mindshare by succeeding in one area and then move into others, because MS controls ALL the areas. MS makes sure that most PCs come with MS applications that do everything, obviating the need to purchase any other software. If you're Joe/Jane User with limited funds, and your $500 Dell comes with programs to do all the things you need to do, why in the world would you spend more money or more time installing other programs that do the same thing?
Microsoft has a lock on the whole computer, especially now that they're extending their reach into the BIOS. The only reason they need to add more features now is to force users to upgrade their computers and feed the upgrade cycle.
As long as people can spend less than $1000 on a complete system that comes ready to use and has software that does everything they need it to pre-installed, and works pretty well most of the time, no one is going to switch to anything else.
We've already been waiting for 5 years, since IE4 with desktop integration slithered its way onto computers. What features of consequence has IE brought us since then? As others have noted, popup blocking, type-ahead find, & tabbed browsing have all originated elsewhere.
The Safari team at Apple has made more progress on the standards complaint front in the past 6 months than IE has made in the past two years.
I, for one, am not satisfied with taking my lumps for another year (or two, or three). Time to light a fire under Microsoft and make some changes happen, or else we need to start a massive campaign to get people to switch to other browsers!
Could an entity with a solid claim to prior art sue the USPO to get the patent withdrawn? If granting patents like this isn't negligence I don't know what is. Any real (as opposed to armchair) lawyers care to comment?
I'm leaning towards it being an actual bolide. Look at the contrast b/w the sky and the "flaming" object in the first picture; unless the camera used to snap the picture has an exceptionally narrow dynamic range, that fireball is much brighter than the light reflected off a cloud could be.
No more M$ software on my computer. I can't tell you the last time I ran Office or IE, anyway, esp. since Safari 1.0 came out. BBEdit is all the word processor I need 90% of the time, and for the rest AppleWorks is fine.
Now if only I could get Gentoo onto my girlfriend's VAIO...
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Quite right. Information should be transferred as properly formatted XML, with CSS used to indicate emotion.
I admire his work on the original Macintosh and recognize that he was instrumental in creating the modern GUI as we know it.
However, by failing to recognize the changes in HCI introducted by the pervasive, multi-modal, non-linear interface known as the world wide web, along with the slow but steady increase in users' basic knowledge, his comments have become more and more out of touch with reality.
It is worth noting as a postscript that his theory for a Humane Interface was strikingly similar to vi: interact with the computer by memorizing an array of keystroke commands.
I've never noticed any lag on my old G4 PowerBook's built-in display, on my 17" Apple Studio Display at work, or on my girlfriend's 2 Sony laptops for that matter. All have been used with USB mice (Apple and Microsoft) and/or their built-in trackpads. My guess would be that something other than the display itself is at fault.
The use some variant of NetBoot imaging to re-image the machines from a central Apple server (at Apple HQ, IIRC). I think this happens every night. That way they can ensure that every machine in every store works identically.
I use it to manage my lab of 28 G5s. I have a Mac OS X Server set up to deliver a NetBoot image with NetRestore on it to the lab machines.
When I want to re-image a machine from scratch (as a side note, I haven't had to do this once in 2 years, Radmind and OS X do such a good job of keeping everything the way it should be), I just boot it while holding down the N key, NetRestore loads, I select the appropriate image, and there it goes.
A single machine takes about 10 minutes, and since the OS X Server also acts as a Workgroup Manager server, our departmental file server, and a WebDAV server for our students, I stick to 5 or 6 at a time to keep the load down. But a dedicated XServe G5 over gigabit should be able to push out an entire lab in one fell swoop.
There are also scripts that can take care of the ByHost preferences and even giving each machine a unique hostname, and you can set up NetRestore to restore & reboot automatically, so if you use ARD to boot the lab using NetBoot, it can be a completely hands-off system: get it started before you leave on Monday, have a lab ready to go when you come in Tuesday morning.
Making a singe 4x5" CCD may be difficult, but I'd be surprised if no one has experimented with making a camera using several smaller CCDs tiled to create a single large CCD, like a videowall. Still expensive, but possible with today's manufacturing techniques.
You may also be interested in the 16MP+ digital backs available for the Hasselblad H1.
California's passenger car diesel fuel is low(er) sulfer, but not as low as Euro diesel or the new standard.
In Europe, VW sells a diesel Passat that uses a baffled particulate filter to trap the soot-causing particles that are the part of diesel exhaust that is dirtier than gasoline emissions. When the filter gets full or particulate matter, an electrical heating element heats the filter to several thousand degrees C to burn off the particulate matter.
A modern direct-injection diesel engine with a particulate filter is a much better solution than a hybrid, IHMO. Simpler, more powerful, more fuel-efficient, and just as clean.
That's what Valenti said when the interviewer asked him why he can't (legally) play back a DVD on a computer running Linux. I think that captures the issue very well.
Valenti and those sharing his views on copyright believe that we (the consumers) should only be able to view works on devices that they approve, at a time and place allowed by them, and how ever many times they want us to.
However, fair use standards CLEARLY state that consumers are allowed to view copyrighted work however they please, as long as they have paid for it. There is no law or statute that allows copyright holders to force consumers to view their work only on certain devices. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provision has this effect, but it would be a blatant anti-trust violation to allow copyright holders to tell consumers they could only view their works on certain devices.
Another notable quote from Valenti is that he is a "great persuader". We need people advocating for consumer's rights who are just as smooth and soothing to technophobe politicians and Valenti is. We need a Good Old Boy to evangelize to the Good Old Boys. Even if Valenti found qrpff "un-fucking-believable", he still left the interview with the opinion that such tools should not be legal. A dialog is most successful when each side can identify with the other on a personal level.
I'm lacking enough funds to make the switch
Find the funds. Put it on credit. The increased productivity will pay for itself.
"Apple hardware is too expensive" is an excuse that fails to look at the entire picture. Increases in productivity enabled by intuitive design and reliable equipment far outstrip the initial premium.
I (and, I suspect, most thinking people) will GLADLY pay an extra 10, 20, even 50% over competitors' offerings for a product that does what it claims, easily, reliably, and elegantly.
That is what the "new" (i.e. Jobs II) Apple has been producing since 1997.
If enterprise customers do not see how using Apple's products will result in greater performance at a lower overall cost, then I have no sympanty for them. UNIX + Usability = The Holy Grail, even if it isn't "Free".
...but it won't be the end of life as we know it. That was the poster's intent. Civilization was still essentially civilization as we know it 1000 years ago. If the global temperature was higher then than it is now, then it stands to reason that our civilization will survive climatalogical changes in the near future.
This is not to say that there will be upheaval and strife, but we will adapt.
Is it just me, or did the poster get progressively more stoned as s/he wrote the above text?!?
The built-in firewall is very good (as a supplement to our network's Cisco firewalls), and the AFP fileserver is fast & solid. I did have some stability problems with OS X Server 10.2.x, but 10.3 has been trouble-free, and the new admin tools are great to use. Two thumbs up!
Veritas makes a client for Backup Exec 9 for Mac OS X (you still need to be running Backup Exec on a Windows or NetWare box). There are also dozens of open source & freeware backup solutions that provide schedulable GUI frontends to command line staples like ditto, psync, and rsync, such as Carbon Copy Cloner and RsyncX.
Check out Gimp-Print, an open source project that provides PPD files for hundreds of printers and allows you to use them with networked printers. With it installed you select the appropriate Gimp-Print PPD when you set up the samba printer.
The reason why print drivers for USB printers don't work when you try to use them for a printer shared via a LPD queue is that the drivers were written under the assumption that the printer would always be directly connected to the computer. If you really want to share a USB printer via LPD, there's always ghostscript. I suspect if you're installing an OS X Server for your house, installing ghostscript won't seem like a big deal.
USB Printer Sharing has been around since OS 9, and I suspect it would have required a major effort to fold it into the BSD-based LPD server OS X Server used.
Again, if you really need to share a USB printer, just hook it up to an OS X client machine. OS X Server isn't designed for or marketed towards people who want to set up a home network with 2-3 clients and a shared USB printer. OS X Client can handle that easily. OS X Server is designed for larger networks. For home users it's more practical and cost-effective to stick with OS X client, use personal file sharing and USB printer sharing, and not spend money on a dedicated server and network printer.
This article might help you:
Mac OS X 10.3: Sharing Your Printer With Windows Users Via SMB
In brief, you can share your USB printer via USB Printer Sharing for the Macs on your network, and via SMB printer sharing for the Windows computers. You should be able to use Canon's drivers on the Windows computer.
The Print Server in OS X Server is designed to manage network-capable printers. Client computers must have the correct drivers installed on their systems for the printer who's queue they are connecting to.
Although you can create a queue for a non-networked printer (like the USB printer Pudge was using), the client computers won't be able to use the printer's driver with the queue because the driver assumes a directly-connected USB printer.
OS X Client's USB printer sharing is a completely different mechanism that essentially tricks other computers into thinking that a shared USB printer is in fact connected directly to the local machine. This allows USB printer drivers to work correctly.
I don't know for a fact why USB printer sharing was disabled in OS X Server. It would be nice if it could be integrated into the Print Server in OS X Server, but Apple probably made the decision that the vast majority of customers would be using workgroup-sized, networked printers with OS X Server, and the time it would have taken to add USB Printer Sharing to the LPD-based Print Server wouldn't be worth it.
Workarounds include Pudge's solution of connecting the USB printer to an AirPort Extreme base station; connecting the USB printer to another computer on the network that runs OS X Client; or purchasing a simple print server for the USB printer. Many printer manufacturers sell add-on network adapters (both wired and wireless) for their USB printers.
...he also gets angry.
Huh.
It's true, other programs have been "king of the hill" before, only to be dethroned. But look at your examples and tell me who did the dethron-ing? Microsoft.
What we have today is different than what has happened before. Before, one company dominated word processing, another had a lock on spreadsheets, another was the king of databases. But look at the situation now. When it comes to "productivity applications" (i.e. the programs that 90% of users use 90% of the time), the leaders are products FROM A SINGLE COMPANY.
Word Processing: Word
Spreadsheets: Excel
Presentation: PowerPoint
Planning: Visio
Database: Access
Web Browsing: IE
Email: Outlook
It goes on and on. No one is going to dethrone MS because they control the whole field. No one can get money and mindshare by succeeding in one area and then move into others, because MS controls ALL the areas. MS makes sure that most PCs come with MS applications that do everything, obviating the need to purchase any other software. If you're Joe/Jane User with limited funds, and your $500 Dell comes with programs to do all the things you need to do, why in the world would you spend more money or more time installing other programs that do the same thing?
Microsoft has a lock on the whole computer, especially now that they're extending their reach into the BIOS. The only reason they need to add more features now is to force users to upgrade their computers and feed the upgrade cycle.
As long as people can spend less than $1000 on a complete system that comes ready to use and has software that does everything they need it to pre-installed, and works pretty well most of the time, no one is going to switch to anything else.
We've already been waiting for 5 years, since IE4 with desktop integration slithered its way onto computers. What features of consequence has IE brought us since then? As others have noted, popup blocking, type-ahead find, & tabbed browsing have all originated elsewhere. The Safari team at Apple has made more progress on the standards complaint front in the past 6 months than IE has made in the past two years. I, for one, am not satisfied with taking my lumps for another year (or two, or three). Time to light a fire under Microsoft and make some changes happen, or else we need to start a massive campaign to get people to switch to other browsers!
Could an entity with a solid claim to prior art sue the USPO to get the patent withdrawn? If granting patents like this isn't negligence I don't know what is. Any real (as opposed to armchair) lawyers care to comment?
I'm leaning towards it being an actual bolide. Look at the contrast b/w the sky and the "flaming" object in the first picture; unless the camera used to snap the picture has an exceptionally narrow dynamic range, that fireball is much brighter than the light reflected off a cloud could be.
No more M$ software on my computer. I can't tell you the last time I ran Office or IE, anyway, esp. since Safari 1.0 came out. BBEdit is all the word processor I need 90% of the time, and for the rest AppleWorks is fine.
Now if only I could get Gentoo onto my girlfriend's VAIO...
Sounds like Dean really IS net savvy, in an evil sort of way.
"Net savvy" does not mean omniscient. Don't be ridiculous.
And besides, when did it become unusual for politicians seeking office to send people unsolicited communcations? People need to calm down.